Plague Doctor
chapter-188

Translator: Lonelytree

Gu Jun was still caught in darkness. Two days had passed since he recovered his consciousness. As tired as he was, sleep eluded him. It appeared like he had lost that ability, and so fatigue trailed him like a ghost. Other than learning how to control the movement of his eyeballs, there was no progress with the rest of his body. He still could not open his eyes. Earlier, it was the Zoogs who peeled back his eyelids.

‘Systematic Autopsy, oculus…’

For the past two days, he had tried to remember what had learned in the past to resuscitate his mind. At the same time, he tried to extend his control to his eyelids.

‘Argana Oculi accessoria are used to protect, move, and support the eyeball. They include structures like blephar, conjunctiva, lacrimal apparatus, extraocular muscles, corpus adiposum, and fascia orbitalis… The blephar is situated in front of the eyeball. It is separated into palpbra frontalis and malaris palpbra. The gap between them is called fissure palpebrae. The interior and exterior of the fissure palpebrae are respectively angulus oculi medialis and angulus oculi temporalis. The edge of the palpebrae is called margo palpebrae, and it is differentiated into the anterior palpebral edge and posterior palpebral edge…’

The pages of the chapter on the eye in Systemic Autopsy appeared in his mind. The more he tried to recall them, the clearer they became.

‘Since I am not dead, I can’t just wait here for death to come. I am a doctor. I can save myself.’ Gu Jun had been attempting to train his levator palpebrae superioris and muscles orbicularis oculi. As long as he gained control of them, he could open and close his eyes freely. Over the past two days, his training had reaped a slight result…

Perhaps it sensed his eyeball moving about—his right eyelid was suddenly pressed onto by a furry paw. The tapping said, “Be honest and don’t move!”

He could not move or speak. Gu Jun could not handle this pain one second longer. How was he going to communicate with these creatures? Patients of Locked-in Syndrome could move their eyeballs to communicate meaning. Well, since tapping could be a language, why not the moving of the iris? This was the dream world. As long as the speaker was willing to communicate, the listener would get the intention despite the inscrutability of the language used.

Gu Jun was thinking as he tried to memorize the little linguistic knowledge he had learned… Okay, he would use the movement of his eyeball to create a ‘Chinese character input method’… The strokes of each character could be translated into different movements of the eyes. One set of actions would combine to form a word. Moving from left to right, it would mean horizontal slash. Moving from top to bottom, it would mean vertical slash. Moving from right to left would be a dot. So on and so forth… When he was done writing a character, he could frown to communicate that he had finished it. A blink of the left eye meant comma, and a blink of the right meant period. Rapidly blinking the left eye twice meant a question mark, and the right eye meant exclamation point.

‘This should do.’ Gu Jun memorized the simplistic rules of this made-up language. It was all he could manage to come up with on the spot. The passage of time was loose in darkness.

Another day appeared to have passed. During that time, he had been studying how to use his eyes to communicate with this simple language system. When he felt that he was ready, Gu Jun moved his two eyeballs to write out slowly, “Hello.”

As he knew, a Zoog had been standing guard over him, and instantly, the rapid patting came. “You are speaking with your eyes?”

A tremor of excitement spread through Gu Jun. He had succeeded! It felt like he had been given a glimpse of light after so many years trapped in darkness. He quickly calmed himself and continued to move his eyes to ‘say’, “Yes, my mind is clear. Thank you for saving me. I am just wondering, who are you going to offer me to, and what will happen to me then?”

Rolling his eyes to all these different directions was incredibly taxing. When he finished that sentence, Gu Jun was feeling quite dazed.

“Quick, the man has spoken!” The Zoog gasped in shock, and soon, the rattling of feet approached.

Gu Jun tried to communicate in his strange way to try to get these creatures to lower their guard. “Hello, I am from another world. My name is Gu Jun.”

“Ignore him!” The voice that definitely belonged to their leader said, “Human beings are extremely cunning no matter which world they come from!”

Gu Jun quickly rolled his eyes. “I mean you all no harm…”

“He said he meant us no harm.”

“Then, is he implying we mean him harm?” the leader said angrily. “Dumb Zoog! He is trying to make use of our kindness to cure him and help him return to that world. Regardless of what he says, I know that is his goal.”

“Then, is he just toying with us? Damn human, we should just eat him! Forget about the five thousand hens, five thousand quails, and five thousand fowls.”

So, that was the final value that they had placed on him.

The Zoog who had been proposing Gu Jun be cooked added, “I know a cooking method that will guarantee to make a scrumptious meal of him! We shall turn him into a feeding box for the maggots. When the maggots are all grown inside him, we will pit roast him until seventy percent cooked. That way, it will preserve the freshness of the maggots and the juiciness of his flesh. With some spices and some moonshine, oh, I’m swimming in the thought of it already.”

“Brother, should we keep the cooking just to his limbs? The rest of him should be worth at least three thousand of each bird!”

“Ah…” The leader sounded like he had gulped before he groused in annoyance. “Let me think about it!”

