Chapter 375: Polarization

It is no longer here, but it is not without trace.

Nothing ever leaves absolutely no trace—not even the North Sea Sea Monster people reach into the fishing hole each winter to grab food for themselves, which still leaves behind a mountain of terrifying legends for mothers to scare children with.

As long as you patiently follow a certain line of thought, you will always find some ambiguous clues.

The problem is, they can all be interpreted from multiple angles.

The empty bench was simply forgotten and left behind; the strange scratches came from certain fish's dorsal fins. Even the messy handprints could be explained as struggles caused by an accidental fall into the water.

A sea monster may exist—but it is more reasonable that it does not; after deep investigation, the simplest, most logical conclusion you can reach is precisely this.

Or perhaps, the greatest mercy.

If you truly believed a creature with a body longer than mountain ranges and tentacles more numerous than forest trees lurked along the coastline, that fear would surely drive you into constant dread, turning you into an irrational water-phobic madman in others' eyes.

What Kraft read was more or less like this.

Every region must have its own "sea monster." By the sea, it's a giant squid with a cluster of tentacles; in the countryside, it's the half-real, half-fake scarecrow in the wheat fields; in castles, it's the vampire that hides by day and prowls by night.

By extension, in mountainous regions, it's the predator hidden deep in the clouds and mist—perfectly normal.

For dozens, hundreds, or even longer, human imagination has always shaped fear into a concrete image and passed it down.

Legends often become refined and standardized: are the tentacles like an octopus or a squid? Is the straw fresh or dry? Does it prefer the blood of boys or girls?

Some even devised entire sets of countermeasures, teaching people how to avoid harm through various methods.

In short, they transformed from formless dread into something… akin to safety rules.

Thus, something that has been passed down for countless years without ever taking a concrete shape stands out sharply.

It has no distinctive description; all known are vague notions like "high up" or "normally invisible."

Even when the same pronoun appears in two consecutive passages, you may not immediately connect them.

Narrators often avoid precise reference, deliberately or inadvertently creating ambiguity—as if they never felt this method caused any comprehension barrier.

Yet strangely, the more you read, the easier it becomes to find it within the sentences.

Sometimes, opening a completely unrelated book, you instinctively sense a passage relates to it—even if the narrative perspective and language style differ entirely—and you still cannot overlook it through carelessness.

You feel you understand it better, though you've read no new information—only witnessed its presence through another's narrative viewpoint.

If you possessed extraordinary memory and could instantly retrieve and compare every passage you'd read, this strange sensation would become even more pronounced.

On the boundless ocean, isn't it strange that you keep stumbling upon familiar wave patterns by mere chance?

Thus, it is natural that interest arises.

Human nature is such: if something draws attention, you try to understand it—just as your eyes automatically adjust when vision blurs, refocusing to sharpen the image on the retina—something etched into the genes.

They review what they've read, attempting to form a concrete concept, and then…

Nothing.

Of course, even if intuitively familiar, how could anyone form any concept from text offering no concrete description?

So they trace its origins through local folklore and primitive beliefs—but the result remains unchanged.

The information they obtain is either chaotic or vague; most research stops here.

But some people—the particularly sharp ones—feel their reading has changed. Certain phrases sound poetic, scripture-like in depth, yet vanish upon closer thought.

The elusive sensation drives them to obsession and agitation, like viewing through a thin veil: outlines grow clearer, yet the true form remains unseen.

At this point, they may unconsciously eliminate distractions and isolate themselves to better capture fleeting inspiration.

Psychologically, when difficult information is suddenly "understood" after intense contemplation, it produces a moment of epiphany—a pleasure that pushes consciousness further into a pathological flow state.

Simultaneously, consciousness becomes hypersensitive to certain words and phrases; even when they appear in entirely unrelated passages, they still evoke a distinct sensation during reading.

It feels as if touching, through a thin veil, the scales and fragments of something behind—motionless, yet reacting with a faint, almost imperceptible recoil, as if curled back; perception judges before thought: this is no longer ink and paper, but the living skin of something concealed beneath reality.

"A layered infiltration of altered cognition? Interesting."

Kraft reviewed his reading results from the past few days, including the special terms he'd isolated: "vortex," "cloud layer," "high altitude," "scale," and others.

His guess was correct—he had indeed experienced vague phenomena previously undetectable, incomplete, merely outlining a fragmented trail that lured consciousness deeper.

Dominic's tipping point was likely here: unable to perceive the abnormality in his cognition, he slid helplessly into a vicious cycle.

But here two divergences emerge: Does the thing hinted at truly exist? Or is it merely an illusory bait, luring prey to the hook?

If the latter, there is no need to proceed further; with the current understanding of its mechanisms and typical symptoms, some level of prevention and treatment is already possible.

If the former, everything changes. It means this thing is merely one link in the system—a very small one.

Kraft leans toward the former.

What he sensed clearly did not arise from pure fiction, but emerged through specific cognitive filtering.

Like putting on polarized sunglasses and seeing what was previously invisible.

It was not the glasses instantly altering the world, but that those things had always existed—just undetectable—until filtered by special cognition.

Perception itself is a subjective structure formed by the brain's filtering; it merely adjusted the filter slightly.

Perhaps it should be called "cognitive polarization"?

And this pattern—of beginning to perceive special things after encountering some trigger—feels too familiar, not like a first encounter, but like a reunion.

He must investigate, see what dwells above the mountains—or he will never find peace.

Yet progress has stalled; cognition cannot deepen further. He now feels himself spinning in place, rejected at the threshold. Clearly, it possesses selectivity: unless sufficiently infiltrated, the core remains forever inaccessible.

Kraft feels he needs something to help break through the barrier.

Perhaps a new way of thinking, perhaps a key piece of information, or even a physical object.

"Looks like I'll have to send Kup on another long journey—and make Lei Mengde suffer a bit more."