"Boom!"

As Ryan's expression shifted from confusion to shock, Kraft's forehead slammed against the windowsill. The light snow accumulated last night did not act as a buffer, and there was a striking red mark on his head.

Some of his unresponsive hands and feet and temporary strike positional receptors did not allow him to react, and he simply slid against the wall, slumping to the ground.

Ryan, who was still in a state of confusion and panic, quickly stepped forward to help Kraft and transferred the awkward position of a princess hugging him to the bed.

As he reached out to ruffle Kraft's blonde hair, he realized that even more serious than the red mark that was just a flesh wound was the unusually high temperature of his forehead.

As a cousin several years older, Ryan didn't fail to take care of Kraft when he had a fever as a child. Even if those memories were blurred, he could still conclude that such a high temperature was exaggerated, far beyond the ordinary heat level, close to the level of hot hands.

What's more, Kraft didn't say a word, and he didn't even let out a faint cry of pain from the time he hit his head to the time he was moved to the bed, and he was completely in a state of burnt confusion.

"Kraft, Kraft!" Ryan used Old Wood's secret battlefield first aid technique, slapping Kraft the cheek in an attempt to bring him back to consciousness.

When he found that the two slaps failed to wake up, he decisively grabbed a large handful of snow on the windowsill, compacted it and applied it to Kraft's forehead for a simple but effective physical cooling. Ryan tilted Kraft's head, and found that he was still staring straight ahead, not in the slightest hint of reacting to his atrocities.

"I'll go next door and ask if there's a doctor here, you lie down and don't move!" With a symbolic remonstrance, Ryan got up and ran to the door, turned back in a few steps, closed the window that had been open all night, pulled out half of the quilt from under Kraft and covered him, and then rushed out the door.

……….

After a long time, after Kraft was gradually freeing himself from the chaos and barely regaining control of his face, his panting cousin dragged a middle-aged man who looked indistinguishable from the rest of the villagers to rush through the door, followed by the breathless village chief.

After Ryan pulled in the village chief, the two of them pounced on the house of the only person in the village who knew how to make dirt, and after searching the village in vain, they finally found the person they were looking for at the stone pillar. Ryan then learned that among the few people they had hired to dig the pit was the village's "doctor".

This part-time "doctor" and a few other people, with a fairly good remuneration but failed to dig out the whole thing, a little reluctant not to go, out of the idea of being idle in winter, seeing that the rare sunshine today is just right, make an appointment to dig a few more hoes, and chat and chat to pass the time by the way.

The group of three ran back to the doctor's house to get his tools and herbs, and it was already half a morning.

In this way, when Ryan brought the people back, he could already see Kraft squeezing out an indistinguishable expression to look at him, muttering a muttered muttered voice, which, combined with the image of a bar above his head and red and swollen cheeks, was quite comical. He lay on the bed and listened to his relieved cousin describe his condition to half of the doctors.

In the absence of a personal history, a past medical history, a family history, a history of marriage and childbirth, and no specialist examination, this fellow, who was far more amateurish in Kraft's eyes than the doctor who amputated the firehand, made a diagnosis based only on the oral complaints of his family and half of his present medical history—you disease, I think about it is a characteristic disease of our village!

In his narration, which is a little difficult to understand because of his accent, Kraft and Ryan learn that the doctor is still a doctor.

From the unverifiable ancestors to the current generation, three generations of them have worked part-time as doctors in this village, working as part-time doctors in addition to farming, and supporting the primary medical and health services here with technologies that are basically in line with the average medical level of this era.

The main business is generally phlebotomy therapy and local herbal medicine treatment, compared with the clinics in the city, the victory is in the orderly inheritance, and the loss is in the lack of high-tech such as amputation enema.

This kind of medical model, which only exists in historical rumors in the souls of the other world, can only be said to be efficient slaughter, not to say that it is unpretentious.

However, objectively speaking, after the doctor unsurprisingly proposed bloodletting therapy and local specialty potion treatment, it did promote Kraft's early recovery of speech ability.

