Sometimes You Have to Play Sherlock Holmes

Before their souls merged, both had some understanding of calligraphy, whether out of personal interest or the threats of a grandfather. Long-term practice, both active and passive, made this new soul increasingly sensitive to the nuances of various writing styles.

Kraft mobilized his consciousness, entering a state of meticulous observation and photographic memory. He forced himself to ignore the faint, lingering sense of unease in his intuition and threw himself into analyzing the papers scattered across the floor.

The pressure of the pen and the stability of the strokes significantly affect the thickness of the lines, reflecting a person's state of mind while writing. Meanwhile, the connections between letters indicate the fluidity of the writing, which relates to one's familiarity with the words and their overall grasp of the language. Although these can be added after the fact, it is still possible to discern unnatural points at the transitions.

If text is written in a similar state of mind, the handwriting tends to be relatively consistent. Among this pile of records, they could be roughly categorized into three types.

First is the category exemplified by the letter the professor left for him. This content perfectly reflects the professor's mastery in this area, highlighting a kind of "impractical elegance."

These coherent, flowing lines were not actually produced by rapid writing, but by pulling the force at the end of a stroke to gently drag the pen to the position of the next letter, forming a ligature. In actual writing, this style is not only inefficient but also prone to hand tremors and mistakes.

However, the back-and-forth lines give the writing a strong sense of unity and aesthetic appeal. Coupled with the professor's excellent control over line spacing and letter size, the text remained machine-like in its neatness and precision, even on paper without guiding lines.

When writing these, the professor must have been in a good mental state, possessing the energy to pursue such extreme, delicate beauty in his penmanship.

The second type of handwriting was likely written when greater speed was required.

The strokes of these characters are mostly slightly thinner, and when picked up for close inspection, there are fewer burrs caused by ink bleeding, indicating that the professor wrote them quickly, with the pen lingering on the paper for only a short time.

These contents often feature sudden interruptions, where the flow of the ligatures abruptly stalls where it should have continued, leaving behind a blunt end or a stagnant ink blot. It looks as if he stopped to deliberate on his word choice, his original train of thought broken and then resumed, implying a disrupted rhythm.

After continuing to write, the professor would habitually add a stroke to reconnect the broken parts. Because these were added later, they are not as natural as the continuous writing, leaving Kraft a chance to discover them.

As for the third type, it is the easiest to pick out. It is obvious that the writer's mind was not on his hand; the stroke thickness is uneven, and the coherence and overall structure are very poor. Often, the degree of slant varies within a single page, which rarely happens to someone whose writing habits have already solidified.

In these records, there are at least fifty percent more words that neither Kraft nor Lucius recognize compared to the other papers, and in some cases, half a page consists of completely unreadable information.

Uppercase and lowercase letters are mixed together, and violations of writing standards are everywhere, separated by indistinguishable punctuation that looks like a slip of the pen but cannot be reverse-engineered to find the original meaning.

In the most severe cases, the gaps between letters are broken, crowded, and stacked; rather than extending into the blank space nearby, they are squeezed into a lump. It is on par with Kraft's level before he practiced his penmanship, with legibility approaching zero.

There are also a very few awkward characters that Kraft has no clue about; they do not conform to any writing style. Some were drawn against the conventional direction, and after discovering the ink was insufficient, they were traced over several times in the same spot until the paper fibers were destroyed, leaving behind a hard, carved mark.

"Are you really sure this is the professor's handwriting?" Kraft picked out the third type first and asked Lucius, pointing to a stroke that had pierced through the paper.

This way of writing is not only ugly but also causes great damage to the nib, emitting a harsh, grating sound while writing. Imagine a needle dragging across sandpaper covered in small bumps; the uncomfortable sound scrapes the eardrum, and the irregular tremors transmit directly to the fingertips holding the pen.

Applying this action to a pen nib—at the very least, Kraft felt it was intolerable; seeing it was enough to effectively treat symptoms of low blood pressure. Judging others by himself, it is unlikely that any normal person would enjoy this, just as humans instinctively recoil from the ultimate noise of a spatula scraping an iron pot.

