Plague Doctor

Chapter 306: Dermatomy

Less than a few days after the Afterlife Cult’s 16 communication bases were destroyed, the things Phecda worried about still happened. Gu Jun was currently standing outside the quarantine room at People’s Hospital. Beside him were Deng Ximei, Uncle Dan and the expert dermatologist from Phecda, Zhang Donghao and Sun Wei. They looked through the pictures of Xie Yiman’s face earlier and all of them believed this was not a normal case of skin allergy or inflammation. This was because the irregular patches on her face formed a strange picture, in fact, they reminded Gu Jun so much of the Host of R’yleh’s wriggling tentacles.

‘Is this a type of dermatological illness? Or a symptom caused by a more hidden illness? Is it contagious?’ Still dealing with the aftermath of legionella pneumonia, Phecda was prepared for the worst.

Inside the room, Xie Yiman paced about anxiously. Her face was covered in welts from constant scratching. Part of her face was torn. This made her youthful and pretty face look quite disfigured. The destruction of beauty was always something regretful. Seeing how troubled the young woman was, everyone’s heart went to her. Naturally Gu Jun knew who Xie Yiman was. Two years ago, before the world went to shit, Gu Jun admired this up and coming actor. He even watched a few movies she starred in. Who would have thought this would be the way they met…

When he walked into the room, Xie Yiman’s excitement was clear. Even though they were all dressed in protective gear, she recognized Gu Jun easily. Her company had already decided that should she get the role for the Phecda movie, they would create some rumors between Xie Yiman and Gu Jun for promotion. After the brief greeting, Gu Jun said, “Miss Xie, we suspect your illness has something to do with supernatural energy, so we will perform some tests on you.” He stood less than a metre away from Xie Yiman. From this close contact, the feeling of illusion surged at him… When Xie Yiman opened her lips to speak, Gu Jun seemed to see her commercially brightened teeth turned into irregular jaws and her throat a ball of darkness. Deng Ximei gave Gu Jun a silent nod, this was her signal that she believed this had to do with the Conqueror Worm.

Uncle Dan went through the regular procedure. He had Xie Yiman press against the cleansing stone and applied the cleansing seal on her but neither worked. Then the dermatologist examined her for a prognosis. Her symptoms included erythema, serious itchiness, and local edema. Her face was full of scratch marks. Other than the rapid growth of the red welds and the shape that they formed, there was nothing too irregular about her conditions. The most imminent thing that they needed to figure out was the illness’ pathology and whether it was contagious. Therefore, they needed to perform a minor dermotomy on Xie Yiman to acquire her tissue sample for PCR screening and bacterial culture to see whether there was presence of bacteria, virus or parasite in her skin lesion.

“But my face…” Once Xie Yiman heard what they were about to do, her face paled.

“Miss Xie, I hope you’ll consider our current condition.” Gu Jun understood her worry and consoled warmly, “Furthermore, we’ll only make three small incisions at barely noticeable locations, the incision will be as small as the size of a nail. It can be perfectly covered with bandages and they will not leave behind any scar.”

Xie Yiman still had her worry but soon the nurses came in with tools like surgical knives and petri dishes. Then again, she consoled herself with the fact that she had more things to worry about compared to possible scars. If she saw herself in the mirror again, she might faint.

“Ah Mei, do you think this is contagious?” Gu Jun asked Deng Ximei as he observed Zhang Donghai perform the dermotomy. The girl’s feelings were much valued due to her connection to the illness. Could Xie Yiman be Earth’s ‘Lydia’?

“If you’re asking for my opinion.” Deng Ximei answered softly, “The illness is contagious in the sense that the selection of the on-stage actors is totally random.”

Random? Yes, indeed, the randomness of tragedy and the great levelling of death… If that was the case, not only celebrities but everyone who ‘worked on stage’ would be in danger. However the silver lining was, the audience member would not be in any danger of being contaminated.

After the incisions were done, the dermatologists prescribed Xie Yiman some anti-allergy drugs and even some of the replicated Drug No. 1 as well as boric acid lotion to help with the itchiness. Before they understood the pathology, that was the most they could do. Disease control warning was ordered throughout the nation. Once any hospital registered a patient with similar dermatological symptoms, the patients had to be quarantined immediately and have the case reported to Phecda.

At midnight, the PCR result arrived. Xie Yiman’s skin tissue showed no sign of regular bacteria and virus. Xie Yiman’s team and the movie crew who interacted with her daily showed no symptoms either. However, while they waited for the result, the second and third patients appeared. The ‘stage’ was being set. By noon of the second day, there were 136 confirmed cases and they were spread across the nation. They were all members of the entertainment business, ranging from actors, singers, models, hosts to youtubers. Some of them were the biggest stars while others were barely known.

To make things worse, this unknown illness also broke out in the US and UK. The total number of patients around the globe had broken through the one-thousand threshold and it claimed many successful celebrities. Before GOA or WMO was officially in duty, they were already faced with such a big challenge…

The pathology of all the patients was the same, they started with itchiness on their faces until a certain threshold when erythema and local edema appeared. But the time taken to reach the threshold was different, based on the information gathered, the more famous the celebrity, the quicker they’d reach the threshold. For now, this information was held from the public and all the related personnel was quarantined. However, if nothing was done soon enough, the lid would soon be blown off. The public would eventually realize the disappearance of all these celebrities.

“Ah Jun, could this be the Mutated Scale Disease mentioned by Atal?” Elder Tong asked. In the prophecy, the Mutated Scale Disease referred to the growth of scale all over the victim’s body. This was clearly a dermatological illness. Based on the analysis of medical experts, this could only be a form of hyperkeratosis, which caused the formation of keratin that resembled fish scales.

“That is possible.” The possibility already crossed Gu Jun’s mind. The Deep Ones… Could the mutated creature that worship the Lord of R’yleh be related to the Mutated Scale Disease? Furthermore, the rashes on the victims’ faces appeared to form the image of the statue…

If that was true, then they were in for a big problem, because Mutated Scale Disease had to have caused some serious damage on humanity to be left in the land’s travellers’ legacy. In any case, whether this skin disease was Mutated Scale Disease or not was still ambivalent. The most worrying problem though was they still had no way of treating this illness. Drug No 1, Claritin, boric acid lotion were all useless… Even facial anaesthesia proved ineffective.

“Ah, ah…” In just a day, Xie Yiman, who was the first to receive professional treatment, looked much haggard. Since the illness started, she had not had a moment of rest due to the relentless itchiness. Her skin was torn and bleeding from the endless scratching. Honestly, she wanted to strap her hands together because she knew how important her face was. Even the medical workers advised her from doing so but the itchiness was too impossible to ignore. Resisting the urge caused other symptoms like heart palpitation and breathing difficulty. Her mental state was also worrying.

…

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