If he had to describe it with one word, Kraft felt he was experiencing a severe case of... phantom limb pain.
He moved himself from head to toe, checking his spine, arms, legs, hands and fingers. There were only a few minor scrapes and bruises from the jolting, all superficial. He couldn't find anything missing.
The pain came from something else.
His sense of self was crowded with countless extra parts. These extra "limbs" were sending negative sensations flooding into his consciousness, overwhelming his thoughts.
It was an extreme agony, like having his hands and feet folded into a space too small for them to stretch out. With the blood flow restricted, the tissue first grew sore and swollen, then began to stab with pain, and finally became necrotic. Yet the nerves remained alive, faithfully transmitting the pain of being cramped and curled up. Even the pain itself was caught in an endless, never-ending decay with no end in sight.
It wasn't imaginary. It was something that truly existed, pressing down heavily on his consciousness.
The frantic cultivators couldn't feel any of it. They worked together to drag the incapacitated professor out of the standing water, trying to keep him from drowning in the boat.
After that, they were helpless.
As professional armed personnel, they knew a little about emergency first aid, though it was limited to loosening a collar to help someone breathe, checking for serious external injuries, and perhaps stopping bleeding and bandaging wounds.
Under normal circumstances, that wasn't much of a drawback. They only needed to keep someone alive until a doctor arrived.
But now they were lost in a filthy expanse, surrounded by darkness and floating debris, and the only doctor in their group looked like he needed a doctor himself.
If that had been all,