Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

"What?" Kraft didn't follow Lucius's train of thought. His mind was still stuck on how fast the operation should be done, and he was not distracted.

"I mean, Professor Romolo is wrong. He is very familiar with the theory of four liquids and pharmacology, but that is already a thing of the past."

Lucius glanced at the door again. He didn't want to say it himself, which should be enough for Kraft to understand what he meant.

Yes, in the traditional four-liquid theory, in order to make a person lose consciousness, either the red liquid or the white liquid must be exhausted, of course it is correct. But isn’t there another liquid that they have never found?

He raised his hand and placed it in front of Kraft. A few days ago, this hand still had several red spots, traces of a reckless experiment.

"You mean black liquid?" Kraft suddenly woke up and focused his eyes on Lucius's face. "I thought I had made it clear enough that we shouldn't touch that thing."

"Why?" Lucius looked at Kraft without hesitation, as if to dig out the reason why he was so afraid of black liquid from his eyes.

Kraft felt that Professor Kalman's experiment was unreasonable, and Lucius also felt that Kraft's excessive caution was unreasonable.

In his opinion, black liquid fully meets the current needs. It only requires a little dilution to make people lose consciousness for a whole day. The pain of acupuncture cannot awaken them, and they have no idea what happened afterwards.

"Because it's...unsafe." Kraft was speechless for a moment, and even he couldn't be convinced by this explanation. "We're not sure it's the real 'black liquid', right? It's just called that, right?"

He couldn't explain to Lucius what his intuition and inspiration told him. Do you mean to say that you discovered that a small amount of liquid is related to something that is incomprehensible to humans, and that it can induce living things to come into contact with it? Just keep this kind of thing in your stomach. Saying it out will only make you more untrustworthy.

"It cannot be ruled out that it may have some bad effects that will take longer to show up. Professor Kalman also said that it must be kept strictly confidential, didn't he?" Kraft added.

He instinctively felt that there must be some deeper reason for its outward appearance, and he did not dare to come into contact with it more until he had a chance to find out. For this reason, he did not hesitate to bring Professor Kalman out to silence Lucius.

Lucius disagreed with this statement. He pointed to his nose and said, "Only living people have the opportunity to worry about the long-term effects. If I were not an exception, we would not discuss this issue for at least ten days."

"I know now is not the time for this great discovery to come to light, but isn't the original intention of discovering it for the development of medicine? Is it just to keep it secret?"

Lucius was a little excited when he spoke. He misunderstood Kraft's meaning and felt that Kraft's disagreement with his suggestion was more due to the professor's request rather than an inexplicable fear of black liquid.

"No, of course I didn't mean that..." Kraft subconsciously never thought about taking the black liquid out of the basement.

When he was thinking about anesthesia just now, he only thought about what anesthetics he knew that could be made at the moment, or what plants could be used as natural anesthetics, and he did not label such anesthetics as "unknown" or "dangerous" at all. Lean on things.

Now that I think about it, Lucius's statement actually makes sense.

Providing long-term and effective anesthesia, pain cannot arouse, and there will be no intra-operative awareness. Lucius showed no sequelae at all for more than ten days after drinking it.

With this thing, the success rate of the operation has skyrocketed, from almost impossible to somewhat certain.

As for what sequelae there will be in the future? We can wait until "later" to discuss it. The worst is death, and the worst is death on the operating table today. The best case is that this dose does not reach the limit of causing any special effects. Judging from Kraft's observation of Lucius, it is entirely possible.

Lucius watched as Kraft's expression gradually relaxed, his eyebrows gradually relaxed, and he changed from nervous to thoughtful.

"Once, just once," Kraft said. To Lucius, but also to himself.

He remembered that night a few days ago, he firmly wrote in his notes, "Keep distance, stay closed; never contact unless necessary." I didn’t expect that the time of “necessity” would come so soon.

Kraft sighed. There might be a lot of bad things that need to be dealt with after this time. "How to explain the origin? No one would be curious about this kind of thing."

"You say it's a family secret medicine?" Lucius opened his mouth. "It's an orphan product that has been passed down from one generation to another. The formula has been lost. This is the only one."

The familiar saying is that the inspiration probably came from Kraft's "family medical skills", but this excuse is really bad. The last bit of an heirloom-level secret medicine from a noble family was given to the daughter of the tavern owner. It felt like an insult to everyone's intelligence.

"I suggest you think about it again." Kraft held his forehead, "But you can think about it later. Now let's prepare the diluent."

"Together?"

"As soon as possible. We have to prepare other things after we are done. It may not be as simple as this thing."

