[{"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-57":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},2283535,4467,"Chapter 57: Chapter Fifty-Six: Mutual","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-57",57,"\u003Cp>Li Si turned his gaze to the staircase shrouded in shadow; its thin wooden frame offered no concealment, and unquestionably, there was nothing there.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The room fell silent; even the owner turned his head, following Kraft’s gaze toward the old staircase, searching the flickering shadows for whatever he had pointed to.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the silence, Lu Xiusi glanced at the staircase, then back at Kraft, certain he meant that exact spot—observing something invisible, while the others, entranced, treated his question as an undeniable statement.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Recalling Kraft’s sudden, blade-like strike—cold and sharp—hacking at a wooden board and some enemy he couldn’t identify, Lu Xiusi couldn’t tell whether it was hysteria or if something unseen had long been lurking nearby.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“There’s nothing there.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was Li Si who broke the spell of the emperor’s new clothes, “Do you perceive any fixed blotches in your vision? I’ve seen this in some trauma patients.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft’s demeanor didn’t seem feigned, yet Li Si saw nothing on the staircase—forcing him to suspect organic damage from blunt impact, a common enough case in his clinic.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Those who suddenly fell or were struck by heavy objects might wake up and permanently lose some ability—sight, hearing, or the capacity to speak a single coherent sentence, their behavior becoming strange.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Some attributed this to evil entities invading the soul, but Li Si scoffed at that—spirits don’t always rely on physical trauma to harm the healthy. This was surely structural damage, though his skill wasn’t sufficient to reach a conclusive diagnosis.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unfathomable drawings, insisting on seeing invisible things—perhaps Kraft had injured himself when falling from the second floor; according to humoral theory, draining the stagnant blood or letting it dissolve naturally would restore clarity of mind.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yet the closed windows and his water-soaked clothes remained unexplained; Li Si neither could nor wished to delve into these minor details.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“So do you remember how you went from sleeping on your bed to ending up in the alley?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“The alley?” Kraft’s face flickered with a brief, fading confusion, “Oh, right—the alley. I jumped out the window…”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He closed his eyes, chasing the chaotic memories; though only the most vivid fragments remained, the act of leaping from the window was still clear.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Why do that? The height isn’t low.” Li Si pressed. Unlike Lu Xiusi’s evasiveness, Kraft seemed more candid—perhaps still disoriented from waking.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Water.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lu Xiusi handed Kraft a glass of water; he took a small sip, then added, “I don’t mean this water—I mean there’s water below.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Below the window? In the alley?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Without hesitation, Kraft wanted to affirm—his mind clearly held a record of it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the instant before speaking, he felt his logic was flawless: unless there was water below, he must have been insane to jump—yet he was certain he wasn’t.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But he froze—his logic jammed at a critical link, realizing he’d blurred the boundary between dream and reality.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“No.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Not below the window?” Li Si was thoroughly confused by the back-and-forth.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“None of it’s right!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft shouted, his expression twisted with confusion, as if battling himself—the contradiction forcing him to realize he hadn’t fully awakened, or perhaps what he’d experienced wasn’t a dream at all.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He was in a transitional state, shifting from half-forgotten experiences toward the normal world—still accustomed to everything within those experiences, yet his memories of them were shattered.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Breaking free from numbness and calm, he re-examined the “abnormal” elements around him: his mental senses, the salt-crusted, half-dry clothes. The gap between lying on the bed and being found in the alley was stitched together by lingering dreams.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Judging from these fragments, he had just experienced a phenomenon that had materially affected the real world.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>[Turn it off.]\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The lingering dream urged him to push away his mental senses—but it was too late.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A sharp, familiar headache struck, disrupting his thoughts; his senses scrambled for an instant, his mental perspective was shoved aside, and he returned to normal vision.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A sense of confinement, withdrawal discomfort surged—he understood now why he had such a vivid memory of limiting his use of mental senses.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To the others, Kraft suddenly clutched his face, gasping as if his trachea had been slit, his long fingers bending with force, as if trying to tear his face apart to release a soul suffocating in a cramped space.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lu Xiusi and Li Si reacted swiftly, lifting him onto the table and unbuttoning two collar buttons to ease his breathing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But Li Si quickly noticed Kraft showed none of the typical signs of respiratory distress—no cyanotic lips, no deep chest heaves; instead, his breathing was rapid, more like an extreme reaction to acute anxiety or mental agitation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He tried to pry Kraft’s hands away to examine his face, but Kraft’s strength far exceeded both him and Lu Xiusi—even though Kraft had already expended tremendous physical energy, the two of them together couldn’t hold down the writhing, thrashing man like a fish out of water.