Pastoral Daily Life

Fang Lei was looking for Lu Lingxi about the matter of human-animal communication. He was very busy these days, because he had been asked by his superiors to investigate these matters.

At the beginning of the year, Lu Lingxi had warned Fang Lei that more and more people would be able to communicate with animals in the future. Fang Lei had this in mind, but he didn’t expect to encounter it so soon. Just a few days ago, a case was reported to the police station under Fang Lei’s jurisdiction. The case seemed to be ordinary. A few kids were dominating the school and often bullied another kid in the same class. The kid who was bullied couldn’t stand it anymore, and after being bullied again, he got a helper to take revenge on the kids who bullied him.

If you looked at the case like this, it was not unusual. What was unusual was that the helper the bullied child found was a dog. One boy and one dog cooperated tacitly to teach the little overlords in the school a lesson. As a result, the parents of the students who were taught a lesson called the police, and the police investigated and quickly found something weird. It wouldn’t be a big deal if it was an isolated case, but the police stations received several similar cases one after another. These things quickly attracted the attention of the tops, and the communication between humans and animals moved from the shadows to the open.

Fang Lei wasn’t at liberty to say much on the phone, but only vaguely reminded Lu Lingxi not to run around with Dahei in the near future. It was still uncertain how the tops would handle these matters; for the time being, they only instructed all those in the know to keep it confidential.

“Confidential?”

Fang Lei let out an “en”, “The tops seem to be not too convinced and probably want to invite experts to investigate further. I guess they don’t want to spread the news before they make sure, for fear of not being able to control the impact.”

After talking about this matter, Fang Lei asked a few more questions about Yan Yue’s recent situation and hung up. He had worked all night last night and had only just returned to his dormitory. His mobile phone had been confiscated by the tops, just like his colleagues’ phones, and was only returned to him today. Fang Lei knew that he had violated the confidentiality discipline by calling Lu Lingxi, but Lu Lingxi had trusted him before and told him about the animals, and he wanted to warn Lu Lingxi while he had the chance.

Fang Lei was just about to catch up on his sleep when Xiaohui, whom he hadn’t seen for a few days, rushed over, aggrieved, lightly jumped onto Fang Lei’s face and meowed angrily.

Fang Lei was so sleepy that he grabbed Xiaohui by the neck with his eyes closed and tucked him under the blanket, holding him in his arms and coaxing him, “Xiaohui, don’t make trouble, I know you’re tired of eating canned cat food these days, I’ll get you some dried fish when I get up after a good night’s sleep…”

Fang Lei sat up with a start when he spoke of dried fish and asked with an odd expression as he picked up Xiaohui’s neck, “What did you just say, Xiaohui?”

Xiaohui waved his paws angrily, trying to scratch Fang Lei unceremoniously and meowing.

Fang Lei’s expression became more and more odd, he could hear clearly that Xiaohui seemed to be angry. He was angry with him for disappearing for all this time, and angry with his colleagues for only giving him canned cat food. When Fang Lei remembered what he had just called Lu Lingxi about, he couldn’t help crying and laughing. Little did he know that once he got home he himself would understand Xiaohui’s meowing and would thus belong to the ones who needed to keep it secret. “Alright, you want to eat dried fish, right? I’ll get it for you now.” Fang Lei said and put Xiaohui down, ready to endure the sleepiness to serve Master Cat first. However, once Xiaohui left his confinement, he first jumped up and slapped Fang Lei with his paw, then squatted down in front of him, licking his paws and meowing twice.

Fang Lei: “……”

He now felt that it didn’t seem to be too pleasant to understand Xiaohui, unless he could tolerate Xiaohui’s “stupid mortal” tone.

After finding the dried fish for Xiaohui, Fang Lei made another phone call to Lu Lingxi. This time the content was simple and clear: he could finally communicate with Xiaohui, but was it too late for him to change a cat?

Lu Lingxi: “……”

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Hanging up the phone again, Lu Lingxi turned around and saw Yan Yue. Perhaps his expression was too odd; Yan Yue took a few steps over and said in a deep voice, “What’s wrong?”

Lu Lingxi shook his head and repeated Fang Lei’s accusations of Xiaohui’s evil deeds. Yan Yue couldn’t help but be amused. Seeing Xiao Xi’s bad expression, he thought something was wrong, but it turned out to be about Xiaohui. “Next time we see Fang Lei, let’s bring him some more band-aids.” Yan Yue chuckled.

Lu Lingxi imagined Fang Lei’s expression while receiving the band-aids and nodded as he held back a smile.

“By the way, Brother Fang said that several cases of people being able to communicate with animals have been discovered recently, and the authorities have requested that these be kept secret.”

Yan Yue raised his eyebrows slightly, “He hasn’t been in touch in the past few days because he investigated them?”

Lu Lingxi nodded and asked with some concern, “This kind of confidentiality is only temporary, it won’t stay hidden forever, right?”

Yan Yue smiled, stroked Lu Lingxi’s head and said soothingly, “Don’t worry, this kind of thing can’t be hidden.”

As the environment in Fengcheng changed, there would only be more and more people and animals who could communicate with each other, and it would be impossible to keep it completely secret. Yan Yue believed that there were already journalists with a keen eye who smelled the news. They would see how hard the tops would try to keep it under wraps. By the time the news was out, the number of evolved people in Fengcheng would reach a certain scale. At that time, even if Lu Lingxi was found to be abnormal, he wouldn’t be too conspicuous in this group of evolvers.

