Chapter 72: Following Medical Advice Is Very Important

Lu Xiusi left after mooching lunch, perhaps feeling he hadn't been of much help; he ate only two portions and hurriedly took his leave.

Mr. Kraft naturally handled the bill. After chatting with the owner for a while, he returned to the attic, picked up that stack of papers again, held them under the sunlight, and used arrows to mark the shrinking trend of the pale area surrounding the blue dot representing Kup.

"It still doesn't feel quite right." A small case of Mr. Kraft's obsessive-compulsive tendencies had flared up. He was the type who, after every exam, felt he hadn't filled in the answer sheet correctly; the more he thought about it when reminded, the more uncomfortable he became.

Today's afternoon nap was a wash. Lifting his suitcase, fastening his mask, Mr. Kraft pushed the door open and walked toward the Salt Tide District.

Finish today's work today; if he didn't figure out exactly what was going on with this matter, he feared he wouldn't be able to sleep. It was like a thorn stuck in the skin—not very painful, but the occasional small prick made him restless.

To soothe his unsettled heart, he set off carrying a bit of patience that hadn't yet been worn down by complex investigations.

Days of back-and-forth experience had made him start to get used to navigating here; narrow, winding roads could no longer hinder his steps. He deftly avoided wooden beams, stepped over piles of clutter, and was even more familiar with the area than the locals.

With Lu Xiusi gone—someone who, no matter what, couldn't walk fast—Mr. Kraft's speed increased, and he headed straight for his target along the map in his mind.

Very quickly, he arrived at his destination: the pale area on that map.

After briefly discerning the direction, he decided to start by verifying Lu Xiusi's guess. First, visit Kup; sacrificing his precious afternoon nap to talk with him, perhaps there really was some unspoken difficulty?

In the past, he mostly arrived in this area later in the day, with fewer opportunities to learn more.

Hoping for a relatively frank exchange, Mr. Kraft knocked on Kup's door. This was a shack considered quite small even within the Salt Tide District; the owner, having lived alone for a long time, had no desire to expand, leaving rare open spaces on both sides, though they were filled with various kinds of clutter.

"Knock, knock, knock."

A very restrained knocking sound, three taps then stopping, possessing quite a rhythm; the nearby residents had probably grown accustomed to this over time. If the door wasn't opened, the sound of calling the homeowner's name would soon follow.

"Kup, are you home? I have something I'd like to discuss with you alone," Mr. Kraft shouted inside; a considerable portion of the people in the Salt Tide District had poor hearing, and sometimes one had to raise one's voice.

Looking at the height of the sun overhead, it shouldn't be noon yet, but it wasn't early either; if Kup's recovery level was similar to others, he might already be out and about by now.

"Kup?" he called out again, tentatively.

"Oh, Mr. Kraft?"

The voice came from the side; the wooden door of the neighbor's house was pushed open, and an elderly woman, having heard the sound, stepped out.

"Looking for Kup?"

"Yes, but it's nothing major." Mr. Kraft gave up on knocking on the door, recalled his memory of the last visit, and naturally entered a follow-up mode. "Your grandson's hand hasn't been hurting again, has it?"

Last time, this family's child had been dragged out by an anxious father; by the time they realized something seemed to have been torn, his elbow had been hurting for quite a while, to the point where it was completely immobile.

If left in the hands of the few "people who know a bit of medicine" in the Salt Tide District, the standard procedure would probably be to apply some strange ointment and call it a day; the child's arm would be completely ruined.

Fortunately, Mr. Kraft happened to be there for a follow-up visit; hearing this, he was extremely familiar with it: elbow pain in a child caused by forceful traction, a classic case of radial head subluxation, a textbook example of manual reduction.

It was rare to encounter such an easy-to-treat ailment; how could he let it go? With a casual press, he performed traction, rotation, and elbow flexion; before the child could react, the pain vanished after the reduction. The child stared blankly at the entire procedure, then moved without any hindrance, quite resembling the protagonist of a holy scripture story whose touch instantly healed illness.

If he couldn't cure major illnesses, could he not cure this? It had to be said that this gave Mr. Kraft a tiny bit of confidence amidst the long torment of miscellaneous ailments in the Salt Tide District and effectively won the trust of this family.

Hearing Mr. Kraft ask about this, the elderly woman's face, covered in wrinkles, broke into a smile. "No, of course not. Thank you so much."

Mr. Kraft had not asked them for payment; out of simple thinking, since he was here to find Kup, she wanted to offer whatever help she could, so that next time, if there were minor illnesses, she could ask for help.

"If you're in a hurry to find this young man, I do have a way to see what he's up to."

She led Mr. Kraft around a large pile of clutter to the shadowed side of the shack. To Mr. Kraft's surprise, she directly pushed a wooden board that looked firmly nailed inwards, exposing a hole nearly half a person's height.

"Ah? How did you know this?"

"My son gave him that board; indeed, this lazy fellow is too lazy even to exert the effort to nail it on." Her tone was full of disdain for this neighbor. "He's too lazy to do anything and wakes up late."

