Kraft's hand holding the bottle trembled and he almost threw it away. Then he increased the strength of his hand and grabbed the bottle tightly to prevent himself from losing control and throwing it out and breaking it.
In the terror, he found the fulcrum of reason. After experiencing something unimaginable to ordinary people, his spirit seemed to have undergone unknown changes, and he was not easily shaken.
It cannot have its own thoughts. It is just a little bit of liquid and has no basis for thinking ability.
This liquid is only inducing itself through some means, rather than speaking directly. The impulsive thoughts just now are essentially composed of the original materials in your mind.
Curiosity about new things, plans to conduct animal experiments, and learning that the professor and Lucius had swallowed the diluent. These contents were dug out and spliced together to come up with new ideas that would help release it from the bottle.
Following the strong curiosity, the brain completed these contents on its own, so its "persuasion" only provided the most primitive attraction, and the rest was left to Kraft's own thinking.
The principle is not complicated, it is equivalent to an emergency call from a scammer, without clearing out the specific information, only providing huge anxiety, and the contents are all imagined by the anxious victim.
All it takes is one primitive impulse to leverage the whole situation and use the subconscious reasons of the target to deal with him. This applies to everyone and even all living things.
"This is so interesting." Kraft raised the small bottle and exclaimed in admiration. Although he didn't know the mechanism through which it affected his emotions, this idea was brilliant.
If it is really a different kind of creature, then it is better than the anglerfish's lantern.
In fact, it has almost succeeded. With two people acting irrationally as it wished, it has easily achieved its goal of contacting more living creatures.
At least a few rats and two people came into direct contact with the black liquid.
There is one more thing that has not been figured out: what is the significance of this? At least Lucius doesn't seem to have much abnormality now. What is the purpose of doing this?
Is it a parasite living in liquid? Is it a bacterium? Or a virus? The pursuit of communication is nothing more than spreading itself on a larger scale, constantly multiplying and reproducing, and completing meaningless replication.
It has been more than ten days since Lucius came into contact with it. There seems to be no physical abnormality, and the mental state is difficult to evaluate at the moment.
Is the amount too small, or does black liquid not cause drastic changes in the short term? Will the mice used for experiments have the answer?
Kraft carefully placed the bottle on another table and asked Lucius, who was holding the candlestick: "Do you remember any changes in the mice that you fed the diluent? I mean, except for the coma.
The change."
"No." Lucius shook his head, "There were a total of fourteen mice, all of which were dissected by the instructor. No long-term observation was done until the last experiment."
"If you feel uncomfortable in any way, please inform me in time." Kraft patted Lucius on the shoulder and glanced at the bottle on the table. "To be honest, I feel that this thing is a bit dangerous. If it is not necessary,
, we’d better not touch it.”
Kraft couldn't explain to Lucius what he noticed. When he consciously refused, the induction of black liquid could not force people to take drastic actions, especially after distance, the effect quickly disappeared.
Weakened to the point of being imperceptible.
"Really, no joke, let's stay as far away from it as possible. Don't you really think it's weird that you drink the diluent rashly?" He added, this attitude made him look like a timid old scholar.
, giving up precious opportunities for a little risk.
But Kraft knew that this was the best option. For something that was beyond comprehension, suspected of being a living thing, and with the tendency to spread, no one could be too careful.
If he wasn't afraid of causing trouble, he would rather go out and lock the cellar and fill up the cellar with soil. He would never step foot here again until the professor came back after figuring out everything.
This is not something he should touch. Just like the gift he brought back from "outside the cave", it is not part of human common sense. He has not yet thought about whether to pay the price of going too deep.
He refused this change and refused to pay any unknown price. He opened a corner of the giant screen, was shocked by what he saw, and did not have the courage to face the whole picture.
At least now, he doesn't have enough reason to jump into this muddy water.
"Okay, okay." Lucius picked up the glass bottle and shook it. The black liquid rolled in it, hit the thick wall of the bottle, and finally lay peacefully at the bottom of the bottle.
He opened the closet door and put the bottle back in. However, the moment he lifted the bottle, Lucius paused.
He stopped the bottle at eye level and looked at it for a few seconds, then put the bottle back on the table. Under the light of the candlestick, he lay down at the table level and turned the bottle several times.
Then he said in an incredulous tone: "It seems a little missing?"
"A little less?"
"Yes, look at this thread." Lucius brought the candlestick closer and pointed to the bottom of the bottle so that Craft could see it more clearly.
There was a tiny scratch there, done so lightly and so inconspicuously that Kraft hadn't even noticed it just now.
Lucius held Kraft's shoulders and asked him to lean down and look at the line at a height close to the table.
"I drew this line on the last day before the professor left. Logically speaking, it should be consistent with the highest point of the liquid level. When I took it out just now, I felt something was wrong."
"you sure?"
"I thought it was a viewing angle problem just now." Lucius's breathing behind the mask became heavy and rapid. He stretched out his hand to straighten the lens, readjusted the position of the beak, and checked again by lying down at the table level.
Indeed, if this scratch is used as a standard, there is an obvious gap at the highest point of the liquid level, and about a quarter of the height has disappeared.
