Plague Doctor

If time was flexible and you could reach into any moment in the future and the past, would you change everything? The blood rushed to the brain's frontal lobe, parietal area, temporal lobe, occipital lobe and epencephala. Waves of pain overwhelmed him and everything was red. The PEEK polymer connected to the skull stretched to burst through the skin. Blood capillaries popped in the widened eyes. Unknown light flickered in the eyes, they seemed to come from a different dimension. The man's body which the bloodshot eyes belonged to was currently lying flat inside a giant glass chamber.

His hands were not long enough to reach out to grip the strange metallic beam but when he laid down, some threads rose from the bottom of the chamber. It was unable to tell whether they were corporeal or just reflections of light. They pierced through his skin, connected to his nervous system and then crawled out from his body again. Instantly, he felt his hands changing. They became longer. The 10 fingers disappeared, instead, his arm ended in a cylindrical organ with a giant claw attached. He appeared to have morphed into a different species. Not only his hands, the threads even slithered into the other parts of his body, including his brain.

The machine made a strange and screeching sound. The metallic beams and tubes made from unknown materials started to operate. The machine and the carvings, inscriptions and patterns on the platform initiated their mysterious purposes. Yu Chi, holding a shovel by the side, stood on the platform. He watched the proceeding with nervousness and some envy. Even though it was clear that the man in the chamber was under great pain, Yu Chi would have given up everything to trade places with him. The opportunity to use ancient technology wouldn't chance upon every archaeologist. However, it had been decided that Yu Chi would be on guard duty. If any abnormality took over Gu Jun, Yu Chu would drag him out from the chamber but the problem that they worried about before they put this plan into action occurred—Yu Chi had trouble telling what was normal and what was abnormal.

"Captain Gu?" Yu Chi had no choice but to ask the man himself, "How do you feel?" But he got no answer except Gu Jun's face turned even more horrifying. Every vein on his face popped. "This is bad…" Even though Yu Chi was no doctor, he realized that this was not how a normal human body should react. Furthermore, Yu Chi knew about Captain Gu's history of brain damage. He was worried that Gu Jun's head might explode like a balloon. Yu Chi was suddenly reminded of the intermittent messages from the mysterious signal, "…Your brain limited… accept…"

'Is it our human body has limited our brain? Accept power and accept this machine…' Yu Chi studied this machine again and hesitated about doing something but he was afraid to interrupt Gu Jun. At that moment, there was a whiz. Lights in some of the tubes faded. The veins on Gu Jun's face slowly returned to normal but his eyes were still red. Yu Chu called hurriedly, "Captain Gu, can you hear me?"

"Yes, I can…" Gu Jun answered slowly. His voice was weak and low. Despite the weakness, there was severity in it.

"So how was it?" Yu Chi asked, knowing the situation wouldn't be that great.

"This machine can enable one to travel through time and space to infiltrate into the brain of the other lifeform in that specific dimension… I… have just returned to Phecda World from several days ago and changed some things… Captain Yu, there's big trouble at both Phecda World and Mysterium World. Both of our Mo Bei Cities are under attack…"

'A time machine?' Yu Chi was shocked and excited. He listened to Gu Jun slowly tell his story. Earlier, after Gu Jun climbed into the chamber, the connection to the machine was fully automatic. He did not do anything, or rather, he 'accepted' it. But during this process, he could feel the incompatibility between his body and the machine. It was like a ps 4 trying to play a ps 5 game. The incompatibility was very dangerous, it could have killed him at any moment. Furthermore, Gu Jun had to deal with the witch's presence. However, when he was inside the chamber, Gu Jun felt a great lowering of the witch's power.

In this case, the witch was not the main problem. The main problem was his lack of brain power and unfamiliarity with this machine. After the forced connection, Gu Jun found new information gushing in his mind, including the theory and operation manual to this machine, but he could only understand the most surface level of it. Other than that, another detail clarified for him. Someone told him that this Pnakotic Library, these tomes, knowledge and technology did not originate from the Yith but the essence the Yith had collected from their travels through the river of time and through different worlds. The Yith used this machine to input their consciousness into other creature's minds to absorb their knowledge.

Among the bookshelves, there was a tomb about the homo sapien civilization. There was only one because compared to other long and great civilizations, the homo sapien civilization was like a newborn. After knowing that, Gu Jun naturally wished to know what was written inside that book and he wanted to know if there was a tomb on the foreign civilization. But these thoughts he put on the backburner for now, he had something more important to do.

Yu Chi's supposition was correct. The human body had limited brain power, Gu Jun agreed with it. If his brain could support a greater and faster blood flow, things might turn out differently. He could achieve a greater mastery of this machine. At their current stage, human body was unable to use this machine. There was danger of brain haemorrhage and cardiac failure. The human body was too fragile. Gu Jun's case was unique because he had firm determination as well as the guidance from the machine itself.

