Chapter 54: Between Reality and Illusion

The sky curtain fell, the sun set and the moon rose, the city sank into darkness, leaving only drunkards stumbling in and out of taverns on the streets, along with a few unlucky souls with business to attend to.

Two figures in black robes stood before an inn, the light from their lanterns flickering, their bodies mostly hidden in the night, like two heads floating in the air.

After dark, they found the investigation surprisingly easier. With Kraft so busy, he certainly had no time to consider long-term housing, and he wasn't staying in the house provided by the professor, so they only needed to visit the inns with lights on.

From the mouths of students who had not yet left, they pieced together Kraft's daily route around the academy. Thanks to Kraft's high profile and approachable nature at the Medical School, many had greeted him on the street; for someone familiar with Wendeng Port, the search area could already be narrowed down significantly.

According to Li Si's reasoning, they just needed to walk into an inn and ask if there was a young guest with good-looking golden hair; no one would lack an impression of such a person.

After visiting several inns, Lu Xiusi began to grow anxious, but Li Si remained unaffected, confident in his judgment; finding Kraft's lodging was merely a matter of time.

Of course, whether they would find Kraft himself was uncertain; even if found, there was no guarantee whether he was alive or dead. As far as he knew, Kraft was rigorous to the point of being harsh in such matters, never drank to the point of negligence, and even if he had broken a leg and was bedridden, he would at least send someone to deliver a message.

Having no news at all could only mean Kraft lacked even the ability to send someone with a message; what exactly had happened was hard to imagine, and Li Si was unwilling to imagine it either; both were deliberately avoiding the question.

Warm light shone from a door not far away, yet there was no rowdy noise of drunken sailors; it was another inn.

Li Si pushed open the half-closed front door, led Lu Xiusi to the counter, tapped the table lightly, and woke the owner, who reeked of alcohol.

"Looking for a room?" The owner shook his head, opening his sleepy eyes wide; his dark clothing made him instinctively averse, as black was often associated with ominous rumors, and a late-night visit added a touch of eeriness.

"No, we are here to find a friend. He has been missing all day, and everyone is very worried about him." Li Si adjusted his black robe to make it clearer for the owner to see. "Golden hair, very young, wearing a black robe just like ours; do you have any impression?"

The owner rubbed his eyes; his alcohol-numbed brain took a few seconds to recognize the academy's attire. The fatigue and drowsiness of just waking up further slowed his thinking; only when Lu Xiusi was about to speak impatiently did he finally realize what was going on.

"Oh, I understand what you mean, but we have our own rules and cannot answer such questions. Didn't your friend tell you where he was staying?"

The owner, acting as a sort of intermediary, quickly sobered up and became extremely vigilant. He had heard and seen this kind of thing many times before: people pretending to be friends or family, arriving at the door and immediately asking if anyone had seen a certain person. If he spoke loosely, business would be hard to do in the future.

"F***!" Lu Xiusi angrily spat out a word no one understood; it was surely not a compliment, probably a dialect from his homeland, and from the short, forceful pronunciation, one could vaguely guess it related to reproduction. He found a chair nearby, sat down, and left the negotiation to Li Si.

The owner shrugged, unbothered; he was past the age of getting angry over such small matters and only cared about his business.

"Alright, the previous inns were the same, but look at this, will you?" Li Si lifted his collar to show the owner his badge.

"I am a lecturer at the academy, named Li Si, and I run a clinic near the port; you may have heard of me, or you may not."

"But that is not important; someone as well-informed as you must have heard of the person we are looking for. His name is Kraft, the one who cuts open bellies to cure diseases."

"So what?" The owner knew who they meant when he heard "golden hair" and "black robe," but because Kraft never drank or bragged with other guests in the front hall, he had never known he was that legendary doctor. "What does this have to do with me?"

"He has been missing all day and missed a very important matter; we suspect something unfortunate has happened to him." Li Si stared at the innkeeper, trying to read something in his eyes.

The owner wavered, leaning towards believing this account, but he still glared back defiantly. "On these grounds alone, I cannot believe you; there is more than one scammer pretending to be an acquaintance to fish for information."

After silently staring at the owner for a few seconds, Li Si also began to grow increasingly irritable; through several negotiations, he had repeated this process over and over, exhausting the patience honed in his clinic work, not to mention he hated this meaningless tug-of-war.

"Of course, I understand your point, and I cannot do anything to you, but I must remind you, this fellow is a noble, and his life or death is unknown."

Li Si leaned his entire upper body over the counter; as a typical surgeon, he was tall and strong, already much taller than the owner, and from this angle, the pressure was even greater. "No offense intended, but if something is delayed due to this meaningless, stupid tug-of-war, when his family comes knocking, the one who will be unlucky will definitely not be me."