Lucius leaned in for a closer look and gave an affirmative answer: "I happen to have a slight impression of this one; it was indeed written by the professor. Because it was a record made just before he left, and it looked quite peculiar, I can be certain."

Kraft frowned, placed this sheet on top, and took it to the window to try and understand the professor's meaning once more.

Many people might have their own special way of writing, which can turn into a mess when they write quickly and without care. But this is different; he could be certain that this was definitely not some special uppercase form of any letter.

The reverse stroke, the nib tearing through the paper fibers, the way it took several strokes to "carve" this symbol out. The ink was inconsistent, scattering and transferring between the destroyed fibers, turning a line into a beaded strip made of lumps and irregular dots.

Kraft's consciousness captured its form, fitting it to the lesions formed by tuberculosis developing in a narrow lumen, like a rosary of tumors and cysts; the disgusting outline was the result of the distortion of an orderly thing.

Sharp, folding ink lines crossed around it, concentrating on another symbol like a gaunt hand with long, thin fingernails thrusting into the lesion. Long, narrow letters, chaotic like a swarm of flies, circled them, their trajectory appearing both circular and square; staring at them for too long gave the illusion of movement and deformation.

He had never seen such writing—no, he shouldn't use the word "character" to describe something so contrary to nature. A person with their sanity intact should not, and could not, smear such a thing.

If that was a record left by Professor Calman, Kraft would rather believe that an evil spirit had truly seized the professor's body and, after deceiving everyone, sat at the desk to write the most malicious joke it knew.

"No, something must be wrong." Kraft threw out his conclusion and moved his gaze away from the paper. Once his consciousness wandered, it was not easy to pull it back; his mind was filled with unavoidable associations, dragging out the most stomach-churning or profound things from his memory and combining them with the current content, mixing them into a nauseating product.

A sense of nausea forced him to get away from these papers as quickly as possible and put them back into a closed container where they couldn't be seen.

"I think I've found some leads; let's separate them first."

"Fine, the professor isn't here, so you're in charge." Lucius followed suit, taking out a few wooden slats used as bookmarks.

Thus, Kraft spent some more time sorting the three types of records and putting them back into the box, separated by the wooden slats to make it easier to continue the detailed sorting next time.

With another two thuds, the lid was closed again, and the room returned to a neat and comfortable state. Kraft felt an inexplicable sense of relief. But things were far from over; that secret laboratory, whatever the situation was, was now waiting for them to deal with it inside the Medical School.

It was impossible to conjure up a gas mask, and just covering one's face with a wet cloth wasn't reliable either; he had to think of another way.

If there was any way, there was indeed a "no-way" way. Kraft thought of the equipment often associated with the black-robed doctors of the Middle Ages—the bird-beak mask; it did exist in this world.

As for the specifics, he really didn't know. His knowledge of it was limited to some popular science articles of unknown origin, which said that the bird's beak was stuffed with cloth bags containing spices and herbs.

It seemed to make some sense, didn't it? Or perhaps it made no sense at all.

"Lucius, I want to ask, is there a mask here like the ones worn when visiting plague patients? The one with a pointy beak?" Kraft put his hands together in front of his mouth, making the shape of a bird's beak.

"Is it really necessary?" Lucius couldn't understand; today he had been exhausted physically and mentally by Kraft, and his enthusiasm for the experiment had been worn down quite a bit. "Even if it is truly poisonous, we only lost consciousness after drinking the diluted sample."

For a moment, the thought that "it seems I am being too vigilant" took the upper hand, but Kraft quickly shook it off. Because the professor and Lucius often did experiments, they at least opened the doors for ventilation every day; now that the laboratory had been sealed for a week, it was hard to say what would happen if there were volatile substances.

Preparing more would at most waste a little time; not preparing could potentially waste the rest of his life. This was a calculation he could make clearly.

The author's buffer has run out ∑(дlll)