[{"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-44":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},2283522,4467,"Chapter 44: Chapter Forty-Two: John Snow","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-44",44,"\u003Cp>\"That's right, it's not early anymore; at this time we should already be in our first morning class.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lu Xiusi straightened up, adjusted his beak-shaped mask with a grip on the handle, \"Have you decided where to start? If we hurry back, we can still make it for lunch. Gris asked me last time why you never show up anymore.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Quiet down—I truly don't understand how you can talk about food in this environment,\" Kraft raised a hand in a stop gesture.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The only two voices faded; silence swiftly enveloped them, like quicksand filling gaps, wrapping them in a solidified atmosphere.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft was usually a quiet person, but the silence he preferred was one with occasional distant sounds—a sense of retreat—not this unnatural stillness, like being locked in a soundproof room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In this place of stench and chaos, every sensation overwhelmed his senses: the nauseating smells, the alien architecture, the slick, wet surfaces under his touch. Yet sound had been stolen—missing from his perception.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lu Xiusi quickly sensed the oddness too; this silence reminded him of late nights leaving the dissection room, when the empty corridors were utterly silent, everything frozen.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But this wasn't the deep night when everyone slept—it was a bright, sunlit morning.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He strode to the nearest door and pounded hard; the hollow knock echoed through the frozen silence, with no response.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Anyone there?\" Kraft called out toward what he guessed was a window opening. He could faintly see dim, cramped spaces where people lay sleeping on the floor, still deeply unconscious, oblivious to outside noise.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Starting from the Red Algae Well, they moved outward, knocking on every door.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>There was no need to ask anymore: any door locked from the inside with no one answering was surely still asleep.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft pushed his memory to its limit, etching the location of every household into his mind, matching them to his mental map of the space, forming a flat layout.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The more they investigated, the more he realized how grave the situation was; half an hour had passed, they had knocked on dozens of doors, yet not a single person had woken.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The sleeping people seemed separated by invisible walls, while they wandered through a transparent maze, hearing only their own sounds and phantom echoes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The pathological sleep disorder had an alarmingly high infection rate—no one in the affected area escaped—and they still hadn't reached its boundary, unable to estimate how many were afflicted.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lu Xiusi couldn't see Kraft’s mental map, couldn’t tell which places they’d passed, nor even notice they were gradually moving farther from the Red Algae Well. He mechanically followed Kraft, repeating the knocking and calling, his anxiety growing with time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He was utterly lost, unable to comprehend what factor could cause such a massive illness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"It makes no sense—it makes no sense at all. It’s so much like the black fluid’s effect, but so many people—what is it?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft couldn’t answer him; he felt his hypothesis was wrong again. If the influence weakened from inside outward, the distribution of patients should show varying degrees of severity—after walking so long, they should’ve encountered at least one responsive person.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>With this confusion, the investigation continued. He felt he was nearing the edge of this zone—distant voices faintly reached him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A dozen minutes later, Kraft encountered the first group of awake people they’d seen in this area.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A few people, dressed in coarse linen like the gaunt man before, men and women alike, glanced in surprise at the black-robed figures emerging from the corner, then returned to their tasks.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As they pressed forward, they saw more and more people, transitioning from the realm of slumber into the normal zone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Wooden houses with closed, unresponsive doors rapidly decreased, replaced by scenes of open doors, people dumping waste and hauling water home.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft stopped a woman carrying a bucket.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"I’m a doctor from the Academy. Have you and your family been waking up later and later lately?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Academy? Doctor?\" The woman scrutinized Kraft’s strange attire. \"I think I understand what you mean, but it doesn’t happen in our household.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>She set down her bucket and pointed behind him. \"There are plenty over there—but you’ll have to wait until noon to see them wake up.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"What about others?\" Kraft, listening to the chaotic sounds and clatters for the first time, felt a profound relief, \"Your neighbors, for instance?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Their family is exactly as you say—some devil must’ve cursed them. Now they can only work half a day. How are they supposed to survive?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After asking several more people, Kraft realized the progression of the illness had changed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Based on Gari and Brad’s descriptions, he’d expected to find patients with varying degrees of delayed sleep.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But here, there were only two kinds of people—those who slept until noon, and those unaffected entirely—and it was almost always consistent across entire households: either all slept, or all were normal.