[{"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-51":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},2283529,4467,"Chapter 51: Chapter Fifty: Feeding the Fish","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-51",51,"\u003Cp>Consciousness extended outward from itself, revealing the three-dimensional structure of space in an unprecedentedly intuitive form; beyond four or five steps, it grew distinctly blurry, barely reaching the inn’s front door, and beyond that, entirely imperceptible.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Setting aside his circumstances, this new sense organ still brought Kraft considerable joy—literally joy—he could observe the internal structure of his own body, witnessing how the heart pumped blood into the arteries. Nothing in this world was more novel than this experience.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Even as his mind remained in the final stages of reconstruction, it could not stop Kraft from a sudden, unexpected euphoria. For an instant, he forgot the other world, forgot the pursuit, forgot what else he could forget—this sense seized his fragmented psyche.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft wanted to announce to everyone he knew: from today on, I am CT, I am MRI, I am ultrasound—I am an entire imaging department!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Perhaps due to incomplete logical reconstruction, the absurd joy lasted for a long while. He cheerfully used this sense to observe everything that interested him—planks, stone bricks, thoracic cavity, abdominal cavity, even his own brain—finding no blind spots whatsoever.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Just as he intended to carefully “scan” the internal structure of his sword, a sudden headache interrupted him, forcing his attention away from the mental perspective.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It seemed consciousness had reached a critical capacity limit and could no longer accept more of this kind of information. Apparently, a non-native sense organ did not integrate well with the human body—he could not use it for long; the hardware simply could not keep up.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Like closing his eyes, Kraft could temporarily marginalize the mental sense and revert to being a normal human.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In just a few minutes, the mental sense’s influence had become too significant to ignore, resembling withdrawal symptoms.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The moment he disconnected from it, Kraft felt distinct discomfort—the sudden reduction in sensory input felt like donning a full-body armored helmet: narrowed vision, confined to an uncomfortable narrow angle.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He felt as if crawling through a pipe, needing to take deep breaths to combat the illusion of breathlessness; the constricting pressure urged him to reactivate the mental sense, to return to the free panoramic view and stop enduring the inefficiency of retinal imaging.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Dependence, Addiction】\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He had thought only drugs could produce such exaggerated effects—purely mental dependence could reach this level. The illusion of confinement fed back into the body, triggering panting, nausea, and mild muscle soreness, perhaps leftover from intense exertion.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The mind’s reconstruction was nearly complete; reason fiercely suppressed the urge to reconnect with the mental sense—the more uncomfortable he felt, the less he should engage, or else the next disconnection would be far worse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Restraint—he needed restraint. He must gradually adapt to this switching process. Neither mind nor body could allow anything suspected of addiction to control him, especially when it could inflict harm in mere minutes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft sheathed his sword, leaned against a relatively clean tabletop, and lay down, seeking other thoughts to fill his mind, trying to divert attention from the discomfort.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The food he ate for dinner, the book he hadn’t finished writing, the clothes he forgot to wash—random, unrelated trivial matters—pushed out the unwanted thoughts.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not particularly effective. His consciousness and body twisted in discomfort for half an hour, perhaps longer, before readjusting to vision as the primary source of information. Kraft felt his body and subconscious had already found a new lover, abandoning the familiar senses he’d used for over a decade, attempting to replace them permanently with the mental sense.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This feeling deeply displeased his subjective awareness—he realized there were parts of this body he could not fully control, a “non-self” tendency growing stronger, forcing submission through physical discomfort.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>That was impossible. He suppressed the discomfort, rolled into the water, and waded toward the stairs. His entire clothing was soaked through by seawater, clinging unpleasantly; the low ambient temperature steadily drained his body heat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Returning to the second floor might improve things—if he could light the room’s small stove, he might still dry his clothes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before that, Kraft sat midway on the stairs, emptied the water from his boots, and put them back on. The second floor remained unknown; climbing it wearing heavy, water-sloshing boots meant not just the boots were flooded—his brain likely was too.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Out of caution, he drew his sword again. That glowing thing was certainly grotesque, but not an invincible demon from a horror tale—it resembled an animal that used special methods to weaken prey before hunting.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He had more or less figured out its tactics: it approached when consciousness was already blurred, with gentle light, soft movements, and a whisper-like voice; after exposure, it switched abruptly to intimidation and disruption, shattering the target’s will with a twisted, skull-piercing shriek, while its bizarre form itself inflicted mental damage.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It possessed the strange ability to drag prey deeper—the more closely one is connected to the depths, the more easily one is pulled downward.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft could not understand the principle behind this, but it was easy to connect it to the behavior of residents near the Salt Tide Zone’s contaminated wells.