Chapter 59: The Mansion

The next day, Li Si sent Kraft and Lu Xiusi to Elm Street, using the excuse of purchasing items on the list, and left ahead of them.

Before leaving, Kraft did not bid him farewell; instead, he put on the bird-beak mask beforehand. An unsettling cough came from beneath the mask, as if he had accidentally inhaled some secret spice powder from a grilled fish in Gris's tavern.

Perhaps being close to the Salt Tide District caused the foul miasma there to spread to this place. After approaching this area, Kraft's cough hardly stopped, making people suspect that something in the air, undetectable to others, was irritating his windpipe.

Until Li Si had walked a distance and looked back, Kraft finally stopped coughing and waved to him, indicating there was no need to worry. Lu Xiusi supported him, advising the fellow who had just seemed about to cough up his lungs to talk another day, but was firmly refused.

"Cough... cough... I'm fine, just choked." Kraft reached out to wipe his face, his hand knocking against the lenses. Instead of taking it off, he tightened the mask, pressing it more firmly against his face.

This action clearly concealed something; only someone as dull as Lu Xiusi would believe it. Li Si didn't know what this meant; the distance between him and the truth was far greater than just this mask, so he could only figure it out himself.

First, go to the market near the port, divide the purchase items on the paper into several parts, and hand them to friends and acquaintances, who know these things far better than he does.

As for Li Si himself, he changed out of the black robe, put on a new set of clothes never used in the academy, and pressed his hair down with a hat. He crossed half the city and, relying on memory, found a rather secluded street; Professor Kalman's house was on this street.

Yes, he had a bold idea.

Li Si wanted to personally confirm his conjecture. The Clarity Elixir was something capable of changing the entire course of surgical history; if guided down a wrong path by someone with rich medical knowledge and immense influence, the resulting evil consequences would be immeasurable.

It was clear that Kraft and Lu Xiusi were not the ones harboring malice; they were hoping for a chance, thinking there was still room for maneuver, perhaps there were some misunderstandings or twists, and dared not draw a conclusion.

An onlooker sees clearly. Li Si didn't care what role Kalman played in this; anyway, the professor was definitely a key link, and he wanted to figure out exactly what the logic behind it was.

Not for morality or other illusory ideals, but the unknown shrouded in mist drove him to think and pursue; without an answer for a day, he could not be liberated from the fear of the unknown truth for a day.

Just like being in darkness where one cannot see a finger, with sounds not human coming through, enduring this unknown was truly a huge torment; lighting a fire to see it clearly was better than letting it ferment in imagination into the most terrifying nightmare that tormented the mind.

When he came to his senses, Li Si had already climbed over the backyard wall; fear had overcome the last bit of inner struggle.

He was someone who had experienced the plague ten-plus years ago, witnessing an invisible and unstoppable force sweep through, reaping lives, bringing an indelible impact to him when he was still young.

If it was truly as Kraft said, using Clarity in such a way would be no different from an artificial plague.

"I have to figure out where this thing actually came from." Li Si brushed the dust off his hands and muttered to himself.

The professor's residence in the academy was not much of a secret; colleagues visiting each other was perfectly normal. Those who had been in the academy for a long time mostly knew each other's addresses. Some students from good families would also visit upon enrollment, and a significant portion of the academy's economic operation came from their donations.

Thinking of this, Li Si snorted coldly. After Kraft's surgery last time, he still wanted to make up the money for the student who provided the spider-silk thread.

That was because he simply didn't know that since the abdominal surgery became famous, the spider-silk thread, which was originally expensive and had no really necessary use, had been hyped by that merchant family as having a "rich vitality," making a huge profit in Wendeng Port riding the wave.

Slightly distracting himself let the tension fade. Li Si looked around this abandoned backyard and realized the owner here was indeed not the type who enjoyed managing life.

At least in a place like Wendeng Port with abundant rainfall, it should be quite rare for a yard where even weeds grew poorly.

After Professor Kalman bought this house, he obviously didn't put any effort into flowers and plants. The yard covered in dust retained only the outlines of the past; half-withered weeds and strange vines crawled among sand, earth, and stones, making a crisp rustling sound underfoot.

The owner of the mansion, wholly devoted to academia, remained unmarried for half his life, never having any ambiguous rumors involving the opposite sex or the same sex, so naturally there was no refined and picky mistress to harmonize the living space of the residence. As for the professor's own lifestyle... it could only be described as rough.

He even forgot to lock the back door. Li Si pushed it lightly, opening the small door of the house opening onto the backyard, and entered the interior.

The house, long uncleaned, was covered in fine dust. The airflow created by pushing the door sent them flying, circulating in every inch of the space, sticking to the water film on the surface of the eyeballs and drilling into the mouth, nose, and throat.

Li Si closed his eyes, covered his mouth, and let out a suppressed cough; this place was even more dilapidated than the time he had visited in memory.

The interior furnishings, lacking light, were dim and indistinguishable. It seemed the professor, before leaving, at least remembered to close all the window shutters. Li Si half-closed the door behind him and walked into the room.