Once she started speaking, she couldn't stop. Pointing to a dark corner inside, roughly where a bedroll was placed, she showed it to Mr. Kraft. "Speaking of which, everyone is doing better now, yet he still only wakes up at noon. I think he's just gotten used to sleeping; anyway, one person eats full and the whole family isn't hungry..."

"Mm." Mr. Kraft replied, already beginning to record the neighbor's corroboration in his mind.

"You'll have to wait quite a while for him to wake up. Be careful with this fellow; he's not diligent in work and has many ways to shirk and cheat..." She muttered as she went back, looking very displeased with this neighbor.

"Alright, alright, thank you. This is really a huge help." Now that he had confirmed the person was home, Mr. Kraft pulled the board back into place and waited at the door.

Not much time passed; subjectively, less than half an hour, and rustling movement sounds came from inside. Mr. Kraft knocked on the door again.

"Who is it, so early in the morning!" The man inside complained as he opened the door, very displeased that someone was disturbing him right after waking up. However, upon opening the door and seeing the person before him, his casual expression immediately softened.

"Ah, it's Mr. Kraft? I didn't know it was you."

"It is me. May I disturb you for a moment? I have some things to ask you, which might be very important." Saying the same opening lines as usual, but the voice behind the bird-beak mask sounded slightly heavier, lacking some warmth and carrying a more serious and sharp tone.

The last time Kup had felt this way was in front of the priest, being questioned, "Are you guilty?" He was so frightened that he even confessed to stealing half a loaf of bread from a fellow worker a month ago. As a result, the priest strictly ordered him to eliminate his sin and avoid falling into hell by offering sincerity at the church.

His eyes wandered, and he stammered out a sentence: "Of course."

"Then I thank you in advance, Kup. This question might be related to the safety of many more people, and they live right around you." Mr. Kraft applied pressure to him.

Shifting the topic, "However, generally speaking, most problems, if handled early, won't cause too terrible an impact."

Kup hurriedly nodded to show understanding; seeing his expression, Mr. Kraft could guess there was definitely a problem, the only difference being its scale.

"First, I want to ask: regarding the feeling about your waking time you told me recently, is it possible you misremembered quite a bit due to being groggy?"

"I didn't..." Kup instinctively wanted to deny it without thinking.

Mr. Kraft stepped forward, the tip of his beak almost poking his forehead, cutting off his words. "No rush, think again. And there's a second question: have you had any form of dream? Think back carefully."

The bird head with red lenses tilted slightly, as if moving its neck; the height, already significantly taller than Kup's, brought considerable pressure.

Kup lowered his head to avoid eye contact but saw that the left hand wearing a black glove was intentionally or unintentionally placed on a protruding object under the black robe. He had heard that this doctor carried a sword with him; those who claimed to have seen it boasted that it was an extremely terrifying weapon capable of splitting a person along with a wooden wall in two.

"Think about it again. I have plenty of time today."

The words were gentle, but the tone sounded like "You don't have much time left."

Finally, under pressure, Kup seemed to weigh the pros and cons and squeezed out a sentence: "Thinking about it, I might indeed have been groggy."

"Speak specifically." Mr. Kraft nodded; this exchange was becoming honest, wasn't it?

"At first, the waking time was a bit early, but later it... didn't change; even now, it's still close to noon." As he said this, he had confusion and panic; he saw the improvement of the surrounding neighbors, yet he alone was different and anxious about not being able to speak of it.

Good heavens, it matched the neighbor's account; before, not a single word of truth had been spoken. Simply recalling, those early risings and late risings that swung back and forth wildly were all fabricated. But since he himself already knew there was a problem, why not say it?

The silence behind the mask was interpreted by Kup as a precursor to anger; he quickly continued to confess: "It might be because, for convenience, I went to draw water from that well a few more times. It's absolutely not that I don't trust you; I just thought such a small thing wouldn't matter..."

"Hmm?!" Upon hearing this, Mr. Kraft completely lost his composure. "How is that possible? Wasn't that place sealed off long ago?"

So this fellow, out of laziness and for the convenience of the short distance, had secretly gone to draw water from the old well. Afterward, the situation fluctuated; fearing Mr. Kraft would notice and blame him, he dared not tell the truth.

"In those first few days, they insisted on dragging me along to seal it; I secretly left... Later, it was completely blocked off." Seeing Mr. Kraft get angry, Kup confessed the rest.

Kraft knew this matter; he first found several people living nearby to fetch wooden planks and nail them on, and he had even inspected it himself. Later, seeing the residents improve, they spontaneously used earth and stones to pile this poisonous well into a large earthen mound. Unexpectedly, this fellow took advantage of that brief gap to draw water from it for several more days.

【Restrain, restrain, don't get angry...】

Kraft tried hard to comfort himself, suppressing the rising anger, and asked in a tone that remained relatively calm: "Besides you, is there anyone else?"

"No, only I know; I told no one, and only used it three times when few people were around." Kup felt that Kraft had no intention of acting for the moment, so he also confessed another matter he had been holding back for quite a while.

"It seems I can dream recently, though they are all very short; the only one I remember vaguely was at home..."