Trickster Hunter

Chapter 108 Tree Man Syndrome (Subscribe please!)

The young monk went to the back kitchen and got a bowl of cold porridge, picked up some pickles, and slowly walked towards the innermost room with the bowl in his hand.

Sun Hang walked around to the side of him and carefully looked at the expression of the young monk. He found that in addition to fear and worry, there was also a hint of disgust that could not be hidden on his face.

Who was he disgusted with? Was it the eldest brother who gave them orders based on their seniority, or the monk who was guarding the door just now, or... the person in the room?

The young monk knocked on the door twice and whispered: "Master, Senior Brother Jueming asked me to bring you food."

No one responded in the room. The young monk hesitated for a moment and slowly opened the door.

Suddenly, a foul smell floated out of the room.

This was not the smell of a rotting corpse, but the smell of an old man who had been bedridden for a long time and was not properly cared for and cleaned.

"Master?"

It was still dusk, and the light in the room was very weak. Sun Hang could only vaguely see a figure lying on the bed in the corner.

The little monk pressed against the wall, put the bowl of porridge on the cupboard, and then lit the kerosene lamp in the room.

An old man who looked like a monster appeared in Sun Hang's field of vision.

His limbs were exposed outside the quilt, and the ends of his hands and feet were covered with thick keratin growths, looking like four dead tree roots dug out of the mud.

The old man's face was also covered with growths of various sizes. The largest one was as big as a goose egg and stuck in the corner of his mouth, making him completely lose the ability to speak. He could only make a "ho ho" sound from the depths of his throat.

"Master...Master." The little monk asked nervously, "Are you...are you okay?"

Sun Hang walked around the old man's bed, squatted down and observed the growths on his body closely, and then heaved a sigh of relief.

This old man is not infected, at least, not infected with the Weird Virus.

Although he looks more like a monster than most infected people, Sun Hang happened to see a description of this disease in a medical journal.

This is a rare disease called "Tree Man Syndrome", which is essentially a disease caused by immunodeficiency due to genetic problems, and then infected with human papillomavirus, also known as "HPV", and a large number of keratinized warts grow on the surface of the skin.

Although this disease looks disgusting, it is not contagious to people with normal immune systems.

Compared with the danger of the Weird Virus, it is even worse.

However, in that era of information blockage, in the eyes of ordinary people, getting this disease is equivalent to being infected with the Weird Virus - no, according to them, this is called "evil possession".

The little monk found a pair of coarse cloth gloves from the cupboard, and took out a cloth mask that he had worn countless times from his pocket and put it on, and carefully walked to the bed with the bowl of porridge.

He scooped up a spoonful of porridge and stretched the spoon to the half-open lips of the old man.

Sun Hang frowned as he watched from the side - how can you feed someone lying in bed like this? At least you have to help him up first, right?

Sure enough, half of the spoonful of porridge flowed down from the corner of the old man's mouth and dripped onto the pillow.

The young monk seemed to be worried about being punished by his senior brother, and hurriedly tucked up the corner of his clothes to wipe it, completely ignoring the change in the old man's expression.

"Is this... choked?" Sun Hang looked at the old man's eyes, and guessed in his heart - the old man's face was also covered with warts, which made the old man unable to speak or make any expression.

But the way the young monk fed the porridge just now, most of the half spoonful of porridge that didn't flow out was fed into the old man's trachea.

Sun Hang subconsciously raised his hand to help, but immediately realized that he was just reading a past memory. Everything he saw here was a fact that had already happened.

"Cough... cough..."

The old man finally coughed as if he was dying, and the young monk jumped back a big step in fear, leaning against the wall and staring at the old man, not even daring to breathe.

After a few seconds, the old man's coughing finally stopped - and his breathing stopped as well.

The young monk walked forward in disbelief, took a look, turned around, and ran out in a hurry.

After a while, the monk guarding outside rushed in with another young monk with a fair face but a huge black mole on the back of his head.

"Big Brother..." The gatekeeper monk looked at the old man on the bed, then looked at the fair monk, and whispered, "Master seems to have... died?"

Just when the two were about to go forward to take a closer look, the old man suddenly took a deep breath as if he was having a last glimpse of life, and then he started coughing violently.

He coughed so violently that the warts on his face that were stuck together to each other were torn apart, and blood mixed with pus slowly flowed down along the gaps between the warts.

"Big Brother... What should we do?" The gatekeeper monk was stunned and asked anxiously, "Should we... call a doctor?"

"What doctor?!" A fierce look suddenly appeared on the white monk's face. He grabbed the quilt on the bed and covered the old man's face with it.

"Big, big brother?!" The gatekeeper monk was startled and subconsciously stretched out his hand, but he retracted it halfway.

After the weak struggle under the quilt disappeared for half a minute, the white monk let go of his hand, stepped back a few steps, turned to the gatekeeper monk and said: "Jueming! Go find some firewood and pile it in this room, and then burn the house and the people together. Be careful not to set the house next door on fire! Also, keep an eye on that kid and don't let him run around - tell him that he killed the master with his own hands, he is the murderer, if he doesn't want to be arrested by the Public Security Bureau, just listen to me! Do you understand?"

"Then, then tomorrow's pilgrims..."

"Go and post a notice at the door, saying that the abbot Huishan has passed away, we are going to hold a cremation ceremony for him, and refuse all visitors within a week." The white monk said.

This memory ended abruptly. In the next scene, Sun Hang found himself in a raging flame. A withered skeleton was curled up not far away, crackling under the licking of the flames.

Faintly, Sun Hang smelled a faint, unique smell of strange creatures emanating from the skeleton.

"So that's how it is..." Sun Hang suddenly realized.