[{"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-64":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},2283542,4467,"Chapter 64","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-64",64,"\u003Cp>After a busy day, falling asleep was not difficult. Even lying on the floor could not prevent the mind from quickly adapting to comfort and slipping into sleep.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The final stage of this process is rarely perceived by subjective awareness; when you drift in a vague sensation of falling, you have already missed the best chance to break free.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was a feeling of losing support—upon closer reflection, your back still pressed against a solid, flat surface, while the motion sensors in your semicircular canals persistently sent signals that your body was moving.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If anything, it was an abnormal disorientation: the senses’ localization of the self did not match reality—visual motion forward, actual movement backward, like walking in space.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft opened his eyes; the candlelight had gone out, replaced by pure darkness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A faint, continuous sound came from outside, rolling in waves, striking the building’s outer walls with rhythmic regularity. Humidity rose in the air, moisture seeping through unsealed gaps in time with the tide, as if the building had been dragged directly to the seashore.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A flat, elongated block had somehow been placed in his hand; a vague sense of comfort urged him back to sleep.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His prepared consciousness swiftly compared the last memory; the next moment, his body slipped soundlessly from beneath the bed, his hand reaching for his pocket—where he had pre-positioned the flint.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yet, alongside the angular block, he pulled out a thin, resilient card, its surface embossed with what seemed to be a familiar script.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The rehearsed procedure was not disrupted by the unexpected object. Kraft walked to the memory of the brazier, struck the flint; sparks and shattered stone fragments flew, expanding rapidly into a sheet of flame after leaping a few inches.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The cloth soaked in fish oil burned fiercely in the brazier, flames leaping and licking the firewood tossed inside, the light growing, driving away the darkness from floor to rafters.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Only now did Kraft have time to examine the two objects in his hand that should not have been there.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>One side was a flat black-mirrored box; a small blue-green card, on which a faint human silhouette could barely be made out.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The chest portrait on the white background melted and dripped like baked gelatin, staining the yellow shirt buttoned at the collar, solidifying into waxy, small lumps.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At first glance, it looked like faded paint—but upon closer inspection, it was always this way: features erased by molten skin patches, losing human form, strands of Nianlian  hanging like curtains.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Below, several square-style regular script characters were printed, their strokes and arrangement jumbled, crooked. From afar, they seemed plausible; pay attention, and you’d notice their unnatural distortion.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The flat box felt familiar to Kraft—he had seen it before, that same uncanny familiarity, and when activated, it gave no further response.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He placed them beside the pillow on the bed, took the torch and lit it from the brazier, then surveyed the room, lighting the candlestick as he passed. Aside from the inexplicably appearing objects, he found no discrepancies from memory.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The trap positions received special attention—they remained exactly where they should be. Kraft exhaled in relief; he had no desire to step into a trap that had moved on its own while following his memory, turning his shin bones from two into four.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He pulled open the door, ducked under the chained barrier, and stepped into the corridor. Looking down, the firelight revealed no staircase—the dark water had swallowed the path to the third floor; beneath the rippling, scaly surface, familiar areas had become unknown again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fortunately, he had chosen the attic as his position; otherwise, he would now be swimming in the pitch-black waters below. In those first moments after waking, water would have flooded unprepared lungs, triggering violent coughing, then deeper drowning, ending in suffocation in darkness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His limited diving experience could not help him orient himself underwater; oxygen could not sustain brain function—the more panicked he became, the faster he consumed it. Entering the water meant certain death. The staircase, his escape route, was cut off; the only openings to the outside were now the two windows on either side of the attic.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This water level explained the external sounds—the oscillating tide must lie less than two meters below the windowsill, waves crashing against the crude, earthen walls, shattering foam bubbles with a gurgling noise, like the bubbling of sputum in a bacterial infection of the trachea.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Humans would likely never adapt to this water; everything here carried an innate sense of sickness, like a faded access card or a permanently booting white screen on a broken electronic device—always resembling the norm, yet subtly, unintentionally revealing differences.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>On streets where water reached three stories deep, all marine life could thrive—sharks could swim freely, let alone those things.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft returned to the room, extinguished the torch, and covered the flame with the brazier’s residual ash, slightly restraining the burn. He suddenly realized this was a semi-enclosed space with poor air circulation—carbon monoxide poisoning was a significant risk, and he could not open the windows to ventilate.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Environmental assessment complete, he curled up with his sword beneath the bed. All that remained was one task: wait in silence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The room fell silent once more, save for the occasional crackle of burning charcoal and the ceaseless, background rhythm of water striking the walls.