Kraft's First Lesson

The next day, Ryan saw Kraft walk out of his room looking exhausted.

"Didn't sleep well?"

"Not exactly. I spent half the night reading, wanting to fulfill my duties as a lecturer before I leave." Kraft yawned. "Ryan, could I trouble you to go buy what we need on your own today? I can entrust you with my money."

As the saying goes, one shouldn't accept rewards without merit; feeling a bit guilty about running off after receiving benefits, Kraft still wanted to make some contribution before departing.

He took out his coin purse, grabbed a few silver coins from it, and handed the rest along with the pouch to Ryan.

"No problem. Before that, shall we go grab something to eat together?" Ryan had been wondering how to find an excuse to act alone, and Kraft had volunteered the request himself, which conveniently made it easier for him to meet the stonemason. The stone hand for carving runes he'd requested yesterday should be ready by this afternoon.

After finishing breakfast, the two left and went their separate ways. Ryan rode his horse and quickly vanished from Kraft's sight again, which made him feel a bit suspicious; he had the feeling his cousin had already locked onto a target.

However, he soon pushed this minor issue to the back of his mind. He pinned on his badge and decided to walk to the nearby academy. It was the perfect time to reorganize the content he had planned to present yesterday.

The things he prepared to discuss had actually taken shape while he was reading Human Anatomy. Once he saw that the book had already mapped out the drainage pathway of yellow fluid—that is, bile—from the liver and gallbladder to the intestines, the entire structure of his lecture was set.

Logically speaking, even while dancing in shackles within the current framework, one could indeed explain why a patient would exhibit "excess yellow fluid" through jaundiced skin and whites of the eyes, yet still remain emaciated, edematous, and dyspeptic. The content of Human Anatomy was sufficient for him to provide an explanation for this.

In the soft morning light, Kraft, dressed in his black medical school attire with the silver badge pinned to his chest and three books tucked under his arm, walked slowly toward the academy. He blended into the various scholar robes not far from the entrance, feeling as though there was no difference from attending classes during his university days.

As the outline organized itself, he began to proactively supplement more potentially relevant knowledge, rehearsing possible questions and challenges. From the third hepatic hilum down to the first, then along the common hepatic duct to where it joined the cystic duct to enter the common bile duct, the location and contents of the gallbladder triangle, and even blood vessels, lymphatics, and ligaments he hadn't carefully memorized were all filled in within his imagined structural diagrams.

That abnormal sensation, which had appeared several times before, descended upon him once more. The clear, unmistakable memory made him feel as if his brain didn't belong to him.

Kraft could no longer remember his name from that other place, but he still had impressions of the painful memories of rote memorization. If he truly possessed such a memory, he certainly wouldn't have needed to pull all-nighters preparing for exams—especially since he had only glanced at this content back then, and yesterday's still-crude Human Anatomy could never have provided these details.

He continued to try and trace more content in his mind with almost fearful intensity, hoping to verify his conjecture. Those things he thought had faded away over the long passage of time were, for some reason, neatly listed there. It was as if someone had broken into his most private storage room while he was unaware, taken the liberty of repainting the faded murals, and returned the scattered books to their proper places.

The lost items he thought he could never regain were placed exactly where he had just checked the moment he turned around, simply because he had thought of them.

He couldn't understand how such a thing happened. He even recalled the page numbers of the books; the black-and-white illustrations were right before his eyes, the numerical labels marked on the diagrams, and the names of the corresponding parts neatly arranged beside them.

Kraft was finally convinced of the existence of the anomaly within him. If he wasn't mistaken, it was after that incomprehensible high fever that it seemed as if the walls had been torn down; his consciousness had been released from a narrow, restricted space, canceling some innate limitation and allowing it to expand wantonly.

Its expansion was not controlled by subjective thought. As long as it was triggered, it would seek, it would excavate, and it would find more information from every possible source. Signals collected by eyes, ears, touch, and all receptors, along with things sealed deep in the dust of memory, were all within the territory of this liberated monster.

There was only one thing it could never find—where it came from.

Fever, strange dreams, subconscious avoidance—after a series of events, his consciousness began its infinite expansion, yet it could never touch what happened at the origin of it all. He only knew of its existence, but not what it was.

His consciousness uncontrollably concentrated on that one point. The light before his eyes dimmed, the clamor of the crowd receded, and a violent sensation of weightlessness struck him. He understood that this was the price for the meager benefits he had gained; he would never be able to rid himself of an existence he couldn't even explain.