…

…

Wearing the beak masks they used last time, the two returned to the secret laboratory. As soon as he entered the door, Kraft opened the closet and checked the position of the liquid level in the bottle relative to the scratches. There was no change.

Lucius took out an egg-shaped ceramic cup from the lower floor, which was the cup they used to prepare diluent.

Cups with a large body and small mouth are difficult to clean, but it is not easy to shake out the liquid inside. There is also a small triangular beaker-like mouth structure at the mouth of the cup to facilitate the transfer of liquid.

Fill the cup with water to four-fifths, shake the pottery cup gently to make sure it will not splash out during stirring, and then use a small metal rod to dip a little black liquid into the water.

"Just take this, just dip it a little. Don't let the droplets hang on the stick." Lucius handed the stick to Kraft, "How about a little more? After all, we only tried the needle before. prick."

"No, children are not smaller versions of adults, especially when they are only three years old. Not reducing the dosage is already overestimating."

Craft peeled off the wax seal on the bottle, pulled out the cork, inserted the thin rod into the small glass bottle, and carefully approached the liquid level.

Looking down from the mouth of the bottle, in the blurred field of vision, the liquid at the bottom of the bottle is silent, and the candlelight passing through the glass is swallowed up on its surface. The smoothness of the liquid surface was not shown, and was replaced by a matte, deep black.

It digs out a sudden and stubborn defect in the field of vision, weakly but continuously sending an invitation to touch to those who look at it.

From this perspective, Kraft began to think that it was a deep cave entrance, with vague sounds coming from the other side. He squeezed the thin stick in his hand, feeling that it would fall into the entrance and into another world as soon as he let go.

One end of the thin rod presses against the liquid, breaking the dark surface and causing fleeting tiny ripples. The improperly controlled force caused it to hit the bottom of the bottle, making a scary crisp sound.

"Be careful, I don't think it's that strong." Lucius moved the ceramic cup to the table in front of Kraft. He almost thought that Kraft had pushed the glass bottle through.

"Sorry, I made a mistake." Kraft lifted the thin stick, shook off the excess black liquid in the bottle, and inserted the stick with the last thin layer of liquid into the ceramic cup. Then plug the cork tightly into the glass bottle and seal the gap in the bottle mouth with wax.

"So just stir it and it's good?" The metal rod stirred a few times in the ceramic cup, and the trace amount of black liquid was completely dissolved in the water. Now it is what they want.

"Yes, this stuff dissolves easily in water."

Looking under the candlelight, the water in the cup is still very clear, without any color change. It is absolutely impossible to distinguish with the naked eye, and it no longer has the original inducing feeling. It is just a cup of ordinary clear water.

But it did become the centerpiece of the world's first anesthetic surgery. Lucius would pour a small sip into the prepared "family heirloom" vial, and let Liz drink it all in one gulp without leaving any evidence.

This small copper bottle was donated to the collection by Lucius. The bottle, which is less than half a palm in size, is inlaid with a turquoise-like decoration. As an "ancient family heirloom", no one in Wendeng Port Will be free enough to identify it.

"What was this bottle originally used for?" Kraft habitually wanted to touch his chin in thought, but he only touched the beak on the mask.

"I bought it to carry spices with me, but I couldn't find a suitable one, so I kept it empty." Lucius tilted the pottery cup and transferred what he thought was a "bite" into the copper bottle. "I think it's half an antique. I’ll use it from now on.”

"The future? There is no future, Lucius. Just this time, I swear that next time I do such stupid things, I will go to the pub and stand on my head and drink three glasses of wine."

"Which one do you mean? Agree to accept Liz, or the black liquid?" Lucius put the cap on the copper bottle and completed his work.

"It's hard to say." Logically speaking, he shouldn't be involved in either of these two things, whether he took on this case that could only be solved with special methods, or he violated his previous decision not to touch black liquid.

Kraft put the glass bottle and the lidded ceramic cup back into the closet, closed the cabinet door, and sighed. Today he sighed as many times as half a month in half a day, and he had a feeling there would be more in the future.

Things in this world have always followed such a pattern. Zero or countless times, just tell Lucius "just this once". You can't deceive yourself.

There is never any chance, everything happens for an inherent reason. Without Liz, without Lucius, sooner or later, he would meet another patient who needed surgery one day, and then think of the function of black liquid.

"I am determined to do my best to eradicate human suffering."

"Huh?" Lucius heard Kraft muttering to himself, his voice was like a mosquito, and his pronunciation and intonation did not sound like Norse.

"It's nothing, it's just the oath I made before." Kraft seemed to become a little firmer again, "Don't worry about me, go prepare other things now. If there is a god of medicine or some other god, please bless him before it's too late. Me."