Bewilderment

1,162 words

Li Huowang ran down the middle of the main road, gritting his teeth as he desperately chased the red ahead of him.

As he gave chase, he could sense Layue Shiba constantly shifting positions, sometimes becoming someone else’s red hat, sometimes turning into a roadside shop sign. But no matter how it changed, Li Huowang clung to it stubbornly. He had finally found an opportunity, and he wouldn’t give up so easily. Whether he could get Layue Shiba’s eyes might determine whether he could rid himself of Danyangzi.

He also noticed something strange about Layue Shiba: this thing seemed to have no eyelids. It couldn’t even stop itself from looking at something. Anything within its field of vision would be passively observed by it.

“That’s weird. What does it actually look like back in the real world?” Li Huowang wondered as he ran.

His persistence finally paid off. He was getting closer and closer to Layue Shiba. Five meters. Three meters. One meter!

Li Huowang lunged forward, raising his right hand. He pushed off the ground, ready to grab at that patch of red.

But just as he was about to catch it, a hand reached out from behind and grabbed his wrist.

“Li… Li Huowang? You’re Li Huowang from Class Four, Grade Two, right?”

Li Huowang glared viciously at the person who had ruined his chance. It was a bald, middle-aged man around fifty.

The man adjusted his square-rimmed glasses and looked at the teenager in front of him. “Don’t you remember? I’m your homeroom teacher. Where are your shoes?”

Li Huowang stared at the familiar face, momentarily stunned. He spoke without thinking. “Teacher Tong?”

“I remember your mother applied for a leave of absence for you on medical grounds. Why are you running around in your hospital gown? Are you okay?”

Teacher Tong spoke with concern, reaching out to pull out the collar that Li Huowang had tucked into his clothes.

Looking at this teacher who had helped him so much in school, a flicker of struggle appeared in Li Huowang’s eyes.

But he quickly calmed down. He shook off Teacher Tong’s hand and sprinted after the distant red.

“Illusions!! It’s all illusions!! You can’t fool me! It’s all fake!!”

Watching Li Huowang’s retreating figure, Teacher Tong’s face showed worry. He pulled out his phone.

“Hello? Is this Li Huowang’s mother? I’m his sophomore-year math teacher. Ah, yes, hello, hello. I saw your son on Lian Road. He’s not wearing any shoes.”

“No, I’m absolutely sure. It’s him. I’ve been teaching for so many years, I wouldn’t mistake one of my students. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.”

Li Huowang, his eyes bloodshot, frantically looked left and right, searching for any trace of Layue Shiba. “Damn it! Where did it go?”

The distant sound of police sirens didn’t affect him at all. He knew it was all fake.

In his frantic search, Li Huowang suddenly stopped in front of a gate.

He looked at the child inside, and a terrifyingly eerie smile spread across his face. “Haha! Found you!”

The toy-like iron fence was no match for Li Huowang. He climbed over it in a few swift moves.

He punched a preschool teacher who rushed at him, knocking her down, and then charged toward the children. Screams and cries erupted immediately.

But Li Huowang ignored everyone else. Like an eagle snatching a chick, he grabbed a little girl who looked to be about five or six years old, dressed in a panda costume, and lifted her up. He glared fiercely at the pair of red cherry hair clips pinned to her hair.

The little girl was clearly terrified. Tears welled in her eyes as she spoke timidly, “Uncle, I’m scared.”

“Still trying to fool me? You can’t trick me!” Li Huowang roared.

Just then, the sound of police sirens rapidly approached. Tires screeched against the asphalt. “Stop! Police! Hands in the air!”

Li Huowang instinctively turned his head. He saw two police cars, and several officers crouched in front of them, pistols aimed at him.

Li Huowang looked at the Layue Shiba in his hand, then back at the police. A cold sneer appeared on his face. “You think you can trick me with this? Fake!! It’s all fake!!”

The little girl in his arms was crying loudly, terrified.

Just as Li Huowang was about to finish off Layue Shiba, a figure suddenly pushed through the crowd of onlookers. She spread her arms open and resolutely stepped in front of the guns.

“Don’t shoot! Please, don’t shoot! That’s my son! He… he’s always been a good boy! It’s because he’s sick that he’s like this! Let me talk to him, okay? He’ll listen to me. I know he will. He’s a good, filial child.”

Hearing that familiar voice, Li Huowang froze again. He watched as the figure with graying hair slowly turned around. It was his mother, Sun Xiaoqin. But she looked haggard, aged by several years.

Seeing her son behind the iron fence, Sun Xiaoqin tried her best to force a smile, but she failed.

Hot tears welled in her eyes for a moment, then streamed down her cheeks. “My good boy, please listen to your mother. Put the little girl down, okay? Let’s go home. You can play video games for as many days as you want. I won’t stop you. I promise.”

Li Huowang stood there, his face twisted with conflicting emotions. He looked at his mother, who seemed so real, then at the Layue Shiba in his hand.

Sun Xiaoqin trembled as she slowly walked toward him. Li Huowang instinctively stepped back. His expression became agonized.

