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 at what should have been the palm, only to pass through it effortlessly.

This was not normal: the skin and muscle enveloping 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 stopped Greene from pouring 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 saturated with moisture had been dissolved, leaving thin, withered muscle bundles adhering to the surface of a left upper limb skeleton with four distinct curves, the skin shrunk into longitudinal folds.

Yet clear textures and pores remained preserved, frozen in vivid detail at the moment life had fled.

In stark contrast, the hand appeared as if all lost life had converged there, condensed to the point of saturation, nearly melting into bone and skin.

Boundaries between tissues blurred, regressing toward a low-differentiated state; a heartbeat-like pulsation formed the undulations they observed beneath the sleeve.

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

Amid the churning biomass, several irregularly sized hard objects were lifted—pale, stony fragments emitting a dim glow, faint yet unmistakable even against the torchlight.

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 in the remains, then discover fresh fodder nearby.

No blood gushed from the cut—the bodily 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 block the view behind him with his body, pull out a new bottle, and catch the liquid.

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

It was practically synonymous with attraction; even the active, dangerous biomass on the ground failed to divert the gaze of onlookers from the black liquid in the bottle—until it was covered with a sack.

The quantity was minimal; Kraft quickly completed collection, 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 slightly cracked—evidently handled frequently; cramped handwriting was interspersed with ink stamps and smudged stains.

"What's this?" Greene waved away the torch, whose sparks occasionally scattered, 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 long—the earliest entries were already from a previous date.

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 marked its location and approximate shape with simple sketches, 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 very successful." Kraft continued flipping; at this recording frequency, the notebook could not possibly be so thick.

Though the frequency of practice was low and the handwriting poor, the author's attitude and professionalism were commendable—his logic and descriptive accuracy were precise, reaching a level that instantly confirmed to Kraft the author'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 long 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 college—not a student. Someone at least a lecturer level could lead autopsies at this skill, but likely still a lecturer; the professors would perform autopsies 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, meticulously documenting how they had used prior autopsy experience to bypass the arm's muscle bundles and clear a complex humeral fracture without damaging blood vessels.

Kraft could picture the scene: the surgeon had to dissect layer by layer, retract tendons with hooks, expose the fracture site, inspect vessels, remove bone fragments, and realign the shaft—groundbreaking work in an era when external traction for reduction had not yet been adopted.

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

The follow-up entry a week later showed failure: 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.

Seeing this, Kraft sighed. Insufficient understanding of nerves and 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, including bone fragment reinsertion and 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: likely due to inadequate sterilization, compounded by the patient's already deteriorated condition from prolonged illness, postoperative complications directly 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 nearing a cure—but rather, futile labor.

"They went too far." Even with black liquid to bypass anesthesia, the rest was a dead end. This was a limitation of the era—not of the person.

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

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

There was only one small problem: the patient seemed to have developed mild auditory hallucinations.

"Below, I hear people talking to me in the sewers. Many people."