Chapter 26: Occasionally Playing the Role of Sherlock Holmes

Before the two souls merged, both possessed some understanding of alphabetic calligraphy, whether out of personal interest or due to their grandfather's threats. Long-term active or passive practice made this new soul increasingly sensitive to the differences in various forms of writing.

Kraft mobilized his consciousness, entering a state of meticulous observation and photographic memory, forcing himself to ignore the faint, elusive sense of anomaly coming from his intuition, and immersing himself in the analysis of the papers scattered on the floor.

The pressure of the pen and the stability of the stroke significantly affect the variation in stroke thickness, reflecting a person's state of mind while writing from a side angle. The ligatures between letters indicate the fluency of writing, relating to familiarity with words and overall control. Although they can be added after writing, the unnatural points at the transitions can still be distinguished.

If the characters were written under roughly the same state, the handwriting is mostly quite similar. Among these records scattered on the floor, they can be roughly and vaguely categorized into three types.

First is the type exemplified by the letter left by the professor. The content of this part of the writing well reflects the professor's mastery in this area, highlighting a kind of "impractical elegance."

These fluid lines of continuous trailing silk were not obtained through rapid writing, but by reducing the force at the end of each stroke and gently pulling it to the position of the next letter to form a ligature. In actual writing, such characters are not only inefficient to write but also prone to hand tremors and mistakes.

However, the lines pulling back and forth give the written characters a strong sense of unity and aesthetic beauty. Combined with the professor's good control over line spacing and letter size, they maintained machine-like neatness and precision even on paper without auxiliary horizontal lines.

When writing these characters, the professor must have been in good mental state, having the energy to pursue an almost extreme delicacy and beauty in his handwriting.

The second type of handwriting was likely written when a faster speed was needed.

The strokes of these characters are mostly slightly thinner; when examined closely, there are fewer burrs formed by the ink spreading, indicating that the professor wrote them quickly in a single pass, with a shorter dwell time.

Sudden interruptions frequently appear in these contents; the cursive writing of the text suddenly jams where it should have been, leaving a broken end or a lingering ink spot. It looks as if the writer paused to deliberate on word choice, the original train of thought was interrupted and then resumed, carrying a sense of a disrupted rhythm.

After continuing to write, the professor casually added a stroke to reconnect the broken parts. Because these were re-added parts, upon close inspection, they are not as natural as continuous writing, leaving room for Kraft to discover them.

As for the third type, it is the easiest to pick out. The notes of this category clearly show that the writer's mind was not on the hand; the strokes are uneven in thickness, and both continuity and unity are very poor. Often, the degree of slant of the letters varies within a single page, which is rare for someone with a fixed writing habit.

In these records, the vocabulary unknown to both Kraft and Lu Xiusi was at least half more than on other papers, with some even having half a page of completely unreadable information.

Uppercase and lowercase letters were intermingled, places violating writing standards were visible everywhere, separated by indistinguishable punctuation marks, resembling typos but with no way to deduce the original meaning.

In the most severe sheets, the gaps between letters were broken, crowded and stacked, preferring to squeeze into a ball rather than expand into the blank space beside them, comparable to Kraft's level before he practiced calligraphy, with readability approaching zero.

There were also a very few awkward characters that Kraft had absolutely no clue about, not conforming to any writing method. Some were drawn against the conventional direction; after discovering the ink was insufficient, he scratched the same position several more times until destroying the paper fibers, hard-carving the traces.

"Are you really sure this is the professor's handwriting?" Kraft picked out the third type first, pointing to a stroke that pierced through the paper on one of the sheets and asked Lu Xiusi.

Such a writing method is not only ugly but also causes great damage to the pen tip, producing a grating friction sound while writing. Imagine a needle tip scratching across sandpaper full of small bumps; the unpleasant sound scrapes the eardrums, and irregular tremors transmit to the fingertips holding the pen shaft.

