Krafft's Anomaly Notes

Chapter 400 The Cage of the Uncaptible
I saw it.

Silver needles and cotton threads weave through the flesh, chasing after something.

Kraft felt that he did "see" it, but not only with his eyes, but also with the touch of his fingertips, the smell in his nose, and a little bit of imagination and memory.

It is sometimes a cracked wound, sometimes a twitching muscle bundle, and occasionally it flows and crawls on the skin surface with bright red blood.

That's not it. It's the part that remains after stripping away all material things to the point where nothing can be stripped away anymore. It's a pure and abstract thing that is neither material nor can it completely exist apart from material.

A concept, a piece of living knowledge.

The weapon only temporarily destroyed its material manifestation, and the memory only preserved its partial image.

But concepts ultimately have boundaries, and knowledge can ultimately be understood.

It will eventually encounter a consciousness, a consciousness that is close enough to it and will never forget it.

It was a very strange feeling, similar to touching a mass through thick skin and muscles, gradually approaching its edge from shallow to deep, from light to heavy, and clearly outlining its contours.

At first, it felt like touching a ripple of water, then a chain wrapped in silk, and then the edges became sharp, with scale-like bumps and undulations appearing in my consciousness.

Each confrontation on the wound allows consciousness to understand it a little more. For it, understanding is also the most direct contact, the most binding gaze.

I caught it!

Kraft sensed its texture, sensed its struggle.

The feeling was contradictory. Perhaps it should be described as stripping away from the carrier and restoring it to its essence; or perhaps it should be incorporated into one's own consciousness and solidified through cognition.

However, both exhibit the same behavior.

As the wound closed and the blood dried, its range of movement was gradually compressed with each step forward and backward. With the new gauze wrapping every inch of skin again, the last trace of its existence was erased.

Kuppu promptly removed the ether inhalation bottle and placed it in a light-proof and shock-absorbing container. He then used the remaining gauze to wipe away the foam that had spilled from the patient's mouth.

The fluid inserted into the shinbone had been changed to the third bottle, with only a little more than half left. The patient's face was as white as fresh snow in winter, with only a trace of faint blood hanging from his lips.

He pulled through. Perhaps because he spent many years preaching in remote mountainous areas, and the maintenance of the church required him to do everything himself, his old body was much more resilient than one might imagine.

The opportunities given by God are as delicate as spider silk, and no one can say for sure whether the situation will take a sudden turn for the worse.

But at least the doctor's skills did not disappoint Benny's blind faith, securing a glimmer of hope. Whether he can climb back up depends on himself.

"He survived?"

“He’s not dead yet.” Kraft reached into the sink and rubbed his hands vigorously, the dark brown murky water rising to the surface. “It’s not up to me; it depends on what the higher-ups say.”

The incident happened so suddenly that there wasn't enough time to thoroughly disinfect even two pairs of hands. In addition, the wound was extensive, so infection wasn't a matter of probability, but a matter of time.

"Heavenly Father will surely be able to uphold him through Your hand, and evil spirits and diseases will not be able to take his life." Benny clearly had a different understanding of this. In his mind, the treatment ended here, and what followed was just a waste of time waiting for recovery.

"Ugh……"

All that remains is a sigh, but a sigh solves nothing and cannot stop the problems that are about to arise.

Perhaps we should restart an experiment that was suspended due to technical issues and take a gamble.

However, something more troublesome awaited him now, something that wasn't elsewhere, but closer than he could be. Craft instructed Kup to stay and look after the patient, then went alone into the inner room and locked the door.

The latter, unfazed, began the cleanup work: tidying up equipment, collecting trash, and cleaning the work surface. It has become the norm for doctors to need to rest alone after each major surgery, and this is becoming increasingly frequent; it's almost an unspoken consensus.

He suddenly remembered something and looked at the two lead boxes on the table; the empty one no longer seemed so conspicuous.

I vaguely remember that something important was inside. As for its whereabouts, it seems...

[Was he taken away by Kraft?]

Yes, that's how it should be," Kup closed the box, confirming the conclusion, even though he had no memory of the object itself or the process of taking it away.

Related thoughts faded away, like snow melting in the sunlight, flowing away through some loophole from the darkest corner of the mind, the remaining water vapor evaporating into wispy clouds, quickly scattered by other thoughts.

The eerie atmosphere in the room faded with Kraft's departure. The smell of blood and alcohol was pungent and monotonous, but it was more reassuring, with no longer any indescribable ingredients mixed in.

The world returned to normal, and something was gone, leaving only his arm, immobilized by a splint, as a reminder that he had gone through a fierce battle.

This false tranquility breeds panic; who knows what has happened beneath the surface of the world?

He could only console himself that everything would be resolved once Kraft left the room.

……

……

Kraft had a bad feeling.

He was in a state similar to performing an emergency surgery with a lot of bleeding without any protection, and then he was told that the patient had tested positive for all three markers (HBsAg, syphilis, and HIV).

It is impossible to know how this thing spreads—there is no eye contact, no information exchange, its existence does not have to follow any restrictions, and it is not even entirely under its own control.

If consciousness goes deep enough into its understanding, then thought becomes the hands that can touch it, the vessel that can carry it.

When the ambiguity and the unknown truly arrive, they fall into the open soul, and each counterattack makes the concept clearer; each struggle makes the understanding deeper.

The more you resist understanding, the more you promote understanding. Meticulous logic and solid memory, as viscous and heavy as resin, cling to its contours, seeping into the gaps between its scales, like amber encasing and solidifying.

Consciousness trapped it, or rather, it successfully invaded consciousness.

However, language and writing still cannot share the existence of this thing with others. Although it is not a physical entity, it is not entirely a concept in the conventional sense either. It belongs to some kind of "unique" thing and can only exist in one place.

Kraft could not find a suitable way to describe its existence; if he had to give it a name, perhaps "living knowledge" would be just right.

Living knowledge cannot be confined to written texts for circulation.

Of course, this doesn't mean it's suitable to be fixed in the brain.

Using yourself as a sample bottle is obviously not a good idea, but how to kill a piece of knowledge or a concept is a complex problem that no one has ever done before, and it is even more likely that it is impossible to do so.

He'll probably be spending quite some time with this uninvited guest, and it would be best to find out where it came from, and also...

What is its relationship with things in the sky?

I sincerely apologize for the delay in updates. I've been falling asleep as soon as I get off work these past few days.