The liquid itself is small, and without drawing lines for comparison, it may be difficult to make a definite judgment based on memory and intuition alone.
"Could it have evaporated?" Kraft asked. People in this world still know the three-state changes of liquids, but they are still at the stage where they regard the white mist on the kettle as water vapor.
It cannot be observed because the white fog is too little and too light.
"No." This guess was immediately denied by Kraft himself.
He remembered that the professor had only been away for seven days, and the experiment lasted for more than ten days, with only a small amount of liquid being dipped each time. The amount of liquid itself was small, and if the evaporation was so obvious, it should have been noticed long ago.
Considering that the amount of liquid itself is very small, it may even evaporate on the way to Wendeng Port, and there is no chance to keep it until now.
"Evaporation? It's unlikely." Lucius also denied this conjecture. He was deeply confused and could not understand how this situation happened.
"Apart from the professor and you, will anyone else come here?" Kraft asked. This is the most reasonable explanation he can think of at the moment. If this is not right, the black liquid can only escape on its own.
Lucius put his hand into his pocket. Inside was the thick metal lock and matching key hanging on the door. His hand brushed over it, and the cold metal was reassuring.
"That's impossible. Only the professor and I have the key. Unless someone can pry open the lock and hang it up exactly as it is, but this lock is not that easy to deal with." Lucius gave a negative answer again.
He may have thought about this. People in the academy don't need to do this. After all, it's normal to have some secret experiments, and most of them end up with nothing. It's abnormal to have no secrets. Who would go to such trouble to find someone else's?
Secret laboratory?
As for the people outside the academy, let alone how they got in, even if they accidentally came here in a complex building, could it be that he opened the lock and put it back in, only to take a little bit of some unknown liquid from the small bottle?
Could it be that the black liquid really grew its own legs and ran away? Kraft was confused. This thing seemed to have no such ability at all. It couldn't be that it opened the stopper and ran away partially, and then put the stopper back in, right?
If it was really that outrageous, would it still be necessary to lure creatures into contact with it?
Amid a cloud of question marks, Kraft ruled out several possibilities one after another, and the entire incident was shrouded in sudden fog.
But there is actually another possibility.
"Although it may be strange to say this, there is no one else here. I would like to ask the professor if he knows that you scratched a mark?" Kraft asked, staring at Lucius behind his red lenses, waiting for him to tell his professor
of course I know.
"..." Lucius was silent, as if he was thinking, but also as if he didn't know how to answer, but silence itself was the answer.
The atmosphere in the room was slightly frozen. Professor Kalman should have been the one least likely to have a problem. Kraft mentioned this purely in passing, but he didn't expect that something would actually go wrong.
He hesitated for a while, picked up and put down the bottle on the table, without directly giving his opinion, only throwing out what he knew: "I took a small stone and drew it casually, trying to estimate the dosage for future experiments, but I didn't
Notify the professor."
Things started to go in the direction Kraft least expected.
Professor Kalman did all the experiments with Lucius, and all the experimental records were given to Lucius for sorting. As the professor's academic heir, he basically had no reservations, and even his own son might not be so close to him.
What was the reason for him to avoid Lucius and secretly take out a quarter of the black liquid before leaving?
Anyway, it is impossible to do animal experiments. There is no need to avoid Lucius in animal experiments, and it is obviously more convenient to use multiple people.
…
…
The two put the bottle back into the closet, leaving the box containing the experimental records. They locked the door and covered it with the box, and left the cellar without saying a word.
Lucius seemed a little frustrated, but he still patiently told Kraft the time and place of his classes as a lecturer, as well as the specific location of the house the professor left for Kraft. He left after confirming that Kraft had no doubts.
Kraft thanked him and watched his tired figure disappear at the end of the corridor. He knew what Lucius was thinking.
The person whom he regarded as half of his father did not give him the complete trust he expected. He must be thinking now whether he did not do well enough, or whether he did not show the ability to meet Kalman's expectations.
This kind of denial of himself may have hit him too hard. No matter what the reason is, it is difficult for him to accept it. He may not be able to recover for a few days.
Kraft did not comfort Lucius, nor did he know how to comfort him. He still had his own problems to think about, and Kalman's concealment was also bad news for him.
The liquid showing strange inducing tendencies, the twisted and weird characters in the notes left by the professor, the parts of the sample that were taken away and disappeared...
He stood in the corridor that was painted scarlet by the setting sun, and took a deep breath, as if he was trying to pull the elongated shadows of the corridor columns and the dusty light pillars into his lungs.
There is a vaguely familiar but unfamiliar, unknown smell permeating the mouth and nose, making people instinctively feel that it should not be there. It cannot be caught when focusing on the sense of smell.
From the moment I walked into this building, the deeper I got to know it, the more obvious it became. It exists in the spread out experimental records room, wanders in the basement, and appears in every moment when Kraft is inspired.
Kraft suddenly woke up and figured out why he felt familiar. It was a weak and irrefutable feature, indescribable, incomprehensible, and should not exist in the world.
"Fuck!" The otherworldly part of the soul couldn't help but burst out the curse words from home, "This is really bad news."
He had already come into contact with a similar existence that was countless times stronger than this in the snowy night. But now, it was just an unexpected and inevitable reunion.