Time passed as The Fox remained asleep, unaware of anything around himself. The Black Lily kept watch with her blurred vision that she has when she can’t use The Fox’s vision. The Black Lily couldn’t help but be stressed during this time as she couldn’t be sure of dangers.
The part that bothered her the most was the blurred vision she had. She lacked any way to hear in the current state, and she couldn’t see anything well. This meant that anything that has visual camouflage could reach and kill them easily.
But even as she sat there watching the surroundings as best she could, she was also enamored at the changes happening to The Fox. While she had seen this before in the cave, seeing it like this up close and also feeling what is going on internally changes her feelings about the process.
The Fox’s body was currently in a self preservation or self repair mode. With the large amount of damage he had received in the battle his body was on the verge of death. The only reason he had lasted to now was because of The Black Lily providing his body with oxygen when his lungs couldn’t.
The muscles within The Fox were rapidly regenerating and moving in attempts to save his life. First scabs were rapidly made to temporarily stop the bleeding so that the repair can start. As The Black Lily before wasn’t a part of him, she couldn’t tell what had exactly happened after this the first time, but now with their current state she can see what is happening clearly.
After the scabs have been made and the bleeding stopped, The body then went on to replenish the blood supply best it could, to stop any problems of blood loss that might be problematic. Next his body moved to the most pressing concern, which was his punctured lungs. First any pieces of ribs or other shrapnel in his lungs or puncturing his lungs were removed.
The body mainly did this via contractions of the lungs along with spirit qi moving these pieces to his throat and then ejecting the pieces by causing The Fox to spit them out. In terms of removing the pieces of bone currently still puncturing his lungs, the lungs had been strengthened temporarily with the spirit qi which allowed for the contractions to break off any bones that were currently inserted in them.
After having removed the blood, bones, and other things that had found their way in, the lungs started to rapidly grow where they have holes and quickly sealed themselves, thus making them operational again.
With the problem of the lungs solved his body moved onto the next concern, one less pressing but still important nonetheless, the ribs. After being thrown around like a rag doll throughout the fight, The Fox’s ribs were anything but okay.
Starting with the parts that were interfering with the lungs the muscles and flesh around the ribs convulsed moving the pieces of ribs back into their more or less correct locations. After getting them about in the right spots strings of bone attached to each part and started to connect them and make them whole again.
It was during this step that the body just suddenly stopped repairing. This process had taken multiple hours, yet The Black Lily was rather confused as to why the process suddenly stopped. The ribs were most definitely not doing good still, and could easily break with a slight impact. Yet the body that was so active before just suddenly came to a stop.
Pondering for a short time The Black Lily thought about how the body was moving so abnormally and remembered the commonality of it, there was always an abnormal amount of spirit qi. In each part of his body that was moving abnormally there was a proportionate amount of spirit qi fueling the abnormal movements.
Thinking about this she checked his body and noticed that his body was currently empty of spirit qi. He seemed so frail and weak when he lacked spirit qi which alarmed The Black Lily greatly. If he was in such a frail state, it doesn’t matter if I see something coming as it will be able to finish him off easily.
Taking this into consideration The Black Lily thought back to its actions from the first time The Fox was injured. During that time she was mostly just going off of instincts and doing what she felt was needed at the time. She didn’t honestly know what it was that she was doing but she did it anyway.
Now with her increased awareness and intelligence she realizes that what she was doing before was giving up her cultivation of spirit qi to help his body complete the process. Just like last time, he has run out of energy and needs more to complete the repair.
Luckily this time is much less desperate as he won't die even if she doesn’t give him energy, but also unluckily they aren't in a safe environment that would allow for them to give it time.
Besides, just like last time, she doesn’t really like watching him just lying here injured when she can do something about it. She might argue with him quite a bit, but that is mostly because it can’t be said to be a great way to become friends when you tried to kill the other party the night before.
She doesn’t hate him or really blame him for being angry at her for trying to kill him, but also she doesn’t feel remorse over her actions either. This is survival of the fittest, there is no if or buts about it, if she was stronger she would live and evolve if not she would likely have been eaten as soon as he had found a way to do so. He had originally tried to eat her when he first found her after all.
Either way the how and whys don’t really matter any more. They are now stuck together. There really isn’t much to be done about that, nor does she really plan to do much about it even if she could.
Getting back to how she can help, she remembered before that she would give him a large portion of qi only for him to absorb a smaller portion of what she gave. But now when she started to inject him with her spirit qi it seemed to be transferred fully with no loss which made her quite happy as it meant she didn’t need to lose as much cultivation as before to help him.
She slowly injected her spirit qi into The Fox as his body demanded it allowing it to continue its repairs. Another few hours passed and now it's the start of a new morning. When the new morning was just starting, The Black Lily suddenly couldn’t help but be a little embarrassed. She said to herself that she could easily give enough energy to repair the damage done to The Fox, but in reality she only had enough to finish the repair to his ribs. There was still the ghastly looking wound on his abdomen that The Wolf left.
Thankfully nothing seemed to have approached during this time of recuperation. Honestly this was odd and worrying in itself, far more than if a few smaller critters came and attacked. If nothing came then this area is likely the hunting ground of something big, and that something big just hasn’t found them yet.
With their small statures they were at the bottom of the food chain, leaving them little to no confidence to say that their power or intimidation had scared off those smaller animals. Interestingly enough there actually was even a lack of non-spirit animals in the area. Just eerie silence.
With time once again slowly passing after the repairs are done to the best of their ability, The Fox slowly started to wake up.
‘Com’on wake up already’
Waking up, The Fox was anything but happy. His body ached and he was confused and disoriented. Yet even with all of these annoyances he has an additional one in his head.
‘Hush’
‘I just spent my time protecting you and helping you get better and the first thing I get back from you is a “Hush”?? Rude off white pile of annoying fur.’
‘... that was just mean. I really liked my white fur.’
‘....’
Ignoring the whole of the message The Fox only reacted to the comment of his off white fur. He had honestly felt annoyed and sad about it before so hearing it said made him focus on that among the whole message.
Nevertheless he started to then process the rest of the sentence as The Black Lily sat there in pure confusion in the fact that only the fur comment was heard of her sentence.
‘...Thanks though…’
The Fox might be grouchy at the current state of his body, but hearing her comments he realizes that she likely helped him again. Some time before, after he became smarter, he thought back to his original wounds during one of his napping sessions. He realized that it was The Black Lily that likely helped him get through his injuries before. So hearing her say that she did so this time made him more sure of that conjecture and also brought little doubt to his mind that she did help him.
‘Humph’
It seems that she isn’t completely satisfied with this answer but at least she won’t continue to complain, he hopes.
‘So, uh, where are we?’
‘How would I know! You are the one who ran in a random direction!’
‘Well you told me to run!’
‘I didn’t say to run with 0 regard for where!’
‘....’
Well he can’t really refute that statement but he also had no choice as he was not even really conscious during that time. He knows he ran, he knows he is alive, he knows he is hurt, but that is all he really knows about that time after he started to run.
