Plague Doctor

Translator: Lonelytree

Before the existing questions could be answered, new ones had appeared. Gu Jun looked into the starless sky and felt at least some comfort within him knowing that Earth had not collapsed and was not destroyed. Peacock’s group of five came from Earth and perhaps so did all the land’s travellers for the past 30 years.

“I, I…” At that moment, Peacock groaned in pain. She lifted her eyes to look at him and they were filled with blankness. “Mr. Nightmare Man, I don’t understand…” She slowly stood up to look around. There was sand and nothingness, instantly tears poured out of her eyes. “What, what happened to our settlements?”

“You finally see the truth?” Gu Jun’s heart jumped, “In actuality, there are only us around here.”

“The City of Kindle…” Peacock wanted to take a step forward but her knees buckled and she dropped to the sand like a deflated balloon. “Where is the city and the temple?”

Gu Jun answered it for her. “Everything has disappeared like a mirage being broken, yes? I can relate to that but for me, this is what I’ve been seeing since you brought me here.” While he was sharing the mental bond with her, he had taken a glimpse of the City of Kindle, that did not appear like an illusion.

“Is it the Ossarians? But even they could not have removed the trace of everything so fast… or we’ve gone to the wrong place? But…” Peacock saw the two sacred relics the nightmare man was holding. She muttered, “The relics are here…” She suddenly raced towards the lake. She rushed to the lakeshore where the cluster of rocks was and saw the rock with the seal. It was so simple-looking, it was just an old rock. The garden of statues had disappeared. Peacock returned with helplessness. When she passed Malachite, the latter did not seem to notice her. She picked up the porcelain puppy from the sand and gave it a loving pat.

“Kathlyn.” Gu Jun decided to snap her out of it, he yelled in English, “Can you hear me? You are not Peacock, your name is Kathlyn!” He was now certain that there was another personality hiding inside the shell of Peacock and that identity would be able to give him more information.

“Ah…” Peacock’s still chaotic mind started to quiver again. “What is all this? Ah… Kathlyn Lee…” her face twisted and her voice changed. The strange string of English letters came out again, “Where am I… Have I lost my mind?” Then she switched back to the language of the land’s travellers as she shouted at herself, “Who are you? Get out of my mind!” Her two consciousnesses appeared to be fighting for dominance, it manifested as the girl’s frantic scratching at her head like she was trying to yank both of them out. Gu Jun walked slowly towards her as the girl gradually calmed down.

“Mr. Nightmare Man.” Peacock whispered. “I recognize her now. Kathlyn, she is right here.” Her eyes focused and then the stability faded away, being replaced by some youthfulness. “Damn it, damn it! Mr. Mask, do you exist for real? Oh my god, what are those? Rats?”

“Calm down.” Gu Jun consoled her. “You are Kathlyn Lee, right? What is the most recent date that you can remember? Answer me!”

Kathlyn was rather startled by him and she uttered quite dazedly, “It’s somewhere around June.”

“Has there been any big change to Earth?” he pursued, “Anything going on in China? Epidemic? Supernatural tragedy? Did you hear anything about that?”

“I… don’t think so.” Kathlyn shook her head in confusion. “Things are as they were.”

Gu Jun gave a sigh under his breath, his worried heart finally relaxed. If she was not lying, then it had been almost half a year since he boarded the white ship to Dreamlands. The Nightmare Illness was truly vanquished, there was no epidemic of it at Eastern State, China or the rest of the world.

“What is the last thing that you can remember?” Gu Ju asked.

“I… I am not sure.” Kathlyn admitted quite openly. “I have some psychological problem, you know, the kind that needs medication for me to function properly. Tom, my boyfriend, is the same way. Honestly, why is he standing there like a dumb rock? Tom! I know this will sound weird but apparently we can see strange things.”

“What?!”

“There is a city in the desert.” Kathlyn shrugged. “It is like a desert mirage. It comes complete with houses, streets, and citizens. According to Peacock, it’s called the City of Kindle. By the way, I have no idea who or what she is. This kind of illusion started when I joined a party when I was 16…”

“Judy’s birthday party?” Gu Jun asked which earned a startled look from Kathyln. “How did you know that? Are you one of my imaginary friends?”

“No.” Gu Jun answered. “You can’t remember at all how you got here? Other than Tom, was there anyone else with you?”

“I really can’t remember.” Kathlyn frowned in thought but in the end, she shook her head. “All I can remember was going on a date to the cinema with Tom, I was leaving my apartment… and then, I was here.” Gu Jun asked Kathlyn a few more questions but he got nothing new. Like she said, she and Tom were just normal people. He tried to arrange his thoughts. Compared to schizophrenia, they seemed more likely to suffer from multiple personality disorder, there was an extra soul living in their bodies… a soul of a land’s traveller that seemed to have come from the future. That started to occur after the party that happened many years ago, but recently they stumbled into Dreamlands through some unknown methods. There were 5 of them. Then Peacock and the other personalities took over their bodies, seeing and experiencing different things.

The senses of oneself depended on the stimuli received by the brain. These stimuli might not come from the external world, it could come from the internal world as well. For example, people with hallucination responded solely to their imagined world, with no regard for the actual world. Their imagined world was as real as the one outside. Be it Kathlyn or Peacock, before this, they did not know about each other and the other’s memory. They were like chess pieces that did not know they were one. In that case, who was the puppet master playing at the chess board? How did they manage to do this and what was their goal? And where did these 3 sacred relics come from? Who placed them here? The land’s travellers from the past?

The more Gu Jun thought about it, the greater the headache. The wind picked up a wall of sand that enveloped him like an invisible hand. And these information about the future? Are they real or not? The chaos within Phecda, the internal traitor, the age of collapse, the bloody lungs disease, the mutated scale disease, the petrification disease…

And what did the Ancient seal and the Pnakotic Manuscripts had to do with all that…

“What happened to the previous land’s travellers?” Gu Jun asked the Elder Zoog. “Do you know?”

“Erm.” The Elder Zoog patted his head with difficulty. “Even us Zoogs will not pay such close attention to these nobodies.”

“Mr. Nightmare Man.” Peacock had returned while Kathlyn faded away. She asked in confusion, “Is this one of the nightmares you have casted?”

At the same time, commotion rose among the Zoogs. The Elder Zoog clapped his hands to interrupt her and announced nervously, “Mr. Nightmare Man, I think you should know this. The channel has started to become unstable, based on our experience, it is about to collapse soon.”

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