Chapter 272: Resonance

Noticing the anomaly in the sleeve was not difficult—it pulsed rhythmically, especially incongruous against the black robe clinging to a withered frame.

Kraft drew his sword and thrust straight into what appeared to be the palm, only to pass through it effortlessly.

This was not normal: the skin and muscle covering the bones had vanished, replaced by a substance offering almost no resistance, slowly flowing around the blade's tip, transmitting faint tremors of gnawing, grinding, and clinging.

He halted Greene's attempt to pour oil, twisted the blade, and sliced vertically through the entire sleeve down to the robe's armpit.

The body was unquestionably dead; even by Kraft's standards, the exact time of death was hard to determine. It existed in a peculiar desiccated state—fat rich in moisture had been dissolved, leaving thin, dried muscle bundles adhering to the curved skeleton of the left upper limb, the skin shrunk into longitudinal folds.

Yet clear textures and pores remained, frozen vividly at the moment life had fled.

In stark contrast, the hand appeared to have absorbed all the life that had drained away, condensed to the point of saturation, nearly dissolving skin into bone.

Boundaries between tissues blurred, regressing toward a low-differentiated state, pulsing like a fetal heart, creating the undulations visible beneath the sleeve.

The slender five fingers had melted and spread apart, fused like webbed palms, flowing like near-boiling slurry on an iron plate, filling the slit he had just cut.

Amid the churning biomass, several irregular hard objects were lifted—pale, stony fragments emitting a faint, dim glow that no torchlight could mask.

Calcified nodules rapidly precipitated, forming irregular, tooth-like structures that ground and gnawed, shredding nearby desiccated tissue and incorporating it into themselves.

Kraft raised his sword over his shoulder and brought it down, severing half the limb; the second strike entered the same incision, cleanly detaching the entire limb. He did not wish to watch this thing consume any potential clues from the remains, then discover fresh fodder nearby.

No blood gushed from the cut—body fluids, as expected, had dried up; oily, viscous black liquid seeped from the vessels, coalescing into droplets that hung and fell.

The seepage was slow—slow enough for Kraft to shield the view behind him with his body, pull out a new vial, and catch the liquid.

Its fluid, non-coagulating state revealed its identity: fully activated black fluid.

It was practically synonymous with attraction—even the active, dangerous biomass on the ground failed to divert the gaze of those nearby from the black liquid pooling in the vial, until it was finally enclosed in a sack.

The quantity was minimal; Kraft completed collection quickly, dragged the remains aside away from the amorphous mass, and fully cut open the robe to search for personal items.

Forceps, vascular clamps, long needles, and a small leather-bound notebook with a clasp.

The cover bore an oily sheen; the spine was slightly cracked, clearly from frequent handling. Scribbled handwriting was interspersed with ink stains and smudged smears.

"What is it?" Greene waved away the torch, whose sparks occasionally flew, and held up a lantern to illuminate the pages.

"Looks like a notebook—autopsy notes." Kraft flipped through a few pages and knew the content immediately; the time span was extensive—the earliest entries dated three years prior.

It recorded the autopsy of a dead infant, in which an unusual tissue, never before seen in adults, was found in the anterior superior mediastinum. He sketched its location and approximate shape, noting he should pay attention to this area next time.

Then... the next autopsy came three months later—and he never again obtained a subject of the same age.

"What does it say inside?"

"It says your work has been highly successful." Kraft continued flipping; at this frequency, the notebook could not possibly be this thick.

Though the practice was infrequent and the handwriting poor, the author's attitude and professionalism were commendable—his logic and descriptive accuracy were precise, reaching a level that immediately confirmed to Kraft the writer's identity as a fellow practitioner.

The author's terminology had become second nature—he could fill in obscure technical terms and run his strokes together without pause.

It seemed he had anticipated the notebook might fall into others' hands: no signature appeared anywhere, yet even without reading further, his identity could be narrowed to a very small group.

"From the Medical Academy—not a student. Someone at least a lecturer, capable of leading autopsies. But likely still a lecturer; professors would perform autopsies far more frequently."

After the initial autopsies, the intervals between entries shortened around a year ago, becoming nearly weekly. The content grew increasingly detailed and expanded beyond mere dissection.

Rarely, a single entry featured neat, deliberate handwriting, documenting step-by-step how they had used prior autopsy experience to bypass the muscle bundles of the arm, avoiding vascular damage while treating a complex humeral fracture.

Kraft could picture the scene: the surgeon dissecting layer by layer, retracting tendons with hooks to expose the fracture, inspecting vessels, clearing bone fragments, and realigning the shaft—groundbreaking work, given that external traction for reduction had yet to be widely adopted.

But the crucial point was: it took a long time and required a stable environment.

A week later's entry noted the outcome: the surgery failed. The patient developed high fever; instability from missing bone fragments caused poor alignment; sensation and motor function were lost on the radial side of the hand; the patient could no longer work as a blacksmith.

Kraft sighed. Insufficient understanding of nerves, difficulty healing after massive bone loss—these were essentially unsolvable problems, no matter how hard one tried.

Unfortunately, they had indeed tried every possible solution: bone grafting, substitution with other materials.

The most refined case involved a syphilis patient—they attempted to replace bone destroyed by the pathogen with carved animal bone.

The result was worse: inadequate sterilization, combined with the patient's already deteriorated condition from prolonged illness, led directly to fatal postoperative complications that freed the patient from suffering.

Repeated failures drove the recorder nearly mad, leading him to conclude that even with the aid of that mysterious, unknown substance, complex surgery was essentially impossible.

This meant that the long-term, costly progress in anatomy might not be drawing closer to healing patients—but instead, was futile labor.

"They went too far." Even with black fluid as a shortcut to solve anesthesia, the rest was a dead end. This was a problem of era, not of individuals.

Yet the next entry shifted tone: they had found the first patient who had suffered failure, and attempted a "new filling material."

No fever. No prolonged healing. Sensation and motor function returned to the affected limb.

There was only one minor issue: the patient seemed to have developed mild auditory hallucinations.

"Below, I hear voices speaking to me from the sewers. Many voices."