The first floor, occupying the vast majority of the area, was the reception hall, where the professor received occasional visitors.

In memory, the reason for coming here last time had been forgotten; he only remembered the professor brewing barley tea for himself at a large table with no taste, where the added honey tasted good. It would have been better if that table and the one in the academy's alchemy room weren't the same model.

Now, the square table and chairs had been moved to the corner, and the entire main hall had been cleared out, as if to make space for redecoration, but the new furniture had not yet arrived. The emptiness was uncomfortable, creating a sense of floating without support.

Li Si walked back and forth in the dim reception hall; the floor here was very clean, and he didn't step on anything.

Insufficient light made him regret not bringing a light source, but he didn't want to risk opening the window and attracting unnecessary attention, so he had to grope his way toward the stairs in the faint light. The bedrooms and study were probably upstairs; if there were any clues, they were most likely in these two places.

Like the layout of most houses, the second floor was divided into several single rooms. Besides three doors, there was also a ladder leading to the attic.

Li Si pushed open the nearest door; it might be Kalman's bedroom. Inside, a large bed stood against the wall, and a desk with drawers was placed before the sun-facing window.

The dust here had decreased significantly, replaced by a faint smell of ink.

Walking up to the desk, Li Si only then belatedly remembered that he must have left footprints. Fortunately, he had changed his shoes before coming.

Several thick books were spread on the table. Through the sunlight leaking through the window crack, one could see that the one in the center was one of Li Si's most familiar books, a handwritten "Human Anatomy," opened to a page in the major chapter on "Bones."

Surrounding the beautiful and precise hand-drawn illustrations, besides the original content, were additions and summaries transcribed by the professor himself in small characters, which were research results from the early years when he first came to Wendeng Port.

To this day, the research and summary on bones had actually tended toward perfection. Many of the added details were from Kalman's hand. Subsequently, the new "Human Anatomy" made in the name of the original author Edward actually had quite a few small differences from the first edition; the one in Kraft's hand was like that.

These achievements were the pride of Professor Kalman. He believed that on a solid foundation, the hall of anatomy would be completely built sooner or later. Future generations could use the bony landmarks confirmed in his lifetime as coordinates, judging the position of internal structures roughly just by touch.

But why did the professor suddenly open the old book again to consult knowledge he already knew by heart? Curiosity struck, and Li Si leaned in to observe.

Under the open book lay a yellow paper with a corner exposed. The jagged edges caused by tearing were uneven; it had been temporarily borrowed from some booklet. Li Si had only heard that some artists would treat paper this way when inspiration struck; he had never seen Kalman so hasty before.

Carefully lifting the book, he pulled out the fragment. The things recorded on it were no more formal than the paper itself.

Scrawled, flying letters, paired with sketches drawn with uneven lines, were a hasty record meant only for the writer's own normal reading; he had to identify one by one the original meanings of the letters missing strokes in the cursive script.

In the intermittent reading, Li Si skipped over several strange words he couldn't understand at all, and roughly saw that this text discussed Professor Kalman's belief that the connection between muscles and bones had a way completely different from previous cognition.

"Could there be such a thing?"

If this statement held true, then the entire field of anatomy might face the threat of reshaping, its scale no less than the shift from purely speculative structures a hundred years ago to the current theory based on physical objects.

The current "Human Anatomy" was all verified from actual secret dissections. Including Li Si himself, who had witnessed its correctness many times; even if there were small differences in a few individuals, it was not enough to overturn the overall correctness.

Curiosity about this novel viewpoint made him forget his original purpose; his eyes continued reading involuntarily.

Kalman proposed that he had observed a new combination method for the human motor system, which was not less efficient than the original structure, and might even be higher. An example was the sketch drawn below.

If not for the text content, it would really not be easy to associate this tangle of lines with bones and muscles.

Several segments of double straight lines were misaligned and connected end-to-end. One segment, looking at the small fold angle and round head, might refer to the femur; the femoral neck and femoral head were drawn too abstractly. If not for the fact that this form was unique among long bones, Li Si absolutely would not have recognized it.

The lines entangled and wrapped around the periphery might be muscles and tendons, arranged in a form never seen before, violating all combination methods Li Si knew. It was like a creator who had never seen human limbs, imaginatively combining them onto the bones as if they were ropes or cloth.

Cavity-like and nodule-like organ tissues were mixed into the gaps, filling the empty parts of the complex structure. One couldn't imagine what kind of body would need such an arrangement.

On the periphery, two curves covered in bumps and bristles outlined the general boundary, leaving a section unsealed to indicate this was part of a whole.

At first glance, it was chaotic; even a child's drawing was more orderly than this. But upon careful thought, one discovered another set of illogical logic within the chaos, demonstrating a feasibility Li Si had never imagined.

Like another Solution to the same problem, it instantly opened up new train of thought. In his joy, he became impatient to see its full scope.

Turning the paper over, the blank backside splashed cold water on him; this was just a draft written temporarily, with no follow-up.

Li Si stuffed the paper back into its place.

"Could it be that the professor has been researching these things recently, and someone else is involved with the Clarity Elixir?"