Heart-Element

1,119 words

“Going mad is the best outcome for a Heart-Element?” Could this really be his future?

Li Huowang had always assumed that when others called him a Heart-Element, they meant he was some kind of rare material. Like a special spiritual root in those cultivation novels he used to read.

But this old nun in front of him was telling him that wasn’t the case at all. The name “Heart-Element” itself held a great problem.

Li Huowang calmed himself for a moment, took a deep breath, and spoke again. “Reverend Jingxin, I’ve used Black Tai Sui before to treat my delusions. It worked well. Did you ever try it on your son?”

He desperately wanted to hear her say no, but he was immediately disappointed.

“I did, of course I did. But you can’t just eat Black Tai Sui carelessly. Once that stuff gets in, it’s hard to get out. It just sits in your belly, sucking your blood and eating your flesh.”

“If you eat a little, it’s manageable. But if you eat too much, it can fill up your entire stomach and crawl out from inside you.” Reverend Jingxin described it vividly, as if she had seen it with her own eyes.

Li Huowang touched his own stomach, his expression growing even darker. He had a wad of Black Tai Sui covered in tentacles sitting inside him right now.

Danyangzi had never had any good intentions. Even the medicine he gave him had severe side effects.

But those were minor issues he could deal with later. He had more important things to ask now.

“Reverend Jingxin, can you tell me what a Heart-Element really is? And why every Heart-Element ends up falling into madness?”

Li Huowang pressed on, anxiety mounting in his voice. He needed this answer too badly now. It concerned his very survival.

Jingxin paused in her eating. She looked up again, fixing those two black, empty sockets on Li Huowang.

“What is a Heart-Element? You’re a Heart-Element, and you’re asking me? Can’t you tell what’s different about yourself? Then let me ask you—where did you come from?”

Li Huowang opened his mouth instinctively, then stopped, wary.

The fact that he had crossed over from the modern world was an extremely important and private matter. He couldn’t just tell it to this bizarre old nun he had only just met, without any protection.

Who knew what this fat old nun would think if she learned that secret.

“Hehehe. Let me guess. You think you’re not from around here, don’t you? That you’re from some other great world? A world completely different from this one?”

Jingxin’s light words shattered Li Huowang’s psychological defenses in an instant. “You know?!”

Jingxin, as if she had seen it all before, lowered her head and continued eating the yellow paste from her bowl.

“What’s there to panic about? Kids, no self-control. You’re wondering how I know? Didn’t I tell you? My son was a Heart-Element. He thought the same thing at first.”

This made Li Huowang unconsciously lean closer, his voice trembling slightly as he asked, “Your son is also a modern person? He crossed over too?”

His heart was pounding wildly. The realization that there might be someone like him in this bizarre, dangerous world filled him with an immense excitement.

No matter who they were, man or woman, as long as they came from the same world, he wouldn’t be alone anymore.

The crushing pressure he felt could finally be shared with someone.

Most importantly, he couldn’t remember how he got to this world. Maybe they did. Maybe, through them, he could find a way back to his original world!

But Reverend Jingxin didn’t answer right away. Instead, she wiped the yellow paste from the corner of her mouth and “looked” at the young man with a smile.

“No, he wasn’t. He was born from my belly, that’s for sure. And, young man, ‘Zhuangzi dreamed of a butterfly, the butterfly dreamed of Zhuangzi.’ Don’t be so sure about anything, including everything in your head.”

“What do you mean?” Li Huowang found himself unable to understand what she was trying to say.

“Why are you so certain you belong to that world over there? Why couldn’t you be someone from this world, and all those dazzling, strange great worlds are just fakes, everything in them conjured up by your own delusions?”

“Impossible! Absolutely impossible!! I know what I saw in Qingfeng Temple was an illusion, but I definitely lived in the real world before! I crossed over from there!! I’m an isekai! I’m not some lunatic who imagined another world!!!”

Li Huowang’s eyes were bloodshot. His hands trembled as he clenched his fists, as if she had touched an open wound. He roared his rebuttal at the old nun.

Jingxin didn’t argue. She tilted her head slightly, as if reminiscing.

“Hehehe. My son said the same thing back then. Just like you, sometimes he was clear, sometimes fuzzy, babbling nonsense to himself.”

“But I, as his mother, knew clearly. He came out of my belly and never left my side. He had never been to any other great world. He made it all up.”

These words hit Li Huowang like a freezing spell. He stood frozen, his breathing becoming erratic.

Yang Na, his mother, the hospital, the school… Everything from his past flashed through his mind. None of it existed? Could it be that even that world didn’t exist? That there had never been a modern world at all?

In that instant, everything around Li Huowang felt unreal and illusory. “What is real? What is fake?!”

“I didn’t cross over? I’m from here? There was never a modern world? Everything in my head about reality was just a delusion? No, that’s not right. Something is wrong somewhere!”

Li Huowang’s emotions began to spiral out of control. His breathing grew faster, his expression twisting into a snarl.

His very self-perception had been severely shaken. He needed a release, a target for the mountain of pressure in his heart.

Suddenly, his gaze sharpened. He glared viciously at Reverend Jingxin.

