Plague Doctor

Chapter 167: Face of Humanity

Translator: Lonelytree

The sound of unknown beasts drifted over. An abandoned field, rousing wind, Gu Jun felt the whole world was spinning.

‘Where am I?’

The wild grass rustled, and then out came several lean and short Neanderthals. They were dressed in animal hides. Their hair and beards were long and unkempt. They were looking for something, their eyes flashing with fanaticism. All of them suddenly rose in a loud chant as they raised their wooden clubs to charge forward. Gu Jun’s heart twitched. It felt like he was dreaming, but it was not one where he could control what was happening.

From his point of view, it felt like he was one of the Neanderthals. He could feel the heft of the wooden club in his hands as he charged forward with his other tribe members. As he pushed through the wild grass and his vision cleared, he noticed there were several other Neanderthals before him. It appeared like his group was searching for them. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that these new arrivals looked slightly different from them. They had flat foreheads, squat bodies, and short limbs. They were mumbling some kind of ancient language on their lips.

The wooden clubs fell mercilessly. They were pounding relentlessly at their victims. The blows fell on the flat foreheads, as skulls cracked and blood flowed!

“Woo! Woo!” The victorious neanderthal dropped their wooden clubs before lunging somewhere beyond the grass. They ransacked through the uncooked meat of some unknown creature and started feasting on it.

The freshness of the delicacy, the feeling of satisfaction of a good meal, Gu Jun felt it deeply. It was as if some kind of ancient memory was awakening within him. He could hear a strange whispering telling him, ‘Look at them. They are your ancestors. You are modelled after them…’

“Shut up, I have studied all this in history class before. Do you think some gore will scare me? I’m a doctor!” Gu Jun shouted back and summoned his focus to resist. “And I know this is just a mind trick!”

Some other images assaulted him, and it was like Gu Jun could live vicariously through them. Neanderthals killing each other, Neanderthals shivering from the winter cold, Neanderthals witnessing the sudden darkening of the world around them… It was an eclipse, but the Neanderthals had no knowledge of such phenomena. They knelt on the ground and prayed for forgiveness even though their hearts were filled with not faith but terror. This fear of the unknown reverberated inside Gu Jun’s heart.

‘The Neanderthals are afraid of the eclipse. What are you afraid of?’

“Shut up!” Gu Jun hollered into the unknown. There was no truth in the illusions; they were just make-believe.

‘The truth is always hard to digest. Open your eyes, these are not illusions. They are part of you as homo sapiens.’

Suddenly, more images flew before his eyes. It was as if Gu Jun was sent flying through tens of thousands of years. He saw some Neanderthals learning how to acquire fire from a tree that was struck by lightning. They huddled around the fire for warmth. On accident, a piece of fresh meat was dropped into the fire, and in another accident, rain doused the fire because it was left in the open.

He saw them searching for more fire sources and then learning how to start a fire. He saw them migrate from one location to another. The tribe was growing, and with that came more conflicts. There were more fights and more blood to be shed.

‘This is your so-called civilization… the foundation for humanity…’

Gu Jun could feel his flesh being pounded and his skin being torn as he saw the tribe expanding and reproducing. A species that flourished in pain and brutality, a species that lusted for war and oppression… He saw some tribes fade into obscurity while others thrived on the fallen… He saw many acts of cruelty performed in the desert, inside the castle and on the open field… Different countries, different continents, spanning different eras, but the inhuman brutality toward each other had remained a frightening constant. Exiles, massacres, oppression…

‘This is your so-called world… the foundation for humanity…’

“Ah…” Gu Jun gritted his teeth and tried to calm the waves in his heart. “Is that all you’ve got? Who doesn’t know that the history of mankind is paved with bloodshed?”

“History? Do you think they are in the past?” The strange voice began again. “Open your eyes to the truth.”

Many images struck Gu Jun. They appeared to be snippets of the future…

Dark and gray cities, broken and tattered streets, withered trees and eerie silence. But in the dark corners, there was only fanaticism in the eyes of the hungry citizens. They were dressed in sharp outfits but were brandishing weapons. They cursed and yelled as they fought, killed, stole, pillaged, and raped. The penchant for brutality had always been a part of humanity. It would only keep repeating itself. Even in modernity, even dressed in civility, they were no different from the Neanderthals in the wild.

“Do you wish to see more? Do you need more proof?”

With a sudden jerk, Gu Jun was pulled back to the ice-capped summit. His teammates were still around him, but their faces and their eyes spoke of something sinister. He had seen the same emotion in the Neanderthals before. It was the desire of extreme hunger. A strange portent spoke to him through a vision. He saw Xue Ba, Uncle Dan, Lou Xiaoning, Yu Xiaoyong, and the rest feasting on a headless body on the ground… and the body was dressed in his own clothes.

The so-called regulation, law, and civilization of humanity was fragile, as fragile as the human body.

