Chapter 339 The Tailbone and Bowl <TOC> Chapter 341 Totoro
Translator: SumTLMan
“What’s your name? You must have some impression of it, right?” Angel asked.
“What’s your name? You must have some impression of it!” The man repeated cheerfully, his face still beaming with excitement, waiting for praise.
“Don’t mimic me. Have you genuinely forgotten, or are you just playing dumb with me?” Angel looked exasperated.
“Don’t mimic me. Have you genuinely forgotten, or are you just playing dumb with me?” The man repeated Angel’s words without hesitation and without missing a single word.
Angel rubbed his forehead. He had once studied Western and Chinese medicine under Jon for a while. However, traditional Chinese medicine was too esoteric, so he learned more about treating external injuries with medicine. He had also dabbled in modern Western medicine, but most of what he learned was about surgical theories.
He knew that amnesia was mostly psychogenic, but there were also instances of organic and dissociative amnesia. Aside from the injuries causing organic amnesia, other types of amnesia were mostly the brain’s way of initiating self-protection, actively forgetting memories that caused intense psychological trauma to the patient.
Angel couldn’t see the man’s brain condition, and even if he could, given the brain’s complex and ever-changing nature, it would be difficult for him to make a diagnosis. After all, his medical knowledge was quite superficial, filled with theories and pathologies, but he had virtually no practical experience.
Nonetheless, based on his medical experience, the man might have witnessed the annihilation of the Hippocrates people, and his brain might have initiated self-protection to make him forget those memories that could cause secondary psychological trauma. Of course, this was just Angel’s speculation based on common sense, and the actual reason might be different.
What he could do now was to determine whether the man had partial amnesia, selective amnesia, or total amnesia.
While roasting meat, Angel began to converse forcefully with the man.
“How do you feel right now?” Angel first used an ambiguous question to test the man’s self-awareness.
The man repeated blankly, “How do you feel right now?”
“Do you still remember the Hippocrates?” Angel changed his approach, not asking “Who am I?” but instead “Where do I come from?”, attempting to pry open the man’s memory box through the mention of the Hippocrates.
The man’s eyes were filled with a desire for praise, “Do you still remember Hippocrates?”
Angel had initially planned to ask “Where will I go?”, but since the first two of life’s three big questions didn’t work, the third one would hardly be any different.
After thinking for a moment, Angel gently snapped his fingers—
With a crisp snap, the man’s eyes became momentarily blurred. When he opened his eyes again, he suddenly realized that his surroundings had changed. The young man who had been in front of him had disappeared, and he found himself in a snowy landscape… As the sky was filled with heavy snow, he noticed that his body was bare.
The man’s eyes showed panic as he frantically looked around, seemingly searching for someone.
The snowfall grew heavier, and the man became colder, shivering continuously. Following his instincts, he returned to the hunter’s cabin. Although the cabin was sheltered from the snow, the temperature inside remained quite low.
The man shivered from the cold, and then he noticed a fur coat on the bed. His eyes showed a hint of confusion, but before he could react, his hand instinctively grabbed the coat and wrapped it around himself.
It seemed like the warmth had returned. The man immediately dashed out of the cabin, his eyes searching the surroundings in a daze.
At that moment, the man’s eyes grew blurry again. When he came to his senses, the heavy snow had disappeared, and the fur coat was gone, leaving him in a bewildered state.
As he tried to make sense of the situation, a strong gust of wind blew through the forest.
The wind swept up rotten leaves and dust, blinding the man. He instinctively raised his hand to shield his eyes, preventing any sand from blowing into them.
Suddenly, a thick black cloud drifted across the overcast sky. A bolt of lightning struck a tree in the distance, igniting a raging fire. Gazing at the distant flames, the man’s eyes revealed a trace of fear.
At the same time, torrential rain began to fall. The man, soaked by the rain, looked around in confusion. He could not find the young man who had spoken to him earlier, nor could he see the hunter’s cabin.
Within his field of vision, the only thing he could see was a closed umbrella. But the man ultimately ignored the umbrella, squatting shivering under a tree.
As the man looked around helplessly, Angel appeared.
The man’s eyes lit up with joy, and he happily dashed into the rain, approaching Angel.
The man’s mouth opened and closed as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, he didn’t utter a word. Instead, his eyes revealed some confusion. What was he trying to say?
Seeing this, Angel sighed softly and picked up the umbrella from the ground, handing it to the man.
Still with a bewildered expression, the man took the umbrella and stood there, not knowing what to do.
Angel shook his head and snapped his fingers.
In an instant, everything around them – the heavy rain, the wildfire, and even the umbrella – disappeared. They returned to the sunlit forest of early morning, back in front of the hunter’s cabin.
Angel continued squatting on the ground, tending to the grilled meat, while Toby flew carefree in the sky. It was as if everything that had happened earlier never took place.
The man, however, showed no confusion and smiled at Angel.
Without a doubt, the snowy and rainy scenes the man had experienced earlier were illusions created by Angel. From these illusions, Angel had deduced the man’s memory impairment.
