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Vol. 8 Chapter 146.1
Incommunicable
Translated by boilpoil
Edited by boilpoil
Mu Jiashi, Shen YĂźnjĂź and Mystic are already aware that humanity has made attempts to understand and resolve the madness since its spread.
But it is precisely the spread of the madness that has marred the process of discovery and research, tainting it in insanity and blood. It is entirely irrational and void of intelligent behaviour.
The issue at hand relates to the brain.
Craniotomy and brain transplant are what Fei and Wu Jian witnessed in the Nightmare that corresponded to this hospital.
It explains a lot, as humans are… existent, as it were, and so it was ridiculous to assume some formless thing could affect their consciousness at a mental and metaphysical level.
“That’s the issue,” Mu Jiashi quietly mumbles, “in Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, we already knew that humanity faced an enemy that existed in a completely different form to us.”
Shen YĂźnjĂź and Mystic have their own thoughts.
Entirely different from humanity?
What actually was humanity’s nature in the first place? They are——
“We have our brains, we remember,” Shen Yünjü lists off, “we have intuitions and sparks of inspiration. We have primal instincts.”
Humans will have a hard time understanding what exists entirely differently to them.
We have produced a lot of literary fiction featuring aliens, but those aliens are almost always based largely on human characteristics.
They might add distortions here and there, but the changes are insubstantial.
For example, aliens always arrive in spaceships… in material things.
Instead of humans fantasising about a different lifeform to them in the universe, it’s just more of an exercise in imagining what a human society would look like if they started on another planet.
When they encountered an actual alien intelligence that was also hostile, they tried to base a response off their own experience and subjectively human values.
The labyrinth was one such attempt.
People assumed these alien creatures they encountered would be just like they are, and would become disoriented and trapped in that maze full of jarring, everchanging colours.
The place spells absolute disaster for any human to navigate——So they can hold the aliens hostage, they thought.
Perhaps it’s a sort of arrogance printed in their souls.
Humans were the only sentient being on Earth that created a civilisation in the universe;
And so, we assume all other civilisations to be similar to human civilisations, as if it’s some kind of——underlying order in the universe.
Denying that almost felt like denying their own evolutionary path.
Humans understood the universe physically, scientifically, rationally, through exploration, through making measurable what was not so. They held such an attitude.
There are people who joke that ‘any sufficiently advanced study of science is indistinguishable from studying divinity,’ and to be fair, the most advanced fields of science back on Earth did start to look to approach that way, but the public wasn’t generally aware of those. Mainstream media would scoff at reporting and acknowledging such ideas.
So humanity simply treating the spreading madness as a sort of neurological disorder, that was communicable, possibly viral, bacterial, or even coming from prions… anything.
Therefore, they have to study what was infecting the brains. The brains of the insane.
Wu Jian actually read a book in the Cangcheng library in the Nightmare about Raining Hellfire, that recorded the Apocalypse in progress. There was a section that noted on the rights the madmen should have by the author, but he did not recall how he had once explored a certain psychiatric hospital in a certain Nightmare before.
Since he didn’t understand the Apocalypse all that well back then either.
But, suffice it to say, cruel and utterly unethical things happened to the madmen.
And the most tragic part of the story is that humanity could not find the problem in the insane people’s brains, whatever methods they used.
The phenomenon was beyond their abilities, and they were ill-equipped to even understand it.
But they cannot just stop trying to treat it, and naturally came more and more absurd methods being proposed and then implemented.
When the madness has become the main way that human society, and the whole world operates on, what is completely barbaric happens regardless.
The madness… it was truly unstoppable.
But when Mu Jiashi, Shen Yünjü and Mystic actually enter the psychiatric hospital, they don’t find its interior completely covered up by fog. Everything can be seen clearly, but they could feel immediately, a strange chill.
It does remind one of a hospital, but in a normal hospital, a strikingly clean and immaculate white should be the impression, and not this murky, somewhat chaotic grey.
Mystic is murmuring, “there have been so much… cruelty here. It is still continuing.”
No one responds to her either. They do not know what to say.
They stop at the reception.
Mu Jiashi says, “right now, the Ultimate Nightmare is at the stage of the ruins after the Raining Hellfire, which means there isn’t much time. And I suppose… there wouldn’t be many people alive in here either.”
“Perhaps somewhere isolated and empty like this makes it a good place for them to develop an artificial intelligence?” Shen Yünjü takes a guess, “is it possible that people here… proposed for the AI?”
“Do you mean the patients or the doctors?”
Shen YĂźnjĂź pauses.
He is wondering whether, in this psychiatric hospital, it was the doctors or the patients who are actually insane.
Bitterly smiling, he explains, “I suspect with the madness around, even normal people were also sent here.”
Mystic agrees, “I also think that to the people who are mad, those who act normal are insane.”
In the post-Apocalyptic world, it would be quite likely those who are insane still held the positions of power, and even have mainstream control over society.
Mu Jiashi is silent.
This is a psychiatric hospital, but after the Apocalypse, it transformed into a place for the studying of the madness, building lots of impromptu operating rooms and laboratories.
There must be lots of madmen here, but a question remains – would anyone still be sane here?
Mu Jiashi shakes his idle thoughts away and says, “Operating Room 3 is on the 11th floor. We have to hurry, so let’s check if the elevators are still working.”
They walk through the corridors, their footsteps resonating through the empty hallways. Where motivational advertisements and notices were have now become blobs of experimental data and research progress reports. Mystic could not bear to give it a second glance after the first.
She feels really strange. Even though the hospital ground is really clean, spotless, it still feels like she is wading through a pool of blood. It reminds her of the building she was once inside of.
Where her daughter was.
The connection makes her feel nervous. She remembers that her daughter is also in the Ultimate Nightmare right now, though they didn’t meet.
Besides… looking down at the ground, at her every step, she knows she has a far more important task on her hands.
It’s like every time, she has to make her daughter wait for her.
She really is sorry, so sorry… she wishes her daughter wouldn’t be angry at her mother; to that, she prays.
It distracts her a little, and she gets a little emotional by herself.
That is when Mu Jiashi comes to a sudden stop.
Shen Yünjü asks, “what’s wrong?”
Mu Jiashi furrows his brows and asks, “don’t you feel that something’s wrong?”
“What?” Shen Yünjü doesn’t notice anything, and says, “I don’t really feel anything I think…”
“You’ve become talkative,” Mu Jiashi points out the elephant in the room, then looks at Mystic, asking, “how are you feeling?”
Shen Yünjü, surprised, suddenly realises, that when he was walking in the hospital, he didn’t seem to feel as dead and emotionless inside as he usually would be.
Looking at Mystic, his surprise turns into shock, as he sees Mystic’s eyes filling with tears, dropping.
Her tone is almost too calm in comparison, “I am remembering my daughter… I feel really guilty to her.”
“Why is that?”
“I left her behind again. She is waiting for me,” Mystic sobs, continuing, “I’ve never been a good mother.”
Mu Jiashi calmly points out, “that is why we’re doing what we’re doing right now. Your daughter will never have to stay behind and wait for you again; we are doing what is right. Don’t let unnecessary thoughts distract you.”
Mystic nods, slowly.
Shen Yünjü asks, “so we’ve all been affected by this place?”
Mu Jiashi says, “I think that’s the case.”
Shen Yünjü wonders a little what Mu Jiashi is thinking about——And immediately realises how uncharacteristic of him it is to harbour such curiosity.
He’s one of the ‘Zombies’ in the Tower. The last time he was so ‘alive’ like this was possibly forever ago.
The madness carried by this scene seems a little strong…