While traveling through Westminburg, visitors experience a sense of freshness.

The foundation of the complex is not flat, but occupies the entire summit of the hill, which is shaped according to the shape of the mountain. Buildings of different levels and orientations are often not on the same level.

The ramparts that enclose the urn city can also be the road leading to the fortress on top. After a lapse around the fortress, you will encounter an arch with a wing ring on the terrace on the third floor, and enter a small chapel with a pulpit that cleverly blocks the passage from the back to the inner castle tower.

Everything is connected and close together, but with a clear separation of the respective spatial functional areas, turning the ungradable terrain from a construction obstacle into an advantage.

Outsiders will get lost in such a network, while defenders will rely on their familiarity with the road to appear anywhere, or seal off an area. Not to mention that all the design details are intentionally made convenient for the defenders, such as a consistent clockwise bottom-up spiral staircase, which is only conducive to the upper position to use right-handed weapons in limited space.

Following Martin as a guide, they walked through the shortest "shortcut" after the attackers had breached the outer walls, assuming anyone could have done it, almost gradually in half a circle, half of which was exposed to the crossfire of the inner fort walls and the wing towers, and the other half was an interior obstruction like the aforementioned spiral staircase.

If you don't want to fall into this desperate maze of one-sided street battles, you have to honestly face the "inner door" that does not open late at night, and repeat the siege process under the attack on both sides of your head.

The designers did a good job of incorporating these ideas into the construction of the building, which was the culmination of the malicious intent of the defenders. Kraft nodded his head all the way, and with some reluctance reached his destination, the absolute safety of the Inner Castle room before the torches were extinguished. Perhaps it was used as a shooting hole during the war, and the window without any wooden part was made straight and narrow, at least the residents never had to worry about anyone breaking through it.

However, in such a pure stone world, some tenacious creatures can grow, and he found a few clusters of fungi in the dirt on the windowsill, no bigger than a small fingernail.

The warm and humid climate here seems to be perfect for these fast-growing little creatures to grow, and it only takes a rain to see them in the wild, indoors and on the dinner table, and everywhere you can or may not think of it.

More than thirty feet above the ground, with a craggy cliff down the window, Kraft spent the night guarded at the door. Unexpectedly and unsurprisingly peaceful, when he opened his eyes again, he was glad to see that it was the dawn of dawn, illuminating the normal room, and not some other strange and desolate place.

After breakfast was brought and no one bothered him, he remained in his room with nothing to do until noon.

"Good afternoon, Professor Kraft, I hope you slept soundly last night." A familiar greeting came from outside the door, "If you wish, you can choose the black robe that you are most accustomed to." ”

"Oh? I thought it would be a little more formal. Still, Kraft did not hesitate to change out of the banquet outfit that had made him uncomfortable and dressed in black.

"Nope. Today is a private meeting, and there are no extra people involved, so just take a regular service. Waiting outside the door, Martin relaxed like strolling through his living room, but became serious when it came to his agenda. As he walked, he made the sound of an empty can of wind chimes, and Kraft opened the door to see Martin wearing a blue and white oak burqa armor he had never seen before, without a helmet, leading a group of guards and servants.

"Of course, there is no superfluous person who should know, and this is what I must remind you." He took a ribbon from the tray in the servant's hand, and wrapped it around the back of Kraft's neck, hanging the ends on his chest, "Let's go." ”

At this point, the passage is no longer tortuous and difficult to understand. Rooms and traffic were distributed floor by floor along the standard octagonal shape of the Inner Fort, and they were following the main road on one side towards the core of the fortress.

Two people were already waiting for them at the door. A man in aristocratic costume with two delicate mustaches, while the other, unexpectedly, was an acquaintance whom he had just met.

"Mr. Wilbert, this is Professor Kraft whom I want to introduce you." Professor Fernand, or Viscount Fernand, wore the black robe of last night's banquet, and he didn't seem to be in good spirits.

"One step too late. Please forgive me for not being able to withstand such bumps as you young people, which can be regarded as a little preferential treatment for the elderly. ”

"Hello, I'm Wilbert, the Duke's internal officer. Please be sure to be quiet after entering, as the spirits of adults are not very good. The mustache bowed to Kraft with an inconspicuous but extremely rigorous salute that could be used as a model for inverting the mold, and shook his head slightly as he looked at the return salute that was obviously not commonly used by the visitor, "Your hands should be slightly higher and placed closer to your shoulders than in front of your heart." ”

It sounds more like a position in the ranks, but his performance is more in line with the status of a meticulous aristocratic butler with some obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Professor Fernand interrupted his chatter, "Alright, Wilbert, Lord Duke won't care about that. We're in a hurry, we've got to show him that. ”

[That? 】

Kraft looked at Fernand for no reason, but the Interior Officer was successfully persuaded to put aside his insistence on etiquette and waved sideways to the heavily armed guards on either side of the heavy double open door.