His episodic memory function must have been damaged, as he could not remember any past events.
Furthermore, the man’s procedural memory might be incomplete. In simple terms, procedural memory refers to common sense. In heavy snow, the man consciously avoids snow and cold, which is a human instinct to seek good and avoid harm.
However, in heavy rain, he doesn’t know how to use an umbrella, which is common sense.
One could argue that if he had never seen an umbrella and didn’t know how to use one, it would be understandable. Yet, Angel had seen umbrellas in Hippocrates, and almost every household had one. Although Angel did not understand why umbrellas were needed in the underground world.
The disappearance of common sense indicates damage to procedural memory. Fortunately, his instincts haven’t disappeared, and the damage to his procedural memory hasn’t reached its worst.
Moreover, the man’s language memory seems to be intact, but his language logic abilities are also gone.
Angel could now draw a conclusion for the man—
“You haven’t lost your memory, you’ve become a fool!”
Of course, “fool” is Angel’s angry remark. The true meaning is that the man is now like a blank sheet of paper, as pure and innocent as a baby learning to speak. What he will ultimately become is still unknown.
Perhaps he has truly become a fool, unable to learn no matter how hard he is taught. Or perhaps he will regain knowledge, re-establish his values, and become an entirely new person. But whether this new personality is the same as his former self is another philosophical question.
…
Fortunately, the man’s instincts for eating, drinking, and taking care of himself have not diminished. Angel gives him whatever he can, and he eats it. If he is still hungry, he gazes longingly at Angel.
Once he is full and satisfied, Angel prepares to continue their journey.
As for… this man.
After much thought, Angel decided to take him along. The fate of someone who has lost their memory and common sense in the depths of the wilderness is obvious without saying.
All the way, Angel couldn’t help but sigh helplessly.
He had originally hoped that this man would help solve his confusion. However, not only did his confusion remain unresolved, but he also gained an additional burden. Angel secretly planned to leave the burden behind once they found civilization.
While on the move, Angel continued to stimulate the man using various methods, even resorting to the most intense ones. Angel simulated the illusion of Hippocrates’ destruction, forcing the man to confront his cruelest and deepest memories…
This kind of stimulation didn’t have much effect on the man, as Angel hadn’t truly witnessed how Hippocrates was destroyed. His illusions were mostly constructed based on the events in Twilight.
It wasn’t until Angel simulated the parasites and Colorful Dragonflies that the man had a moment of bewilderment. However, to Angel’s disappointment, the man fainted again.
Upon waking up, the man had forgotten everything again. This time, when Angel tried to simulate the multicolored dragonflies, the man showed no reaction.
“Overstimulation causing a counter-effect?” Angel rubbed his temples, ultimately giving up on this method of stimulation, which was not recommended in medicine.
In the end, Angel lost interest in exploring the man’s past.
Whatever he had experienced before was not important. Since his brain had made him forget, let it be forgotten. Forgetting painful memories and starting anew might also be a good choice.
Angel no longer deliberately tried to make the man remember his past but instead casually talked to him about everyday matters. Even if the man could only repeat his words, it was still a process of practicing and accumulating vocabulary.
Although the conversation was quite dull, it added some interest to their monotonous journey.
During the conversations, Angel noticed that the man had a unique accent.
The man’s voice was crystal clear, like a gentle breeze under the morning sun, warm and soothing, with a soft upward inflection at the end.
This accent should be a regional dialect. Moreover, Angel felt it was familiar, as if he had heard a similar accent before.
But after pondering for a while, Angel could not remember who had spoken with this accent. It could be someone unfamiliar or someone he had once heard in passing, which is why he never paid attention?
Although Angel could no longer remember why this accent seemed familiar, the fact that the man could speak such fluent Common Language indicated one thing: the man must have used the Common Language as his mother tongue.
Even if he was only imitating Angel, without resonance in his linguistic memory, he would not be able to speak the Common Language so fluently.
For example, when Angel said a sentence in Chinese, the man struggled for a while, and the imitated Chinese had no sense of “ups and downs,” to the point that Angel didn’t even think the other party was speaking Chinese.
So, based on this, they could determine one thing:
—Places where the Common Language is used as the mother tongue must be in the Wizarding World.
As for where exactly in the Wizarding World and whether it was in the Southern Region, they could only confirm when they encountered human settlements.
…
Since the man had not recovered his memory, Angel could only continue to follow the riverbank.
This journey took them two days and nights.
At the end of the river, there was a vast lake, or could it be called a sea?
Angel couldn’t see the end of this body of water at a glance, and they had no path to follow for the time being, as a continuous range of green mountains next to the water blocked their way.
Either go around the mountain, climb the mountain, or wade through the water.
Going around the mountain was too far, and who knew where they would end up; wading through the water was the shortest route, and Angel wouldn’t mind, but after all, there was a mentally impaired person with him, so he needed to show some care for his disabled companion.
In the end, Angel chose to climb the mountain.
He had a hunch that there might be human settlements on the other side of the mountain.