Chapter 2165: Chapter 1424: Good News (Part 3)
The next day, the same sensation appeared again. It was slightly clearer than the previous day, just a little bit. He asked Sister Li to place her hand on his abdomen, and then he performed the same breathing exercise.
"Do you feel anything?" he asked.
Sister Li pressed her hand on his abdomen, trying hard to sense something. Her palm rested on his skin, her eyes fixed on her fingers, her expression as focused as if she were listening to a faint heartbeat.
"No, nothing at all."
Chen Jianguo was not surprised. The connection was too thin, so thin that only he could feel it. He wasn’t even sure whether the connection truly existed or if his fingers were deceiving his brain. But he didn’t dare to seek confirmation. What if the slight pull he felt today was merely a memory of yesterday’s sensation? What if he could never feel it again in the coming days?
On the third day, he told Manstein about it.
After listening to his description, Manstein showed no expression and simply noted it down in his notebook. Then he asked Chen Jianguo to lie on the treatment bed and placed an electrode on Chen Jianguo’s rectus abdominis muscle.
"Now, take a deep breath, inhale... exhale... and at the end, contract your abdomen forcefully."
Chen Jianguo did as instructed.
A series of waveforms appeared on the electromyogram. They weren’t the kind of waveforms seen in nascent electrical activities before, but ones closer to normal voluntary movements. Although the amplitude was small and the duration was short, the shape was right. It flickered on the screen and then settled down. But that brief moment was enough for everyone to see.
Manstein looked at the waveforms and was silent for a long time. He repeatedly replayed the recorded segment, magnifying it again and again, comparing it with previous waveforms, confirming it wasn’t interference, it wasn’t an artifact.
"Mr. Chen, your rectus abdominis is starting to work."
Chen Jianguo lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
"Rectus abdominis!" he repeated the term. For eleven years, he had not heard anyone utter these words and relate them to himself.
"Yes! It’s the central part of your abs, the muscle you use when doing sit-ups while watching TV."
Chen Jianguo asked, "Professor, how long has my rectus abdominis not worked?"
"Eleven years."
"Eleven years, it rested for eleven years."
"It didn’t rest, it just didn’t receive any signals. Like a phone that hasn’t been called. Now, someone is starting to dial."
Chen Jianguo placed his hand on his abdomen, feeling the muscle that had not worked for eleven years. It was soft, flat, without any strength. But it received a signal. Like a sleeping person finally hearing an alarm clock. It wasn’t fully awake yet, still in a daze, turning over, but it heard it. That thin, thread-like signal, like a spider’s silk, broke through eleven years of silence and found it.
Sister Li stood beside him, covering her mouth with one hand, tears streaming down her face.
"Jianguo, your tummy is moving."
"No, it’s just an electrical signal, the muscle didn’t really contract, or it contracted so weakly, you wouldn’t be able to feel it."
"An electrical signal is still movement. Eleven years, the first electrical signal."
Chen Jianguo didn’t speak. He turned his head and looked at his wife’s face. She was crying, yet she was also smiling. It was the most contradictory and most genuine expression he had ever seen. Her tears and smile mixed together, like someone who had waited eleven years finally receiving a letter. Regardless of what was written inside, just the fact that "a letter has arrived" was worth crying over.
In the fourteenth week post-surgery, the boundary finally began to shift.