Before he could speak, the fat woman raised a greasy finger, pointed at him, and mimicked his voice with a shrill tone.

“No! You’re lying~! You have ulterior motives~! Everything you say is fake! You want to hurt me, don’t you~! It won’t be that easy!!”

After saying this, she looked at Li Huowang, frozen in place, and her fat, bloated face broke back into a kind smile.

“Hehehe. You were about to say that to me just now, weren’t you? My son said the same thing to me. Ah, thinking about it now, it feels like yesterday. How nostalgic.”

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Reading Guide Decoding

The Identity Crisis Chapter

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

The Heart-Element (心素, xinsu): This is the chapter that redefines a core term. It’s not a special physique like a “spiritual root” in standard xianxia. The term literally means “Heart/Essence,” but as Jingxin explains, it’s a condition that causes its owner to perceive false realities as their real home. The horror here is that it’s not a gift; it’s a congenital flaw in one’s connection to objective reality. When Li Huowang asks if he is from another world, Jingxin’s reply—that her son was born here and thought the same thing—is the key. It reframes his “isekai origin” story as a core symptom of his disease. This is a masterstroke of the novel, using a common web novel trope (transmigration) and making it the literal pathology of the protagonist.
Zhuangzi Dreaming of a Butterfly (庄周梦蝶): Jingxin references this classic Daoist parable, which is central to understanding the chapter’s thematic core. This is a famous story from the ancient philosopher Zhuangzi: he once dreamed he was a butterfly, fluttering about happily. When he woke up, he wasn’t sure if he was a man who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming of being a man. The parable is used to question the very nature of reality and identity. Here, Jingxin isn’t offering philosophy; she’s weaponizing it. She uses this ancient wisdom to dismantle Li Huowang’s most fundamental pillar of identity. It’s a beautiful and terrifying application of classical thought to modern horror.
The Institution of the Nunnery: This chapter marks our first deep look at a Buddhist nunnery in the Dao-Twisted World. Unlike the polished, bureaucratic evil of Zhengde Temple, Anci Nunnery is filthy, vulgar, and run by a woman who eats with her hands and speaks with a mother’s bluntness. This is a different flavor of corruption—not high ritual, but base, animalistic decay. The spiritual has been replaced by the stomach.

Anci Nunnery

A filthy, rundown Buddhist nunnery in the mountains. Its inhabitants are a symbol of vulgar, instinctual corruption, a stark contrast to the more polished evil of other temples.

Chapter Overview

Buckle up, fellow travelers, because this chapter is a straight shot of existential poison to the brain. Li Huowang finally gets an answer to the question that’s been haunting him—what is a Heart-Element?—and the answer is devastating. It’s not a rare cultivation physique. It’s a diagnosis of reality sickness. Reverend Jingxin, the blind and unsettlingly omniscient old nun, drops a truth bomb that doesn’t just shake his world; it tries to delete it. Was his entire life in the modern world a delusion? Is he just another madman imagining things? This chapter is less a plot advancement and more a psychological vivisection, where every comforting lie Li Huowang told himself is flayed open and laid to rot under the sun.

Key Plot Points

The Expected Fate: Reverend Jingxin bluntly states that for a Heart-Element like Li Huowang, going insane is the best possible outcome, immediately confirming his worst fears.
Shared Horror: Li Huowang questions her about using Black Tai Sui, and she confirms her own son used it, but with a gruesome warning about the parasite taking over the host’s body from the inside.
The Heart of the Matter: Li Huowang directly asks for a definition of “Heart-Element,” bracing for the worst.
The Foundational Crack: Instead of an explanation, Jingxin throws the question back at him: Where do you think you came from? She then devastates him by correctly guessing that he believes he’s from another world.
A Cruel Connection: The brief, manic hope that he has found a fellow “isekai” traveler is shattered when Jingxin reveals her son was not a crosser, but a native who had the exact same delusion.
The Ultimate Gaslight: The nun delivers the philosophical coup de grâce: why is he so sure his “modern world” memories aren’t just a vivid hallucination? Wasn’t it just as likely that the other world was the fake one?
Karate Kid Style Pointing: As Li Huowang’s identity fractures and he prepares to attack, the old nun perfectly predicts and mimics his next words, proving she has seen this exact breakdown before in her own son, leaving him powerless and mute.

Reading Guide

This is a thinker’s chapter, not a fighter’s. If you came here for action, you’ll be disappointed, but if you came for the psychological demolition of a protagonist, you’re in for a treat. Read this chapter slowly. Pay close attention to the rhythm of Li Huowang’s mental collapse. Notice how the author uses the dialogue to mirror a therapy session gone horribly wrong, where the therapist has already seen the patient’s exact breakdown in someone else. The most chilling part isn’t the gross description of Black Tai Sui, but the casual way Jingxin predicts his rage. This is a masterclass in building despair not through monsters, but through the simple, terrifying weight of another person’s certainty.

Prepare yourself for a hit to the core of the novel’s mystery. This chapter doesn’t give Li Huowang a new power or a new enemy; it takes away his certainty about his own existence. After this, the distance between the “real world” and the “Dao-Twisted World” has never felt smaller, and the ground beneath our protagonist has never felt more like quicksand.