Plague Doctor

Translator: Lonelytree  Editor: Lonelytree

The graveyard in question was located at Nan Tang Village in the Southern Eastern State. Incidentally, it was only fifteen kilometers away from Xu Ling Village, where the Necro-skins first appeared. When Gu Jun pointed out this connection, a frown appeared on everyone’s face. During their immediate departure to Nan Tang Village that night, Gu Jun leaned against the car seat and blurrily went into sleep. Due to the many thoughts bouncing around his mind, he had a fitful sleep.

It was quite ironic that the Necro-skins’ invasion was only deemed a F grade incident by Phecda, but then again, the type that Phecda had faced so far was definitely not the kind that made the foreign civilization extinct through their usage of spells. There were still too many mysteries surrounding the Afterlife Cult. For now, Gu Jun knew that Phecda had done DNA sampling on the tissue samples of the people in black and red he encountered at the banyan tree shrine. None of them were blood-related, and they were all normal homo sapiens. They had also failed to find anything from the autopsy of the leader’s skull.

Zombies were real, and they probably had been around the Eastern State for a long time.

The mountainous roads twisted and turned. When they arrived at Nan Tang Village, it was already 4 am. The sky was still dark, but the peace at the small village had been shattered. Gu Jun’s group was not the first to arrive. The members from the Investigation Department and Action Department had arrived much earlier than them, sealing up the village and establishing a perimeter around the graveyard. There was also a Special Mobile Force team at the temporary pit stop on the path heading to the graveyard. It was the Demon Hunters.

“Ah Jun!” Uncle Dan’s friendly and cheerful voice rang out.

It was supported by Xue Ba’s booming holler. “Ah Jun!”

When Gu Jun saw this group of familiar faces whom he had survived quite literal death with, he could not help the feeling of relief coursing through his veins. How glad he was to see everyone still standing alive… Well, almost everyone. Lin Mo, who lost his left leg, had been given an honorable discharge from the team. He was no longer fit for the frontline, so he had returned to the Scientific Research Department. Lou Xiangning was still the vice captain. Even though she had lost a right eye and the eye-patch gave her the funny appearance of a pirate, the fact that she had been exposed directly to the indescribable illusion made her indispensable. Her experience would be helpful for the team.

When she saw Gu Jun, Lou Xiaoning broke into a guffaw. “Damn you kid, I heard you’re the team leader of a unit of your own. There goes our plan to recruit you into the Demon Hunters.”

“It’s just a name, that’s all.” Gu Jun was too embarrassed to elaborate more about the Problematic Team. If Wu Siyu was physically present, at least he could make some introductions, but now all he could do was laugh awkwardly. After the brief reunion, they quickly got into business. Of the Special Mobile Forces in the Eastern State, the Demon Hunters would be most receptive to Gu Jun’s exposition of ESP, illusion, and zombies.

“Zombies.” Xue Ba provided a nugget of esoteric information. “As all of you know, they come from Arabic urban legends. Apparently, they have the ability to morph into other animals, especially hyenas, so in the legends, zombies have human bodies and dog faces. They would trick unsuspecting people deep into the desert before killing and feasting on them. It’s all real. I’m not kidding.”

Gu Jun did not question that, but thinking back to the ugly blurry faces from his illusion… ‘Hyenas? Unlikely…’

However, it did remind him of something else. He looked around him. “Commander Yao, how is the security here? If this is a trap prepared by the zombies, will we be able to handle it?”

“It should be fine.” Yao Sinian was equally cautious. “We have ordered the support of heavy artillery. There are some tanks making their way here as we speak.”

Gu Jun nodded, but the anxiety in his heart did not dissipate from that news. With the mayor of Nan Tang Village leading the way, the group headed toward the ancient graveyard. Even with the temporary spotlights, the place was still shrouded in a mist of eeriness. The mayor, Chen Dechaeng, was confused by the literal army that had suddenly taken over the village. After all, only a few police officers had come to check up on them when he made the reports about the grave robberies earlier.

But as they brought this issue up, fury lit up Mayor Chen’s eyes immediately!

Mayor Chen was born and raised in Nan Tang Village. According to him, this was just a normal village. Most of the villagers had the surname Chen, and they came from the same ancestral lineage. Like most villages, there had been some altercations over borders in the past, but that was easily washed away in the tides of modernization, so he really could not fathom who would do something as vicious as this.

“This is our village’s old graveyard,” Mayor Chen said. “The year before last, the villagers suggested we move it to a different place because the maintenance cost too much, but who was willing to account for the bad Feng Shui that would accompany the move?”