When Yan Yue said this, Lu Lingxi stopped worrying about it.

After the expert group that Fang Lei had spoken of secretly entered Fengcheng, the time had come for the bamboo from the laboratory to be transplanted to the hills. On the day of the transplant, both Lu Lingxi and Zheng Xinhe got up early. The temperature was too high recently for transplanting during the day, so they could only transplant the bamboo while it was still a bit cool in the morning.

Zheng Xinhe took his students and a dozen villagers hired by Lu Lingxi up to the hills. Everyone had dug the pits yesterday and today all they had to do was to plant the plants. After a morning’s work, Zheng Xinhe looked at the young shoots all over the hills and said to Lu Lingxi with a certain sense of satisfaction, “In a few months’ time, this will become two bamboo mountains. When the bamboo reaches the required hardness, our production line will be ready to start.”

Lu Lingxi followed Zheng Xinhe’s gaze; the breeze was blowing and the greenery of the hills filled his sight. Imagining that in a few months’ time this place would be a sea of bamboo, evergreen all year round, Lu Lingxi felt that all the fatigue from the hard work he had done dissipated.

After the bamboo was planted, Zheng Xinhe rushed back to Zhongjing. Before he left, he took a small piece of finished bamboo with him, saying that there was a seminar in Zhongjing and he would go there to promote it. Even Yan Yue was impressed by his desperate energy and told Lu Lingxi privately that although Zheng Xinhe was sometimes stubborn and annoying, he was a really nice person.

After the production preparations for Zhugang were on track, Su Lang and Huo Weiping also made a breakthrough in the clinical trial of donglingcao.

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Early that morning, Yan Yue received a call from Su Lang, asking if he had time to bring Xiao Xi to their institution for a visit.

Yan Yue quickly guessed what was going on, “The clinical trial is working?”

Su Lang laughed at the other end of the phone, his tone light, “Mr. Yan has invested so much money in the project, I would be embarrassed to find you if it didn’t work, right?”

Yan Yue laughed along, “When is it convenient to come?”

“Anytime. Xiaobao is still thinking about meeting Brother Xiao Xi.”

At the beginning of the year, Yan Yue helped Su Lang get the approval for the review of the clinical study of the new drug. Su Lang and Huo Weiping officially began recruiting volunteers for clinical trials. Pan Xiaobao’s father, Pan Liang, decided to let Pan Xiaobao join the clinical trial after a difficult choice. At first, he was waiting for a suitable bone marrow to be available from the bone marrow bank while participating in the trial. But as the trial progressed, the leukaemia-causing pathogenic proteins in Pan Xiaobao’s body continued to degrade under the induction of donglingcao methylin, and his condition improved significantly. Seeing that Pan Xiaobao was getting better day by day, Pan Liang was so sure that he put all his energy into testing the new drug.

During these days, Pan Xiaobao had suffered a lot. Perhaps it was his illness that made him mature early. Pan Xiaobao was the youngest among the group of volunteers, but he was the most understanding, only occasionally saying that he missed Brother Xiao Xi.

Previously it was the key stage of the experiment, and outsiders were strictly forbidden from entering or leaving the institution. Now that the experiment had made progress, Su Lang wanted Lu Lingxi to come and take a look. He couldn’t say what he felt in his heart; it seemed to be an obsession. He knew that the two Lu Lingxi’s couldn’t be the same person, but he just couldn’t help but project all the guilt he felt for the dead young man onto Lu Lingxi now. Including when he made progress in his experiments, the first thing he thought of was to have Lu Lingxi come and take a look.

After he had spoken to Su Lang, Yan Yue put away his phone and frowned imperceptibly. Although what Su Lang said on the phone was an invitation for him to come and have a look, it was Xiao Xi who was mentioned several times. Yan Yue had always felt that Su Lang’s attitude towards Lu Lingxi was a bit odd, not because he suspected that Su Lang had guessed the secret of Lu Lingxi’s rebirth, but because he disliked Su Lang’s attitude of treating Lu Lingxi as a substitute. Although in essence the two Lu Lingxi were the same person.

It was just that although Yan Yue didn’t like it, there was no way to keep Lu Lingxi away. Especially knowing that Elder Zhao had also joined Su Lang in their research, Lu Lingxi had to go and take a look.

“Grandpa Zhao is very powerful, with him the new drug trials will definitely be successful.” Lu Lingxi said seriously as he sat in the car.

Yan Yue hummed and added, “The new drug trial is actually considered a success now.”

“Really? Then when will it go into production?”

Yan Yue thought for a moment, “It depends on the national regulations on the timing of clinical trials, but there is a green declaration channel for some special drugs, so it will depend on Su Lang and the others.”

“Brother Su definitely wants it to go into production as soon as possible. He said before that he wanted to invent a special drug for leukaemia so that many people didn’t have to suffer.” Only when Lu Lingxi finished speaking did he realise what was going on and looked at Yan Yue somewhat sheepishly.

Yan Yue held his hand quietly and said as if nothing had happened, “Su Lang seemed to have told me the same thing, but Xiao Xi remembered it clearly.”

His tone was casual, and Lu Lingxi secretly breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that Yan Yue didn’t seem to suspect anything.