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In stillness, fleeting thoughts always arise; Kraft recalled the few times he had hunted with his grandfather.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Wood family’s hunts were, of course, unlike others—often not for food, but necessity. The mountains behind them teemed with beasts that had yet to learn to respect these two-legged creatures; when one visited too frequently, it had to be eliminated.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Usually, this duty fell to the castle’s trained young men—but clumsy youths often botched the job; their simple minds could not match the cunning of a bear that had lived too long. Loud noises might scare off smaller game, but to seasoned predators, the effect was negligible.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then it was Old Wood’s turn—he would take the opportunity to stretch his limbs, lead the hunt himself, walking deep into forests where ordinary hunters would never dare tread.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>They walked across thick layers of decaying leaves, damp tree trunks covered in moss, ferns and miasma oozing from crevices.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In such forests, finding direction required patience, just like in confrontation training—silently consuming precious time and energy, waiting for the prey to reveal its inevitable flaw.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It could be a patch of moss torn away with bark, a path of crushed fern stems, or a wet, clinging sound breaking the monotony of the tide.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Old Wood showed them how to pry open the jagged-toothed traps, place them along the paths the beasts favored, anchor the chains to sturdy trunks, cover them with thin soil, disguise them with dead leaves, then lie in wait nearby.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Next, if all went as planned, you would clearly feel a creature far larger than yourself approaching.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At first, you’d mistake it for familiar background noise—the ripples continued as usual, liquid splashing back onto the surface, no different from what you’d heard while waiting.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then one beat fell out of sync; resonance fractured, eddies spun, deep currents surged upward, breaking through the water’s surface, the parted waves gliding over a smooth skin as if avoiding something that did not exist.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In auditory terms, part of the water sound vanished without cause—a mysterious void appeared beneath the windowsill, the noise gone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The dense, gurgling rhythm was replaced by a rising musical tone, harmonies layered in unison, each note echoing in cascades, gentle yet urgent, sung by countless vocal cords, resonating through elongated cavities, forming a wave of sound.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Kraft held his breath, crawled out from under the bed, and picked up a jar of fish oil. He might suffer from concert-induced PTSD for a long time afterward; fortunately, Hegang had only the church choir—he could simply avoid feeding seagulls at Saint Simon Square from now on.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The singing rose, and light flared.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A steady, soft white glow, pulsing like breath, intensifying gradually, shifting from thick, rich hues toward a pale, natural brilliance, unnaturally bright.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A few strands of white light leaking through the wooden cracks clung to the walls, overpowering the warm glow of the brazier, announcing its arrival.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The music rose again, penetrating further, drowning out the sharp sound of fleshy tendrils gripping stone crevices. Wet, heavy limbs extended alternately, internal joints bending and twisting, muscles contracting; the main body rose from the water, a waterfall of membrane sliding off its surface, dense droplets falling like a sudden downpour.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Finally, all sound ceased outside the window; the inviting, stable white light streamed through the window cracks, radiating an irresistible urge to open it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Behind a single wooden panel, it waited for its unknowing prey to open the window and welcome it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It felt like an anglerfish—this trick of glowing was simple, yet surprisingly effective; few could refuse such a comforting, beautiful light when startled awake at midnight. But unfortunately, here was one who could.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He weighed the oil jug in his hand, stepped two more paces aside to avoid the direct white light. He had often thought this glow came as close as possible to the perfect moonlight—bright, luminous, so much so that it instinctively stirred uncontrollable fondness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This could not be mere light; it carried a special attraction mechanism effective on humans, just as the anglerfish exploited deep-sea creatures’ phototaxis.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In a way, this might be good news—creatures that hunt this way often had some physical limitation: too slow, too inflexible, or utterly immobile.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The human locomotor system was still human—it was never designed to routinely bear several times its own weight. No matter how optimized, it had limits. Conversely, perhaps it was not that this creature naturally lived in water, but that its adopted locomotor system forced it to remain mostly submerged to reduce load?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His guess was likely correct—the angle of the white light tilted slightly; the thing outside could not maintain a stable grip on the wall and had to adjust its posture. This gave him considerable confidence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yet the first change did not come from the silent standoff—he sensed, through his acute hearing, that the tide sound behind him had abruptly ceased, replaced by the familiar wet, sticky clinging noise.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Its scientific name probably requires a plural form】\u003C\u002Fp>",1722,"2026-06-20T02:15:55.761Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","1a98366fec0aec460cfde80507e34370aa8b29b13e75e292220ae12d16b5d7b7","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-65","notes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-chapter-63",406,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fnotes-on-kraft-anomalous-studies-cover.jpg"]