Chapter 25: I Think Something's Off

"What are these?" Kraft frowned; this scene was truly unfriendly to someone with obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

You could say he hadn't tidied up, yet he had sorted a little; you could say he had tidied up, yet it made no difference from not having done so. The chaotic mess on the table reminded him of the scattered pages his grandfather had bought, which could cause immense mental distress when unnumbered.

"Oh, speaking of which, you've arrived just in time. These are experiment records from over ten days ago, but they've been jumbled, and I was in the middle of sorting them." Lu Xiusi picked up a page from the pile and handed it to Kraft. "Professor Kalman is a good mentor; it would be better if he didn't leave things lying around."

Kraft took the paper from his hand; upon close inspection, the handwriting did indeed resemble that in the letter. The writer's habitual letter ligatures and slant were well reflected here, and even in the rush of the experiment, he had not forgotten to draw a few decorative strokes.

The script was very clear; the content was very vague.

This headless and tailless record contained several lines of nonsensical writing, known only to correspond to feeding different cups of water to several mice, with only numbers and no specific content. Beneath each line were scattered abbreviations; Kraft guessed they were probably something like the mice's fates.

Kraft was unfamiliar with the professor's shorthand habits and could not guess what words had been abbreviated and pieced together, or perhaps they were new terms the professor had just coined.

He flipped the paper over, found no corresponding explanation, no experiment date or number, and could only hand it back to Lu Xiusi, asking, "What do these words mean? I am not very familiar with the professor's writing style."

"Unfortunately, that is the problem; I don't recognize them either, which is why I wanted to ask for your help." Lu Xiusi glanced at it and tossed the paper onto the neatly stacked pile; this stack was not actually sorted, but rather abandoned because it was completely unintelligible. This mess looked far worse than Kraft had estimated.

"I mean, is there a possibility that Professor Kalman is your mentor, not mine?" Kraft voluntarily picked up another sheet from the table and glanced at it; it seemed to depict part of an animal's skeleton and muscles. He knew little about this aspect and could at most tell it was not human.

Combining it with the previous sheet, if there was a connection between the two, it might be the structure of a mouse? He didn't know where the professor had found mice for the experiments. Nowadays, no one seemed to raise those familiar white or black lab mice; the professor's text referred to ordinary mice, and he didn't know if they had been washed before being caught.

If not, then after touching these experiment records, he should probably go wash his hands.

"It wasn't like this before; recently, the mentor has become too obsessed with researching the Black Liquid, so he writes without caring whether I, the sorter, can understand it." Lu Xiusi also had grievances about this. "Moreover, I didn't participate in all of these; most of them, I can't even recall when they were done. The mentor didn't have time to explain clearly before rushing off to Dunling."

"Hold on, you mean these are experiment records about the Black Liquid?" Kraft's hand trembled; previously guessed terms like heavy metals and neurotoxicity rolled through his mind. The writings left by these two clowns after contact without protection were now in his hands.

"Yes." Lu Xiusi looked entirely matter-of-fact, quite surprised that Kraft had only just realized it.

"And then you brought these experiment records here without any concealment? Aren't you afraid someone might come in and see them?"

Kraft felt somewhat numb; when he first saw the letter, he thought it concerned high-level experiments on some mysterious substance. In the stereotype from the otherworld's soul, such experiments should be conducted by a group of people in hazmat suits and masks, operating in a high-end laboratory like Umbrella Corporation.

Then, such dangerous and precise things should have their relevant data locked in a safe that could not be found at all; to retrieve them, one would have to pass at least three large iron doors, go down at least three floors underground, and press a mysterious small button in the secret room.

That was an exaggeration, but even with limited conditions, it shouldn't come to directly taking confidential documents to the office for sorting, right? What if some thoughtless person broke in and took a look? Did you really not consider this possibility, or what?

"It shouldn't be that bad... Generally, no one comes here; everyone knows the professor has left to attend to business." Lu Xiusi gathered the remaining papers spread on the table into a pile; his completely indifferent attitude raised Kraft's suspicion of neurotoxicity by another level.

"Since we can't figure it out, let's put them away first, somewhere absolutely impossible for others to find, and lock them up." Kraft placed the drawing he held on top of the stack, feeling as though he had inadvertently boarded a thief's boat. Since the professor's cleanup work was a complete mess, someone had to clean up his mess.

The immediate priority was to find a place to hide this huge pile of records that shouldn't be here; for instance, that so-called secret laboratory the professor mentioned in the letter would be good—although it wasn't exactly very secret, it was still far better than just leaving them spread out here.

He could only hope that place wasn't too conspicuous, and add another lock.