The flickering firelight cast shifting shadows across his features; the anger, which did not seem feigned, bordered on ferocity. The lantern was slammed heavily onto the counter with a bang, startling the owner.

"Now, for the sake of our mutual safety, please carefully recall if there was such a young man with golden hair staying here for a long time, and that you have not seen him for a whole day?"

As a doctor who had encountered all kinds of people, Li Si fully understood the rationality of such rules for an innkeeper, but he could not afford to worry about that now; even if he had to threaten with the somewhat unclear background of the Kraft family, he had to find the person as soon as possible.

"Can you guarantee that no one else will know about this?" When the possibility of involving some unreasonable, shameless nobles arose, the innkeeper decided to back down once, after all, the matter could be explained logically.

"I swear by the Heavenly Father." Li Si casually picked the heaviest oath he knew from those he was familiar with; anyway, he did not particularly like the church, so it was purely a no-cost business.

"What terrible luck." The owner pushed himself up from the counter, muttering, "I hope so."

"If I am not mistaken, the person you mentioned returned to his room last night and indeed has not left for a whole day; perhaps he just slept all day."

He walked up the stairs, gripping the swaying handrail; the wooden boards creaked underfoot, making one suspect they would collapse under the weight at any moment. "Come up, and leave as soon as you see your friend."

Lu Xiusi and Li Si quickly followed, arriving with the owner before a wooden door on the second floor.

"Is this the one?"

Li Si gently pushed the door inward, and as expected, it was locked from the inside.

"I told you, he has been inside for a day and has gone nowhere." The owner leaned against the wall, watching the two. "Sometimes, when I am drunk, I sleep all day too."

Li Si ignored him and knocked on the door himself. "Kraft, are you in there?"

"Kraft!"

There was no movement from inside the door; the room remained asleep. Lu Xiusi could not help but step forward and bang on the door, gaining nothing but curses from other rooms.

The guests in the adjacent rooms were all woken up, yet Kraft's room still made no sound, as if the master was in a deep sleep after drinking, unaware of the disturbance from the outside world.

Li Si stepped back two paces; just as the owner thought he was giving up, he handed the lantern to Lu Xiusi. "Lu Xiusi, hold it tight, then stand back."

"What?" Lu Xiusi did not understand his meaning but obediently stepped back two paces, standing beside the owner.

"Do you think Kraft is the kind of person who would get drunk and suffer a hangover?" Li Si moved his ankles, stuck his fingers into his pocket, where the sound of metal clinking helped him make up his mind.

"How is that possible? He almost never touches alcohol."

"I think so too!"

He suddenly sprinted two steps, leaped up in the narrow corridor, his figure agile, displaying the good physical fitness shaped by long periods of standing and physical labor, and kicked the door near the latch.

The latch snapped with a sound, flying out with small splinters of wood, bouncing and rolling inside the room; the door slammed against the wall and bounced back, the huge noise waking the sleeping guests on the entire floor. For a moment, curses were endless; several doors opened, and a few people in disheveled clothes came out to check.

Lu Xiusi and the owner were still frozen in place, maintaining their cowering postures. Li Si took a lantern, blocked the rebounding wooden door, and walked straight into the room.

On the empty bed, the quilts were piled in a heap, with a depression one person wide in the middle. Ink and fresh blank paper were still on the table, but the user was nowhere to be found. A black outer robe hung on the wall, the collar pinned with Kraft's lecturer badge.

There was no place in the simple room where a person could possibly hide; Li Si, refusing to believe it, crawled to the bedside and used the lantern to illuminate under the bed, finding only a small box for storing miscellaneous items.

"What is going on?"

He stood up and looked at the window, discovering it was barred from the inside with a wooden bolt. This was a space completely sealed from within; Kraft had walked into the room, locked the door and windows, lay on the bed for a while, and then...

Disappeared?

Li Si carried the lantern and walked around the room once, lifting the quilt; the feel was somewhat heavy, inconsistent with the thickness of the quilt.

He lightly pinched a corner with his fingers; the sliding of the fabric was sluggish, as if there was moisture.

"Lu Xiusi, come touch this." Li Si beckoned to Lu Xiusi, who had just arrived at the door; the latter was still immersed in shock, having discovered the violent side of the lecturers for two consecutive days, which was too shocking for him.

Putting down the quilt and closing his eyes, Li Si used his skin and mucous membranes to feel the room; after losing his sight, the imperceptible humidity became more obvious, with invisible thin mist accumulating, completely different from the environment outside the door, as if from another world.