Why can’t Li Huowang cut his hallucinations with the sword?

Because they are not separate beings—they are projections of his own fractured mind. He cannot injure them any more than he can injure his own shadow.

Is the “modern world” scene really real?

In the novel’s structure, the “real world” (hospital, Yang Na, the bridge underpass) is a hallucination layer. But the horror is that Li Huowang can never confirm which layer is real; both cause him equal pain.

Why does Li Huowang laugh at the end?

He has exhausted all resistance. The label “madman” is no longer an insult—it is the only identity that fits. The laugh is the sound of surrender.

Madman

1,281 words

Chapter 312: Madman

Li Huowang emerged from Niuxin Village and trudged down the muddy path in silence.

The paper clothes and paper skin on his body, soaked through by the rain, gradually softened and fell away onto the ground.

Beneath the cold downpour, Li Huowang’s charred skin, mixed with fresh new flesh buds, was slowly exposed.

Drops of rain fell onto the tender new buds. At this moment, Li Huowang understood what it meant to be cut by a thousand knives, yet he made no effort to avoid it. He simply endured it silently in the rain.

Gradually, the rain lessened. The sky began to lighten. Li Huowang stopped at a dilapidated temple. He hadn’t slept in days and nights, and he was truly exhausted.

He looked up at the broken plaque—only half of it remained—then at the moss-covered couplets on either side. Though the characters had faded a great deal, with careful scrutiny they could still be made out.

The upper line read: Human effort decides all; do not say everything is fate.

The lower line read: The mind creates the circumstance; take a step back, and naturally there is room.

Li Huowang walked inside without a word. The temple was small. There was only a clay statue—half of its body gone—and everything else had been removed. The roof was leaking; the puddles on the floor were no fewer than those outside.

Soaked through, he stood in the only corner that wasn’t leaking, staring blankly at the rain falling through the holes in the roof.

“See? Told you so. All alone now, aren’t you? I warned you to listen to me, but no—the young never heed the old man’s words.” Red Zhong circled around Li Huowang, his face full of schadenfreude.

The Monk walked over, his eyebrows drooping in sympathy. “Taoist, don’t take it too hard either. It’s not your fault. You didn’t want to kill them. In the future, do more good deeds, recite more Amituofo, and the Buddha won’t blame you.”

Li Huowang didn’t process what his two hallucinations were saying. His mind was entirely filled with the image of himself on the other side of the hallucination, reduced to a beggar, and the icy, cold look Bai Lingmiao had given him yesterday.

His own family didn’t want him. And he had caused Bai Lingmiao to lose her family. He was a curse—a disaster who brought misfortune to anyone he touched.

With a clang, the Purple-Tasseled Sword, radiating waves of killing intent, was drawn. Li Huowang studied his partial reflection on the blade’s cold, gleaming surface.

As he thought, a question rose in his mind. What is the point of living? Since living brings me so much pain, what the hell am I even holding on for?

In an instant, the surroundings fell silent. Jin Shan Zhao, Peng Longteng, the Monk, and Red Zhong separated into four directions, encircling Li Huowang.

“Hey, hey, hey, what are you doing, Li boy? Calm down!” Red Zhong hurried over in a panic, trying to persuade him.

“Yeah, Taoist, what are you doing? If you think life isn’t worth living, you can become a monk! Why do you have to go and die?” the Monk added.

Silent Peng Longteng stirred. She was clad in armor, and her body language formed a gesture of contempt and disdain.

Jin Shan Zhao, who had been silent and open-mouthed, finally closed his mouth. He stared at Li Huowang’s profile with a look of concern.

Li Huowang paid them no heed. He just studied the sword in his hand, pondering seriously. He had never examined his own life with such sober intensity before.

“Oh, come on! It’s just a woman. A real man need never worry about finding a wife. Sure, you lost them, but you still have us!” Red Zhong sidled up, grinning cheekily, and poked his own chest with his finger.

Hearing this, Li Huowang’s stiff expression twisted into a savage grimace. Shhh! The sharp longsword sliced through Red Zhong’s body, cleaving the clay statue behind him in two.

Cold light danced in the rain. Nearly insane, Li Huowang struck again and again, hacking at the faceless, eyeless Red Zhong, at the headless Peng Longteng, at the legless Jin Shan Zhao, and at the Monk who had no evil in him.

