Chapter 273: Radical

{Can't you hear it? }

As the surgical participants were enveloped in unprecedented excitement, the patient posed this question.

Kraft could imagine the scene: the celebrating crowd cooled down, like fish noticing a thin ice shell forming on the water's surface—still not fully comprehending, yet sensing an invisible, unspoken change, like coldness, in the environment.

The patient, recently recovered from severe illness, was in high spirits and even drank a cup of wine that day, but kept suddenly turning his head toward some direction, as if reflexively responding to hearing his own name.

He was certain he heard voices, and that those voices were directed at him, though they came from different tones and he could not make out what they said.

"It was as if a group of uninvited guests had slipped into the scene," wrote the notebook's owner.

Attributing this to fluid imbalance caused by intraoperative blood loss was a plausible idea—for instance, deficiency of heat-associated red fluids allowing cold-associated white fluids to become relatively active, inducing hypersensitivity in mental perception.

But the patient's short-term subjective feedback did not support this diagnosis, and the direction of the voices grew increasingly clear.

During a follow-up visit days later, they saw the subject attempting to pry open the sewer stone slabs beside the courtyard wall with an iron pick, his strong arms now fully healed of scars, new granulation tissue nearly enveloping the sutures scheduled for staged removal.

{They're right below}

Something must have gone wrong—the recorder was certain, documented everything in detail, and submitted the report; the reply was: no action needed, continue observation.

This made him resentful toward his superiors, for "that one" had always been known for meticulousness, never overlooking any tiny detail in experiments—precisely this attitude that had yielded abundant results.

Or perhaps this situation was expected?

He still held a positive attitude toward the new surgical material; with the patient regaining the ability to resume labor and daily life, the minor, controllable psychiatric symptoms could almost be ignored.

Compared to this, he was more concerned about the origin of the surgical consumables—whether they would again become a secret refused to be disclosed, like the previous anesthetic.

Before this discordant voice emerged in this extremely closed circle, this had been his greatest concern, for the supply of new material seemed severely limited, so much so that he had waited months without a second use.

Observation of the first patient had lasted over a month; the psychiatric symptoms, once thought to resolve spontaneously with fluid balance, showed no sign of improvement, even exhibiting progressively heavier trends.

Noticeable personality changes appeared in the patient: he grew easily agitated, lost interest in surrounding things, and an indescribable psychological discomfort—like persistent mosquito bites—haunted his consciousness.

His former familiar life now brought pain; he wanted to follow those voices, find their source, find the answer to his release.

Even colleagues who constantly touted "restored independent living ability" began to waver. The best current hypothesis was that these side effects were isolated cases, or caused by technique flaws, solvable through improved methods.

Yet the leader of the small circle and the two colleagues who had previously raised objections remained strangely silent.

{No opinion}

This was another way of saying "don't want to say."

The recorder left two full pages of postoperative discussion, analyzing the gains and losses of this surgery, even touching on the debate of body versus consciousness. After long contemplation, he suddenly realized the current division was likely caused by information asymmetry.

And regarding the subtle fracture within the small group, the leader ultimately proposed a solution: since there might be an issue, let's perform one more case and see.

"Huh?" Kraft reread that sentence, confirming it meant exactly what he thought it did.

Their preliminary plan was to implant a small sliver of special material and record the complete, precise sensations throughout, to determine whether it was a physical or mental disorder.

Since the patient was not a professional, his subjective symptom descriptions were imprecise; how to fully and accurately understand the process became the second challenge.

But this didn't trouble them long—they chose a simple, brutal solution to bypass the difficulty: operate on themselves.

"Huh?!"

The writer volunteered to be the one to experience and record it; his proposal was approved.

Kraft realized he now held something real: a true "primary source," an exceedingly rare firsthand conclusion drawn by a professional through personal practice.

Of course, he hadn't burned his bridges: in his initial plan, he didn't need to go as deep as the first time—just implant a sliver the size of a fingernail beneath the skin's superficial layer; no general anesthesia needed, just freeze the area slightly numb as before, then drink two sips of wine before proceeding.

If anything went wrong, the implant could be quickly excised and removed, reducing risk to an acceptable level.

"What's wrong? Your face looks terrible."

"It feels like seeing an old acquaintance—the style is identical; I wouldn't believe it wasn't taught by the same person."

The surgery was a complete success—or rather, there was no technical reason it could have failed; for them to perform it was almost an overkill.

"This is the second time I've seen that thing—it looked like a chipped stone fragment, white in a color I'd never seen before," he recorded, his handwriting slightly unsteady, perhaps due to postoperative clumsiness in one hand.

"When I touched it, I felt 'vitality'—hard to describe, like a shard of bone that had been removed yet remained alive for a long time, its cooled marrow seeping out, carrying a damp chill even through my frozen arm."

The wound healed completely by the next day; days later, the skin was smooth as before, the subcutaneous foreign body detectable only by touch.

The first sensation was a dull ache, somewhere between a light prick and a burn, followed by complex feelings of coldness and itching.

His mental state was unusually good—he often found himself writing past his usual bedtime without noticing.

This calm life lasted until a night a week later, when indistinct human voices interrupted his work.

At first he thought it was family reminding him to rest early, but downstairs he found them already asleep, lights out. The empty, dark house held only himself, the candle in his hand, and the voices again.

A young voice, as if just a few steps away, yet also as if from the street outside.

He stood still, silently counting over two hundred breaths—then the voice came again.

This time, it was old and weary, rising from below, gurgling as if from a throat clogged with phlegm, devoid of meaning—yet he was certain it was calling him.

{Like hearing your own name on the street and naturally turning to look}

The house had no basement. He searched every possible hiding space—the living room, kitchen, storage room—driven by inexplicable terror and an instinct to find the voice's source, for only then could he find peace.

His family awoke; only after his wife calmed him did he realize he had slipped into an almost uncontrollable state of anxiety, just like the patient.

"I need to know what that thing is. I need to know where the voices come from." The erratic, jagged notes showed he had been captured by intense emotion; the plan to remove the implant never reappeared.

His accounts of the implant became increasingly frequent; he began detailing the sensations and the growing frequency of the voices, cataloging them by age and suspected direction.

When Dunling's rainy season arrived, a strange pattern emerged: his auditory hallucinations worsened on rainy days.

Whenever heavy rain flowed through the city's ancient drainage channels, countless voices rose from underground, whispering ceaselessly through the night.

And at this time, the leader of the small circle promised him an answer—the answer to the voices, and to everything.