Chapter 1268: The Fleeing Liehuo Squad Member

This wolf's body was relatively weak, so Xia Qing didn't dare use an oral general anesthetic on it; instead, she had Old Four hold its head down while she injected it with a local anesthetic.

Local injection anesthetics are expensive? No problem—Old Four is an evolved wolf worth a million, so it can afford the points.

Once the anesthetic took effect, Xia Qing efficiently shaved the wound, debrided it, disinfected it, and sutured it, then applied the best waterproof, breathable sterile dressing.

This old wolf was very resistant to humans approaching, but it was so weak now that, pinned down by Old Four and unable to move, it could only let the human fuss over its body.

After drawing blood to confirm it wasn't poisoned, Xia Qing examined its body once more, applied a fur disinfectant and deworming agent, fed it a deworming pill, and squeezed a tube of nutritional solution X into its mouth.

After finishing with this wolf, Xia Qing also had Old Four drink a tube of nutritional solution before letting it lie down to begin treating the torn wound on its hind paw pad.

The wolf's paw pad has a 5-millimeter-thick keratin layer—a "biological running shoe" formed over tens of millions of years of evolution—that protects the evolved wolf's foot. But when an evolved wolf runs over sharp gravel or broken glass, this keratin layer isn't enough, and tearing can occur.

Long-distance running easily leaves wounds like this. Evolved wolves will lick their own wounds to debride them and reduce activity to let the wound heal. So this kind of injury is nothing to the old wolf at all; it called Xia Qing over mainly to get its companion treated.

While treating its wound, Xia Qing explained the situation to it: "Hui Three's reconnaissance aircraft discovered a Hui Six monkey troop invading Blind-Eye Tiger's companion's territory. I was afraid of exposing our cooperative relationship and attracting more danger, so I called Broken-Waist Wolf and had it notify you. Luckily we made it in time and let you avoid the explosion at Liehuo Mountain."

The old wolf whose wound had been treated and who now felt comfortable all over was squatting nearby, glaring ferociously at Xia Qing. The old wolf currently being treated raised its head and looked at Xia Qing solemnly.

Xia Qing looked back at it for two seconds and sensed something was up.

After applying the sterile dressing to the old wolf's paw pad, Xia Qing took out her phone and showed it the footage of the Liehuo Mountain explosion that Seeing Xin Yu had recorded and sent her. When Liehuo Mountain exploded, Xia Qing and Watching Huo Zhun were on the road and hadn't seen it, so Seeing Xin Yu clipped the video and sent it to her.

As she played the video, Xia Qing chatted to the old wolf: "The Liehuo humans must know that blowing up this underground cave will collapse the mountain—they're really ruthless…"

Liehuo Mountain has unpolluted spring water, and destroying the mountain's structure would degrade the water quality. So Xia Qing deduced that Liehuo's underground bunker was built using a pre-existing cave.

Xia Qing didn't know the internal structure of Liehuo Mountain, but she knew that blowing up a mountain covering over a thousand mu and standing more than eight hundred meters tall would definitely require a great, great many explosives.

Liehuo Mountain's spring was destroyed by the Doomsday Cult people two months ago, but the spring water is definitely better quality than ordinary spring water and should be usable as a drinking source. The Liehuo Squad scumbags are, as always, true to their style:

What I cannot possess, I destroy!

The old wolf listened to Xia Qing's chatter, carefully watched the overhead footage of Liehuo Mountain's collapse twice, then used its paw to gesture for Xia Qing to send the video to its phone.

Xia Qing sent the video over, then used the old wolf's phone to play it twice more. Once it had watched enough, she took a screenshot, zoomed in, and pointed at the wolves' positions in the image to ask, "Old Four, you and Lord Cui Yan led the wolf pack to stand this far from the cave—did you sense something was wrong?"

Old Four nodded.

Compared to Broken-Waist Wolf's way of baring its teeth to mean "yes" and "agreed," Old Four clearly preferred the nodding method.

Xia Qing pressed on: "How did Old Four sense something was wrong? Did it see something? Did it smell something? … Smelled it? Okay. What smell… meat? … blood? Okay, blood. Besides blood, what else did Old Four detect?"

The old wolf thought seriously for a moment, then raised its front paw and wrote a character on the ground: tongue.

"Old Four truly is the academic-wolf standing at the top of Blue Star's pyramid, the pioneer of a new era for Blue Star's evolved wolves—you've learned more characters than Broken-Waist!" After sincerely praising the old wolf, Xia Qing continued asking, "Did Old Four clearly hear what the humans inside the cave said?"

After communicating with the wolf for over ten minutes, Xia Qing returned to the top of the sinkhole and sent her idol a long message:

Third Brother, Old Four has returned to Mountain Twenty-Eight. It told me that the people hiding in Liehuo Mountain's underground bunker spread blood inside, and only detonated the explosives after retreating. Old Four says the underground river beneath Liehuo Mountain has an exit, in a waterfall about 10 kilometers south of Liehuo Mountain, and the terrain there is very similar to the waterfall on Mountain Twenty-Two where Yangchuan moss grass grows.

Zhang San read it in one second, immediately deleted it, stared for a few seconds at the hand-drawn map of Liehuo Mountain's underground river system on the screen drawn by Wang Rujiang, and ordered, "Pull up the map of the area 5–10 kilometers south of Liehuo Mountain."

Disaster-Relief Assistant Tang Heng immediately pulled up the map. Following Zhang San's instructions, he enlarged it, but found no waterfall. Zhang San had the assistant pull up the map of the area 10–20 kilometers south instead, and at a location 18 kilometers from Liehuo Mountain, they found the waterfall Xia Qing had mentioned.

Those eight kilometers were a communication error between Xia Qing and that brain-domain evolved wolf.

Zhang San stared at the waterfall for two seconds, then his gaze shifted to the hand-drawn map on another screen, and the magnetic field he released sharpened again. "What kind of fierce beast's activity zone is this area?"

Tang Heng answered, "According to the data provided by Hui One, this is Hui One's Mountain Zone 4, the outer territory of that evolved hyena group that just invaded Liehuo Mountain. Humans can also hunt in this area. Currently, three squads are on missions in this mountain zone."

Zhang San nodded. "Seeing Xin Yu."

Seeing Xin Yu, who had been sitting nearby with her laptop, walked over, stared at the squad list on the screen in front of Tang Heng, and quickly reported: "Hui One's Hundred Victories Squad has an average relationship with Liehuo on the surface, but they often cooperate privately; the Frost Squad is currently on bad terms with Liehuo, but the captain of this Frost squad, Wu Xian, has a wife who gets along well with Fire Phoenix. I don't have personnel information on the third squad."

Yan Yue beside her continued reporting, "Based on a name search, the third squad is made up of evolvers from Hui One's southern territory."

Hui One's southern territory isn't too far from Liehuo Mountain, so the two sides very likely have a cooperative relationship.

Zhang San had Tang Heng send the specific coordinates to Yang Jin, then contacted Yang Jin: "Yang Jin, send the squad you dispatched to search for the underground river exit to the coordinates at maximum speed. There's likely an exit to Liehuo Mountain's underground river in that waterfall. If you find any fleeing Liehuo Squad members, capture at least one alive."

Compared to Wang Rujiang, Zhang San trusted more the information provided by that brain-domain evolved old wolf that had a good relationship with Xia Qing.

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