But no matter how sharp the Purple-Tasseled Sword was, no matter how much force Li Huowang put into his swings, he could not harm them in the slightest.

“YOU!! IT’S ALL BECAUSE OF YOU!! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU? WHY DO YOU ALWAYS FOLLOW ME?!” Li Huowang’s enraged voice exploded inside the ruined temple.

“WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE ME WHO’S A HEART-ELEMENT? WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE ME WHO’S SICK? WHY ME? WHAT DID I DO WRONG? WHY NOT SOMEONE ELSE? I JUST WANT TO LIVE IN PEACE! WHY IS THAT SO HARD?!”

After swinging again and again, Li Huowang staggered and fell. The sword flew several meters away.

He lay on the ground, no longer moving. He was tired. Truly, deeply tired.

But even though he was already very sleepy, he couldn’t fall asleep. His mind kept throbbing and pulsing.

Red Zhong came closer, crouching down to comfort him. “It’s okay. From now on, just listen to me. I can trick as many women as you want.”

Li Huowang no longer had any violent reaction to this. He just lay silently on the ground, not blinking once.

Suddenly, the surroundings began to twist and shift rapidly. By the time Li Huowang came back to his senses, he found himself lying under a cold, damp bridge.

Looking at everything around him, Li Huowang opened his mouth in a silent, bitter laugh. Gradually, the sound came out. “Heh. Heh…”

As he laughed, he suddenly realized he was thirsty. Desperately thirsty. Li Huowang stood up and walked toward the water’s edge.

Because of the rain, the water level had risen significantly. Li Huowang lay down directly, plunged his head into the water, and drank in great gulps.

After drinking his fill, he realized he was hungry again. He stood up, wiped his face with his hand, and walked out from under the bridge.

The rain had stopped and the sky had cleared. The air was very fresh. There were quite a few people on the crosswalk beside the road.

When the tattered, filthy Li Huowang emerged, it was as if his body had an invisible barrier. No one dared come within five meters of him.

“There’s that madman again. What are the city inspectors doing? Why don’t they deal with him?”

“Ssh! Don’t let him hear you. That madman has sharp ears.”

“He’s pitiful too. Sigh.”

Li Huowang paid no attention to their reactions. He searched through the streets.

Finally, he stopped beside a trash can. He reached out, opened the green lid, lowered his head, and focused on finding something to eat.

People these days were generally wasteful with food. Li Huowang quickly found two half-finished cups of milk tea and a plain bun that had been bitten into once.

Click! A flash went off. A man with a cigarette dangling from his mouth lowered his phone, his thumb tapping out a line for his朋友圈. “Look! A new version of ‘Homeless Brother Sharp’!”

After Li Huowang found a few more sticks of cold barbecue skewers, he headed back toward the bridge, eating as he walked.

Just then, a few teenagers ran over. They stood at a distance, laughing and pointing. Suddenly, a small stone flew over and hit Li Huowang. “Hahaha! Madman! Hey, wanna smoke?”

Li Huowang suddenly grinned and laughed out loud. “HAHAHA! That’s right! I’m mad! I’m a madman! HAHAHA!!”

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Reading Guide Decoding

The Hardest Chapter: When Li Huowang Gives Up

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

This chapter leans heavily on the condition of the heart-element (xinsu) as an existential trap. Li Huowang’s question, “Why does it have to be me?” is not a typical protagonist’s grievance but a man realizing his own ontology is a cosmic error. The novel’s core horror—that a Heart-Element makes belief into reality—means that his madness is not a side effect; it is the function. His hallucinations (Red Zhong, the Monk, Peng Longteng, Jin Shan Zhao) are persistent, unkillable constructs that mirror his own fractured self: trickery, guilt, violence, and mute observation.

The temple couplet, “Human effort decides all; the mind creates the circumstance,” is a classical piece of Chinese folk-wisdom that typically encourages self-reliance. In this context, it becomes a sick joke: Li Huowang’s “effort” destroyed a family, and his “mind” creates a reality that tortures him. The rotting, half-swallowed characters on the wall echo the story’s central theme—that any comforting philosophy is just a pretty mask on a skull.

