Chapter 26

Before their souls merged, both had developed some familiarity with alphabetic calligraphy, either out of personal interest or under their grandfather’s threat. Long-term active or passive practice made this new soul increasingly sensitive to subtle differences in writing.

Kraft mobilized his consciousness, entering a state of hyper-observational focus and perfect recall, forcing himself to ignore the faint, elusive unease in his intuition, and immersing himself in the analysis of the scattered papers.

The pressure and stability of each stroke significantly affect stroke thickness, indirectly revealing the writer’s state at the time. Connected letters indicate writing fluency, tied to familiarity with words and overall control. Though such connections can be added afterward, unnatural transitions in the flow remain detectable.

If written under similar conditions, handwriting tends to be quite similar. Among these records, the writing could be roughly grouped into three categories.

First, there was the category exemplified by the professor’s letter to him. This portion of writing clearly demonstrated the professor’s mastery in this area, embodying a kind of “useless elegance.”

These flowing, linked lines were not produced by rapid writing, but by deliberately easing off pressure at the end of each stroke, gently pulling the pen to the next letter’s starting point to form the connection. In actual practice, such writing was inefficient and prone to tremors and errors.

Yet the back-and-forth linking gave the characters a strong sense of unity and aesthetic harmony. Coupled with the professor’s excellent control over line spacing and letter size, the writing remained machine-like in its neatness and precision, even without ruled lines.

The professor must have been in excellent mental condition when writing these, possessing the mental energy to pursue such extreme refinement and beauty in his script.

The second style was likely written when speed was required.

These characters generally featured slightly thinner strokes; upon close inspection, there was little ink bleed or fuzz, indicating the professor wrote quickly, with minimal dwell time.

These records frequently contained sudden interruptions—connections that abruptly halted where they should have continued, leaving behind broken ends or lingering ink dots. It appeared the writer paused mid-sentence to reconsider word choice, disrupting and then restarting the original thought flow, creating a sense of rhythm broken.

After continuing, the professor would often add a quick stroke to reconnect the broken parts. Since these were added later, they lacked the natural flow of original connected writing, leaving traces for Kraft to detect.

The third type was the most obvious. These notes clearly showed the writer’s mind was elsewhere—strokes varied wildly in thickness, lacked coherence and unity. Within a single page, the slant of letters differed noticeably, something rare for someone with a fixed writing habit.

In these records, Kraft and Lu Xiusi encountered at least fifty percent more unfamiliar vocabulary than on other papers; in some cases, half a page contained completely unreadable information.

Uppercase and lowercase letters were mixed haphazardly, violations of writing norms appeared everywhere, separated by unidentifiable punctuation, resembling scribbles that could not be reversed to deduce original intent.

On the most severe pages, letter spacing collapsed entirely—letters crowded and piled together, refusing to expand into adjacent blank space, matching Kraft’s pre-calligraphy skill level, with legibility approaching zero.

A few bizarre characters were utterly incomprehensible to Kraft, violating all known writing systems. Some were drawn against conventional direction; finding insufficient ink, the writer retraced the same spot multiple times until tearing the paper fibers, carving the mark into the surface.

“Are you absolutely certain these are the professor’s handwriting?” Kraft picked out the third category, pointing to a stroke that had pierced through the paper, and asked Lu Xiusi.

Such writing was not only ugly but severely damaged the pen tip, producing a grating, piercing sound during writing. Imagine a needle scraping across sandpaper covered in tiny bumps—the unpleasant noise scraped against the eardrums, irregular tremors traveling up to the fingers gripping the pen.

Translating this motion to a pen tip, Kraft found it utterly intolerable—simply seeing it could effectively treat low blood pressure. By his own standards, no sane person would enjoy such an act, just as humans instinctively recoil from the ultimate noise of scraping a iron wok with a spatula.

Lu Xiusi leaned in for a closer look and gave a definitive answer: “I remember this one—it was written by the professor. It was among his final notes before leaving, and stood out enough for me to be certain.”

Kraft frowned, placed this sheet on top of the pile, and carried it to the window, attempting once more to decipher the professor’s meaning.

Many people have idiosyncratic writing styles that become chaotic when written quickly and carelessly. But this was different—he was certain this was not merely an unusual capital letter.

The stroke was drawn in reverse, the pen tip tearing through paper fibers, requiring multiple passes to “carve” the symbol. Ink varied in quantity, spreading unevenly through the damaged fibers, transforming a single line into a beaded chain of lumps and irregular dots.

Kraft’s consciousness absorbed its form, matching it to the lesions formed by tuberculosis growing within narrow tubules—like a string of nodules and cysts, the grotesque outline a distortion of order.

Thin, sharply returning ink lines pierced through the surrounding space, converging on another symbol, like a bony, long-nailed finger plunging into the lesion. Elongated letters, chaotic as swarming flies, encircled them, arranged in paths that seemed both circular and square—prolonged viewing induced an illusion of motion and deformation.

He had never seen such writing. No—he should not even call it “characters.” Something so unnatural could not and should not be produced by any sane mind.

If this were truly the professor’s record, Kraft would rather believe an evil spirit had taken over the professor’s body, deceived everyone, and then penned the most vile joke it could conceive.

“No, something must be wrong,” Kraft declared his conclusion, tearing his gaze from the paper. Once scattered, consciousness was hard to gather—his mind overflowed with unavoidable associations, dragging up the most repulsive or profound memories from his past, blending them into the present content, turning it all into a nauseating mess.

The nausea forced him to distance himself from these papers as quickly as possible, returning them to a sealed container where he could no longer see them.

“I think I’ve found some leads. Let’s separate them first.”

“Fine. Since the professor isn’t here, you’re in charge,” Lu Xiusi replied readily, pulling out several wooden bookmarks.

Kraft then spent more time sorting the three categories, placing them back into the box, separated by wooden dividers for easier future organization.

With two solid thumps, the lid was closed again. The room returned to its neat, comfortable state, and Kraft exhaled, inexplicably relieved. But the matter was far from over—the unknown laboratory, whatever its condition, now waited for them inside the Medical Academy.

Making a gas mask was impossible; covering the face with a damp cloth wouldn’t suffice—they needed another solution.

There was, however, one impossible solution. Kraft recalled the equipment commonly associated with medieval black-clad physicians—the beak mask. It existed in this world too.

He had no idea what it actually looked like. His knowledge was limited to vague, unverified popular science articles claiming the beak was stuffed with bags of spices and herbs.

It made a little sense. Or maybe it made no sense at all.

“Lu Xiusi,” Kraft asked, clasping his hands before his mouth in the shape of a beak, “do you know if there’s any mask like the one worn when visiting plague patients? The one with the pointed beak?”

“Is it really necessary?” Lu Xiusi didn’t understand. Today, Kraft had worn him down completely; his enthusiasm for the experiment had dwindled. “Even if it’s toxic, we lost consciousness after drinking the diluted sample.”

For a moment, the thought “Maybe I’m being overly cautious” gained ground—but Kraft shook it off immediately. Previously, the professor and Lu Xiusi regularly opened windows for ventilation; now, this sealed laboratory had been closed for a week—who knew what volatile substances might have accumulated?

Extra preparation might waste a little time. Skipping it might waste the rest of his life. He could do the math.