He thought he had left that place the next day, but now he was somewhat uncertain. Even as this consciousness exhausted all the information he knew, he still stood in the unknowable, unmeasurable darkness, gazing into the long night that his eyes could not pierce. The invisible thing was right before him, yet he could never touch it; even perceiving its existence was already his limit.

"Lecturer Kraft?"

"Kraft!"

The light returned in an instant, as if everything just now had been a pure hallucination, and there was even a faint thought persuading him that it was just a fainting spell caused by low blood sugar.

Kraft rejected this thought and blinked, readjusting to the light. Appearing before him was a head of brown hair, looking down at him with a worried expression. A sharp pain came from the back of his head, and he realized he was lying on the ground at the entrance of the medical school.

"Lucius?" Kraft found that he didn't seem panicked; his emotions seemed to be floating in mid-air, not yet returned, with only a thin residue of fear remaining. His voice sounded calm, unlike his own, just like when he woke up from the dream last time.

Instinct was trying to erase what he couldn't accept, but this time it failed. Kraft had grasped the truth—at least a corner of it, that terrifying corner he had to face.

"Just call me Kraft. It's just some low blood sugar; could you give me a hand?" Fabricating an excuse without any difficulty, Kraft reached out to Lucius, signaling for him to pull him up.

"Uh, what is 'blood' 'sugar'?" Lucius reached out to pull Kraft up, the worry on his face not yet dissipated, but a new compound word had diverted his attention.

"Nothing, just a new term. We'll have plenty of time to talk about that later." Kraft brushed the dust off his body. "I seem to have forgotten to schedule a time today. Could you tell me when it would be suitable for me to fulfill my duties as a lecturer?" He even smiled at Lucius, dispelling his doubts.

"Of course. If you don't mind, please go to the empty classroom and sit for a while; I'll go tell the other students."

The strange, inexplicable feeling lingered, but at least for today, Kraft felt he could finish his lecture before considering these things that had no leads.

"I'm really glad so many people came to listen to my lecture. I bet my teacher never imagined I'd have a day like this." In a formal classroom that was more spacious than yesterday's anatomy room, Kraft began with a self-deprecating remark, drawing a ripple of light laughter from the audience.

"Today, I want to talk about a theory proposed by a predecessor. Of course, it is confirmed based on some reasons that cannot be explicitly stated.

Everyone should already have a fair understanding of the book Human Anatomy—wait, Humoral Theory. It mentions the yellowing of the complexion caused by an excess of yellow fluid, as well as the patient's simultaneous symptoms of anorexia, emaciation, and diarrhea after eating greasy food.

Mainstream opinion has always held that this situation contradicts the function of yellow fluid in digesting food, but in fact, this was already explained in the book Human Anatomy, though the author himself didn't realize it." He turned around and, on the dark wooden board behind him, used a small piece of chalk to draw the bile pathway from the liver all the way to the descending part of the duodenum.

"Actually, it's quite obvious. Everyone must realize that this yellow liquid has one, and only one, narrow path to travel from the liver to the intestines.

So, why couldn't it be that it simply never had the chance to reach where it was supposed to go? It could easily be blocked at some point in this duct, or perhaps it never even made it out of the liver to be discharged into the intestines, and naturally, the digestive capacity would be greatly weakened.

Of course, I must say that there are more complex mechanisms at play here, and the causes of these symptoms are by no means so simple. However, what we are going to do today is just discuss these two situations...

...In short, once you understand that there are multiple reasons that can lead to yellow fluid stagnating in the body without entering the intestines, the claim that jaundice contradicts emaciation and anorexia naturally falls apart.

I believe that an understanding of human anatomy is an extremely important part of medical development, one that will explain and overturn countless existing things. For the sake of further understanding, even breaking through some traditions is acceptable.

Thank you all. My lecture ends here. I hope it has been helpful."

Kraft concluded his lecture. The classroom was unusually quiet; the questions and challenges he had imagined did not appear, and there was only the sound of scratching pens recording notes. There was no custom of applause here yet; the students' respect for the transmitter of knowledge was reflected in solemn silence and diligent writing. Kraft did, however, spot Professor Calman in the audience, looking thoughtful.

Noticing Kraft looking at him, Professor Calman stood up carefully, not disturbing the students around him who were still thinking and writing.

"Perhaps a lecturer's position is stingy for you; I've never seen a family with this level of knowledge remain obscure." He leaned in and whispered, "However, this is all I can offer for now. Perhaps you yourself will become a professor sooner or later."

Calman paused, and seeing that the surrounding students weren't paying attention to them, he lowered his voice again, asking in a volume that was almost inaudible, "Did you mean that when you said 'breaking through some traditions'?"