With his lips that were still a little numb, he tried his best to squeeze out a few words under the doctor's surprised gaze: "No, I'm much better." ”

In the continuous shock, Kraft's brain has returned to normal, except that he still has difficulty moving his torso and limbs. When Ryan applied ointment to the wounds on his forehead, he could clearly feel that the high fever had subsided, which at least ruled out the possibility of being infected with the epidemic.

Of what had happened last night, Kraft remembered only fragmentary words such as snakes and scales, which could be summed up as a nightmare in front of him with a large snake crawling in front of him.

This is nothing new to all of you here. In an age when neurology had not yet reached the top of the chain of contempt, all kinds of complex diseases were still explained by some supernatural factors.

Whether you have speech dysfunction and hemiplegia due to stroke, weakness due to low potassium, or limb convulsions and gibberish caused by febrile convulsions and delirium, it can be explained by something evil.

This kind of nightmare about snakes brings illness, and it makes perfect sense to explain it as a trick of evil spirits. Since Kraft has now improved rapidly, judging from the village chief who has a little faith, it should be God's blessing, and he can naturally be cured without medicine.

Ryan stopped talking. Not to mention that the gods of the Church did not bless the relatives of the collectors of heretics, and regarding Kraft's condition, he did not know whether the accidental impact caused by his shoulder in the morning was suspected of adding fuel to the fire and making a small lesion a major illness.

And Kraft, who was lying on the bed, out of the professional sensitivity of otherworldly souls, quickly caught a word in their conversation. He barely moved his hand to push himself, but Ryan noticed his movements, reached out to help him up, piled a small bag behind him with the quilt, and fed him a sip of water with a kettle so that he could sit up and talk.

"What did you just say about the 'characteristic disease'?" Kraft asked in a somewhat hoarse voice, and Ryan leaned over the kettle to give him another sip, but he tilted his head away from it, "What do you mean by your village's characteristic disease?" How common is it for me to have such a sudden high fever? ”

He was vaguely aware of something, but all that was left of last night's memories was fragments, more of it was lost in the depths he couldn't unearth, and now he needed some clues.

It may be that this symptom is too characteristic, and the amateur doctor shows a good memory in this regard: "According to my father, of course he also listened to my grandfather, and I don't know any sooner. There has been such a strange disease here for a long time, and it is basically young people, and there is one every eight or nine years. It's all suddenly hot on the head, as if it had been roasted in the fire, and what kind of nonsense about snakes and so on, and finally ......" he said and suddenly paused, observing the faces of Ryan and Kraft, and feeling that they would not be angry with themselves in this situation, "In the end, they didn't live for two days, and my father met like that." ”

Seeing that Ryan and Kraft didn't quite believe it, the doctor pulled out his set of bloodletting tools: "My grandfather was a serious doctor outside before he came here, and this set of things was left by him." He said no other place had ever seen such a disease. Even if it's a high fever and talking nonsense, it's not all related to snakes, right? "Of course, this is also from my father, who guessed that there is an evil spirit of a snake here, and after eating a fresh and strong soul, he will go back, and when he is hungry, he will come out again." ”

Kraft habitually filtered his own words: acute onset, more common in young adults, with fever and delirium as the main symptoms, and obvious regional. The fatality rate is extremely high, and the possibility of local medical measures being counterproductive cannot be ruled out.

And, of course, the "snakes". This inexplicable element still lingers in his mind, lingering. His current state is like waking up from a dream, being pulled back to reality from a distant dream. I don't know anything but the most impressive. The only thing that was different was a hazy feeling that lingered, making him feel that something had been completely changed in places he didn't know.

The hazy feeling was like a rafting trip from a past trip, where he was looking down at the murky water where algae were overgrown from his kayak, and suddenly a dark shadow under the water flashed through the afterglow, and when he looked closely, there was nothing. In self-doubt, it may be the illusion caused by the rippling water waves, or the mottled shadows cast by the strange rocks and old trees above, and it is impossible to imagine or dare to imagine what living creatures are moving in the bottomless pool.

If he had discovered any horrific truth in the darkness of the night, it would now be beneath the surface of unwavering sanity, as the body's self-protection mechanisms were temporarily hidden. Instinct told him that he shouldn't put his hand down to try the depth.

