Le roi des pilleurs de tombes

Chapitre 14

"So that's how it is." Lu Xu munched on the seventh chocolate bar while scratching his itch.

If they don't find a way to get out of this swamp while they still have the strength, they'll be doomed once they run out of food or get sick with a fever. Lu Xu estimated that if they could walk on flat ground, it would take at least two days to get out of this swamp. If they had to rely on the interconnected trees, walking and stopping, with occasional dangerous moments, it might take a month.

Ironically, Lü Xu didn't even know where the swamp that had trapped him in Dalian was located—which country? Which region? If only he knew how to identify the species of those strange monkeys that jumped around in the trees all day, he could roughly deduce some clues.

Do you want to die?

For the first seven days, Lü Xu spent most of his time contemplating this philosophical question.

While exploring the best place to land, I kept thinking.

They also offered their own explanations for this incredible "departure".

It was obvious that the woman in the room was a person with supernatural abilities.

Having sex with the woman in the room, at the moment of ejaculation, one is "teleported" to some place in the world by some kind of ability. And the woman's teleportation ability is probably closely related to her menstrual cycle. Judging from the conversation the men had that day, if one "sets off" on the first day of her period, she will be teleported to a more distant and dangerous place. That should be it.

As for where he would be teleported, probably no one could predict in advance, so Old Deng wanted to prepare enough supplies to survive for more than ten days anywhere in the world. He really regretted not preparing ten times more supplies. As for that young man who claimed to have cut off his fingers and toes in the snow, he was definitely teleported to the polar regions. Compared to him, he was considered "lucky"?

It's amazing that such a thing exists in the world.

Seven days later, Lü Xuda had forgotten to consider whether he truly wanted to die.

That's stupid. Of course I have to live. The reason doesn't matter; even just to make sure I finish all the rations in my backpack is enough reason not to die. That's right, that's it. Before I die, I must eat and drink everything I can…

On the twenty-third day, Lü Xuda finally climbed down the tree.

Food was exhausted, and water was completely gone.

Fortunately, it rains heavily without warning, sometimes more than ten times a day. Just by tilting your head back and opening your mouth, you can get a little bit of water. Occasionally, you can fill a mineral water bottle by the stream.

Fruit is a luxurious encounter.

Along the way, Lü Xu mostly ate unknown fruits. Whenever he saw monkeys eating something in the distance, he would try to get the same fruit to eat. Although he would rather eat monkeys, small insects that couldn't run fast or fly high were his staple food, and he would occasionally pluck some plump leeches from his calves to supplement his protein intake.

The sunrise became very beautiful.

The sunset became terrifying.

On the fortieth day, or the forty-first day? Forty-two? He didn't know; calculating time was an extremely tedious activity for Lü Xuda. In any case, Lü Xuda began to hallucinate. Whether it was due to excessive hunger or eating poisonous fruit, Lü Xuda started to unconsciously giggle and engage in the foolish act of wasting his energy singing.

On an unknown day, Lü Xu stiffly and forcefully killed a snake, eating its flesh, skin and blood included. The taste of that foul-smelling liquid sliding down his throat could only be described as "resurrection."

The terrain kept changing, and snow could even be seen in the distance.

Should we head towards the snowy areas? Of course not.

Lacking tools, willpower, and physical strength, Lü Xu readily avoided several routes that seemed particularly dangerous or relatively difficult. He didn't have any concrete plan; he simply tried to find the easiest routes to continue forward, each step a step closer to survival...

But no one was ever seen.

To be honest, the Earth is so vast that the area covered by human footprints is probably still relatively small. In a mathematical sense, the probability of "landing" in a place where one could encounter another human being is extremely low.

Another day, just another day.

The terrain has changed. But the jungle is still the jungle.

The temperature difference between day and night is widening, and the risk of hypothermia after rain is increasing. I've been hearing tiger roars for the past few days. Sometimes they're near, sometimes far. Luckily, I haven't actually encountered the legendary king of beasts. I can't possibly eat it; if I did, my next adventure would be to devour it.

Hunger was the norm. Even the next action after swatting a mosquito turned into licking the dead mosquito from one's palm.

On the one hand, exhaustion deprived me of a lot of energy, and on the other hand, I didn't want to experience even deeper hunger due to consuming calories, so I rested for twice as long as I traveled. Then it became three times longer. Gradually, all I felt was sheer weakness.

Lacking all the nutrients you can name. Nails become gray and soft.

The night was filled with unpredictable dangers, and he was completely unable to move or even relax while sleeping... Later, Lü Xuda learned that slowly losing consciousness in his sleep might be the luckiest thing, and he regained the privilege of sleeping soundly.

Normally, nature doesn't waste any food, but today Lü Xu was lucky enough to find a frog that had just died under a big tree while resting.

