Chapter 45

It was called noon, but it felt even later than noon.

Kraft and Lu Xiusi took turns resting against a relatively clean wooden board, switching rounds several times before the sleeping people finally woke.

Like a giant silent alarm clock ringing, the residents of the sleeping zone were awakened in unison within minutes, more uniformly than students in an alternate-world high school dormitory.

The previously silent room erupted with movement: different feet stomping on wooden planks, unknown metal and wooden tools clashing, noisy chatter interspersed with a few unintelligible curses.

Human consciousness was returned in bulk from dreams, dumped back into reality, beginning a day they had already missed half of.

Then came the grating, shrill squeal of poor-quality door hinges turning; one by one, people pushed out the doors, holding what looked like food, eating as they walked toward the harbor.

Kraft intercepted a middle-aged man holding a fish jerky with mold spots.

"Hello, would you mind if I hired you for a while?"

"Of course!" he agreed at top speed, glaring fiercely at those watching nearby, "Four copper coins is enough—I can work half a day for you."

Perhaps it was truly hard to find work after noon, for he accepted Kraft's employment at a very low price.

Yellow-black teeth bit hard into the brittle fish jerky, shattering the fibrous flesh along with the bones, producing a grating sound. He chewed a few times, swallowing with difficulty.

"So what are we going to do?"

Kraft was stunned by this glass-swallowing way of eating, sympathizing with his mouth and esophagus, "No rush, finish eating first. I want to ask something—how long ago did you start noticing you wake up later and later?"

"Thinking back, it must've been over a month ago. At first, we didn't feel anything, never imagined it would turn into this. Life's gotten worse and worse."

Though he didn't know why anyone cared, the middle-aged man answered while eating, bits and spittle flying, unaware that his new employer had shifted half a step away from his front.

Kraft stood beside him, watching him finish the fish, swallow the last bite, his Adam's apple struggling to roll, thinking he could write a case report on scarred esophagus caused by special diet.

"We came because we're curious about this. Now we suspect the water you drink daily is the problem—can you take us to see it?"

"Sure, though usually my family fetches the water, I still know the way." The man pressed his chest, as if from pain, "Let's go."

He led Kraft and Lu Xiusi further along the twisting, narrow alley, constantly encountering people just stepping out to find work.

The opposite direction forced them to frequently sidestep past each other, or one party to retreat into a side alley to make way.

Overall, their direction was roughly the same as their incoming path, veering off from the previously investigated route, passing near the Red Algae Well, then walking another ten minutes to reach their destination.

A well that looked fairly normal, surrounded by the most neatly arranged stones Kraft had seen here.

A patch of open ground was left around it, with people forming several long queues to fetch water. No winch—just lowering a rope-bound bucket and pulling it up, progress painfully slow; expecting them to grant time for inspection seemed unlikely.

Kraft disliked crowded environments, especially when these people bathed infrequently; gathering together made the already unclean air even more stifling.

His nose, just adapted to the local air, now picked up sweat, body odor, and some indescribable stench, causing him to immediately abandon the idea of queuing himself.

"Here are eleven copper coins—five are your pay." Kraft fished out most of the loose copper coins from his pouch and handed them to the middle-aged man, "Use the rest to buy a cleaner bucket and queue up for me—bring back one bucket of water."

Being lazy is shameful, but it's undeniably comfortable.

Kraft and Lu Xiusi found a shady spot to stand and watch others queue. The small well opening allowed at most three people to draw water simultaneously, barely forming three lines at the wellhead, but further back the lines blurred into a single messy mass, impossible to distinguish who belonged to which queue.

After negotiating with several people at the tail of the queue, the middle-aged man successfully bought a bucket and subtly zigzagged within the indistinct crowd, moving toward the nearest available spot.

In the crowd, Kraft quickly lost sight of him, bored and drowsy, propping his head up with his hand.

The sun hung directly overhead—it was the time he normally ate lunch and took a short nap. His biological clock urged him to find a comfortable surface, press his face against it, and enjoy the rare daily moment of relaxation.

Today, to reserve time for the investigation, he had left the academy early, first going to Elm Street, then Salt Tide District, skipping lunch entirely and having no appetite for it.

Now suddenly idle, fatigue slipped in, making him feel he could fall asleep standing.

