[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies":3,"chapter-notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-353":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Notes on Kraft Anomalous Studies",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2283831,4467,"Chapter 353: Violent Vomiting","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-353",353,"\u003Cp>Following the direction Feld pointed to, it was easy to find the highly irregular ledger entry.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Someone—more accurately, a group of people—exchanged a complete set of ritual vessels for a large quantity of grain and the church’s livestock.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was a disastrous deal. Ritual items would never be made from impure, low-grade silver; the material cost alone was high, not to mention the lengthy craftsmanship required by skilled jewelers and silversmiths. Even wealthy churches in prosperous regions might hesitate to keep a full set.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After all, such items were used only a few times a year. If truly needed, gilded or silver-plated alternatives would suffice.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So where in the parish could anyone produce a full set of pure silver ritual vessels? The answer required no guesswork.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“The monastery? Why would they come here?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Dominic traced the wrinkled script, like chaotic ruts in muddy ground, leading toward the unknown.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“It’s strange, isn’t it? Even if grain stores were low, there were plenty of larger villages closer to the main road—they didn’t have to come here for scraps,” Feld said, baffled. “They took everything. Almost emptied the place.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Only the ritual vessels could have justified it. Otherwise, the church’s administrators would never have risked starvation by stripping their own stores.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Any mishap before harvest season would bring serious trouble.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“And why trade ritual vessels at all?” That was the most incomprehensible part—equivalent to a farmer trading his livelihood, his land, for temporary food. A desperate act of survival.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And for clergy to do this added another layer: moral and spiritual violation. Turning something beyond monetary value into a commodity was sacrilege. In severe cases, the Church would punish such acts.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Only under extraordinary circumstances—war, famine, survival at stake, or to sustain essential charity—could such a choice be debated.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But Feld could not imagine any urgent situation the monastery might have faced.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“What do you think?” He turned to Dominic, who was utterly absorbed in the text, as if something had grown from the words, entangling his gaze and dragging him into that time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His companion said nothing, but Feld felt he had uncovered something—like before: fleeting, ambiguous clues, fatefully guiding them toward a path that seemed preordained.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unease stirred within him, though he still could not pinpoint its source. The holy emblem overhead offered no comfort—only a sense of being watched, of being looked down upon.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Something’s wrong.” Dominic pressed his fingertips against the inner corner of his eye and the bridge of his nose, flipped backward through the pages to the blank, unrecorded sections, then flipped back again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Of course I know something’s wrong. I want to know what you think.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“A wagon train—not one specifically here to collect grain.” Thanks to his experience with food procurement and estate management, it was clear the church’s grain allotment was negligible for an entire monastery’s needs—barely enough to distribute a meager portion per person.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Feld nodded in agreement. Their views aligned, making the wagon train’s purpose all the stranger.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“What if it was only for the wagon train’s own use?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Still not enough.” Feld did a rough calculation. Even with nearly forty people in the train, it would last barely half a month—not counting fodder for the animals. “If the group was small, it might last a good stretch of the journey.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“But what did they gain? It’s absurd to make a losing trade just for a single trip—unless they were just passing through, and their destination was elsewhere.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“They were in a hurry,” Dominic added.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“So hurried they set out unprepared, forced to improvise mid-journey; so rushed they had no time to gather funds or stop—so they traded ritual vessels directly for supplies.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Does that make sense?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course it didn’t. The more he thought, the stranger it became.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Dominic flipped rapidly through the entire notebook again and again, found no second similar entry—this only confirmed something, sharpening his urgency: “We need to find out what happened.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I doubt it,” Feld said pessimistically. He probably had deluded himself from too much research, treating this place like the Cathedral of the Mother’s library, expecting cross-referenced sources to offer multiple angles of analysis.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Even if such records existed, they weren’t cut out for this.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Keep looking. Maybe someone else happened to record it?” Dominic pressed his knuckles into his nasal bridge until the skin turned nearly purple, oblivious to the pain, already pulling out another old book and frantically searching.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The unease deepened. Feld’s mood sank. Dominic’s behavior reminded him of the notebook’s original authors—obsessed, consumed by the pursuit of something insubstantial.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But he couldn't stop him. They were equals. Without clear justification, all he could do was persuade.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Too bad. Twenty years have passed. There’s no hope.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So much time had passed. Everyone in the church had been replaced. The current administrators likely knew nothing of the details.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Wait. What did you just say?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A casual remark caught Dominic’s attention. His gaze, lost among the dusty pages, snapped back sharply.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Uh… no hope?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“No. The one before that.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I said… twenty years?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Yes. That’s it.” Dominic flipped back to the records, cross-referenced the dates, and pointed excitedly. “Precisely, about twenty-one years ago. The June entries from that year.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“What does that mean?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Think. Twenty years ago—what was happening then?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Under Dominic’s intense gaze, Feld finally grasped the hint: “The monastery? The monastery left then.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Dominic grew even more agitated. Feld thought he saw it again—the same fiery, illusory glow in his eyes, burning and flickering like his racing thoughts, erupting from memory’s corners, filling gaps in the theory with improbable details.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I remember the baron mentioning it—they left in a rush. Even the half-ripe wheat in the fields was left behind… and the timing matches.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The emotional surge seemed to worsen his headache. His skin flushed red, sweat trickled down his temples.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the damp, chilly air, facing the window’s light, Feld saw faint white mist rising from Dominic’s hair.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“There’s no second record here. Was it never written… or did they never return?” Dominic’s speech quickened, his words growing slurred, as if something rolled in his throat, obstructing expression.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He looked strange—like a broken wind instrument, playing a hastily composed, off-key, staccato melody with stubborn persistence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A pathological thought, hovering between reason and impulse, forced him to think, to speak, fighting against his body’s distress.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Finally, the urge to speak overcame his physical reaction.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Ugh!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before Feld could react, Dominic vomited violently. The nausea drove him to ignore the precious paper records before him—he seemed ready to tear his stomach out through his esophagus.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His lunch, barely eaten, had long been digested. Only a little tea remained, mixed with mucus-coated fragments of plant roots and stems.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The projectile vomiting rapidly emptied his digestive tract, yet no relief came—until yellow-green bile spewed forth, his lips turning blue from lack of breath, and he collapsed, chair and all, onto the floor.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Damn it! Damn it! Someone help!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Feld frantically turned the patient’s head to the side to prevent him from choking on his own vomit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>(End of Chapter)\u003C\u002Fp>",1174,"2026-06-20T02:15:56.940Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","3f5c209238e90d274d4a65e7a399f46fceeaba928781c688869cefc37495fe6e","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-354","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-352",406,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fnotes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-cover.jpg"]