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Previously, he had only considered a positive feedback loop between range, intensity, and number of people; now it seemed likely this creature participated in that feedback.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Large-scale contact continuously expanded the “domain” of deep-layer influence, attracting strange predators that used their ability to pull people deeper; victims’ sleep grew longer, and the day they fell into permanent slumber would be the day they plunged irreversibly into the first layer—the true nightmare.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It might sound odd, but Kraft thought of an inappropriate analogy: they were like bread chunks with the oily skin torn off, slowly soaking in water, while fish beneath eagerly stirred the waves, accelerating the process, waiting to feast once they sank completely.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Feeding fish was for the fish’s sake; some merely wanted to watch, the crueler ones pulled the fish up directly. The perpetrator’s goal was likely connected to it, with seventy to eighty percent probability.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He had just figured out another question useless to his current situation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft shook his head, shaking off the rising memory of pale, nauseating images. The phantom tentacles flashed before his eyes; every recollection of that shriek brought back the same agony of nausea.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Powerful memory had become a burden—he could not discard any part of it, only temporarily seal it, only to recall it again when accidentally triggered.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Sitting on the stairs, he involuntarily recalled the image of tentacles hanging down, their writhing branches still vivid. Even if he rearranged the structure beneath the furrowed skin a thousand times, he would still recognize it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In repeated, active or passive recollections, the fleeting familiarity he had felt then evolved into a gradually matured hypothesis.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This soul, part was trained in medicine, part in swordplay—certainly not a naturalist who cared deeply about non-human animals; his knowledge from animal experiments fell far short of his professional expertise, so throughout, Kraft understood the structure of only one thing—humans.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He shuddered.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This made no sense—yet in a place where logic was already absent, there was a hint of it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft climbed upward, gripping the wooden railing; the chill clung to him like wet clothing, cold beyond whether it was mental or physical.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The ancient wooden steps beneath his feet emitted a grating, shrill creak—audible in the silence, resembling the dry moans of some withered creature.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He quickened his pace, fleeing the staircase whose decay seemed to accelerate; the piercing sound clung to his heels, then ceased the moment he stepped onto the second floor, left behind and silent.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This gave him an inexplicable sense of relief—as if escaping pursuit. The overwhelming stimuli had not desensitized him to fear; instead, he grew paranoid, unnerved by minute changes, unless he deliberately suppressed them with reason.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Could reason, grounded in logic, still be universally effective here? Kraft pondered this question, but found no answer.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Water not wrung out dripped from his sleeves and pant legs onto the floor, leaving a trail of wet marks behind him. He was not the only damp thing here—the rising tide had brought moisture upward, spreading through the air.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The second floor seemed saturated with invisible vapor; the wooden floor beneath his feet felt subtly soft and damp, the walls coated with a thin film of water—the kind of saturated dampness found only during rainy seasons.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This inn had been soaked in moisture for some time—not like seawater flooding in overnight, but soaked through for days. No need to wonder—his room was surely the same; nothing here could be lit.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Standing at the door, he pushed the water-beaded panel—it wouldn’t open; the latch had been locked from the inside.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft froze, reached into his pocket—empty. The latch he’d casually slipped into his pocket on the first level had vanished; here was another newly locked room.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Damn this damned place.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Leaning against the door, he lost his purpose, unable to think of what to do next.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He had always called the world of normal human life the “real world,” and the deep layer was naturally assumed to be dreamlike—partially confirmed by the reset latch.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Perhaps Kraft’s body still lay sprawled on the bed, incubating a cervical spine disorder, and only his soul—or some immaterial part—had been dragged in; this interpretation remained plausible.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But dreams always end, and he did not know if he could return automatically. He did not know whether time spent here matched the real world’s flow.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Trapped outside his room, Kraft leaned against the door, sinking back into thought.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course he wanted to return, to escape this place entirely. For now, there were two paths:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He could wait here passively, hoping to wake naturally like in a dream. But even if he escaped, he would eventually sleep again—and be dragged back in by that glowing tentacle monster.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Or there might be more radical options—ones that could deepen his understanding of this place, gain some control… for instance, go exploring?\u003C\u002Fp>",1654,"2026-06-20T02:15:55.761Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","48a66fa9920bb35855a12c4c91c2370b9fb55818f678c4d65a8d3ab1b0d9cba7","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-52","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-50",406,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fnotes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-cover.jpg"]