Substituting this action onto the pen tip, at least Kraft felt it was intolerable; seeing it could effectively treat symptoms of low blood pressure. Projecting oneself onto others, normal people are unlikely to like such an operation, just as humans instinctively reject the ultimate noise of scraping a wok with a spatula.

Lu Xiusi leaned in for a closer look and gave an affirmative answer: "I happen to have a slight impression of this sheet; it was indeed written by the professor. Because it was a record made just before leaving and looked quite special, I can be certain."

Kraft frowned, folded this sheet on top, and took it to the window to try again to understand the professor's meaning.

Many people might have their own special writing methods, which twist into a tangle when writing fast and without attention. But this is different; he could be certain this was absolutely not a special uppercase of any letter.

The reverse stroke, the pen tip tearing the paper fibers, took several strokes to "carve" out this symbol. The ink varied in amount, scattering and transferring between the destroyed fibers, turning a line into a rosary-shaped strip composed of clumps and irregular dots.

Kraft's consciousness absorbed its form, fitting it with the lesions formed by tuberculosis developing in narrow lumens, resembling a rosary made of tumor masses and cysts; the disgusting contour was the result of the distortion of an orderly thing.

Sharp, zigzagging ink lines passed through the surroundings, concentrating on another symbol, like a gaunt hand with long fingernails plunging into the lesion. Narrow letters, chaotic as a swarm of flying flies, surrounded them; the trajectory of their arrangement seemed round yet square, and prolonged viewing would create an illusion of motion distortion.

He had never seen such characters before; no, he should not use the word "characters" to describe something that defied nature. A person with sanity remaining should not and could not smear out such things.

If that was a record left by Professor Kallman, Kraft would rather believe that a real evil spirit had seized the professor's body, deceived everyone, and then sat at the desk to write out the worst joke it knew.

"No, something must be wrong." Kraft voiced his conclusion and shifted his gaze away from the paper. Once consciousness disperses, it is not easy to gather again; the mind is filled with inevitable associations, pulling out the most nauseating or profound things from memory, combining them with the current content, and mixing them into a nauseating product.

The feeling of nausea forced him to get away from these papers as soon as possible and put them back into a closed container where they could not be seen.

"I think I have found some clues; let's separate them first."

"Alright, since the professor is not here, you decide." Lu Xiusi readily agreed, taking out several pieces of wood to use as bookmarks.

Thus, Kraft spent some more time sorting the three types of records, putting them back into the box, separated by the wooden pieces in between, to facilitate further subdivision and organization next time.

With two more solid thuds, the box lid was closed again, the room returned to a neat and comfortable state, and Kraft inexplicably breathed a sigh of relief. But the matter was far from over; that secret laboratory of unknown situation was now waiting inside the Medical School for them to deal with.

Producing a gas mask was impossible, and just covering the face with a wet cloth and going in was unreliable; they had to think of other ways.

If there was any way, there was indeed a way that was no way. Kraft thought of the equipment often paired with medieval plague doctors—the beak mask; this world indeed had it too.

As for the specifics, he really did not know. His understanding was limited to some unsourced popular science articles saying that the beak was stuffed with cloth bags containing spices and herbs.

It seemed to make a little sense? Or maybe it made no sense at all.

"Lu Xiusi, I want to ask, is there any mask worn when visiting plague patients here? The kind with a pointed beak." Kraft clasped his hands together in front of his mouth, making the shape of a beak.

"Is it really necessary?" Lu Xiusi could not understand; today he was physically and mentally exhausted from being tormented by Kraft, and his enthusiasm for the experiment had been worn down considerably. "Even if there really is poison, we only lost consciousness after drinking the diluted sample."

For a moment, the thought that "I seem to be too alert" took the upper hand, but Kraft quickly shook it off. Previously, because the professor and Lu Xiusi often went to do experiments, the door was at least opened daily for ventilation; now, with this laboratory sealed for a week, it was hard to say what would happen if there were volatile substances.

Making extra preparations would at most waste a little time; not making preparations had a probability of wasting all remaining lifespan. He could calculate this account clearly.