Not being able to read the records had now become a blessing in disguise; even if someone did see these things, it was unlikely they would easily realize what experiment the professor was actually conducting.

"Also, you just said that laboratory is in the Medical School? And the samples are kept there too?" Watching Lu Xiusi put the experiment records into an ordinary wooden crate, Kraft realized the storage conditions for other items must be no better. "How exactly is that sample preserved?"

"In a glass bottle, didn't I just say?" Lu Xiusi closed the lid and knocked it firmly twice on the raised edge to seal it tight.

This action was more like how Kraft dealt with the old TV at home when he was a child: beating something with some crude but effective methods until it yielded and operated normally.

"Hiss~" Someone sucked in a sharp breath. "I'm not talking about that; I mean, besides the glass bottle, do you have any other preservation measures?" He should have thought of this earlier; now that laboratory was far from a safe place. Something with unknown volatility, effective in extremely small doses, and placed in a basement with poor ventilation?!

Kraft's brain started working rapidly; this didn't seem to be a simple issue of lacking safety awareness anymore.

One or two lapses, he could still imagine to himself that the scientific development level in this world was simply too low, lacking a systematic set of experimental norms. But as he stepped into this office, strange details began to accumulate continuously, and by now had reached a level impossible to ignore.

The professor shouldn't be this kind of person; when he first arrived at the academy, even something almost half-confirmed like human dissection required a rather subtle inquiry, and the day before, he had given him "Human Anatomy" as a foundation. Kalman was a scholar, and indeed, he was not very guarded against fellow scholars; that was a fact, but he was certainly not ignorant of human relations and precautionary awareness.

Could such a person do something like rushing off to Dunling without explaining things clearly? Forgetting to tell him to hide the notes, and even forgetting to explain his newly coined abbreviations to Lu Xiusi?

Alright, Kraft could take a step back and temporarily believe that Professor Kalman was blinded by a huge surprise. The professor was not young; seeing a difficulty that had plagued the academic world for decades finally broken within his lifetime could cloud his judgment; it wasn't impossible to forcibly explain.

Then let's talk about Lu Xiusi. He was a relatively extroverted person, sometimes a bit not so sharp, but not a fool.

Even without the professor's instructions, leaving so many original experiment records in a room where anyone could push the door open at any time was too unreasonable.

Yes, it could be explained that the content was very difficult to discern what it actually meant; objectively speaking, there were no major flaws. The Medical School was the headquarters of Professor Kalman and Lu Xiusi, so doing this was not unreasonable.

Then there was the nearly reckless experimental method. The two of them, without fully clarifying the nature of the Black Liquid and without fundamentally confirming it was "Black Liquid," risked drinking diluted samples.

You know, the tough guy who swallowed Helicobacter pylori raw did so only when no one believed him, and after swallowing it, he could at most get chronic gastritis or a stomach ulcer. On what basis did the professor and Lu Xiusi do this? Did they just rely on their certainty that this heavily diluted sample was fine?

They took turns drinking it, took turns being unconscious for a day, and then directly associated it with the Humoral Theory.

Very reasonable; Lu Xiusi, based on the Humoral Theory, also found a claim that a small amount of Black Liquid would not long-term affect human balance.

Too strange; upon close examination, everything seemed to have an explanation, but Kraft instinctively felt something was out of order. Although the light was not poor, a cold and eerie atmosphere that only he could perceive had already filled the room, strange yet carrying a subtle sense of familiarity.

"Go extinguish that small stove used for boiling water." Kraft reached out and snatched the box from Lu Xiusi's hands; amidst the other's look of surprise, he reopened the lid, took out the papers one by one, and spread them across the table.

The numerous records quickly covered the table; Kraft stuffed two cups of barley tea into Lu Xiusi's hands, telling him to hold them, to clear more space on the table.

After spreading them out without overlapping, the table could no longer accommodate so many papers. More records were laid flat on the floor, extending all the way to the base of the wall. He walked quickly to the window, pushed it completely open, letting more sunlight flood into the room to facilitate his thorough examination of them.

Only after fully spreading them out did one realize these records were far more numerous than imagined. The experiment records that filled only a small half of the wooden crate could fit messily piled on the table, but in reality, they could cover an area nearly three times the size of the tabletop, basically occupying the entire range within the room that could be directly hit by sunlight.

"Is there anything you need help with?" Lu Xiusi stood nearby holding the two teacups, looking like a pitiful student who had just finished class only to be told of an extension, while Kraft at this moment was completely ignoring him.

Circling the papers scattered on the floor, Kraft walked around a few times. The records, which showed absolutely no pattern when huddled together, revealed clues once spread out. Relying on his understanding of this handwriting style, even without page numbers or dates, these records could still be roughly divided into several categories.