Chapter 13: Fragile History

"He didn't realize it! He actually didn't realize it!"

Inside the Central Hospital, Dean Yang looked agonizingly pained, his body almost curled into a ball on his chair, filled with self-reproach. "His spiritual perception! With such a stable anchor, he should have been our greatest asset!"

"Dean Yang, there's no need to be so anxious. Aren't we all looking for a solution?" Beside him, Xiao Wu held a terminal displaying flashing warning signs, his voice laced with helplessness as he tried to console the Dean.

"It's no use! Taihao says there is no time left! We have no time!"

Xiao Wu hesitated, looking at the Dean. "Perhaps you could tell me what is going to happen next. The state is our backer; there isn't a problem we can't solve."

Dean Yang looked up abruptly, glaring at Xiao Wu, gnashing his teeth like a cornered beast. "Do you think my commitment is lacking? I, too, have taken an oath. But, Taihao... ah, Taihao, I cannot say."

"That would lead to an even greater catastrophe. Time is the one thing we lack most."

Xiao Wu fell silent, slowly shaking his head at the security camera nearby.

Suddenly, Dean Yang realized what he was doing and turned toward the lens. He grabbed a pen and paper, scribbling two characters with wild, sweeping strokes: Taihao.

"I know the concerns behind why you have us under lockdown—it’s nothing more than the fear that the Taihao syndrome will spread. I won't leave, and I don't ask for anything else. I only hope you will pass this paper to Xu Chen and tell him to investigate these two characters."

The people behind the camera initiated an emergency meeting. After inspecting the paper and deliberating, they decided that a copy could be forwarded.

~~

Xu Chen looked at his search results with an expression of grim confirmation.

After returning to his dormitory and showing off a bit to Xiao Song, he had immediately set out to research the small fishing village that served as the origin of the outbreak. As expected, he couldn't find a trace; all relevant information had been suppressed.

The original goal of the university medical internship team had been to attempt to treat the patients. However, after these past few days, it was clear to anyone that even if the legendary physician Hua Tuo were alive, he couldn't save them.

The day before yesterday, after the patient's vital signs vanished, they performed a symbolic humanitarian resuscitation before declaring death.

One has to admit, everyone felt a sense of relief at the time. After all, it was better to be dead than to live on in such an infected state.

Only Xu Chen felt that the fewer the patients, the harder it was for the disease to spread. Once every patient had perished, the disease would vanish from the world. In this sense, the faster they died, the better.

With the patient's death, the internship task was effectively over. Although there were still plenty of samples available for research, Xu Chen felt he couldn't stay a moment longer. When the contracts were handed out, he was the first to sign.

The contract contained no sensitive information, so he had no qualms about boasting to Song Tian.

Xu Chen had initially intended to show Song Tian his "404" discovery from earlier, but thought better of it. After all, that was skating on the edge of confidentiality protocols.

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Xu Chen. He decided to use some specialized computational methods to dig for information, only to discover an email had been sent to him.

He checked the sender: it was from Grandpa Yang.

He opened it, took one look, and fell silent.

His expression twisted.

Before switching majors, Xu Chen had been in the History Department. This was because when he first transmigrated into this world, the first thing he did was look up historical records.

When he arrived in this world, Xu Chen originally thought it was a time loop or that he had been reborn. It wasn't until he encountered the name of his province that he realized something was wrong.

His province was named Nanyuan, located in the Central Plains region, and the capital was called Yongan. This was incredibly bizarre; the cities, counties, townships, and towns below it were almost entirely unrecognizable.

One must understand that many capital and city names are inherited from history, and some are even used in idioms—like "Handan Walk," "Luoyang Paper," or even... "Bengbu Couldn't Hold It."

Xu Chen looked, and none of them existed.

The idioms existed, but the city names did not.

Xu Chen began tracing the cause, which naturally and inevitably involved history. When his parents in this world saw that he was interested in history at such a young age, they encouraged him to apply to the History Department after the college entrance exams.

Of course, Xu Chen was not opposed to this.

He had discovered that the history of this world was completely shrouded in mystery. Relying on his own half-baked knowledge, he couldn't make heads or tails of it.

The history books on the streets, aside from the most general outlines, contained absolutely no detailed content.

It was as if... there were no history books at all.

Yet, when Xu Chen went to the museum to verify, history books did indeed exist.

At that moment, Xu Chen’s brain essentially short-circuited.

When Xu Chen received his university admission letter for the History Department, he was genuinely happy, feeling he could finally solve the puzzle. That was until he attended classes for a while and encountered the "Artifact Restoration Course," at which point his face turned green.

The course consisted of nothing more than handing out photocopies of fragmented ancient texts and having students guess the meaning of the characters, writing them out character by character on the side.

These ancient texts looked like they had been dug out of a mud pit. The pages were not only largely missing, but also suffered from severe ink loss and stains. It was impossible to guess accurately.

However, relying on the classical Chinese materials he had painstakingly devoured for his previous life's college entrance exams, Xu Chen managed to piece together the full text by guessing based on context. This restoration shocked the "old fossils" of the History Department.

Those people could initially point out errors, but after Xu Chen refuted them with examples and historical allusions, they realized they should probably move over and let Xu Chen take their seats.

Xu Chen didn't think much of it at the time, assuming these people were just fame-seekers who did nothing while occupying their positions. Otherwise, they wouldn't have failed to notice such simple mistakes, nor would their own writing have been so riddled with holes. The resulting friction made things very unpleasant for both sides.

That was until they allowed Xu Chen to see the real history books.

Xu Chen was stunned.

The true history books were already in a state of decay, having become extremely fragile under the erosion of time. Xu Chen even wanted to reach out and touch one, but was told that the vacuum-sealed casing was the last line of defense; even just opening it could cause the books to suffer further severe damage.

The text within was also missing numerous characters and riddled with errors.

He refused to believe it. After all, history books weren't just official records; there were unofficial histories, miscellaneous records, and folklore, compiled by different people under different storage conditions. It couldn't all be like this, right?

Then Xu Chen looked, and damn it, they were all like this.

Every single historical document was in this state.

Many of the older treasures had disintegrated during the initial preservation efforts. The remnants were left to lie in glass cases filled with inert gas, protected and scanned using special perspective devices to replicate the entire book.

Xu Chen understood in an instant why the classical Chinese portion of his college entrance exams had felt so jarring. Even the ancient poems had absurd typos; the missing parts were simply being guessed.

This wasn't "shrouded in mystery"—this was missing arms and legs.

Everything he had learned about classical Chinese in this world was just the imagination of these old fossils. He had wrongly assumed the people of this world had some unique insight into history.

Xu Chen had initially wanted to contribute his own efforts to the history of this world, but after estimating the workload, he gave up. With so many white-haired old men in the History Department, if he stayed, he would just waste his youth there.

His second life would have been lived in vain.

Thus, Xu Chen pestered them incessantly to switch majors, paying a price unknown to outsiders to enter the Medical Department.

Ever since then, for some unknown reason, the Nanyuan University History Department had surged to prominence, becoming the top history program in the country and gaining control over the classical Chinese textbooks nationwide.

Therefore, when Xu Chen saw the request to investigate these two characters, he felt as though he were wearing a mask of agony.

With historical data like this, investigate? It was less reliable than what he already had in his own head.