Chapter 387: The Serpent

Saltwater, contained in transparent glass vessels, flowed through silver tubes into the bone marrow, then filled the blood vessels.

Clearly, this was a form of extraordinary power—at least, that's how Benny saw it.

Salt purifies and repels evil; silver is sacred and pure—both are substances with special significance in doctrine. The Dean dissolved salt in purified water and channeled it through silver instruments into the bones, symbolizing spiritual nourishment, after which the patient's face regained its color.

The Holy Scripture records: The Heavenly Father instructed the prophet to touch the water in the river with a silver staff, turning the water into blood, plunging the godless kingdom into thirst and stench.

What they now witnessed was undoubtedly a divine miracle reborn. Though only a few bottles were used, and the liquid had to pass through bone marrow for transformation, it was far from the extravagance of staining entire rivers—but the extraction of blood from water had already transcended ordinary human understanding.

He became even more certain that bringing back the gravely wounded priest had been correct; the Heavenly Father had His own plan for the faithful.

"Hey, perfect timing, Kraft, you might as well learn this too." Kraft noticed Benny watching him with the gaze of someone witnessing a miracle; he didn't know what the man was thinking, but it certainly wasn't that he found Kraft's medical skills impressive.

The explanation on his lips was swallowed again—he'd used too many unorthodox methods lately; explaining to laypeople which techniques were medical and which were spells was meaningless.

Better to spend the time teaching Kraft a few things—he actually listened, and could actually use them.

"If too much blood or fluid is lost and you can't find veins, you can inject liquid directly into the tibia's bone marrow—it absorbs quickly and produces nearly the same effect."

"Dosage… roughly one unit of fluid per fifty units of body weight, administered within a quarter hour. If effective, you'll observe warming of the skin and improved coloration."

"What if it doesn't work?"

"Check for ongoing bleeding or other causes. You can repeat the infusion two to three times within an hour. Usually, this amount is more than sufficient—more would be harmful, not helpful."

"And if you use the full amount and it still doesn't work?" Kraft noticed Kraft had used the word "usually."

"Hard to say. Theoretically, we should combine fluid infusion with blood transfusion, but we lack the conditions." Even ignoring long-term storage, he couldn't find any usable anticoagulant.

Without anticoagulant treatment, blood outside the body clots within minutes—you can only rapidly "draw and infuse" with a syringe, or connect donor and recipient with a tube, relying on gravity and blood pressure differences to transfuse.

Another problem: rapidly clotting blood allows only crude blood mixing. Even if he could use this method to screen for a batch of O-type donors, whole blood without plasma removal, when transfused in large volumes, would have a fatality rate exceeding half.

With all these negative factors compounding, blood transfusion was, for now, merely a theoretical procedure.

"Theoretically, you could pray—if the Heavenly Father is truly omnipotent, He could make fluid resuscitation effective."

Even if it fails, that simply means the Heavenly Father has ordained it so; prayer still serves as end-of-life comfort, not a meaningless act.

Kraft had no reply; Benny looked thoughtful, as if he'd actually taken that in.

Seeing the patient's vital signs stable, Kraft began examining the wounds more closely.

As Kraft had said, only something arranged like scales, with sharp edges, could produce such lacerations—on first glance, they even carried a strangely satisfying geometric regularity.

"How big was that snake?"

"Hard to say—maybe seven or eight men long." Kraft looked to Yvonne for input; she nodded, then shook her head.

Now that he thought about it, they had never seen the snake's full body—it always appeared only in fragments, the rest hidden in blind spots beyond cognition.

"But its scales are wide, and they can stand upright, smooth as mirrors, reflecting things… I can't describe them, but things that shouldn't be reflected inside."

"Mirrors…" Kraft repeated unconsciously, scanning the closed doors and windows, opening the suture kit, and beginning to prepare.

Inside was only a small spool of thread, no thicker than a thumb—but it was enough. He had neither the possibility nor the need to suture every wound; his goal was limited to those penetrating below the dermis, where the body couldn't heal itself.

Most of these wounds were on the outer limbs, some deep enough to expose bone near the joints.

The suture thread was threaded one by one into the needle eyes; he waited patiently until all tools were neatly arranged, until the priest's lips regained their color, and just then, urgent hoofbeats sounded outside the door.

Ether had arrived.

The silver needle holder reflected the wound, stretching and widening it; its reflection danced along the curved surface with every movement.

His hand paused for a moment—the threaded needle slipped from the holder's jaws and fell into a floor crack.

"Are you all right?" Kraft hurriedly pulled the needle out with the thread and dropped it into the disposal tray—this thing wasn't cheap.

Precisely because it was small and tough, ordinary craftsmen couldn't process it, making it more expensive than some larger objects—nearly as costly as a segment of silver tubing.

More worrying was Kraft's condition—he'd never made such a mistake before.

"How did that snake you encountered appear?" He asked a completely unrelated question.

The wound reflected on the silver holder, though now distorted beyond recognition, still revealed subtle, inexplicable details to those with sufficient spatial imagination.

They seemed to extend, winding upward along the surface of the holder, coiling toward his fingers like some living, crimson serpent's tongue—then, in an instant, froze back to stillness.

He used immense willpower not to fling the holder away.

Perhaps due to body heat and sweat from his palms, the metal had lost its reliable cold, hard feel—as if awakened by warmth, it had gained a faint illusion of soft, twisting movement.

"It seemed to have followed us for a long time, and attacked the moment we became aware of it. And each of us saw something different—direction, motion, completely different."

"You mean you didn't encounter just one?"

Kraft steadied his hands, picked up a new needle, and struggled to purge the flood of intrusive thoughts from his mind—but those imaginings were like stains that wouldn't dry, swept to the corner only to spread again, dampening his senses and skin.

【Some hallucinations…?】

The needle tip lifted the deep fascia of the wound, selected several key tension points, and sutured them intermittently, tightening like a few buttons fastened to a torn cloth.

A corner of gauze was inserted for drainage, leaving a channel for blood and exudate. He didn't know whether the sutured wounds would still deteriorate, but he couldn't leave them untreated—he could only handle them this way.

Those strange sensations intensified—the needle tip seemed to become long, sharp fangs, entering cavities, biting into flesh, leaving behind trails of passage.

"No, of course not—how to explain? We did encounter the same one, but it appeared differently to each of us." Kraft fumbled for words, but the more he explained, the more confused it became, "At the time, I suddenly thought—this arrowhead might be useful…"

He pointed to the table, where two open lead boxes lay—one holding the bone arrowhead, the other empty.

"Hey, what was this empty box for again?"

?? Just got off work and want to sleep (?'д`)

? One blink and it's midnight.