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Calm down, Kraft! You’re fine!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The force he exerted reassured Li Si somewhat—it wasn’t the strength of a critical patient; it seemed more like hysteria—but he wasn’t a pharmacist like Luo Moluo, and could only watch as Kraft rolled across the table.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The only thing he could do was stand by, steadying him to prevent an accidental fall and further injury—that would only make things worse.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fortunately, the situation never escalated to the point where Li Si or Lu Xiusi needed to attempt their amateurish internal medicine skills; after ten minutes, Kraft eased on his own, gradually calming down.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Uh, sorry—had a little episode.” Kraft turned his head, pressing his left cheek against the cold table to dull the lingering pain.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The agony had awakened older memories—he’d lain on a table before, surrounded by discomfort and headache, in a place darker, damper, where the sound of water was right beside him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Faint afterimages flickered before him—cold, shadowy shapes from another place similar to this one, nearly merging with his current vision, yet wetter, darker, nearly indistinguishable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>[Tide, writhing, soft.]\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His thoughts spilled like a broken teleprompter—fragmented phrases, accompanied by inverted, incomplete images.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“You don’t look as calm as you claim.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I know. But I’ve understood something.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft dared to infer: there was no way the Salt Tide Zone and the phenomenon he’d just experienced were unrelated.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Considering he’d lost most of his memories, he must have contacted another layer—and the cracked circle he’d drawn upon waking was the final, clearest fragment of that memory.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>[Celestial body, falling backward.]\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If there’s backward, then there must be forward?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Recalling the sensation of falling before the malevolent entity approached him in the Salt Tide Zone, he suspected the falling feeling was a bodily illusion triggered upon entering the deeper layer.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Conversely, backward falling must mean exiting the deeper layer.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The puzzle fell into place: he had entered the deeper layer, then returned to the real world through some celestial object—this circle was his depiction of its form, the last thing he’d wanted to preserve before losing consciousness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then the question arose: how had he entered?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Just like in the Salt Tide Zone—during that half-asleep, half-awake state, the sensation of falling.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>[Falling, white light, writhing song.]\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Not by accident: after leaving the Salt Tide Zone, that soft, white-glowing malevolent entity had followed him—and this time, it dragged him into a more stable deeper layer, the cold, damp place he remembered.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The boundary between dream and reality, spirit and matter, had blurred; his experiences “on the other side” had been fed back into the real world. The briny tide had shattered the barrier between them, crossing the once-clear line and soaking his clothes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If Li Si’s words were true, then he had also followed actions taken in the other layer—being moved from his room to the alley.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft realized the gravity of this: it was a terrible sign, shattering his long-held belief that the deeper layer affected the real world only spiritually.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Or perhaps his understanding of “reality” had been slightly skewed—neither side was more real; both were material.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And if he could be pulled into the deeper layer, soaked in its waters, then couldn’t the reverse also be true?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Could things from the other side enter—or at least approach—this layer when the barrier between them weakened? After all, how else could they pull him over if they didn’t “approach”?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“This is bad, Lu Xiusi—how long was I asleep?” Kraft gritted his teeth, ignoring Li Si’s protests, leaping off the table and nearly twisting his ankle.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“If you count from last night, a full day.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Did you go tell them not to drink the well water?” Kraft pressed his knuckles against his temple, asking a question whose answer he already knew—Lu Xiusi entering alone would never have come out.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lu Xiusi shook his head. “I never saw you at the Academy, so I came looking for you.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“You should be glad he dragged me along,” Li Si interjected. “Otherwise, you’d still be lying in that alley.” He hadn’t forgotten his purpose: “Given your current condition, I suggest you sit down and tell me exactly what happened—maybe I can help.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I need to go somewhere else.” Kraft glanced at the staircase; after shutting off his mental senses, he found nothing there anymore—the faint, elusive writhing sensation had been an illusion.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“And one more thing—is this table for sale? I’m taking my first painting with me.”\u003C\u002Fp>",1559,"2026-06-20T02:15:55.761Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","e40eeb1d8cc5c9694faf0f65eb2c2cc73c69606427c0bd7834b5a9f5cccbd41b","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-58","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-56",406,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fnotes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-cover.jpg"]