Plague Doctor

Chapter 492: Dissection

Thanks to the news brought over by Lucky, the higher ups from Phecda had a deep discussion into the night. They knew less about the Ulthar’s cat compared to Gu Jun so what Gu Jun knew was the basis of their discussion, these cats had supernatural power so this favor carried with it many unknown risks. For one, the safety of the team that was sent to the Dreamlands was uncertain, would they be thrown into the air like Lucky claimed; for another, would this earn humanity another enemy? Furthermore, how would they assign the aid given by Mysterium?

Gu Jun participated in the meeting and he gave his thoughts, “We should send a small scout unit to Ulthar and like Siyu said, try to have a talk with the cats and even the Great Atal, to see if the conflict between the cats and the Zoogs can be solved peacefully. If the cats can be persuaded from harming the Zoogs, it’ll be a win-win for all of us.” This solution would provide an alliance for humanity with not only the Zoogs but also the Ulthar’s cats. Furthermore, Ulthar was not a dangerous place like the House of Worm, it was an idyllic village, if placed on Earth, it could easily be turned into a tourist spot, a picturesque countryside to help the cityfolk unwind.

The Ulthar cats were powerful so Ulthar was very safe, they wouldn’t need to worry about enemy ambushes. A trip to Ulthar could be seen as a holiday break, they could even reunite with the Great Atal…

There were many reasons to undertake this risk, after all, if they scored a result, it would bring a great breakthrough. Even though the higher ups leaned towards the agreement, the discussion continued. The next day, even people from Mysterium like Zeng Chanjun had joined in. Gu Jun did not attend the meeting on the second day. In the morning, he joined the envoy to visit Chi Lin City. At night, he returned to the Mo Bei base and hurried towards the morgue. Over the recent months, ever since the new system came online, Gu Jun would find time to train his new ability ‘autopsy’ whenever he had the chance to digest the power from City of Dusk. Through the dissection of flying polypus hydroids, his autopsy Exp had reached 1500/5000 (Level 1/9).

Even though he had only broken parts, due to the overwhelming size of the hydroids, even one of its tentacles was larger than a normal human. Before Gu Jun joined the autopsy, the team faced both breakthroughs and conundrums. Neither autopsy expert like Xiao Huiwen nor spell department members like Cai Zixuan could explain the biological mechanism behind its powerful wails, its ability of flight and invisibility. Similarly, they could not tell how the Deep Ones manage to submerge so deep underwater. The only conclusion they could make was… supernatural energy.

Flying polypus hydroid was the correct name because this thing was not a mammal, it had no internal structures like spine or veins. It was temporarily categorized under the kingdom of cnidaria—a pre-evolution to multicellular organisms. Like cnidaria, its basic structure consisted of periblast, endoblast, and circulatory digestive cavity. The tissues like epidermis, muscle and nerves were a blob of gelatin or fibre. They would not help with flight at all.

Gu Jun believed the answer lies in the nervous system. The flying polypus hydroids were filled with small synapses both inside and outside its body, far more numerous than a normal cnidaria. These synapses, receptors and neurons contributed to the magical abilities of this creature. Other than that, the flying polypus hydroids’ anatomy might include subjects that the human eye could not perceive. Deng Ximei was the first to sense this; after Wang Ruoxiang recovered and joined the autopsy, she came to the same conclusion as well. However, this was just a hypothesis because they had no way of proving it.

The mental pressure dissecting the flying polypus hydroids was much higher than working on Deep Ones and zombies, therefore, the challenge on the autopsy team was harder. They needed to change shifts often and rely on the cleansing stone a lot. With great pressures on his shoulders, Xiao Huiwen fought for months and finally managed to help name many organs of the flying polypus hydroids. Many tissue organs were named according to currently available terms like periblast and endoblast. Since the hydroid had simple anatomy, the labelling had already been settled for months and wouldn’t be changed anymore. Therefore, when Gu Jun stepped into the morgue, Xiao Huiwen smiled without pressure. There would no longer be unprofessional naming like scaly muscle. It was scaly veins, not scaly muscles.

But things that Ol’ Xiao had been trying hard to prevent still happened. Gu Jun always managed to find something new using abnormal senses, observation or even luck. Under the microscope, he noticed a unique kind of axon inside the nervous system at the hydroid’s stomach cavity. After analysis, it was confirmed that this axon was different from other common axons. Due to the already known variations of the axon, it was hard to identify them. Furthermore, there were so many mysteries about the hydroid’s nervous system, the autopsy members were still sifting through them.

However, Gu Jun noticed that the axon inside the stomach cavity was the same across all the hydroids. It even triggered illusory feelings in him. He saw that when the stomach contracted, the axon would be able to twist all the nearby nerve ending together, sending pulses to the adjacent cells, causing them to activate. He seemed to hear a wail and thus came up with the hypothesis, “Could this be the flying polypus hydroid’s vocal tissue?”

Cnidaria did not have specialized breathing and vocal organs, they were connected to the stomach cavity. It was the same case with the flying polypus hydroids. If the wails emitted from the mouth, they could theoretically originate from the stomach cavity. The other members and Gu Jun did not find a similar discovery at other cavities. Due to this discovery and hypothesis, Gu Jun named this axon as ‘Strong Wail Axon’.

Xiao Huiwen’s smile froze. He had the urge to roar, at the sky, at the ground, at Gu Jun… Could you… not come up with a more conventional name… Strong Wail Axon?

Gu Jun participated in the autopsy for 3 hours that day. He raised his exp from 1500 to 1800 but still no mission was triggered. He believed he could still get more exp from the flying polypus hydroids. If possible he wanted to stay there for days. But on the 3rd day after Lucky came with news, the 2 worlds came to a joint decision. Time given by the Zoog tribes was running out. The two human civilizations would send out a joint unit to enter Dreamlands to travel to Ulthar to hash it out with the cats.