Plague Doctor

"Before talking about this creature, I want to talk about the deformed remains you dissected earlier."

Professor Qin's old face was very calm, but what he said made everyone more shocked as they listened:

"Those people were infected with 'Dianthus disease'—this is our tentative name for the disease, because the pathogen is likely to be related to the banyan tree as Gu thought. There may be three stages of the disease, the first stage is the incubation period, The human body itself has no symptoms, and the incubation period is very short, probably no more than fifteen days."

"The second stage is the limb lesion period. Mutant cells appear in the limbs, rapidly multiply and destroy normal cell tissue, which is very similar to cancer cells. However, this abnormal cell will cause limb structural distortion very quickly. It can become like the remains you dissect in a few days. At this stage, if the lesion can be completely removed through amputation, the patient can be cured.”

At the same time, some staff operated the large screen on the north wall of the venue to play related video images.

Hundreds of people in the audience looked on, looking serious as if they were in a classroom.

Gu Jun was also watching. The first video was the amputation process taken above the operating table. Doctors from a special department excised the deformed limbs of a patient with the disease. Because he had dissected this kind of deformed limb, he knew how difficult it was before he saw it...

If the number of patients is large, it is no wonder that special departments urgently need anatomy talents, because anatomy and surgery have many technical similarities.

After a while, this video of the operation made everyone break out in a cold sweat. Many people were dumbfounded, and even Professor Yu, the expert in surgery, was in admiration again and again.

The doctors performing the surgery in the video are really skilled.

"Ah..." Xu Hai, Zhang Haoran couldn't help murmuring, it was an eye-opener.

Gu Jun was also very surprised. Even with the blessing of the second-level calm hand, he could barely stand beside those doctors and serve tea and water.

The operation video only skipped and played for ten minutes. In the following video, the deformed limbs of those patients have been removed, either upper limbs or lower limbs, and they look like ordinary amputee patients, using newly installed prosthetic limbs for rehabilitation training...

But Gu Jun wanted to come, these patients must be isolated and monitored, and they will be like this for a long time.

"There is still no relevant data on whether the patient relapsed after surgery, as well as the survival period, and further clinical observation is needed."

Professor Qin said again at this time, "The deformed remains you dissected are all in the second stage, but they...have not received proper treatment."

These words obviously concealed some inside information, and Professor Qin's voice became deep: "When a patient develops to the third stage of mutilation, the mutated cells will spread rapidly to the whole body, and structural distortions will appear in other places except the head, and the skin Ulceration. Patients will experience persistent severe pain, confusion, delirium, and mania, and as the condition becomes more serious, patients will have muscle spasms all over the body, and some individuals will experience opisthotonus."

Opistonus is a condition in which the body bends upwards like a bow due to the high stiffness of the nape.

Everyone saw another video played on the big screen, and the wailing of extreme pain resounded through the venue again.

The video is a surveillance video of a prison-like small white room. The room is less than five square meters, and there is nothing furnished. There is only one patient lying naked on the ground in a state of opisthotonos. The patient's head is severely bent back and stuck to his back. On the top, the torso protrudes forward, and it is already twisted beyond human shape...

Everyone's senses were once again oppressed by this unspeakable weirdness, and some people silently took the vomiting bags.

Professor Qin said: "Patients in the bereavement stage have already lost their self-awareness. If there are other patients in the bereavement stage of Yirong disease around, the two will be entangled crazily. Separate, and then form hyperplastic skin at the joint. After the wound heals, the two are like conjoined twins. With so many people bonded together, the final deformed shape will be like a banyan tree. It is the cage you see of this thing."

The audience was silent, and the teachers and students were already surrounded by a deep cold. Unlike the direct shock just now, this chill was so solid.

Just now they could push the weirdness in front of them to the fear of "seeing ghosts and evil", but now the real video and a human banyan tree completely shattered their thinking. It's not a ghost, it's a disease, and they're doctors.

It felt like there was a dark cloud pressing down on the sky, ready to rain down a storm at any moment.

But they don't know whether it will be ordinary rainwater or not.

"Once the patients with heterocystia disease are bonded." Professor Qin's old face was elongated, and he said very seriously: "We think that they are no longer human beings, but a new kind of creature, and there is no way to cure them. We have discovered so far. This creature has at least two states, alive and dead. The living banyan tree can continue to grow, and its black liquor becomes contagious, and other creatures become infected as soon as they come into contact with the active black liquor, and quickly develop to The period of loss. Just now, student Gu guessed correctly, the banyan tree can bind creatures other than human beings. And the rejection reaction that student Sun said is indeed gone. "

Another video was broadcast on the big screen in the venue. This time everyone was dumbfounded, but it was because they were confused by the scene.

It’s still the surveillance video, a very large white room with no layout, and a huge white-painted iron cage in the middle, with a human banyan tree in the cage.

Not the one in the venue, but the banyan tree in the video is even bigger, with perhaps more than 30 dead bodies. It moved slowly in the cage, and when two people in full-body protective suits approached the cage, dozens of its heads suddenly came out.

The tragic scream was even more ear-piercing than the one just now...

"The biologists in the department believe that it relies on this sound to hunt." Professor Qin explained, "If you are unlucky to face the banyan tree one day, you must not be intimidated by it, and immediately stay away from its contact range. Otherwise you become part of the tree."

At this time in the video, the two personnel in protective clothing threw several familiar Kunming mice into the iron cage.

"Squeak!" The mice screamed in panic. They fell into the cage and huddled together and couldn't move at all. The skin of those hands oozes black fluid and soaks each mouse...

Ten minutes later, their limbs twisted, and after another ten minutes, their hornbows appeared opisthotonos, and they developed into the stage of death in less than half an hour!

Then, hundreds of teachers and students saw for the first time how the banyan tree sticks together. The time bar of the surveillance video shows that it took more than two hours. a part of.

There was a humming sound in the venue, medical students scratched their hair, medical students covered their faces, medical students sighed long...

"Uh..." Cai Zixuan opened his mouth and wanted to say something, but he forgot what he wanted to say.

Wang Ruoxiang was also silent, and He Yuhan hugged her tightly in fear, muttering: "It's too miserable, it's too miserable..."

Yes, it was miserable. Gu Jun stared straight at the devil's creation on the screen with calm eyes, but why did he see a kind of grandeur in this kind of creation?

It's like a more beautiful Babel tower rebuilt on the ruins that destroyed everything.

I like Plague Doctor.