Origin of the Illness

Inside Gu Jun's buzzing mind, the clues that he had obtained chained up to reveal the cold hard truth.

Who knew how many centuries ago, the Son of Steel Freud Landon had dissected the abnormal creatures at the collapsed Rikers city. After that interaction, his belief and conviction were shaken. Something momentous probably happened, and that caused him to choose to commit suicide. But just as he was dying, the servants of the Great Old Ones appeared to offer him a new life as a demon.

Landon accepted the offer and became the Son of Misfortune. Sometime after that, he returned to Rikers, created the Malformed Banyan Disease, and probably did something else. Was that why the name Son of Misfortune became known in the foreign civilization? Was that what caused the apostates to make the pilgrimage to worship him? They abandoned the Goddess of Life and turned to worship the Great Old Ones, the thing inside the banyan tree, the demon inside it.