A warm current poured out of the crack in the open door, and Wilbert, the housekeeper, reached out to them to make a silent but clear invitation to step into the carpeted room. The zigzag edge embroidery of the long blue blades led them straight to the burning fireplace in the center, into which the servants were pouring the scented substance of dried spices and incense.

Under the wall decoration of crossed swords, long swords, and oak shields, on a chair upholstered with thick fur, the figure sitting upright faces the fire and faces away from the visitors.

"Your Excellency, the doctor is here." The Interior Officer floated lightly across the carpet and whispered a reminder to his chair, then stepped aside and motioned to Professor Fernand and Kraft to follow.

"Come in, Viscount Fernand. and from the north. Kraft Knight. ”

Kraft followed Fernand in small steps to the master of the castle, watched the old professor salute, and followed suit, remembering to move his hand up two intercostal heights.

This is the first time that someone has called him that, and theoretically he should have such a temporary title as heir before inheriting his grandfather's title. The minor frontier nobles generally didn't pay much attention to this theory, and Old Wood didn't bother to give him a knighthood, but it must be admitted that the name was standard.

"Ahem."

A series of coughs and tremors hit the throat and chest, and the man in the chair arched his body, and the bearskin on his chest slipped off. The pause in the sentence is not due to forgetting and hesitation, but to shortness of breath.

Wilbert quickly stepped forward to lift the bearskin and put it on him again, and Kraft saw the mysterious figure who might be the main reason for his invitation.

The circular crown pressed against his gray hair, his half-closed eyes opened and reflected a tired but clear look in the light of the fire, his will was still clear, but his body could not support this state for long.

Muscles with obvious signs of exercise can be seen beneath the wrinkled skin that should have been bulging all over the skin in a stronger, fuller posture, but now only a broad outline remains. Like an old oak tree that has lost its leaves, only from its tall and strong branches remembers the image of the original tree with a lush crown and a wide shade, and thinking about the past only makes people regret the ruthlessness of nature.

"Please bring me some chamomile licorice sweet tea, please." Fernand commanded. This spacious room was accompanied by several servants and guards standing against the wall.

"Professor Kraft, I'm sure you've guessed that the case we vaguely revealed at the gathering is right in front of your eyes. As the core of the entire Westminster and even part of Dunling, the Duke's physical condition cannot be revealed to the outside world, which will have an irreparable impact on the situation. ”

It was something that Kraft didn't understand, and he thought about it briefly.

"What do you mean?"

"We can't let people know that a royal military leader with no heir and great prestige can meet with him at any time, at least not now." These words revealed something that a man on the northern fringes who had never cared about the political situation of the kingdom could not have known, that the land in which he had lived for nearly twenty years was not as peaceful as he thought.

But he was more worried about what Fernand was talking about "that" than he was good at, and that it sounded like some kind of symptom with a regular time, and that he had to do a physical exam before that.

"I have to do some tests and need the patient to take off their shirt temporarily, is that okay?" Kraft put on a mask tucked into the inner pocket of his black robe, rubbed his hands to warm up, and looked at Fernand and the Duke of Westminster for advice.

"There's nothing wrong with that." The Duke generously agreed to this, and the second half of the sentence made Fernand's old face float with embarrassment that could not be concealed, "Anyway, it can't be worse than enema administration, right?" ”

Kraft, who had received approval, rubbed his hands together and began to examine his body.

In addition to the extremely rigorous examination, in the era of the gradual development of imaging, a complete set of standard examinations of the lungs is actually quite difficult to see. In this embarrassing day when there are no instruments and spiritual senses can be used as much as possible, the lazy dog has no choice but to pick up his craft.

On inspection, the respiratory movements on both sides were symmetrical and there was no obvious thoracic collapse, but a slight right displacement of the trachea was observed. When palpating the vocalization, you can glimpse the lesions in the lungs under the thoracic cavity, which are different tremors in different places, or enhance the conduction such as solidity, or reduce the fluctuation, like the residual sound of the cavity, showing the complex and diverse lesions.

As the examination progresses to the next step, the tone of the percussion changes so that the seriousness of the situation is clearly felt by anyone outside the room who is not examined. On every top-down percussion line in the chest, armpits, and shoulder blades, Kraft struck every intercostal space with trepidation, and almost every two or three squares down produced a distinct voice, like some morbidly complex instrument shaped by the plague of the lungs, a scale called up with twisted scar cords and near-thoracic cavities.

In the experience of otherworldly souls, such tuberculosis had deteriorated beyond what he could have seen in his environment at the time, and there was not much he could have done if it weren't for the patient's own strength and adequate nutrition.

As Kraft pressed his ear to his chest and tried to listen to the sound in his lungs, his fingertips felt the heat coming from the patient's skin. It didn't seem to be the temperature difference caused by the gradual loss of heat in the fingers during the operation, but some kind of rapid change, raising the body temperature while blurring the remaining consciousness in those eyes, causing the pupils to drift in a trance.

"Attention, Professor Kraft." Fernand also sensed the change in the Duke, or rather the one he had been waiting for Kraft to see, "The change in condition that we haven't been able to finish talking about is coming. ”

(End of chapter)