The transition to homelessness in the “modern world” hallucination is a grim innovation: the novel has long maintained a duality between a supernatural “Dao-Twisted World” and a psychiatric “Modern Reality.” Here, the two fuse into a third state—a gutter-level existence where Li Huowang’s identity is reduced to “madman” by a camera-wielding public. The stone thrown by the boy is the final external confirmation of what he has internalized: he is not a tragic hero; he is a spectacle to be avoided and mocked.

Chinese temple couplet

A pair of parallel poetic lines flanking a temple door, meant to offer wisdom or blessings. The couplet here (“Human effort decides all; the mind creates the circumstance”) is a classical proverb on self-reliance, now reading as cruel irony.

Chapter Overview

This is the chapter where the last of Li Huowang’s hope is surgically removed, and the wound is left open to the rain. After the massacre at Niuxin Village—where he killed Bai Lingmiao’s entire clan—our walking catastrophe of a protagonist finally stops running. He trudges through mud, endures living rainwater on fresh scar tissue like a walking acupuncture session from hell, and holes up in a temple whose optimistic couplet about fate is already half-eaten by moss. The chapter then folds inward: Li Huowang has a four-on-one intervention with his hallucinations (Red Zhong, the Monk, Peng Longteng, and Jin Shan Zhao), nearly suicides with the Purple-Tasseled Sword, and then slides into a sensory-switch where his “real world” body is now a homeless man eating out of trash cans. By the end, a kid throws a rock at him, calls him a madman, and Li Huowang laughs—loudly, freely, and absolutely broken. This is the sound of a man accepting the label the world gave him, because fighting it hurt too much.

Key Plot Points

Silent Walk from Niuxin Village: Li Huowang’s paper clothes and new skin dissolve in the rain, exposing his charred flesh and new buds—a physical mirror of his stripped-bare emotional state.
The Temple Couplet: Two lines about human effort and the mind creating circumstance, which read less like wisdom and more like a bitter joke against the man who just butchered an entire family.
The Hallucination Confrontation: Red Zhong gloats, the Monk offers hollow Buddhist platitudes, Peng Longteng scoffs, and Jin Shan Zhao silently watches. Li Huowang finally snaps at them—demanding to know what they are and why they follow him—but his sword passes through them harmlessly.
Failed Suicide by Sword: He collapses mid-outburst, the weapon skidding away. He is too exhausted even to die.
Reality-Switch to Homelessness: The temple dissolves into a bridge underpass. Li Huowang is now a vagrant, drinking river water and scavenging half-eaten food from a public trash can.
Final Laugh: A stranger takes a photo for social media. A child throws a stone. Li Huowang laughs, declares himself a “madman,” and the chapter closes on his accepting grin.

Reading Guide

Get ready to feel uncomfortable, fellow Daoists, because this chapter doesn’t give you a cool power-up or a dramatic vow of vengeance. It gives you a man eating cold barbecue out of a trash can. Li Huowang is past bargaining, past rage, and sliding straight into the “depression” phase of grief, with the volume turned up to eleven and the dignity turned down to zero. If you’ve been reading for the catharsis of him fighting back—this is the chapter where he first stops fighting entirely and just… lets the rain hit him.

Pay close attention to the way his hallucinations don’t react when he swings the sword. They aren’t scared of him. They can’t be hurt by him. They’re stuck to him like a disease that has already won. And when the Monk tells him to “recite more Amituofo,” it’s not comforting—it’s a sign that even his own mind’s version of “mercy” is a shallow, useless script.

The final laugh is the one thing to watch for. It’s not a villain’s laugh. It’s the sound of a man who has finally stopped trying to convince anyone—including himself—that he’s sane. He accepts the label. And in that acceptance, there is a terrifying kind of freedom. The chapter ends there, with nothing resolved, and that is exactly the point.

Quick Q&A

Lore recap (TL;DR) drawn from this chapter's Cultural / Xianxia Notes — same text as the FAQ structured data on this page.

Why can’t Li Huowang cut his hallucinations with the sword?: Because they are not separate beings—they are projections of his own fractured mind. He cannot injure them any more than he can injure his own shadow.
Is the “modern world” scene really real?: In the novel’s structure, the “real world” (hospital, Yang Na, the bridge underpass) is a hallucination layer. But the horror is that Li Huowang can never confirm which layer is real; both cause him equal pain.
Why does Li Huowang laugh at the end?: He has exhausted all resistance. The label “madman” is no longer an insult—it is the only identity that fits. The laugh is the sound of surrender.