He further extrapolated that now villagers would be cremated after death and then get a tombstone set up for them in the new graveyard. This old graveyard was occupied by their elders who had passed away several decades ago.

This instantly struck Gu Jun as odd. If that was the case, the bodies in the old graveyard would have decayed into a bunch of bones already. There would be no rotten flesh for the zombies to feed on.

The road going toward the old graveyard was muddy and overgrown with wild grass. He paid attention to his surroundings, but nothing triggered a sense of familiarity from yesterday’s illusion. There were five graves that had been robbed this time, and it all happened overnight.

“This is truly…” Mayor Chen did not dare curse before the city folk, but then again, he was so angry that for a moment it appeared words had left him. “Even Grandfather’s grave has been dug up!”

The ‘Grandfather’ in question was the clan leader from about a hundred years prior. He was well respected in Nan Tang Village. His name was placed up high inside the Chen clan’s ancestral hall. Grandfather’s grave showed signs of multiple repairs and renovations. The villagers had set him up with an impressive marble tomb, but the whole thing had been desecrated from the grave robbery. To demand justice through the media, other than cleaning up the broken coffin and scattered bones, the villagers kept the state of the grave as it was. Mayor Chen led them to Grandfather’s grave. Gu Jun studied the messy surroundings, but nothing spoke out to him.

“Mayor, would you mind showing us the others?” he requested.

“Oh.” For Mayor Chen, Grandfather’s tomb was the focus of this whole incident. The other graves were not worth mentioning, but since he had been given an order, he could not do anything but to oblige. They stopped at each grave like some kind of grotesque tour. They would halt for a few minutes before the young Mr. Gu would request for him to show them to the next item on their strange itinerary. Finally, they came to the last grave, the one that had suffered the heaviest damage.

Yao Sinian and Xue Ba noticed the anomaly of the tombstone carved from gravel immediately. The tombstone was tipped to the ground. Xue Ba asked, “Mayor Chen, what are those words on the tombstone?”

Gu Jun was also studying this ancient tombstone. The epigraph on it had faded from time, but he could tell it was not the foreign language nor was it any commonly-used language. It gave off a sense of decrepitude and unfamiliarity that spoke of a strange past…

“This one?” Mayor Chen looked surprisingly puzzled. “This grave does not belong to one of us. I believe it was a grave left behind by one of the outsiders who stayed with us temporarily in the past. I cannot give you too many details about them, unfortunately. It was way before my time.”

That caught everyone’s attention. This grave could very well explain the origin of the zombies.

“Mayor, I need you to bring over all the elders in the village that might know something about this family,” Yao Sinian said seriously. “I hope you understand the severity of the situation. It can’t be helped that we will need to disturb their rest.”

Being escorted by the big men from the Demon Hunters, Mayor Chen did not dare dawdle. He knocked on people’s doors, asking to see the elders. Soon, Mayor Chen brought back six elders. Four of them could still walk on their own, but the other two had to be pushed in wheelchairs by their family members. The eldest among them was Chen Shu at ninety-five years old. The others were in their eighties. Only people their age would still know about the history of this place.

“This grave belongs to Ol’ Uncle Dog…” With his hunchback, Chen Shu started to reminisce about his childhood. The age spots on his wrinkled face moved from his agitated words. Even at the advanced age of ninety-five, Chen Shu’s mind was still clear. He was speaking in the local dialect, and Mayor Chen was translating for them.

“It was the time of war. I was still a child. Their family came here to avoid the war. The villagers initially turned them away because they were outsiders, but in the end, it was Grandfather who allowed them to stay. I can still remember how Grandfather silenced the rowdy villagers with his comment of how we should be helping others during those difficult times. However, the outsiders proved their worth. They were very good at heavy labor, and eventually, the villagers started to accept them. The family stayed at the village for several decades, but with Ol Uncle Dog’s death, the rest of them either moved away or went off to the city.”

As they listened, the Demon Hunters looked at each other. Reminded of what Xue Ba said, Gu Jun asked with creased brows, “Why was Ol’ Uncle Dog called Ol’ Uncle Dog?”

“Why?” Chen Shu sighed. “He was born with a deformity that gave him an appearance akin to a dog, so we all called him Ol’ Dog. But that was not the only strange thing about them… That family never interacted too closely with the rest of us, and even their children stayed away from ours. I believe there might be a taboo on intermarriage on their side. But the strangest thing was this time…”

As the thought came into his mind, Chen Shu’s face took on a mixture of bafflement and fear. “No, you young ‘uns will never believe me…”

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