‘Oh, no, please don’t think about it.’ Gu Jun’s heart quivered. His eyes stilled, not knowing what to say. These Zoogs were not humans; their way of thinking was even more unpredictable than Wu Siyu, so he had better kept his mouth, or eyes, shut for now.

After the leader Zoog said they were going for a discussion. The pattering returned to normal pattering. They had shut down the channel of communication with Gu Jun. The man thus continued his training silently. He tried to summon Wu Siyu and the rest, but there was no response. He could not sense the movement of space either. His only working sense was his hearing. But there was something incredible about the human body. When one sense was eclipsed, the other senses would be heightened. He could thus hear the sound of pattering, rustling, and even the waves. It sounded like the Zoogs had taken him on the ship across the ocean.

Two days passed, and the sound of waves faded away. Now, there was the sound of trickling water. It sounded like the ship had moved inland. He had no idea whether the Zoogs had harmed him or not because he could not tell where on his body the sensation of pain came from. He would probably be none the wiser even if the Zoogs had cut one of his legs off to eat. Regardless, Gu Jun kept up his training and did not give up. He trained his eyes and his mind.

While the pattering was faraway, meaning that there was no Zoog around, Gu Jun wanted to try opening his eyes again. He channeled every ounce of energy in his body and lifted his levator palpebrae superioris!

‘Ah…’ The blinding light rushed in all too sudden. His instinct almost made him close the eyes that he had forced himself to open, but thankfully, he resisted the urge. As his eyes got used to the light, Gu Jun could see the white sky, green rivers, and the black wooden brow of the small raft. It was hard to imagine that the way he would leave that island and cross the sea would be in a small wooden raft. Currently, his whole person was stuffed inside a large wooden barrel. He tried to move his eyes downward. Thankfully, all his limbs were still accounted for…

The part of his skin that he could see was covered in purplish red scabs. He remembered how every part of his skin had crackled open back then.

‘I really am curious how these Zoogs manage to save me from certain death.’

Gu Jun looked around him and realized that the river trail they were on was snaking through a fertile plain. The plain had some forest, farms, and sparse farming houses. The rooftops were built with straw, and the houses were surrounded with green fences. Billows of smoke rose up from the chimneys. Gu Jun spotted some people moving among the farms, but they were too far from him, and his eyes had not recovered fully, so he could not see their faces too clearly.

‘Help…’ Gu Jun wanted to scream. ‘Help me…’

But his vocal cords were not working.

Suddenly, he heard the shuffling of feet. He immediately closed his eyes. He did not want the Zoogs to know that he could open his eyes already. After a while, he dared to open his eyes slightly. The surprisingly large Zoog next to him thankfully did not notice.

Eventually, he realized the raft had beached on the shore leading into the forest. The group of about ten Zoogs picked up the wooden barrel and jumped down from the raft. As small as they were, they were surprisingly strong. Even while carrying him, they moved swiftly through the forest while chatting among themselves. They zig-zagged among the trees for what felt like a day when the sight opened before Gu Jun. There were several million Zoogs gathered in the clearing in the forest before him!

The forest at the island with the old manor was just a small village for the Zoogs. This was the real base of the Zoogs tribe…

The Zoogs squatted on the tree branches, hid among the bushes, and crawled inside the rotten tree holes. So many beady eyes looked his way, and they were all glowing. Among them, an old Zoog stood in the middle. The fur on his body was all white. He was possibly the person they regarded as the leader or the elder in this tribe.

Only

The wooden barrel was set down and frantic tapping rang out everywhere. Gu Jun finally saw now that the Zoogs made the sound by slapping different parts of their bodies, and that formed the basis of their language. The group of Zoogs that carried him tapped themselves all over as they appeared to try to explain Gu Jun’s origin. The other Zoogs responded by excited tapping.

“Let him in. It does not matter,” the old Zoog said. He pulled on his white beard and looked rather kind. Gu Jun could understand them again, and right at that moment, he realized that the Leader Zoog of his group was explaining to the rest the plan that they had laid out for him. “That way, we won’t need to provide any offerings for the next five years!”

“Sigh.” The old Zoog sighed. The Zoogs that were about to rise into a mob all quieted down. The old Zoog studied Gu Jun and said, “Is that how we Zoogs do things? Ludicrous! This man has consumed the house of nightmares. That is no way to treat him!”

With that, Gu Jun’s heart leaped with joy. He was about to use his eyeball language to thank the old Zoog… when the latter said, “Offering him to that greedy cat will only get us at most five thousand hens, five thousand quails, and five thousand fowls. But if we sell him to the black merchant, we can get at least ten thousand hens, ten thousand quails, and ten thousand fowls!”

The realization dawned on the young Zoogs, and they broke out in cheers and yelps.

“That way, even after we make the offering of five thousand from each of the three birds,” the Old Zoog said, “we will still have five thousand each left for our own tribe, won’t we?”

Instantly, the Zoogs in the forest broke out in brilliant cheers. The sound of excited cheering and tapping echoed throughout the forest.