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In this border zone, the two groups lived side by side, utterly separate, like oil and water. Only the density of cases changed—not the severity.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This… was strange.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"So what’s going on now?\" Lu Xiusi, too, began adjusting his beak mask, using the motion to help calm his thoughts.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unfortunately, it seemed to do no good—he still couldn’t figure it out.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In just this short while, three women carrying buckets had passed by; adult men appeared fewer.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Laborers made up the majority of residents here: they rose early to find work at the docks, returned in the evening with their daily wages, most of which went for bread and cheap seafood, a small portion saved or turned into other small items.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Women stayed home doing handicrafts to supplement income, managing household chores and caring for young children.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Heavy labor and poor living conditions steadily damaged their health, leaving no energy to think about anything else—simply maintaining their current life consumed all their strength.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And when an unexpected disruption arose in such a life—a sudden illness, for instance… Kraft glanced behind him—at the silent zone’s inhabitants.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Such disruptions would collapse an entire family within less than a month.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He found a relatively clean spot to lean against and sighed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lately, his sighs had grown more frequent—mostly because he was pushed along by a mess of things, half duty, half personal matters, sighing over disrupted plans amid the rush.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But sometimes, like now, he sighed for his own limited abilities.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He pieced together the route he’d just walked in his mind: the striped zone of cases, gradually thinning until it vanished.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Regardless, there was clearly a factor whose influence weakened from strong to weak within the area—what could that factor be?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And for this factor, isolation seemed to make little difference—they lived side by side yet remained utterly unrelated.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He must have seen a similar pattern somewhere before, one deduced purely from patient locations, without needing to consider other variables.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Pages flipped in his mind; once a thread emerged, he could retrieve any related memory.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Lu Xiusi! Those women carrying buckets—all came from the same direction, right?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lu Xiusi saw Kraft suddenly spring up from where he’d been leaning, calling his name.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If he had ever lived in another world, he might have thought of a elementary school student who died wherever he went—just like Kraft, his thick glasses gleaming with sudden brilliance.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Though he still didn’t understand the situation, he tried to recall. \"Hmm… probably? I can’t remember clearly.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Yes, exactly—they all came from the opposite direction from us.\" Kraft had solved it. Within the Salt Tide District alone, the phenomenon was a textbook case.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the nineteenth century of the other world, a famous disease spread through London. It surged rapidly, infecting countless people, killing tens of thousands.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In a household, once one person contracted it, the rest were soon likely to follow.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>More bizarrely, isolating patients had no effect as it did with other diseases—as if a strange ghost had taken permanent residence in that area.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In this terrifying epidemic, two names were forever remembered—\"Cholera,\" and the father of epidemiology, \"John Snow.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>John Snow marked every death from the disease on a map. Soon, the famous cholera map revealed a clear trend: cases clustered around a central point, thinning outward.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Here, with Kraft, the phenomenon was even more pronounced.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Water, Lu Xiusi—it’s water.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Compared to London, the water sources in the Salt Tide District were shockingly scarce.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The low-lying coastal terrain made freshwater aquifers nearly impossible; most wells yielded useless brackish water like the Red Algae Well—futile efforts.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thus, a stable water source exerted a far wider influence than elsewhere, drawing vast numbers of residents to the same location.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Each household’s daily water was fetched in buckets from a single source, explaining why illness clustered so distinctly by household in the Salt Tide District.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As distance from that water source increased, residents’ willingness to travel there diminished, shifting to other wells—so case distribution thinned, until the distance became too great for anyone to bother.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The women they’d just seen carrying buckets—all came from directions away from the concentrated case zone, further confirming his theory.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A clear path opened before him again. Kraft moved aside to let Lu Xiusi rest, pacing excitedly back and forth.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Wait—until noon, when they wake up. There’s a contaminated water source here. I will find it.\"\u003C\u002Fp>",1547,"2026-06-20T02:15:55.761Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","04748b9e172f5e48a9166aadb14c3fd3cdbc52f277ab2b0f01fbfe06663eeff0","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-45","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-43",406,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fnotes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-cover.jpg"]