Mutated Tao

Li Huowang held onto the metallic fence tightly. He looked at the patients outside with his single dispirited eye and observed their strange actions.

Li Huowang's lips trembled, pondering for a long time before ultimately muttering, “Are they really hallucinations? Am I actually ill?”

Yi Donglai's muffled, angry voice came from behind Li Huowang. "You're only just realizing that?! Do you really think you’re a normal person even after committing murder, scaling an electrified fence, and gouging out your own eye?"

Li Huowang tightly grabbed the fence. “I have my reasons for doing all that!”

“Which patient doesn’t have their own reasons when they injure someone? Those reasons only make sense in your head! They don’t hold up in the real world!”

Li Huowang couldn’t take it any longer and shouted at Yi Donglai, “Why are you so alarmed?! I’m the one who’s ill, not you!”

Yi Donglai rose to his feet, his anger evident in his voice. "Can I not be alarmed? Do you know what it means to me if word gets out that you’ve relapsed? It would render my thesis useless, and I could say goodbye to any chance of getting a promotion! My peers would mock me, and I had even agreed to an interview with a TV station to boast about my treatment plans! If you're not cured, my life is over! I refuse to accept it!"

Yi Donglai sat back down and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes to calm himself down.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Li Huowang staring at him from just a short distance away.

“Yi Donglai, what are you talking about? Whose projection are you? Why are the changes in me affecting you?”

“AAAAAAAAH!” Yi Donglai lost his temper again, slamming the table.

“Take care of him! I need to go and wash my face.” Yi Donglai slammed the door shut, leaving the nurse to monitor Li Huowang.

Li Huowang paid no attention to them and instead directed his gaze toward the exterior of the metal fence. He looked at Gao Jingyun, who was on the opposite side of the fence.

Am I really hallucinating? Why is everything so real then? If what he's saying is true, then was everything I saw last time true? Which is the hallucination instead?

Li Huowang went through his memories and found they had become very unreliable.

Li Huowang struggled to differentiate reality from illusion even when Yi Donglai had returned.

After washing his face multiple times, Yi Donglai sat down and noticed that Li Huowang had already taken a seat across from him. Li Huowang placed both hands on his knees as he patiently waited.

“What are you doing?”

“Am I not ill? You’re my doctor, right? What else do I want? I want to get cured.”

Yi Donglai rested his chin on his hand and frowned at Li Huowang. What is he thinking?

He had always thought he understood Li Huowang, but now Yi Donlai realized he had learned nothing about him.

Still, Li Huowang really wanted to be cured, and since he was ill, he needed to be cured. Also, since Qing Wanglai had given up on him, Li Huowang could only save himself right now.

Once Li Huowang was cured, he would be discharged once again. This time, he was determined to pay a visit to Qing Wanglai and force out an answer regarding his absence during the Simings' battle.

“Are you sure? Will you really cooperate with my treatment plan?”

“Of course. Do you need to ask that? I also want to get cured as soon as possible.”

“That can come later,” Yi Donglai moved his stool a little. Let’s get things clear first. What did you say about me being a projection? I remember you told me about it before. Could you repeat it?”

“No,” Li Huowang shook his head. “You don’t have to worry about that. You only need to cure my hallucinations.”

Yi Donglai frowned. “So you thought that you only needed to get rid of your hallucinations? Then what about the projections? Have you ever thought that the so-called ‘projections’ are part of your hallucinations too?”

Li Huowang sat silently for five minutes before raising his head. “Do you mean… Qing Wanglai was fooling us from the very start?”

“No, I meant that Qing Wanglai could be a hallucination too. You know what a delusion is, right? It’s a false belief about external reality, which persists despite substantial evidence proving otherwise.

“I once treated a patient who exhibited this behavior. He believed that any woman who made eye contact with him was attracted to him. It didn’t matter if he was beaten up or verbally scolded—he refused to believe otherwise. The more he was physically beaten, the more he convinced himself that it was love.

“Even if the woman cried and begged him to stop, he would think that the woman was playing the long game. He would always twist what his victims did to fit his delusions.

“Your condition is an extreme version of that. You even have hallucinations that talk back to you and offer ideas that further twist your delusions.

“I know you have your very own stable yet incomprehensible perception of the world, and I believe that you trust it very much. Unfortunately, I must point out that it is a type of delusion. It’s the same as the patient who refused to let women go. Frankly speaking, that patient was already in his sixties with three broken fingers and a slanted mouth. I doubt that anyone would love him.”

Li Huowang replied, “No, wait. Maybe Qing Wanglai was lying to me, but he’s real!”

“Real? Are you sure? Can you prove it?”

“Nana!” Li Huowang raised his head. “Nana accompanied me last time to meet them!”

"Do you expect me to ask another mentally ill patient to validate your delusion? Can't you let go of her for the time being? You've harmed her too much."

When Li Huowang was being treated, a nurse carefully whispered to a coworker, “I’ve heard that the previous doctor who treated him went crazy and was locked up. I fear that this doctor could meet the same fate too.”

“Doctor Yi shouldn’t have accepted the case. Now that our superiors have given the orders, Li Huowang is doomed to stay here forever whether he’s treated or not.”

“They should’ve done that from the beginning. He has already killed so many people. I felt it was too reckless to discharge him so easily. Aren’t they gambling with people's lives by letting a ticking time bomb out?”