Plague Doctor

Chapter 243: Individual Commendation Ceremony

Phecda divisions all over the nation received a notification from the headquarters that shocked the members. “That Gu Jun from Eastern State is still alive?””Not only that, he has accomplished yet another great contribution!”

Phecda was a mysterious organization for the outer world, but the Spell Department was in itself an equally mysterious department for Phecda’s common members. Most members were not familiar with Dreamlands and its details, they only knew that Gu Jun had sacrificed himself to acquire victory over the Nightmare Illness... but somehow Gu Jun had managed to return alive. After the past half a year of promotion and posthumous accolades, Gu Jun became a celebrity of sorts within Phecda. In fact, due to his good looks, he even earned a fan club of not a modest scale among the female members.

Everyone was understandably excited to hear that such a legend had returned. Following that, the members’ desire to join the Spell Department was reignited. For some of Gu Jun’s more fervour fans, their goal was to join the Spell Department, get close to him, start the initiation of contact and then... Snap, went the trap!

Both the Spell Department and Eastern State Medical Department were in celebratory mode. Lee Yuerui, Wu Dong and Li Xiaotang were finally told the real identity of the masked man that they had been serving, it was actually their old friend!

That late afternoon, as the masked man accompanied Wu Siyu’s group to head to the recreational centre’s restaurant for dinner, they had a chance encounter. The restaurant was different from the canteen, in that the latter served fixed meals everyday while the restaurant would attend to customized orders. As long as you had the recreational department’s coupons, other than protected animals, everything was on the menu. For someone like Gu Jun, it would be no problem for him to visit the restaurant daily. Furthermore, Wu Siyu was herself the manager of the restaurant, a manager who often misused her power to taste every delicacy in the world in the name of testing their flavors.

“Old friend, it’s me! Ha ha.” Lee Yuerui cut through the crowd and guffawed happily, “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

“Hero!” Wu Dong was even more muscular than Gu Jun remembered, looks like his visits to the gym did not decrease even after his transfer to the Spell Department’s base. His eyes that looked at Gu Jun were glowing with stars. “Have I told you that you are my idol?!”

Lin Xiaotong though acted more reserved than the two. “Doctor Gu.” Looks like she too had been through a lot. Gone were her impetuousness and in its place, was a sense of stability and trustworthiness. All three of them were respectful around Gu Jun. This was not because Gu Jun was frosty around them but the five land’s travellers, who trailed behind the Phecda Hero, were shooting warning glances at them. The land’s travellers attended Chinese language class every day since they settled at the base. Thankfully their language system was not that different from Chinese, there were just some alterations to the written characters and pronunciation so they took to the learning quite quickly and now all of them could speak Chinese, albeit accented.

Gu Jun told Lee Yuerue jokingly, “Actually, to be honest, I’ve missed those memes of yours.”

“Ha ha! Don’t you worry, I’ll promise to send more of those your way.” Lee Yuerui grinned. “But do you mind if we take a picture together now?” Naturally this was to ride on Gu Jun’s coattail, they were now members of Phecda, if they could upload a picture of themselves with the Phecda Hero onto the Classified Chat App, with quotes like ‘me and my old buddy’, the number of likes would go through the roof. “I want in too!” Wu Dong might be slow at times but surprisingly not this time!

Gu Jun agreed to their request, and he took many pictures with him. But he still kept his mask on and in every single picture one could see Wu Siyu photobombing in the background, either making faces or rolling her eyes.

Lee Yuerui uploaded the pictures of them together as well as pictures of Gu Jun eating alone onto the app. As he expected, it soon went rival. The replies came in quickly. “Is that Gu Jun ?!””I want to be at the Spell Department too!””Can you make an introduction?””I wish to touch his face.” Everyone was curious how Gu Jun looked under the mask because in the headquarters’ announcement, it was also stated that Gu Jun’s face was ruined and he was missing a segment of his left pinkie. However, for the inquisitive members, the term ‘ruined’ was too ambiguous, they wanted to see the state of ruination for themselves, which in other words, meant they wanted to see Gu Jun’s real face.

They would get their wish realized on the day of Gu Jun’s individual commendation ceremony. The ceremony was held at the headquarters’ Phecda Hall. The decoration was lavish and the venue, that could sit 5000 people, was full. Due to the relative peace of the recent months, every face in the crowd bore smiles. There were people from the headquarters and Spell Department, as well as invited VIPs from Eastern State. Gu Jun’s mentors like Prof Gu, Prof Qin, Surgeon Zhu and Brother Qiang were all in attendance. They already had their reunion with Gu Jun backstage earlier, naturally that meeting was filled with mirth as well.

Now, every Phecda member across the country tuned in to watch this ceremony in their respective bases. The host started the ceremony. The leader of Phecda as well as Elder Tong took the podium to make speeches. When Gu Jun walked onto stage, the audience was taken aback for a moment before they all stood up and responded with thunderous applause.

Gu Jun was dressed in the official Phecda uniform, with the star-shaped Phecda Medal pinned on his lapel. He looked particularly dashing. He cut his hair and removed the mask for the occasion. His face was still stained purple and red. It was covered in too many scars to count. Now everyone understood the headquarters’ announcement, this was more than just a ruined face, the sight of it could make them empathize with the pain that Gu Jun must have gone through.

“This Gu Jun sure is a man among men.””You’re right.””I’m sure plastic surgery can fix it, right?”

Sitting in the front row, Uncle Dan whispered to his friends, “Give Phecda’s plastic surgeons some time and they should be able to fix about 70 percent of his face.” The trip to Korea was just a joke, there were already quite a number of related experts in the country. In fact, the plastic surgeons at Phecda had indeed offered their services but Gu Jun was not in a hurry. He was too busy to go under the knife.

“Personally, I think this is just fine.” Wu Siyu looked at the figure on stage. “He still tastes quite delicious to me.”

“Well, you do get used to it after a while.” Cai Zixuan rubbed at his bald head, “At least Tycoon Jun still has his hair and brows, so that’s something to work with.”

Gu Jun on stage accepted the first merit badge awarded to him by the leader and then walked to the podium. Instantly the applause stopped. He nodded at the millions of people before turning to the prepared script. He started, “Respected leaders and colleagues...” The script was written by him and then edited and vetted by ghost writers and editors. Therefore, these were not really his words, he was after all now a mouthpiece for Phecda.

“I believe it is the beautiful things which have kept me going until this day. The world is very dangerous and it is becoming even more so by the day but the danger also highlights the preciousness of its beauty. Through the many missions I’ve participated in, some of my teammates have sacrificed their lives, others their sanity; some are sitting in this hall while others are unfortunately absent. I believe this universe is in itself meaningless and we’re the one who gives it meaning. We give meaning to ourselves and to others as well.” Gu Jun paused to look into the audience and the camera. “My teammates, past and present, thank you for giving meaning to my life.”

At that moment, Wang Ruoxiang, Gao Yi and the rest stood up and clapped in front of the screen. Ruoxiang even choked with tears. The applause was louder in the hall. Prof Gu, Prof Qin were both brimming with pride. Wu Siyu, Cai Zixuan, Xue Ba, Uncle Dan and the rest naturally joined in the applause. ‘Ah Jun, you have given us meaning in our lives too.’ Peacock, Malachite and the others clapped as loud as they could. Their eyes were red, since they were unable to return to the City of Kindle, so they decided to provide all the support they had to the Phecda Hero to prevent the era of collapse from arriving.

“Thank you everyone.” Gu Jun smiled. “Thank you to my superiors.”

He was given another standing ovation. The applause echoed inside the hall, and throughout every division across the nation.