Chapter 290: Waveform Signal

After marveling at the wonder of the deep creature, Kraft turned his attention back to the black salt serving as the measurement standard.

Under the high-power lens, the nearest small grain of black salt seemed, possibly, probably, perhaps, to have begun showing signs of melting, causing its edges to become slightly, imperceptibly rounded.

The visual difference was far less obvious than the intuitive change, as if he sensed something had changed first, and only then, upon careful observation, discovered the subtle alteration in its outline, so minute it was hard to distinguish from errors caused by staring too long.

If scaled up proportionally, it would be like a deep entity the size of a crawling creature completing an entire biological version of a Transformer transformation in a room before a small bottle of black salt placed next to it showed signs of melting. Even the most sensitive-eared musician couldn't tell the difference by shaking the bottle and listening.

Kraft retreated to the chair in the corner of the room, waited for five hourglasses to flip, and then observed again.

Perhaps because the sample underwent no further transformation, the melting stopped, or perhaps it never started at all.

To rely on changes in the black salt to display weaker deep influences would likely require a high-power microscope to have any hope. As for finding someone to stare at the black salt under a microscope all day, one could easily see that such a thing offered no safety whatsoever.

The water temperature in the trough gradually dropped, from hot enough to soak open instant noodles to a temperature suitable for brushing teeth.

As always, the sample keenly detected the environmental change, using relatively sharp bony structures to slice open the surface's egg-membrane-like cuticle, squeezing out from inside as if hatching, and wrapping the cuticle inward.

The gray cuticle was torn into pieces, pulverized into tiny fragments suspended within the translucent body, and swallowed and dissolved by some newly formed vesicle-like structures.

It appeared to have been digested rather than directly transformed into other tissues.

This made sense, Kraft thought; the cuticle on the body surface consisted of dead cells. Even deep creatures couldn't perform the miracle of resurrecting the dead, they could only break down and recycle proteins. It seemed somewhat scientific, but fundamentally, it was not very scientific.

He once again observed that "suspected melting" of the black salt under the lens, proving what he had seen before was not an illusion.

At the same time, something touched him on another level, like insects passing over his skin, brushing against the finest hairs. It was feedback from his spiritual senses, identical to the sensation previously considered a warning before every past encounter, only extremely faint.

"Interesting." This was the first true close-range observation of deep creature activity.

Compared to the past, it was roughly the difference between encountering a brown bear in the wild and watching a baby Siberian hamster through explosion-proof glass in a zoo. The former experience was like a violent storm; the latter was a small ripple in a glass of water.

Although very faint, the spiritual-level touch could still be detected as it occurred during the sample's transformation.

When it was less intense and threatening, one could carefully feel this "touch." It was as if sticking a finger into water, feeling the ripples caused by a water strider tapping the surface pass over the skin.

"Interesting." This touch did not seem entirely random; rather, it correlated with the sample's activity.

Kraft hesitated for a moment, but driven by curiosity, he connected his spiritual senses and caught the tail end of the "touch."

It originated from the sample's core, the small stone fragment named "Moon Bone." It released something once thought to be a dangerous premonition—the sensation of his spiritual senses being touched during every encounter.

Facts proved it was not some time-transcending premonition, but something real and tangible, a "field" or "wave" produced by the deep creature.

The spiritual senses could contact it, which might mean it was something of a nature similar to the spiritual senses. The feedback felt like using thought to stroke a current of air that passed through the palm, a mass of undulating air.

If he had to find an analogy, Kraft believed it was somewhat like a "Fungal Spirit," but more elusive, an "unformed Fungal Spirit." At least, he could truly use his spiritual senses to tear a Fungal Spirit into hyphae, yet he couldn't truly grasp this thing.

A primitive, primary, unformed spiritual entity, like a self-replicating macromolecular organic compound on the verge of being true life, its level stuck in the middle.

Waves originating from the core propagated within it, forming a three-dimensional, or perhaps even higher-dimensional, "wave."

As the complex transformation completed, the "wave" also subsided. In a state without waves, the primitive spiritual entity was almost imperceptible; perhaps only when they aggregated into a massive individual—like the one in the Royal Tomb—would they form a suffocating sense of oppression.

"Let's do it again." Kraft emptied the trough and tossed the kettle to Kup. "Boil some water; I want to see it one more time."

To be honest, if this were in the Otherworld's soul realm, whether the operation would pass animal ethics review was doubtful. But here, there wasn't even a human ethics committee, and he hadn't figured out whether this should pass animal ethics or human tissue sample usage ethics.

So the experimental subject was once again placed into the steaming hot trough.

The professor's interest had shifted from developing observation devices with no leads to biological research.

This time, he observed the entire wave phenomenon, so complex it was dazzling, accompanied by intricate and elaborate tissue changes of various kinds.

Complex, but not chaotic. Kraft could sense that some pattern existed within it, even a one-to-one correspondence, like ripples generated by every raindrop hitting a pond on a rainy day, overlapping to form an interwoven, complex wave.

"Can you feel it?" The professor fished the bottle out and handed it to Kup. "That wave."

Mr. Assistant struggled to hold the bottle with a slightly trembling hand for a few seconds, then firmly shook his head and handed it back: "I just feel a bit of an itch in my hand."

He felt that agreeing to serve as an assistant might have been a mistake, coming here to splash water on bottled fear for an extra monthly salary, and having to endure an employer whose state was different from usual.

"What a pity." Kraft said this; discoveries that could not be shared with others always felt lacking.

Taking a deep breath, a hidden satisfaction filled a certain corner like fresh gas rushing into the lungs, then flowed away like an exhalation—he had already absorbed its freshness and generated new curiosity.

Perhaps the sample manipulated tissue transformation by means of this wave signal, inputting commands like a directive.

But so many transformations were proceeding simultaneously; the complex waves intertwined and tangled, forming a ball of yarn with no loose ends, making it impossible to analyze.

It was similar to the problems encountered when biology entered the genetic level; the genetic code lay right before one's eyes, but figuring out what every segment was for and what diseases specific bugs would cause was a killer.

If only they could induce high-intensity expression of a specific function in a targeted manner.

"I want to try again..." Kraft rubbed his stiff hands, eager to make progress.

But the flowing hourglass reminded him that the time he spent in his spiritual senses was increasing second by second; too much repetition was a huge waste, requiring better planning of the experiment.

He had already tried temperature as a physical stimulus; he should try a different angle, perhaps yielding new discoveries.

Looking at the sample still rhythmically expanding and contracting, an idea he had considered long ago popped up: since it was homologous tissue to humans, would drugs effective on humans work on this thing?

"Kup, help me get some digitalis and belladonna from the box, no... I mean foxglove and Devil's Cherry, bring some over."