Volume 6 - CH 97.4

… Xü Beijin has failed to notice Lin Qin’s gaze entirely.

Or rather, he’s been successfully irked by the little apple again.

Exasperated, Xü Beijin is ignoring Lin Qin on purpose, and instead, turns towards the stream instead.

That is when he sees that Wu Jian seems to have discovered something on the second floor.

It’s a book on the far side of the desk of the service counter on the second floor.

While it is generally well organised, but perhaps the shortage of staff, or their lack of enthusiasm therein, has resulted in some areas where the books are rather haphazardly organised.

That one book was just put back at the service counter without anyone caring to put it back where it belongs.

Wu Jian didn’t see it immediately because his attention was first attracted to the gigantic electric clock, which is showing the current date and time.

23/07/20XX, 15:15.

He checks the clock out and notes the time, and so failed to notice the somewhat obvious book over at the service counter.

He then went through the floor without finding anyone or special clues, and was blanking out looking at the thousands of books on the shelves when he incidentally noticed the book.

Before then, he was somewhat frustrated at the thought of this Nightmare possibly requiring him to locate a specific book among the massive bookshelves, which would have been akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

In general, Nightmares of the Tower do not have such ridiculous requirements.

Though with the entire second floor devoid of clues, he was making a sour face and walking towards one of the bookshelves when he was near the service counter and saw the book.

He picks it up.

“‘Madness: A Record of the Last 200 Days’…” Wu Jian reads the title out loud reflexively, and then murmurs, surprised, “is this documenting the madmen?”

He then checks the date of publication against the electronic clock.

… It was published merely one month ago?

“If so, the madness probably started spreading some two hundred and some days ago?” Wu Jian continues murmuring to himself, “or not. It could have been spreading for like a year, like last summer…”

Then he puts up a long face again, going, “but then, that is only the time when it began, what use would knowing that do…”

With no one else around this vast, empty second floor of the library, he can only murmur to himself to quell the stress some.

He takes a deep breath, then gets to reading.

Not perusing, but merely checking the table of contents, and then skimming through what looks to be important.

In the book, there is much more documentation of happenings than any speculation on its reasons. It seems the author didn’t try to investigate the source of the madness, but is focusing more instead on the mad people themselves.

Of note as well is the fact that the spread of the madness is global, which causes the writing to take a more radical and helpless tone.

“… Urban traffic was the first to crumble and then restore itself. I’ve heard that most of the people in the Department of Traffic was transferred from what was the Space Agency. Hey, talk about a silver lining…

… Rather than the lunacy that freshly overtook the patients and doctors in the hospitals, the much more tragic and obscure were the patients and doctors in the mental institutes. Besides an immediate overcrowding problem adding to the full capacity of insane patients, just imagine what a whole lot of good lunatics treating insane patients would do…

…

I recall a joke on how human development is so rapid that, while people of the ancient civilisations transmigrating to medieval times wouldn’t have thought the changes were that drastic, but anyone from the medieval times transmigrating to the modern world would have had a heart attack at the pace of development.

Therefore, it may be logical to ask… how would someone from ten years ago transmigrating to this point react? Would they despair at how hopeless human civilisation has become, or simply express amazement at how the future played out?

There are already rumours that scientists are discussing if the madness should be left alone as is. A school of thought is that this form of madness is one of the possibilities of continued civilisation development.

Those who do not go mad, do not get to live?

But, have humans really already reached such a desperate, unavoidable stage of having to fight for their own survival with lunacy in this vast, endless universe? Are our situation already that volatile?

I must say, even the scientists have all gone off the deep end.

…

A hundred days since the mad people took over the world, people started discussing the basic rights these mad people should enjoy.

Some of those lunatics aren’t that bad, especially the ones that merely work hard, as long as they don’t try to force me to work as hard as they do…

My own safety aside, I’m actually more concerned about the number of lucid people remaining. As their numbers dwindle, how do you define ‘normal’ and ‘insane,’ and which of them are now truly insane? I have no easy answers here…

…

After the madness spread, many people took it as a sign of the coming Apocalypse. They worship it, even, as some sort of punishment from God, and as God wills it, it heralds true destruction, the Day of Judgement, soon enough.

They have taken on the view that humans are the impurities of the blue marble, and we are the ones that are to be eradicated. Madness is the first step to internally exhaust us, before the true Apocalypse is to descend unto us.

Really, these religious fanatics who yell ‘Impurities’ all over are the ones that are clinically insane, I believe. It is even more laughable that many people are buying into their doctrine. Religion seems to have come to a dead end by this point.

In spite of the crumbling of societal order, humans are still doing their best to get by. The only problem is, we do not know how long we will last.

It is at this hour that these people are further grinding away at humanity’s will to live. They call for us to lie flat and allow fate to dictate our future… how dare they?

We are still not ready to give up. We can still go on. We can still do our best to remain sane. I write this book, because I believe that, this is the moment, when someone should speak up and tell everyone——We should do our best to keep going.

Two hundred days hence, and society is recovering. We have found a way through the madness. At least, humanity’s productivity is rising back up. We have learned to live and let live with the mad people. In the future, perhaps, we might even be able to recover, to return everything to how it was gradually.

Speaking optimistically; no. I must speak optimistically, and I believe that this will end eventually. It must.

…”