Chapter 974: Hui Three's Overall Combat Strength Rises

After the bone fracture heals, can the brace immobilizing the lower leg be removed?

Xia Qing flipped through the professional book Zhang Song had given her, found the relevant passage, and read it aloud to the Broken-Waist Wolf: "For a minor bone fracture, the immobilization period for an ordinary human is six weeks, that is, forty-two days; for an advanced Evolver, twenty days."

Xia Qing took a color-printed chart from the drawer; on it the moon's complete cycle from full to waning and back to full was clearly arranged, with numbers underneath.

The sun is the same every day, but the moon is different every day. Using this kind of picture, Xia Qing could convert the "days" humans speak of into time the Broken-Waist Wolf could understand. "The moon going from this shape to this shape is twenty days—that's the immobilization period for an advanced human Evolver's fracture. You're an advanced Evolver, and you've only been immobilized for ten days, that is, from this shape to this shape. By rights, you still need ten more days."

The Broken-Waist Wolf wore a solemn expression, indicating it did not agree—because it was an evolved wolf, not an evolved human.

"You've been soaking with me in the medicated solution that treats bone and skin damage, so our pain wasn't suffered for nothing; recovering a bit faster is normal. Let me ask Third Brother whether the brace can come off." Xia Qing exported the Broken-Waist Wolf's scans and sent them to her idol to consult on the question.

It wasn't even half past six yet, and what Xia Qing was asking wasn't urgent, so she didn't call directly and disturb her late-to-bed, late-to-rise idol's sleep.

Messages also have notification sounds?

NO—her idol does research, and when working needs to concentrate all of his attention; he hates most being interrupted in his train of thought or experiment. So, apart from a few numbers that can reach him by phone immediately, his work phone and personal phone give no sound for anyone else's calls or messages.

Whenever the idol finishes being busy and remembers to glance at his phone, that's when he sees the missed calls and unread messages.

Xia Qing was very lucky to have been placed by her idol in the category of the few important contacts.

About an hour later, Zhang San finally replied to Xia Qing: It can be removed, but for the first ten days after removal rehabilitation training is needed, and strenuous activity avoided. Recheck the X-ray in ten days and reassess the healing.

If the injured one had been the rowdy Broken-Leg Wolf, Xia Qing would certainly have waited a few more days before removing the brace, because once the brace comes off that fellow would go wild as if uncaged. But the Broken-Waist Wolf's temperament was far steadier than the Broken-Leg Wolf's, so she could remove it now and let it begin rehabilitation training.

So Xia Qing showed the Broken-Waist Wolf the message Third Brother had sent, explained its current condition clearly, and then removed the immobilizing brace from its left foreleg.

The Broken-Waist Wolf was happy to have the brace that had hampered its movement removed; but after removal, seeing that only short fur remained on its leg, the whole wolf was not well.

It was the first time Xia Qing heard this fellow open its mouth and burst out with a richly content complaint: "Aowu ao ao wuwu aowuwu…"

Although she couldn't understand what it was saying, Xia Qing could feel its grievance from its expression and tone.

For an evolved wolf that regarded thick fur as beauty, one hairless leg was simply too great a blow.

Xia Qing had long anticipated that this vanity-loving fellow would be like this after the brace came off. She found in her phone's photo album the picture taken right after the Broken-Waist Wolf's leg had been shaved, and showed it to the wolf.

"Look, Broken-Waist, ten days ago your leg looked like this; now the fur has already grown back. By the time the moon is full again, the fur on both your legs will be the same length."

The Broken-Waist Wolf looked at the photo, then looked at its own leg, and its mood indeed improved. It signaled Xia Qing to take it to the bathroom—it wanted to wash its paws and leg.

After the brace was removed, it had smelled that its paws and leg were very stinky.

Xia Qing carried this spiritually wounded wolf into the bathroom, rinsed its leg and paws clean and dried them, then carried it back out and taught it how to do rehabilitation training. After that she left it to do its rehab at home on its own, while she went on to continue patrolling the territory and checking on the crops' growth.

Passing the forage shed, Xia Qing called out a greeting to Eldest Brother, who was eating grass; after inspecting the fields and digging a few root-chewing pests out of the soil, Xia Qing walked up to the northern buffer forest and saw Little Feimao hopping cheerfully among the branches with a pine cone in its mouth. It landed on her shoulder, then climbed into her coat pocket.

No need to ask—whatever Little Feimao had brought back was certainly a premium green-light pine cone. Unfortunately it had been picked too early; the pine nuts inside weren't ripe yet.

Xia Qing picked a large leaf, rolled it into a cup, poured some warm water from her water bottle, then fished Little Feimao out and let it drink its fill, and told it to go on looking for premium food.

The early morning was cool—the time when insects were most active, and the squirrels and birds that fed on insects had to seize this window to eat their fill.

The pine cone? Of course it stayed in Xia Qing's pocket, as Little Feimao's reserve food. Like its mother, Little Feimao was a red squirrel that was especially diligent and especially fond of storing food.

When Xia Qing's patrol reached Shed One, she carefully inspected the Gao Yi-element green-light spinach she had covered with a protective net.

She now planted a crop of Gao Yi-element spinach every half month, about two hundred plants per crop. The patch in the field before her was the fourth crop of the year to mature in her territory—unfortunately this crop's quality was the same as the last, with no improvement.

However, the quality of these native Gao Yi-element green-light spinach was far better than the X-2 on the market.

Not only Xia Qing—after the seeds from this year's first harvested crop of X-2 had passed their dormancy, the Planting Center in the Safe Zone, the lords of the various territories, and residents of the Safe Zone who had the conditions for planting all put the seeds they had held back and not sold into the richest soil they owned, to cultivate a second crop of Gao Yi-element green-light spinach.

Although the price of X-2 had dropped, its quality and nutritional value had not.

According to a news broadcast on Hui Three, after half a month of eating X-2, the physical condition of the lower-class citizens who had previously had extremely poor diets and survived on rations to stave off hunger had already shown marked improvement.

Of course, there were also those eager to improve themselves who, from eating too much X-2, had developed "excess Gao Yi element"—but that was only a very small number.

Good news also came from the Safe Zone's Evolution Ability Testing Center: the month was only half over, and the number of newly detected Evolvers in Hui Three Safe Zone had already surpassed the total of the previous two months, reaching one hundred and fifty people!

The number of Evolvers is an important indicator for evaluating a base's combat strength.

Potential Evolvers among the lower strata of society, whose evolutionary potential could not be activated before because they could not obtain high-nutrition food, were now, by eating X-2, swapping their identity cards from yellow to green, gaining the chance to improve their living conditions.

These people were overjoyed, weeping with happiness.

Among those weeping, some were more sorrowful than joyful. He Hui, who had tested as possessing the highest combat-rated speed-evolution ability but had already lost her right leg in the previous devastating explosion, was one of them.

When Xia Qing last visited Center Nine and saw He Hui's eyes swollen from crying, she said nothing.

Because in such circumstances, any verbal comfort would be pallid. He Hui understood everything—but that did not mean she could calmly accept this cruel reality.