199: Chapter 199 Turning Point

After returning to his hometown, the days passed very slowly.

His mother didn't say anything; she just cooked for him every day, stewing bone broth and boiling eggs with brown sugar.

It was as if she thought that as long as she fattened him up, his leg would grow back.

Lin Yue couldn't bear to make his mother worry, so he would go out on his crutches every day, walking around the village and chatting with the neighbors.

But at night, when he closed the door and sat alone in his room, that feeling of emptiness would come rushing up.

He tried to find work. He went to the town and asked at several factories, but as soon as people saw his leg, they shook their heads. It wasn't that they didn't want him; they were afraid of accidents and afraid of bearing the liability.

Later, the Disabled Persons' Federation introduced him to a job as a receptionist at the county's Disabled Persons' Service Center. The work wasn't tiring and the pay wasn't high, but it was enough to get by.

He went, worked for a month, and then quit.

It wasn't that he couldn't do the work, but that he couldn't stand it.

He couldn't stand sitting in the office every day, looking at the "Self-Improvement" slogans on the wall, and watching the people walking briskly back and forth outside the window.

He started drinking.

It wasn't the kind of heavy intoxication; he just had a couple of drinks every night until he was slightly tipsy, then fell onto the bed and slept until dawn.

His mother saw it all, and though she was anxious, she didn't know what to say.

She just got up every morning and silently cleared away the wine bottles from the table.

...

Days like this passed for nearly two years.

Until one autumn afternoon, a phone call came into the house.

At that time, Lin Yue was in the courtyard sunning himself. The autumn sun wasn't harsh; it shone warmly on his body, making him drowsy. He leaned back in his rattan chair, eyes half-closed, listening to the roar of the harvesters in the distant fields.

His mother answered the phone inside the house, and her voice drifted out faintly: "...Mm... Yes... Okay... I'll ask him what he thinks..."

A few minutes later, his mother came out of the house, still holding a rag, with a strange expression on her face.

"Who was on the phone?" Lin Yue asked.

"It was the county's Veterans Affairs Bureau." His mother sat down next to him, hesitating for a moment. "They said there's some kind of project... specifically for veterans like you who were disabled in the line of duty."

"What kind of project?"

"It seems to be... fitting prosthetics." When his mother said these three words, her voice trembled slightly.

"They said it's a collaboration between the military and some scientific research institution, using the latest technology. They asked if you'd be willing to give it a try."

Lin Yue was stunned.

He looked down at his right leg. The pant leg was empty, hanging off the side of the rattan chair.

Over these two years, he had gotten used to this empty pant leg, used to the feeling of imbalance when walking, and used to the sympathetic or curious gazes others cast his way.

He even thought he had accepted it.

But now, when the words "fitting prosthetics" suddenly appeared before him, he realized that he had never truly accepted it.

His hand unconsciously rested on the stump below his knee. The scar had healed, smooth and hard, like a piece of wax. He had touched it many times, each time as if confirming something.

"Did they say... it could be fitted well?" he asked.

"They said it's the most advanced technology in the country right now." His mother's voice was very soft. "As for how it will actually turn out, we'll only know after going for an examination."

Lin Yue remained silent for a long time.

On the ground beside the rattan chair, a few ants were carrying a grain of rice.

He stared at those ants for a long time, watching them push the grain of rice, which was larger than their own bodies, moving it forward bit by bit.

"I'll go," he said.

His mother didn't speak immediately.

She just reached out and took his hand, holding it very tightly, as tightly as she had held him in the hospital corridor many years ago.

"Okay," his mother said, her voice a bit hoarse. "Mom will go with you."

...

The next day, Lin Yue called the Veterans Affairs Bureau back.

The person who answered was a woman; she sounded young and spoke in a well-organized manner.

"Hello, Comrade Lin Yue. Let me register your details first. What year did you retire? What was the cause of your disability? What is your current physical condition?"

Lin Yue answered one by one.

With every sentence he spoke, the person on the other end typed away on a keyboard, clattering, as if filling out some form.

"Okay, I have recorded the information," the person said.

"Next, we will submit your profile to the project team for review. This process will take about one to two weeks; please wait patiently."

"If the review passes, what is the next step?"

"If it passes, we will notify you to go to a designated hospital for a pre-operative assessment. The assessment includes physical examinations, neurological function tests, psychological evaluations, and so on. Only after passing the assessment can you officially enter the surgical process."

Lin Yue held the phone and nodded, then realized the other person couldn't see him, so he added, "Understood."

After hanging up the phone, he sat on the sofa and ran the information he had just heard through his mind.

Review, assessment, surgery... there was a threshold for every step, and he could be cut at any step.

He suddenly felt a bit nervous.

This feeling was both strange and familiar.

It was as if he had returned to that afternoon many years ago when he signed up for the army.

The younger him couldn't describe what kind of feeling that was, but the current him could carefully savor the various emotions in his heart.

This nervousness was uneasy, restless, and carried an indescribable longing.

What he feared wasn't being rejected.

He feared that hope would be given, only to be taken away again.

The two weeks of waiting passed very slowly.

The first thing Lin Yue did every morning when he woke up was to check his phone to see if there were any missed calls.

Sometimes, when he saw an unknown number, his heart rate would accelerate, but when he answered and found it was a telemarketer, he would deflate again.

He started searching the internet for news about this project.

After searching for a long time, he didn't find much information. He only knew it was a collaboration between the military and Z University, led by a young scientist who was rumored to have achieved impressive results in both the fields of Biological Sciences and mathematics. He couldn't find specific details; the project hadn't been made public yet.

He also found the name of that scientist: Chen Youhua.

This name made him pause.

It wasn't because the name was special, but because he suddenly realized that someone capable of creating something like this must be from a world entirely different from his own.

One was in the sky, the other on the ground. One was in a laboratory tinkering with cutting-edge technology, while the other was in a village drinking cheap beer.

He turned off his phone, lay back on the bed, and stared at the ceiling.

There was a crack on the ceiling, extending from the light fixture all the way to the corner of the wall.

He remembered the ceiling in the hospital; it was also white, and it also had a crack.

He said to himself in his heart, don't get your hopes up too high. What if it doesn't work out?

But another voice replied: What if it does?

These two voices fought in his mind, leaving him feeling restless and agitated.