“No… No, that’s not right. It’s all fake. All of it! Layue Shiba made it all up! The other world is the real one! I can’t let the illusion control me again!”

Li Huowang tried desperately to convince himself, but the hand that should have struck down remained motionless.

His breathing grew rapid. His pupils dilated and contracted erratically.

When Sun Xiaoqin reached the kindergarten fence, she pressed her body against it and slowly slid to her knees.

“Son, your mother is begging you on her knees, okay? I already sold our house to pay for your treatment. We really don’t have any money left to pay for damages.”

That calm, simple statement shattered Li Huowang completely. His face contorted in unbearable anguish as he knelt, still holding the little girl in his arms. Two streams of tears flowed down his face.

“Mom!!!”

Li Huowang’s forehead bulged with veins. His mouth opened wide in a silent, soundless howl. Saliva dripped from the corner of his lips, mixing with his tears, falling onto the cartoon-patterned floor of the kindergarten.

He looked at his mother in the distance, took a deep breath, and poured out all the struggle and bewilderment inside him to the one person he trusted most in his heart.

“Mom!! I can’t tell!!! I really can’t tell them apart anymore!!!”

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Reading Guide Decoding

A Mother’s Knees, a Son’s Scream: The Heart of Bewilderment

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

Layue Shiba Refresher: The entity’s name literally means “The Eighteenth Day of the Twelfth Lunar Month,” tying it to the Chinese lunar calendar as a time-bound curse or pestilence spirit. In folk tradition, certain evil spirits are tied to specific calendar dates and lose power or change form outside those windows. The red motif—cherry hair clips, hats, store signs—is a classic folk-horror trick: it weaponizes a lucky/protective color (red wards off evil in mainstream Han culture) by making it the signature of evil, creating an ominous dissonance.

The “Bewilderment” Thesis: The chapter’s title, “Bewilderment,” is not just a sad feeling—it’s a metaphysical state in this universe. The Dao-Twisted World runs on 迷惘 (mí wǎng), a term that means disorientation but also connotes being lost in a fog, unable to tell path from pitfall. Unlike generic “madness,” bewilderment in this context is a cognitive trap: Li Huowang is not insane in the sense of losing logic; he is over-logical, applying hyper-rational doubt to everything, including the people who love him. In classical Chinese philosophy, “迷” is often the opposite of “觉” (awakening)—which makes his mother’s appearance a kind of tragic Bodhisattva move: she’s not fighting the monster; she’s trying to wake him up.

Chapter Overview

Holy crap, fellow Daoists. Chapter 95 is not a chapter about fighting a monster. It is a chapter about fighting your own brain while your brain shouts “TRICKED YA!” at you from inside a kindergarten. Li Huowang is locked in a desperate chase with Layue Shiba in the modern world, but every time he gets close, reality hits him with a sucker-punch: his homeroom teacher, police cars, and finally—his mother kneeling on the pavement. The chapter doesn’t just show him losing his grip; it shows him clawing for purchase while the line between “real” and “illusion” gets flayed open. And that final scream? Buckle up, because it’s going to stick with you.

Key Plot Points

Chasing the Red: Li Huowang chases Layue Shiba through the streets, noting that the entity has no eyelids—it is forced to “see” everything passively, which gives him a tactical edge (and some excellent folk-horror food for thought). The chase moves from public streets into a kindergarten.
The Teacher Interrupts: His high school homeroom teacher stops him mid-lunge. Li Huowang initially hesitates but then violently dismisses the encounter as “illusion”—the first crack in his certainty.
Pursuit Into the Kindergarten: Li Huowang scales a fence, knocks down a teacher, and grabs a little girl by her hair clips, which he identifies as Layue Shiba. His voice is cold and predatory, calling her out as a disguise.
Police Intervention: Cops swarm in with guns drawn. Li Huowang sneers at them, completely convinced this is part of the ruse. The chapter leans hard into his psychological isolation.
The Mother's Entrance: Sun Xiaoqin pushes through the crowd and kneels in front of the guns, begging the police not to shoot. She pleads with her son, telling him she sold the house and has nowhere left to turn. This is the breaking point.
The Collapse: Li Huowang’s voice breaks entirely. He drops to his knees, clutching the child, and screams a confession that cuts to the bone: “Mom!! I can’t tell!!! I really can’t tell them apart anymore!!!”

Reading Guide

This chapter is a therapy-read nightmare. If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to have your brain gaslight itself in real time, this is it. Li Huowang is not a badass here; he is a raw, weeping, knee-buckled person whose only remaining anchor is his mother—and even she might be “fake.” Pay close attention to the structure: every time he almost reaches certainty, someone real shows up. The chapter weaponizes mundane fragility (a homeroom teacher, police sirens, a mom kneeling) against his fantasy logic. The horror is that he can’t tell if his mom is real, and neither can we. That’s the Dao-Twisted World’s deepest trick: it doesn’t show you fake things; it shows you real things that feel fake, and then watches you break trying to decide.