[{"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-393":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},2283871,4467,"Chapter 393: The End of Destruction","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-393",393,"\u003Cp>Almost all who had wandered the Deep and fortunately returned had seen that shattered celestial body.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If they had not forgotten it as a nightmare, they could not fail to recognize one fact: something broken and incomplete must once have been whole, and between wholeness and fragmentation, something must have occurred.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A very few might learn from ruins and obscure records that an impact once occurred, shaping the world as it is now.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The celestial body’s disintegration was inevitable; its debris pierced the membrane and scattered throughout the Deep and the mortal realm, mixed with an unknown black substance, while the other side of the impact remained perpetually absent.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>No one had ever clearly pinpointed the moment—it seemed distant, so far that few surface traces remained; yet it also seemed near, close enough to have been recorded in human history.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Or perhaps it did not occur within the spacetime understood by ordinary beings, otherwise how could its aftershocks have propagated, and why did they echo here?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The “sound” rolled forth from void and emptiness, like a tide surging toward land, rising ever higher as it drew near, until violent oscillations erupted within body and consciousness, drowning all senses and seizing the mind.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Consciousness could distinctly perceive it, yet it also bore the impact.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It exceeded the limits of reception, even acquiring a certain “texture,” which in an instant washed away all else and filled the senses.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the greatest victim was not consciousness itself, but the living knowledge trapped within it—it offered almost no effective resistance, dissolving like a sandcastle in the same-source tide.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Some entity decayed and sank from high to low, condensing from void into substance within the air.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In his blurred vision, he saw black snowflakes—dark, light-absorbing tiny crystals—multiplying from dust to the size of salt grains.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They fell around him, tapping the stone slabs with incomprehensible, distinctly echoing sounds, as if the noise had bounced back from another vast, silent space.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The remnants of the entity, the part not fully annihilated, became the aftershock of destructive force, entering the extension of consciousness—the spirit-body.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It seemed to be extremely dense information, surging in high-frequency oscillatory waves, like molten iron poured into a mold; the spirit-body was forced to fully perceive its own boundaries.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He could clearly feel that strange and terrifying experience—like a challenger in myth gazed upon by the Gorgon, his intangible limbs freezing, losing the suppleness and extensibility that signified vitality, becoming stiff, heavy, rigid, and stagnant.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The extremities collapsed under unbearable strain, like fingers burned by extreme heat, brittle and shattered, dissolving into fine, ethereal matter.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the “dead spirit-body” did not vanish entirely; instead, it was magnetically drawn to the pure black crystals.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Its edges softened, its contours collapsed—the familiar transformation activated. Like snowflakes warmed by heat, or a creature awakening from hibernation, the crystals rapidly melted, flowing along the floor’s uneven surface into pools of dark, motionless liquid, finally stabilizing in liquid form.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He slowly pushed himself up, kneeling half-bent, avoiding those abyssal blacks.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The transformation ended—for now, in a form he had never imagined.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A distant impact had, by chance and destiny, replayed here; the sole observer was also the stage, enduring the wreckage left after the performance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The wounded body and spirit needed time to heal; perhaps some parts would never recover.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But what he gained was far more than pain—he had learned certain things, and confirmed others he had suspected.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A certain entity or concept, perhaps called the “Snake,” was both another perpetrator and victim of the impact.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fragments of the celestial body fell, reshaping their bodies through the population of believers, allowing themselves to walk upon the earth.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Snake’s remains were more complex. Its still-active portions dwelled within information, wandering the cracks between all things, whether retaining only instinct and limited self-awareness, or having always been so.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The most thoroughly fallen parts became fully materialized, forming the solid known as “Black Salt,” occasionally activated by Deep fluctuations to temporarily melt.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Long ago in Dunling, Kraft had suspected that the cost of stabilizing the black liquid within dead heretics’ bodies must also exist within humans—and now it was clear he was right.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Just as dead shells were used by Lunar Remains to become limbs for hunting more biomass, spirit-bodies stripped of conscious control became nourishment for black liquid, pulling more spirit-bodies toward that other world.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was a two-sided contest, with biological species possessing both physical bodies and spiritual will as the arena, continuously expanding their own numbers.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>One side’s progress would inevitably advance the other. Those who encountered black liquid rarely avoided Lunar Remains, and the Lunar Remains’ derived lifeforms—whether host or manipulated biomass—once dead, provided fresh nourishment for the liquefaction of Black Salt.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A standard positive feedback mechanism.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was impossible to know whether this mechanism arose by accident or necessity, when it began, or how long it had endured. But one thing was certain: the snowball would only grow larger.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Until now, he knew only how black liquid was born, but had never witnessed its annihilation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Black liquid did not always appear in bottles carried by heretics; it could exist anywhere, emerging silently with each dying spirit-body, seeping into water, flowing into rivers and oceans.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>There was reason to believe that trace amounts of black liquid had long since spread through the water cycle, merely not yet concentrated enough to produce noticeable effects within the average human lifespan.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But in certain enriched regions, such as Dunling, might the concentration be higher, making it easier for sensitive individuals to contact the Deep?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Both Edward and Mo Lisen, pioneers of Deep research from entirely different eras, were stationed in Dunling—was this coincidence or inevitability?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Was the frequent outbreak of fever and hysteria in the village where he first saw the hexagonal Black Salt crystals also linked to water contamination?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The impact’s timing had not yet exceeded the birth of recorded history, and the positive feedback mechanism had always accelerated, growing exponentially.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If this hypothesis was correct, within just a few centuries, the black liquid concentration in the water cycle might double—or more—what would the world become then?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>More “Edwards” and “Mo Lisens” would emerge, products of the positive cycle, yet also its drivers. Perhaps then a second or third “Priest-Professor Pair” would rise to stop them, but it would be meaningless against the overall trend.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>More likely, some “Edward” or “Mo Lisen” would succeed—not necessarily in Dunling, for any impact site could become “Dunling.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>One day, the concentration of black liquid in water would reach a critical threshold, sufficient to manifest effects within the normal lifespan of even less sensitive ordinary people.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As for what would happen then, the Salt Tide Zones had already provided the answer.\u003C\u002Fp>",1120,"2026-06-20T02:15:56.940Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","d3e7aa7345fc397dc841c23773bf8cd17060138e825846a358f6a20e8fcee7c1","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-394","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-392",406,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fnotes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-cover.jpg"]