This was an unparalleled delicacy, and Lü Xu held the frog carcass in his palm with deep gratitude.

"Perhaps this is my last meal?" Lu Xu thought to himself, his stomach growling. He couldn't just eat it all up.

He missed the long-missed cooked food terribly, so much so that Lu Xu gathered some dry branches and leaves, lit them with the last tenths of fuel in his lighter, selected a sturdy short twig, pierced the frog carcass, and slowly roasted it over the fire.

The aroma, so similar to roasted chicken, made Lü Xu think that there really was a god in this world.

Before even taking a bite, the aroma brought tears to Lü Xu's eyes.

How stupid of me.

For the past few years, he's been saying he wants to die, that he's willing to die to take moral responsibility for "the well-intentioned mistakes of the past." But now, looking back, it all seems so insincere. A mouthful of self-righteous nonsense.

As long as there's even the slightest chance to live a little longer, I'll seize it and savor it. Even if the meaning of life is simply to eat this frog in front of me, what a noble and strong reason that is!

With a slightly burnt frog leg in his mouth, the reason why Lü Xuda was eating frog here came to mind. He had long suspected that this final burst of lucidity would be filled with that ugly past…

6.

It's been twenty-three years.

Twenty-three years ago, he was just a young doctor in his early thirties, who had just obtained his attending physician qualification at a major hospital. Everyone around him envied his promising future, but Lü Xuda was full of passion to change the world. He believed that people only saw his appearance in a doctor's white coat, but did not notice his surging passion for life.

“I’m different from other doctors,” Lu Xuda says to himself in front of the mirror every morning when he brushes his teeth.

Things often don't go as planned for middle-aged men.

In the small ENT department of a large hospital, I talk to all sorts of people every day. But nine out of ten patients have colds, and the medications prescribed are almost always the same. The advice given to patients is also very rigid: "Drink more water, get more rest, take your medicine half an hour after meals and before bed. And... don't stay up late." No matter how it changes, it is very similar.

Of course, I was wearing a mask, and almost all the patients were wearing masks too. This inadvertently widened the gap between doctors and patients. Patients would leave after their consultation, and I would want to show them more care, but I would find that there were long queues for registration and I couldn't see them all.

The doctor's orders were repeated endlessly, as were the meticulous procedures of the examinations. This repetition numbed something important, burning, and constantly yearning to be shouted out in his heart. One day after work, Lü Xu bought a car magazine and began studying the introduction to the new Porsche sports car with great interest. As he flipped through the pages, a sudden, vain thrill crept in.

Lu Xuda wanted to change something, but he couldn't find a way to do so.

"Is my life just about going to work and coming home?"

If things continue like this, the only difference between me and the average office worker will be the numbers in my bank account.

At this point, Bo Xu offered a rather passionate suggestion.

Bo Xu is a year ahead of Lü Xu in school, and he shares the same passion.

Both were members of the astronomy and photography clubs while studying at Taipei Medical University and had a good relationship. Later, Bo-Xu moved in with Lu Xu-Da as his roommate. During their internships, they were both assigned to the same large hospital one after the other, forging a deep bond. Later, Lu Xu-Da became an attending physician in the Department of Otolaryngology, while Bo-Xu became an attending physician in the Department of Psychiatry.

Perhaps due to his long-term research in psychology and mental health, Bo Xu seemed to foresee himself ten years from now being molded into a cold and indifferent doctor by the hospital system. Unlike the worried Lü Xuda, Bo Xu seemed completely unconcerned about the gradual changes taking place within his own mind.

In the staff canteen on basement level B1 of the hospital, two silver plates sit facing each other.

"So, in other words, we'll all become as indifferent as those old doctors sooner or later anyway, so we don't need to do anything now?" Lu Xuda's expression was somewhat dismissive.

“Of course not.” Bo Xu chuckled as he picked up the last slice of sausage. “The difference isn’t about how we maintain our passion for helping people.”

"oh?"

"It should be said that if we stayed in places like Africa where medical resources are scarce, we would be able to maintain the passion of Schweitzer. But this is Taiwan. One more doctor like us won't make a difference, and one less doctor won't make a difference either. There are so many hospitals, and we are not particularly outstanding medical talents."

"So, if we're not particularly outstanding, then... we don't need to do anything at all?" Lu Xuda repeated his dissatisfaction. Incidentally, he had absolutely no intention of traveling thousands of miles to Africa to practice medicine just because he admired Schweitzer.

“Of course not.” Bo Xu had thought through what he was going to say: “Since we will all become numb sooner or later, we should do more passionate things while we still have enthusiasm, so that when we become so vulgar that we only want to live in nice houses and drive nice cars, we will still have something to look back on.”

"..."

Bo Xu smiled mysteriously: "I have a plan."

7

This plan is very simple in structure.