“Shut up!” Gu Jun pressed his hands over his ears, and he felt his breath catch inside him.

“Why are you still holding on?” The whispering continued like a lullaby. “The things that you view as precious are nothing but an illusion, a self-deception, a collective hypnotism, a false morality. They are like a house of cards, built on nothing, blown away with the weakest draft.”

Gu Jun’s mind was blanking out. He could feel it being consumed by emptiness. The color of the red blood was slowly being blotted away. The illusion was slowly dissolving his humanity. They, these R’yleh cultists, were bleeding him of his humanity. He knew that was happening, but he did nothing to stop them.

“Dissolving? Bleeding? Such harsh words.” The whispering corrected his thoughts. “We are not taking anything away from you. If anything, we are injecting you with the truth of the world around you.

“The beliefs that you held desperately onto were nothing but a mirage, one that will be swept away by time. These so-called civility, law, humanity… will change with time. The sin of the past is the pride of today. The pride of today is the sin of the future. The only one constant unaffected by time is a greater presence beyond humanity.”

Gu Jun’s vision cleared again. In the wild open field, there was a group of Neanderthals kneeling in prayer. They were genuflecting before a giant stone statue that stood before them. The statue was identical to the one that had been unearthed from the unnamed tomb, but it was several times larger in size. The base was carved in such shapes that should have toppled it over but proudly there it stood…

The Neanderthals were chanting something.

‘The permanence in time is that great presence.’

Gu Jun’s headache was so intense it felt like his brain was about to split. But all of a sudden, the illusions faded away. He could feel the biting arctic wind and saw the aurora borealis showering down on him. The mounds of dead animals and the two lines of dead arctic wolves. The Inuits and the shadowy people were still standing there looking at him. He swayed before collapsing to the ground. Xue Ba, Yu Xiaoyong, and the rest were already on the ground. Their faces were scrunched up in pain and confusion as they were swallowed up by hallucinations…

“The sin of the past is the pride of today,” Gu Jun grumbled as the expression on his face changed. “The pride of today is the sin of the future…”

“Dirty-minded Jun, hang in there…” Wu Siyu was lying beside him as she groaned in difficulty. Even though her eyes were unfocused, a lingering sanity was still in there. “Hang in there…”

“Are you okay?” Gu Jun asked.

“I wasn’t earlier.” Wu Siyu gave a light breath. “But after lying down, I feel much better.”

Then, as she pulled her gaze up, she saw a smirk crack on Gu Jun’s lips. Instead of pain, she saw something inscrutable on Gu Jun’s face. She tried to read his thoughts, but all she could sense was chaos.

Gu Jun turned his head to look at the R’yleh cultists, and he slowly said, “Since humanity is so complicated, why would you have deigned that you have understood it? But to hell with the big picture. I shall help you understand the humanity of one, mine! It is surprisingly simple, since you have angered me…”

His gaze suddenly turned as sharp as a dagger.

“Then destruction shall befall all of you!”

The price would have to be paid in the casting of a spell, and it was no different for these cultists. The illusion went both ways; they were affecting his mind, thus forming a connection between the two parties. Therefore, Gu Jun could make use of this connection to deliver them their own bitter medicine.

At that moment, Wu Siyu gasped because it dawned on her what Gu Jun was trying to do… The Inuits and the black shadows were temporarily stumped.

“AH!” Gu Jun growled as he pulled out the Carlot scalpel from his bag. ‘While my humanity is intact, I shall do what my mind tells me to do; while I am still Gu Jun, I shall do what Gu Jun would do. I will not let any harm come to my friends here. They all have to return safely. The Nightmare Illness in Eastern State has to be resolved, or else I will have failed tremendously as a doctor.’

His howl petered off into the chanting of a foreign language. He poured his mental power into this spell, twisting the mental state of everyone who heard him.

“Mutated seeds break through decayed mud like battle axes, disintegrating decay.

“Decay replaces fragrance, millions of descendants gathered around dirty blood.

“Creature of worm and maggot breaking through the barrier, reshaping and reforming.

“On the starlight they feast, spreading the darkness into the world.

“The name of the Old Ones will never fall!”

The spell was used in the banyan tree forest to create the Malformed Banyan tree. They were on an arctic island, so naturally, there were no banyan trees around, but the spell itself contained a soul-crushing power. Gu Jun knew about its destructive power after he read up on that page of the spell book.

As he chanted louder and louder, the Inuits and the black shadows started to blur together as they screamed in panic and horror. But in just a few brief moments, their astral bodies—be it children or adults, Inuits or the shadows—twisted and twined to form a giant banyan tree. Their fingers burst into green leaves, their limbs hardened into branches, and their bodies joined into the trunk. Their skulls imprinted themselves along the grain of the wood, and the chaos and shock in their eyes soon faded into ashy emptiness.