Plague Doctor

The mountainous forest around the Spell Department's base rustled from the early autumn breeze. Fallen leaves twirled dilapidatedly to the ground. Half an hour ago, Gu Jun received the update from Elder Tong that the Spirit Child had been escorted from Eastern State Division by a Special Mobile Force unit. After the Spirit Child arrived, they were sequestered inside an interrogation room and were being heavily monitored. Currently members from the Special Mobile Force and Spell Department patrolled the corridor outside the interrogation room.

Gu Jun pushed open the room's steel door, walked in and closed the door behind him. Before he arrived, he studied the information Phecda got on this Spirit Child. As predicted by Dirty-minded Yu, the child was a girl. She was 21 years old and her name was Deng Ximei. The interrogation room was decorated more like a small studio, with homely furniture and decoration but windows were conspicuously missing. Once he entered the room, Gu Jun saw a young woman standing by the dining table. She turned to the sound of the door opening. The woman was dressed plainly. She had a slender frame, oval-shaped face and her long hair was casually tied into a ponytail. She appeared calm, even serene like she was clueless to her imprisonment.

Gu Jun stared at her pair of dark eyes and something moved within him… Was it his suppressed memory loosening? Or it was the sensation of meeting a kindred spirit, someone who had gone through the same difficult childhood as he did? The realization that he was not alone in this ordeal… The shared empathy lightened the pressure on his shoulders. Perhaps this meeting could solve many problems that had been troubling his mind.

"Miss Deng, nice to meet you." Gu Jun began.

"The pleasure is mine." Deng Ximei nodded slightly. "You are once a Spirit Child, yes?"

Gu Jun's heart skipped but he showed nothing on the surface, ensuring that he revealed not even a shift in his micro expression, "Why would you say that?" Naturally no one briefed Deng Ximei about her reason for being transferred here, in fact, she was not even told that she was at the Spell Department's base. After the severe consequence caused by her previous revelation, she spent the last year in a state of confinement. She was not exposed to any news and had no idea what happened beyond the four walls which housed her.

"We are different." Deng Ximei suddenly uttered, "Very different." She was a woman of few years and her sound was like a barely discernible night breeze. It was not strong enough to bend the trees but it was cold enough to slip into people's hearts.

"How so?" Gu Jun asked evenly even though he already knew the answer. According to Phecda's files, Deng Ximei had access to mental impressions… These impressions were not as intense as illusion and they were not as far-fetched as Dirty-minded Yu's synaesthesia. In her apparent bleakness, Gu Jun saw his former self… the self who drowned in a sense of homelessness.

Last year, at the start of the Malformed Banyan Disease, it was Deng Ximei who approached Eastern State Phecda Division to seek protection. The version that she told Phecda was, her parents were former workers at Lai Sheng Company and because of that, she was part of Lai Sheng Company's Project Child Prodigy. However, as her parents noticed the project's negative influence over her, they sprang Deng Ximei out of the project and left the company when she was seven. The years after that, she followed her parents and made temporary homes all over the country. They stayed at the city outskirts, and Deng Ximei was home-schooled. Looking back, she realized those measures were to avoid detection by the Lai Sheng Company. Last year, when the world went south, her parents made the decision for Deng Ximei to seek refuge with Phecda in exchange for information. Her parents left 'because they still had something else to do'. But based on the clues provided by Deng Ximei, the Action Department members eventually found her parents dead in the forest. They were hung from trees. The front part of Deng Ximei's story was similar to the vision Gu Jun had for his parents, they both left Lai Sheng Company for protection of their own children…

But perhaps because of that very reason, Gu Jun found her story hard to believe.

"Different is different." Deng Ximei did not elaborate as she turned her face away.

When asked, she admitted that she did not comprehend the foreign language and there was no ritual of divine evocation in her memory. With regards to the location of Lai Sheng Company's lair, it was dug out of her mind through hypnosis. "Then do you know who I am?" Gu Jun pressed, "Do you know my name?"

Deng Ximei turned to study Gu Jun, memories appeared to move in her eyes. "I don't recognize you even though I believe I should…" Gu Jun studied her back, but the more he did, the more confused he became. At times like this, he appreciated Lou Xiaoning's overt personality. This young woman before him was shrouded in a complicated self-enclosure, it was as if a wall had been built around her. It was the reason why Phecda came up with nothing even though they studied her closely for half a year already. Based on the personality assessment by the Review Department, Deng Ximei was an introverted person with unyielding determination and high spirituality.

It reflected in her way of life. In spite of her imprisonment, she did not turn towards hard work to prove herself like Wang Ruoxiang nor did she surrender to vices like Wu Siyu, instead she spent her days gardening, reading and writing. She was perfectly at ease. The woman was impregnable, the outer world did not move her and thus she responded to none of the distressing stimulus from the other world.

Gu Jun still had trouble understanding her statement of 'we are different'. Was it supposed to be literal or the 'we' referred to both of them as in the Spirit Children are different and thus superior from the normal people? Deng Ximei was exposed to the cleansing stone before. She passed the test, meaning she bore no mental corruption, but then the stone could not read thoughts.

"Miss Deng, many things have occurred in the past year." Gu Jun said as he watched her closely. "Many innocents have died. Tragedies occurred all over the world. These incidents are all related to Lai Sheng Company. I have read your files, and you believe it was the people from Lai Sheng Company who killed your parents. If that is true, I wonder if you wish to take revenge on Lai Sheng Company on their behalf?"

Deng Ximei's expression froze slightly…

"My name is Gu Jun." Gu Jun said darkly, "I, for one, will do everything in my power to crush them."

"Gu Jun?" Deng Ximei's eyes lit up. "Gu Jun, Gu Jun… So it is you." Gu Jun blinked. 'This girl really knows me or she is just pretending?' In any case, he had no memory of her. "Do we know each other?"

"You might have forgotten it but I haven't." Deng Ximei reverted to her usual unmoved self, albeit with a trace of disappointment. "I really did not expect we would be reunited like this."

"Oh?" Gu Jun stared at her and focused his mind. His emotions raged and faces of young children flashed before his eyes…

…

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