Kraft avoided the parts he didn't like, picked out the parts he was most used to, and asked if those people were related by blood, whether they had any other illnesses before the onset of the disease, whether they had been bitten by snakes and insects, whether they had fever and cough when they were children, and so on.

Combined with the characteristics of this world, he focused on asking about the eating habits of the lower village, and the stream that is used as the main water source of the village, is there any problem upstream? Ryan watched in amazement as his cousin showed his untold subtlety, and then poured him a few sips of water to tell him to speak more slowly.

The doctor and the village chief patiently answered the guest, who had boosted the village's GDP, and the main components of the answer consisted of "I don't know", "I don't know" and "I don't know".

However, the elderly village chief remembered the names of several people in his memories, and sighed that they were all good young men, but they were clever, and the evil spirit could really pick people.

"Okay, I'm done, thank you." Not surprisingly, even the patient's family may not be able to answer this information, let alone the two people who have never had this kind of awareness, "Anyway, since this is the only strange disease here, you haven't considered other places in the past?" ”

As soon as he spoke, Kraft knew he had said something stupid. Only one case occurs every few years, and there may not be a fraction of the common causes of death here. Besides, the location of this village is not bad, just stuck in a position where there is no lord to collect taxes, and it is not too far from the port of Wendeng, which is not too far to buy and sell things, and there will even be traveling merchants passing through here.

Although this means that there is not enough protection, it is not difficult for a more united village to drive some wild beasts together, and the exemption from taxes will allow them to accommodate a larger population, which may not be impossible to develop into a small town over time.

In contrast, in addition to looking terrible, the "characteristic disease" is probably the disease of scabies.

Craft, who had said something stupid, consciously ended the conversation and sent the village chief and the doctor away on the grounds that his brothers had some personal matters to discuss, and before leaving, they could see on their faces that they were "really a rich young master, maybe some kind of nobleman" and something like that.

Regarding this disease, considering that he is a semi-time-traveling person, it is understandable that some other supernatural event will occur, and he can certainly explain this in this way. Oh no, it's called an anomaly here.

However, from a rigorous point of view, it is more reasonable for you to interpret this as a specific acute central nervous system pathology. It may be caused by opportunistic pathogenic bacteria or parasitic infections, because the immune system of each person is different, so it only starts under certain conditions, and the incidence is relatively low.

All mentioned in the confusion that the snake may have been the influence of rumors in the village for generations, and subconsciously felt that it was related, and naturally felt that it was entangled by the evil spirit of the snake.

And I happened to see a snake-like pattern in a place, thinking about it day and night? That's the course of the disease...... Forgive me for being a shallow learner, but there are more messy cases in this world, and it's not bad for this one.

Kraft tried to move his arms again, this time moving himself to a more comfortable position without his cousin's help.

"Okay, sorry to scare you. It looked very bad, but I feel like I'm getting better, so can I put that set of bloodletting tools away? He looked at Ryan beside the bed and stretched his foot hard, indicating that he was fine. The energy was returning to the young body, and the control of the limbs was basically restored, and now he was feeling a little hungry.

Kraft refused Ryan's support, climbed out of bed on his own, walked to his luggage with heavy feet and light feet, pulled out a piece of jerky, twisted it in the middle, and handed one of the pieces to Ryan.

For a patient who had just been half-dead, he was in an unbelievably good state. The powerful chewing muscles give the teeth the strength to bite the marinated jerky: "Look, I'm fine." ”

"I kind of suspect you just pretended." Ryan carefully took the jerky, and his heart palpitated, "Why don't we rest here for a few days before we leave?" ”

"No, I feel like I'll be able to leave tomorrow morning. And the hell pillar, let them fill in the pit, the dirt is solid, I don't want to come to this unfortunate place again. "I didn't get the souvenirs, I lost a few silver coins in the money, and I almost lost my own people, which can be called a bad job at the level of biting lighters.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure you'll leave tomorrow, and you don't want to wait for the snow to melt and ride in the mud. Also, remember to remind me to ask them to fill in the holes. Kraft was a little anxious to put all this behind him, and he could feel himself resisting the need to delve into it from some angle, both physically and mentally, and he had long since wanted to leave.