Furthermore, he had a feeling that when he traversed through time to infiltrate other people's mind, at the same time, a different lifeform traversed through time back to the 'present' to inhabit his mind, to help stabilize his body. It should be the Yith. But Gu Jun had a feeling the Yith still did not want to expose themselves. "I believe they do not even want to get involved in this problem." Gu Jun said, "I cannot be sure that the Yith is behind the mysterious signal but they are involved in this somehow so they are technically dragged into this. They are very careful. Even if they could have taken full control over our body, they did not do that. That showed how cautious they were.

"And there's something even though I'm not sure about it… but something probably happened here, something that they cannot resolve on their own so they left this place to escape into the future. Being an observer in the river of time and not causing any changes is not that exhaustive but initiating changes will cost. It is rather similar to casting spells. However, the sacrifice needed is impossible to predict. On top of that, the sacrifice imposed is unable to reverse. The sacrifice itself was immune to time manipulation. These are the amendments enforced by the universe to stop interruptions to the flow of time. Therefore, the Yith normally will not manipulate the situation, most of the time, they merely observe. Because the sacrifices needed to intervene are sometimes far larger than the entire Yith civilization can sustain.

"The sacrifice could be a single member of the civilization or the collapse of the entire civilization. I have no idea what sacrifice demanded of me from my action would be… Hopefully, it is nothing more than a 24 hours shortening of my life…"

Yes, it was Gu Jun who had infiltrated Elder Tong's mind. His initial target was Wu Siyu because they shared the strongest bond. He would have a much easier time to assume her mind and glean information from her knowledge. Wu Siyu would also be more sensitive to his presence in her mind and more receptive to his attempts at communication. Furthermore, Gu Jun had been curious about how Dirty-minded Yu's brain was like on the inside. Since he could not cut it open, this was the best solution. However, the connection could not be made because Gu Jun could not locate her, it was like she had disappeared…

This kind of connection required the receptiveness from the other party so the Yith often went for those with high spirituality. However, the infiltrated would not realize their mind had been 'visited' after the fact unless they tried to focus on it. Therefore, Gu Jun chose Elder Tong. Elder Tong was the main commander and knew the most about the whole situation. He was also the person who could influence the situation the most. At the same time, Elder Tong was someone with high spirituality and knew both spells and Ancient Seal. He was a good candidate.

"Elder Tong, Elder Tong…" Gu Jun searched for his connection with Elder Tong. The machine twisted everything into a ball of chaos and he was able to swim through it. If he had enough energy, he could control the specific point in time he wanted to travel to but he did not and he was unable to afford the price anyway. Even if he just observed, using this machine one time would cause great exhaustion to the human body and mind. He and Yu Chi were unique cases. If it was a normal human, using the machine once would cause several years of coma or even brain death.

In any case, Gu Jun successfully infiltrated into Elder Tong's mind. The timing was not chosen by Gu Jun but by the machine or rather the Yith. Just as he entered Elder Tong's mind, there was a moment where Gu Jun could look through every memory and thought in Elder Tong's mind from his birth until the moment of infiltration. However Gu Jun was not powerful enough to stay in that phase. Few seconds later, all he saw were lotto numbers, alcohols and funny videos… Regardless, he tried his best to pull information. The nearer it was to 'present', the clearer the information. The mutated area, nuclear radiation, evacuation, quarantine circle…

Gu Jun saw some but not others. It was like trying to look through a fog, he could see only the general frame. Deng Ximei appeared to have entered the mutated area and found the poster he once held and saw the illusion… And this locust Sickness, he did not know much about it. He knew the patients would hunger for soil and self-explode. Some of the patients became part of the Flying Locust and they came from another mutated area.

In that time crunch, Gu Jun inputted several concepts into Elder Tong's mind so that he could grasp what was happening. The multi-world collision was confirmed, the competing realities were still a hypothesis. Which was the 'real' reality? Gu Jun had been pondering over that. After he gained some information about the mutated area, he was certain the mutated area was not a lifeform but a battlefield. Therefore, the quarantine circle was the wrong solution, instead he provided the life circle mission as a solution.

With regards to the desert wasteland, Gu Jun believed it was not coinciding with the Wasteland World but instead the Massachusetts World or the Mysterium World. The chance of it being the latter was higher because Massachusetts World was situated about 100 years ago. Mo Bei at the time should be wildly different from Mo Bei in the present so the difference should be clear.

About that time, Gu Jun's brain reached its limit. He was forced back by the machine and that saved his life. After telling Yu Chu all that, Gu Jun frowned and said, "Captain Yu, I am unable to find anything on Wu Siyu, I worry about her."

In a flickering moment, in Elder Tong's mind, Gu Jun seemed to sense that Dirty-minded Yu was in danger… Now he was concerned this was the price he had to pay for messing with time itself…