It carries a high level of medical risk, but its value is also relatively very high.

Bo Xu plans to write a paper on the practical aspects of this series of plans and publish it in an international journal. Finally, he will compile the case studies into a book using non-academic, popular language. It is conceivable that this controversial book will earn Bo Xu the title of bestselling author.

Of course, given the extent of the violation of medical ethics, it is not surprising at all that Bo Xu lost his medical license.

"It might cost me my life too," Lu Xu said with a bitter smile.

“No good plan comes without a price.” Bo Xu’s relaxed smile vanished, and he said seriously, “While we don’t have too much to lose, let’s see how many people this plan can help to think about why they exist in this world. That is, the value of life.”

A profound question: What is the value of human life?

If this is a riddle, then it is a riddle shared by all humanity. It's conceivable that, with each person's different life experiences, religious beliefs, and even the influence of a particular good movie, there will inevitably be different answers for each individual.

But when will people finally find their own answers?

Or, under what circumstances would a person begin to ponder and try to solve this puzzle?

"The unchanging daily routine has disciplined us all. There are too many tedious things to do, too many complicated interpersonal relationships to manage, and a bunch of inexplicable responsibilities, such as when to pay the card bill, which karaoke bar to go to for someone's birthday, whether the car should be replaced, whether to fill up the gas tank quickly tonight or the gas price will be higher the next day, whether to change the tutoring class for the child whose grades are not improving... Too many trivial matters occupy our brain memory, making us distracted to think about less important things, while the most precious parts are ignored."

"Our memory is being used up by daily life... so what should we do?" Lu Xuda followed up with a computer analogy: "How can we reboot our brains and clear out the overloaded memory all at once?"

"Think about how disaster movies portray things? When people encounter major events, their reactions often highlight their personality traits. Many things you couldn't understand before become clear in an instant when a crisis occurs. The moment when a person re-prioritizes the importance of the things around them is the golden time for self-reflection." Bo Xu's eyes shone with wisdom: "We are doctors, and we have a very high chance of giving our patients a chance to overcome major crises."

"...Hmm." As a doctor, Lü Xuda was certainly a smart man, and he immediately realized the key point: "Crisis is an opportunity."

"This kind of crisis, which involves energy conversion, is much cheaper than a cataclysmic event, and it doesn't pose any real danger. Where else can you find such a useful, practical, and effective crisis?" Bo Xu's expression was confident: "Let me be frank, this crisis plan is not easy to implement in my department, but it has a good chance of success in your department. How about it? Do you want to take the risk and give it a try?"

Lü Xu understood immediately. It was a piece of cake.

A week later, with somewhat awkward acting skills, Lü Xuda announced the devastating news to a 27-year-old female graduate student. "Terminal nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Life is estimated to be only one month left. With proper care, it could be extended to three months, but more detailed examinations are needed. Please return to the hospital in three days to review the reports. The hospital will arrange for a consultation with specialists from the hematology and oncology department."

Three days later, the female graduate student, who had lost weight and had red and swollen eyes, returned to the outpatient clinic.

The crucial moment arrived. Lu Xuda and Bo Xu nervously revealed the "truth" together in the consultation room, carefully observing the female graduate student's reaction… When she learned that she only had a severe cold, the female graduate student excitedly hugged Lu Xuda and Bo Xu, then burst into uncontrollable tears. During her sobs, she shared her emotional changes over the past three days.

She tried to organize a junior high school reunion in hopes of reconnecting with two very precious but lost friends.

She made a phone call to her ex-boyfriend to apologize, hoping he would forgive her for her past immature and irritable behavior.

She took her first puff of a cigarette, then coughed and felt thankful that she hadn't missed anything.

She wrote a very long letter to her parents, but before she finished, she realized that her life was filled with so many debts she owed them. In the letter, she made five humble wishes.

She confessed her feelings to a senior in the doctoral program, not because she wanted to be with him, but simply because she didn't want to have any regrets.

She did so many things and remembered so many people. She relived everything that had happened in her life.

"Thank you for the plan. It turns out I still have many more to go, this is my last month."

The female graduate student bowed deeply and left with gratitude.

Lü Xuda and Bo Xu exchanged a smile. That night, they returned home thoroughly drunk.

One sweet fruit set the whole plan on a high note.

One, two, three, four... Lü Xu's acting skills in deceiving patients were getting better and better, and just in case, Bo Xu also used a white lie to package this crisis plan as a spiritual growth study funded by an international medical journal.

They witnessed patients' tears and laughter, heard many extremely private stories, which greatly enriched Bo Xu's research... or rather, the content of his new book. Patients' age, gender, occupation, and education level are the most basic research variables. Bo Xu constantly reminded Lü Xu to change the subjects of the experiments to better reflect statistical significance, allowing for broader in-depth interviews in the research.