Plague Doctor

Gu Jun looked at the line of foreign text that resembled the crazed handwriting of a lunatic on the paper. The air he breathed in suddenly seemed to condense into a solid lump.

“Student Gu, what is this?” asked the man with the square face, his face still not revealing any expression.

Gu Jun’s mental gears were whirling crazily. Did the country recognise this foreign language? Couldn’t the three reviewers decipher the meaning of this sentence? For now, he assumed that they could understand it. He needed to find other reasons as to why he can write this sentence. He doubtfully replied, “I don’t know, it seemed to be something in my parents’ files. I vaguely have an impression of it.”

“Please explain in detail about what happened.”

“My parents never let me get in touch with their work nor did they allow me to enter their study room at home. But once, I sneaked in and saw some documents with such foreign texts on the table. Or at least, I believed they were texts. I played in the study for a while, and they immediately caught me on the spot. My dad scolded me and made me face the wall as punishment, so I still have a deep impression of the event.”

Were these the actual truth about the past? Gu Jun had been fabricating lies about his “past”, but he also felt that these were tangible memories pouring out from his heart.

Was the “document” that the man from the Lai Sheng was really related to the foreign language?

“Oh...” The man with the square face looked at Gu Jun. The other two interviewers looked at him as well, examining every minuscule change in his facial expressions.

Gu Jun felt like this was the actual truth. Hence with a mentality as though he didn’t lie, he proceeded to ask, “Can you tell me what this means?” This was a small probe on his part.

The square faced man said nothing, walking back after taking the pen and paper. The deeply-wrinkled man took over the conversation and said, “Student Gu, your review is over, you can go out now.” They were still a little too expressionless; clearly tough nuts to crack.

“Thank you, three esteemed professors.” Gu Jun could only get up and leave now with deep lingering doubts.

When he pushed the door of the judging room open, a member of the staff standing beside the door looked at him and said, “Student Gu, please come with me and refrain from discussing.”

Almost an hour had passed, and the other eight people sitting on the waiting chairs all cast their gazes towards him. They had similarly been warned to refrain from discussing and merely watched as Gu Jun walked past them. After a while, another staff member asked Wang Ruoxiang to enter as the second interviewee.

After Gu Jun was led away from the corridor outside the judging room, another group of two indeed approached him for Li Yuerui’s mobile phone. Gu Jun could see that the two were supposed to be police officers of sorts. He gave them the mobile phone and answered some questions such as what happened in Longkan and what happened after receiving the package etc. f𝑟e𝒆𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗oѵ𝐞𝗹.c૦𝑚

For the events that transpired in Longkan, he almost reported the complete truth; after the parcel was sent to the dormitory from the mailroom, he disassembled this broken mobile phone. It could no longer be turned on, nor did he send it for repairs, and recently he had been carrying it around with him.

“Yuerui and the others, are they alright?” asked Gu Jun. In fact, he inferred that the mobile phone had been sent by Lin Xiaotang because Li Yuerui had suffered an injury and had to undergo surgery. Wu Dong lacked the courage to send him the phone, so only Lin Xiaotang, still in the stage of youth rebelliousness, was most likely to be the culprit. However, he and she had not even exchanged phone numbers. Since they were not familiar, he would not mention her.

“We have no authority to answer any of your questions,” replied the police.

Gu Jun guessed that the three guys were just being detained by the secret state department, and their personal safety should have no problems. He imagined a scene of them being locked in a small black room. Li Yuerui jumped up and down, Wu Dong was panicking, and Lin Xiaotang was frustrated out of her mind. He wanted to laugh. You guys shouldn’t have gone on the deep-diving ship in the first place.

If that was the case, then he wouldn’t be able to see the video anymore. It seemed that he still had to thank them?

The two policemen left after finishing their inquiries. It is still unknown whether his review would pass, but Gu Jun was taken by the staff to the next venue to continue the physical examination.

Gu Jun knew immediately that the physical examination did not only include those routine items, but there were many objectives such as neuropsychological tests. This was used to evaluate human brain function including perception, movement, speech, attention, memory, and abstract thinking ability.

He did a complete set of tests: a category test to test the subject’s ability to summarise and reason; a motor operation test to check the subject’s tactile perception, movement, hand coordination, and flexibility; and a trail marking test for abilities of perception, the flexibility of thinking, etc..

The methods of testing were all enhanced versions prepared by the secret department itself.

For example, in the motor operation test, the conventional method was to blindfold the subject and put different shaped blocks into the corresponding wooden troughs based on perception. The test was divided into three operations: dominant hand, non-dominant hand, and both hands. Finally, the subject had to recite the shape and position of the block based on his memory.

But his test method was to face a large pile of blocks while blindfolded, and it was necessary to splice a part of the blocks and assemble them into various shapes. The other untouched parts were already-assembled blocks of varying shapes. The tester would mix them up and had him put them in the corresponding wooden troughs. In the end, he was only allowed to say the information of the spliced portion of the blocks.

This method of testing demanded higher levels of perception, and it was easy to misremember the positions. However, Gu Jun did his best to complete it anyway.

“This secret department is really stringent in their evaluation.” The more tests Gu Jun went through, the more he felt this way. “The talents they’re recruiting are not just medical talents.”

He even received an assessment to check if he had any mental disorders. Fortunately, the result of the examination was that he had no mental illnesses.

As a medical “slave”, Gu Jun could tell from the results of these examinations that he was in the pink of health. His vitals were all good except for the fact that he had a brainstem tumour. Perhaps it was targeting his brainstem tumour, but he was also arranged to do a brain enhanced magnetic resonance to examine his brain more closely.

As for the results of these examinations, Gu Jun did not receive a copy. After finishing one test, he was then rushed to the next test.

It was not until five o’clock in the afternoon that he was informed by the staff that he had completed all the tests which had lasted for more than ten hours.

Afterwards, Gu Jun was taken back to the first floor of the building and went into a waiting room.

“Hmm?” When he pushed open the door and walked into the waiting room, he found that all eight of them were present including Wang Ruoxiang and Cai Zixuan. They were all leisurely chatting or reading magazines out of boredom.

Gu Jun asked them before he found out that everyone had completed the review and physical examination. He was the first to be interviewed but ended up being the last to undergo the medical checkup.

Now that everyone was allowed to speak to each other, Gu Jun asked about the number of personality test questions each individual had. Cai Zixuan said, “I had more than one hundred questions.” Brother Ma Jiahua had about a hundred questions as well. Wang Ruoxiang thought for a while and replied, “I should have answered... hmm, let me count... about two hundred questions?”

But I answered more than three hundred questions. Gu Jun was still confused. What he couldn’t understand was why the items for his review and medical examination were more than usual, was notably higher in intensity, and more time-consuming.

Sure enough, he asked again and found out, for example, there was no mental disorder examination in the medical examinations in everyone else.

Why am I the only one to have it? Gu Jun frowned. Do I look so mentally ill?

“Well, at least I now know that you are not,” said Wang Ruoxiang.

The most-discussed subject among them was the personality test. Everyone wanted to know their results. The several girls and Cai Zixuan were particularly keen as though it was related to their horoscope.

The second hand of the clock on the wall slowly drew circles. More than an hour later, at six o’clock in the evening, the door of the waiting room was suddenly pushed open.

Professor Qin and the several other judges came in one after another, and everyone stood up. Gu Jun looked at Professor Qin’s calm face and was a little nervous.

“Dear students, the results of the evaluation are out,” said Professor Qin matter-of-factly.𝑓𝔯𝑒e𝘸e𝘣𝓷𝘰ѵe𝚕.c૦𝙢