Chapter 297: Nystagmus

Kraft urgently searched his brain for information on brain injury, but the brain provided no explanation for the current situation.

Central nervous system damage can cause a variety of consequences, and ocular changes are naturally among them—abnormal pupil size, visual field defects or blurring, abnormal eye movements, and more.

Typically, patients have a considerable chance of exhibiting one or several of these, depending on the location and severity of the injury.

From an anatomical standpoint, the origin of nystagmus could be localized to several distinct functional areas: the vestibular system, which perceives posture and position, lies in the inner ears on both sides; the oculomotor nuclei, in the midbrain of the brainstem; and the cerebellum, responsible for coordinating movement, situated at the lower rear of the skull.

So what kind of trauma could so precisely strike several of these functional areas, producing a uniform vertical upward nystagmus despite otherwise differing symptoms?

Believing in this is no more reasonable than believing a falling object from above just happened to dislodge a decades-old thrombus or necrotic zone in a pedestrian's brain, suddenly restoring perfusion—anyone who believes that should go get checked themselves.

There must be some other, simpler, more direct reason—likely through normal pathways, not pathological ones. After all, it would be absurd for random, different injuries to coincidentally produce the exact same pathological presentation, but if some unknown condition triggered a naturally inherent human reflex, that would make sense.

Like in a pitch-black bedroom, everyone's alarm suddenly goes off—the most plausible suspicion isn't that each person accidentally set their alarm for midnight for different reasons, but rather that it's raining or the curtains weren't closed.

The logical process was somewhat complex, yet in his mind it took only a moment. Kraft temporarily dismissed the seemingly most plausible explanation of intracranial injury and turned his focus to normal conditions.

This brings us to the physiological significance of nystagmus.

During acceleration, visual scenes pass by at speeds far exceeding normal; to adapt, the visual system spontaneously adjusts, attempting to counteract the effects of motion.

Manifested in the eyes, this results in high-frequency tracking of the passing scenery.

Imagine sitting on a moving train: your eyes track each roadside tree as it rushes past, then snap back into place, creating the appearance of tremor or shaking, with the direction of the tremor precisely opposite to the body's motion.

Interpreted from this perspective, the uniform vertical upward nystagmus in deeply comatose patients actually reflects their subconscious perception of positional change.

【The body is falling】

The clue pointed toward a deeply ominous direction—like a hunter, gleefully following faint traces through mist, only to find not deer or boar, but strange, monstrous forms strolling through the woods.

"How is that possible?" Kraft heard his own muttering; no one answered his self-talk. "It doesn't make sense."

Coupled with the abnormal earthquakes, it was nearly impossible not to suspect a deep-layer influence. But these patients had no documented exposure history—why had they progressed so rapidly to the sensation of falling?

In that faint nystagmus, he seemed to glimpse a premonition of something inconceivable drawing near; though it had not yet arrived, its ripples had pierced spatial barriers, stirring the consciousnesses trapped in deep coma.

Such influence, requiring no medium, occurs only when two entities are sufficiently close.

"This is fucking ridiculous."

It would be best if his guess were wrong. He could only comfort himself this way—a non-neurology specialist, interpreting textbook knowledge, was inevitably subjective and arbitrary.

What he needed to do now wasn't to dwell further on this question, but to continue treating patients, and later ask them whether they remembered perceiving anything at the edge of death—if there even was a later.

The monks in the church were also busy; having heeded the advice not to move patients randomly, they merely whispered prayers and lightly touched the patients' foreheads.

In effect, this gesture greatly calmed most patients still conscious, soothing them considerably.

Kraft began treating those with more severe, yet currently manageable, conditions.

He checked Kup's puncture results and the sealing of the puncture site, commended his technique, and instructed the assistant to move the screened patients together into a denser grouping.

Kup stared in astonishment as Kraft moved swiftly through the narrow gaps between patients, suddenly appearing remarkably agile.

It wasn't that the professor was usually clumsy—rather, his movements now seemed guided by some perception beyond the limits of vision; even without looking at his feet, he precisely avoided patients' clothing and flailing limbs.

Kraft crouched lightly beside the patient with cervical dislocation, administered a small amount of ether from his toolkit to relax consciousness and muscles, then gently but firmly clasped both sides of the patient's head and slowly pulled upward.

Years of study had taught Kup the complexity of the neck—minute force could shift vertebrae that looked nearly identical but differed in shape, and even a slight shift could cause anything from illness to death.

He had seen standard manual reductions before: relying on bony landmarks on the skin to infer the condition, then carefully manipulating, with the risk of failure.

But those hands moved with unmistakable purpose—no back-and-forth adjustments, just a decisive twist after traction, then release and pressure to realign.

The neck snapped back into place; the sleeping patient's facial expression relaxed. Cotton pads were placed on both sides and front/back of the neck, secured with thick bark strips.

"This isn't standard procedure—it's merely a compromise due to time constraints," Kraft noted amid his rush, "Always seek bony landmarks properly and proceed cautiously under normal circumstances."

Yet he immediately applied the same method to several other cases with obvious limb deformities from fractures, bandaged and labeled them, and instructed follow-up examinations.

His speed and efficacy surpassed anything Kup had ever seen—even surpassing Kraft's own usual performance.

Even the church observers offered lay praise; upon learning from Brother Wading that Kraft had once saved a colleague with a head injury—who wasn't even from Dunling University's Medical Academy—they expressed rare approval.

As a student and assistant, one ought to feel proud of one's mentor's skill. But Kup felt only an irrational emotion rising within him—a shadow stretching long in the dark, cast upon his soul; it took him a long while to identify it as a twisted fear.

This fear did not stem from the unknown, but from the known—precisely because he understood, it became incomprehensible.

Kraft began shaving the hair of comatose patients, drawing circles on their skulls—some on the same side as external injuries, others on the opposite side.

A long-absent sense of isolation hovered above his head. The room was packed with people, all watching the same scene, yet none could empathize with what he had discovered; an invisible barrier separated him from the crowd, leaving him alone with the incomprehensible phenomenon. Even though rationally he knew he was safe, biological instinct bred fear.

Once he recognized this, he began to sense something moving around him—a phantom part, like a breeze, brushing across his face and within his body, drifting freely, continuously touching and tracing shapes, as if an unimaginably vast sea anemone, unconsciously sensing the world with its blooming, undulating tentacles.

It stretched within its own tide, relaxed and unbound.

"What are you standing there for? Come help me!" Kraft called over his shoulder, "We need to move this patient back to the clinic—this place can't handle it."

"Yes, yes," Kup shivered, feeling suddenly cold. "Will you have time later? I'd like to talk to you."

"Of course. After I'm done."