Chapter 299: Groundwater

The surgery continued, with the lead surgeon's mental state undergoing a sustained collapse.

The earthquake brought little substantial loss, but it added frost to the already worrying sterile environment; no matter how much imagination he summoned from two lifetimes, he could not have foreseen an intraoperative earthquake or a contaminant falling from the sky.

Although he reacted in time and blocked the falling dust with cotton cloth, invisible particles were surely everywhere in the air now; who knew what concentration had been reached.

Now he could truly only hope in the Heavenly Father, hoping that the old man, seeing his believer was injured in his own arena, would exert some effort to lower the infection probability.

Brother Wading, tearful yet unable to weep, once again accelerated his hand speed, trying to solve the problem faster.

But facts proved that some things do not shift with subjective will. Chiseling bone with a chisel was fastest like this; he still took slightly longer than expected to chip out a circle in the bone.

Then, with force as even as possible, like lifting the lid of a pressure cooker, he pried this piece open to release the internal pressure.

Gelatinous material, red enough to be glaring and slightly dull in parts, bulged from the newly opened gap; due to its large volume, it took on a form resembling egg liquid about to congeal in a pot, subtly undulating with pressure changes.

Brother Wading gently clamped a piece with relatively higher coagulation using small round-nose forceps, lifted it, and placed it on cotton cloth in a tray; against the white background, the blood-streaked clot looked like some red parasite extending cilia.

David finally snapped, turning his head to make this scene disappear from his sight, otherwise he might have vomited. Choosing not to go into surgery back then was indeed correct.

Although there was no suction device, the entire cleaning process was not slowed much; operationally it was close to scooping a soup dish with too much water using a small spoon and chopsticks, except one had to avoid touching the bottom of the plate as much as possible.

One must be fortunate that this was another case of epidural hemorrhage; otherwise, he would have to cut open the dura mater, clean the clotted blood, and suture the meninges back. This also reminded him of the importance of preparing an absorbable suture to handle situations where sutures could not be removed.

After checking and confirming no active bleeding, Brother Wading began closing and suturing the wound. After some hesitation, he still left a small silver tube in place, inserted obliquely into the incision, wrapped the suture around it two extra times, and fixed it to the scalp.

It was originally supposed to be part of new experimental equipment, replacing overly fragile glass tubes in places where transparency was not needed, but Brother Wading unexpectedly discovered that, aside from not being soft enough, this tube was actually very suitable for use as a drainage tube.

With such a large wound, oozing blood and fluid were inevitable; to prevent accumulation, it was necessary to place a tube to guide it out.

Normally, drainage tubes would be soft tubes made of rubber or some polymer material, connected to a negative pressure bag, but conditions were limited, so they had to make do.

This made the style rather bizarre; the sutured patient's head looked like a baseball with a silver straw inserted.

Finally, wrapping the patient's head with several layers of bandaging that was firm yet not tight, loose yet not slack, the tortuous surgery finally drew to a close.

The matter was far from over; this patient would lie in the clinic's independent ward receiving special monitoring for at least half a month. Cost-effectiveness need not be considered; his survival was the most effective outcome.

Before pushing the patient out of the operating room, Brother Wading flipped open the patient's eyelids one last time; vertical downward nystagmus still appeared intermittently, his consciousness still wandering at the edge of the eternal sea of death, stirred by deep tides.

"What next?"

"Let him lie quietly, do not move around randomly, use a small bottle to collect the fluid flowing from the tube; I need to know the daily volume." Brother Wading knew that what could be done here was finished; from now on, the patient's fate would be in his own hands and in the hands of probability.

One must admit doctors are somewhat metaphysical; after all, medicine has not yet exhausted the mysteries of life, and clinical experience always wavers between "this can work?" and "this won't work?"

After sending the patient into the ward, he toured the remaining patients still in a coma; those with only concussions or mild cerebral contusions had begun to wake up, pondering the three great philosophical questions under unfamiliar ceilings, and would still need a while to fully recover.

As for the patients who chose conservative treatment due to smaller intracranial hematomas, although they had not worsened, there was no immediate trend of improvement.

If only he had antibiotics on hand. At this moment, he missed antibiotics priced the same as popsicles; even if not intravenous, an oral version would do, allowing for a more aggressive treatment approach.

Daydreaming was fine; Brother Wading immersed himself for a while in the beautiful fantasy of "moldy oranges suddenly starting to produce large amounts of antibiotics," then reluctantly left the ward and took Brother Wading to transfer to a room upstairs.

In a relatively confidential environment, they could finally discuss their views on the current situation.

"This is not an ordinary earthquake."

"Are you very sure?" Just letting this speculation run through his mind made Brother Wading feel the hair on the back of his neck could lift his collar, letting cool air blowing from underground pour in. "Some unnatural force caused the earthquake, but that is simply too..."

... simply too exaggerated.

People can accept evil existing to harm a region, causing houses to be haunted, fields to lie barren, and water sources to be polluted; at most, it encroaches on the church, and that is already an extraordinary matter.

Reaching the level of overturning an entire city and causing mass panic is simply unheard of and unseen. Not to mention this city is Dunling, the kingdom's center of faith.

"And why today, right on the day we were leaving the city?"

Although it sounds a bit self-conscious, the timing was really too coincidental; just when all of them, the few who knew about recent anomalous events, were outside the city, an earthquake struck inside.

Could it be that they were so bold that the power capable of overturning the earth took a second look at them, waiting until a few insignificant creatures, less than insects to it, had gone far away before daring to act?

"That is not necessarily so." Brother Wading had also had this thought, but immediately found an explanation from another angle. "Our travel time was not decided by ourselves."

"What do you mean?" The monk sorted through all his thoughts from early morning seeing the sky clear up to arranging the trip with Brother Wading, and was certain every decision was completely voluntary, with no one attempting to influence his subjective will.

"It was decided by the weather. We had long wanted to visit Green, so we would definitely set out as early as possible on the first day the weather cleared; it was not a random choice."

Green's earlier description of heavy rain on that side of the dream world provided inspiration. From an anomalous studies perspective, changes in present-world weather should also reflect in the deep layer, inducing deep-layer existences to take various actions. This imprecise logic could make sense.

"Then why would rain cause an earthquake?" This was another question.

"Groundwater levels?"

Perhaps in other places, surface water would need some time to seep underground. But in Dunling, this land covered by a dense drainage system, the time lag between precipitation changes and groundwater level fluctuations was greatly shortened.

Considering the sewers were directional, the resulting water level changes might not be uniform either; it would be a drastic groundwater level change in a specific area, stimulating something highly dependent on water.

"I must return to that Great Hall as soon as possible."

The matter was not entirely without clues. If there was a place closest to the answer, it was certainly in that deeply buried Great Hall, beneath the hexagonal giant well that swallowed water.