His half-closed eyes, through the red lenses, saw blurred, indistinct images that grew even fuzzier; the crowd swayed before him, contours dissolving.

Diffuse afterimages, the red filter, human-shaped color blocks moved slowly, like red paint on a slope blending and bleeding into one another—not vivid, but gradually darkening.

Red usually awakens and stimulates, but this red made him feel more gloomy, evoking thick venous blood oozing and congealing on the walls of a transparent container, stripped of its vitality within the living body.

He felt himself falling—the familiar weightlessness of dreams, lighter, gentler, slipping from the cluttered chaos of reality into deeper slumber, escaping surgery, complications, investigations.

His hearing dulled; the noisy voices around him faded, his ever-active mind no longer attending to what they said, the brain's language centers entering low-power mode, unwilling to translate air vibrations into meaningful information.

The dull splash of a bucket hitting water, wood clinking against stone, loud coughs—simple sounds were still barely distinguishable.

Instinct lazily adjusted him into a half-asleep state, ignoring neural impulses from his senses, letting himself detach from the world.

Kraft felt he was still in place, yet no longer in place; in his drifting state, he heard an unusually clear splash beside his ear—and the weightlessness stopped abruptly.

The dazed state did not break, but solidified; sounds became finer, gentler, like sand ground into flour, harder still to discern their content.

Consciousness spread softly, peacefully, savoring a moment of calm.

The only flaw was the persistent strange odor at his nostrils—not sweat, not rot, not the herb scent from birds' beaks, as if not collected by his sense of smell.

It seemed to intensify, the soft, comforting part of the sound drawing closer, becoming tangible, pressing against his back, caressing his consciousness.

All senses were delighted, sending signals of "soft," "comfortable"; even his sense of smell joined in, acknowledging the odor was strange but soft and pleasant.

Like a girl's hand, like silk gauze, it drew nearer—the weightlessness returned.

His eyelids drooped, the red-black light before him thinning, nearly vanishing, replaced by moonlit darkness as a soft white light grew.

Consciousness bathed in it, just as during any ordinary nap, a thread of doubt flickered through the intoxication.

It gently extended a cool, soft hand, aiming to pluck away this discord within the serenity.

This clumsy move awakened Kraft's sharp awareness; suspicion rapidly turned to alertness, every event was pulled from memory and reanalyzed.

Intuition tasted malice in the soft, gentle sensation—something that should not exist.

Its approach accelerated abruptly, as if sensing Kraft's change, wrapping around him faster from behind.

The reckless motion exposed more of its incoherence—like a starfish flipping its colorful underside, vomiting its stomach to feed. Extreme dissonance, sticky revulsion, slammed into senses still immersed in comfort, jolting the brain with violent neural impulses, reaching deep into the soul.

Before the alternate world's part could respond, the conditioned reflexes forged by years of training within Kraft's native soul activated—the countless lessons and beatings from his grandfather granted him extraordinary reaction speed.

Every muscle tensed; he ducked to avoid potential attacks, swung his elbow backward, then spun and retreated to create distance.

He felt as if he had torn through something as he moved; fear forced him to reach for the sword hilt hidden beneath his robe. His newly opened eyes, blinded by light, saw only the red of his lenses.

The blade unsheathed, slicing diagonally upward toward the sensed position; he forced himself to restrain the urge to slash with full force, preserving room to change tactics. His first strike aimed only to drive the opponent back, buying time for his vision to recover.

He carefully felt the force transmitted through his hand—whether the opponent chose to evade or block, it suited him perfectly.

Unexpectedly, the blade seemed to cut into something, slicing through a loose, fragile substance with ease, scattering several unevenly textured structures.

Behind him came shouts and screams; the chaotic footsteps fading away indicated many were fleeing the area, fortunately with no approaching footsteps to interfere with his judgment.

Vision gradually returned; his gaze pierced the red glass to inspect the results of the slash. Whatever it was, human or ghost, a gaping wound like that would surely not be pleasant to endure.

Kraft forced his eyes wide open; the blinding light caused the circular muscles of his pupils to contract sharply, and his tear glands secreted tears. He had to fight the instinctive reflex to close his eyes, straining with all his might to see clearly ahead.

He saw that huge, hideous gash, which did not exist on some slime monster or mysterious enemy.

It was a wooden wall.