Another Possibility

“Where’s my head?”

Hearing Li Huowang’s question, Li Sui thought he was asking her and quickly replied, “Dad, I know. It fell on the ground back in the city. Should we go back and get it?”

Li Sui’s words seemed to drain the last trace of life from Li Huowang. His body went limp, and he pitched forward onto the ground.

“Dad? Dad, what’s wrong?” Li Sui nudged Li Huowang’s corpse worriedly with her tentacles, but got no response. She couldn’t understand why her dad had stopped moving.

Was it because he didn’t have a head? But he hadn’t had a head before either, and he’d run a long way like that. It shouldn’t be because of the head.

Just then, Li Sui noticed that the little toy her dad had given her was moving.

The moment she took out the little leather man with her tentacle, it grew in the wind, quickly reaching the height of a person. Its face was Li Huowang’s face, but its body was deflated, nothing but a thin layer of skin.

This flat, weightless Li Huowang instinctively crouched down, pressed his mouth to the shadow beside his own corpse, and began sucking hard.

As the shadow was sucked into his belly, the leather skin expanded like it was being inflated. Before long, a naked Li Huowang with a head stood beside his own corpse.

Staring at the headless body on the ground, Li Huowang, having escaped death, let out a breath of lingering fear.

When his head had fallen off, he’d been blind. He hadn’t seen who took it. Ten to one, it was that resurrected jailer.

The Supervisory Heavenly Office really did have a backup plan. If he hadn’t had this artifact as insurance, he might have actually been done for.

“Next time I face the Office, I have to be extra, extra careful. Their methods are too bizarre and dangerous. If I get careless, they’ll kill me.”

As Li Huowang was thinking these things, everything around him trembled. He had just started to wonder if the Office was lying in ambush when his surroundings instantly turned a stark, blinding white.

Li Huowang, wearing two straitjackets, lay quietly on the hospital bed, staring blankly at the unlit white energy-saving bulb above his head. “Back again…”

He realized belatedly what had happened. He had survived by borrowing the skin to return his soul. But Li Sui was still inside his previous body’s belly. Without her to suppress the hallucinations, this false world had predictably reappeared.

“Li Sui… Li Sui…” Li Huowang called out vaguely, his mouth gagged. “Quick… get into my belly… help me get back.”

As he spoke, Li Huowang craned his neck back and opened his cloth-stuffed mouth as wide as he could.

The red-glowing camera in the upper left corner of the ward immediately swiveled, focusing on Li Huowang strapped to the bed.

Maybe because his mouth was blocked and he couldn’t speak clearly, Li Sui didn’t bring him back to reality.

“Li Sui! Don’t dawdle! Hurry up!” Seeing no response, Li Huowang grew anxious.

He had to remember: right now, his belly didn’t just lack Li Sui; it didn’t have the black spindle either. If anyone took notice at this moment, his identity as a Heart-Element would be exposed!

A clatter rang out as the ward door was pushed open.

When Sun Xiaoqin walked in carrying a lunchbox and saw Li Huowang staring intently at her, tears immediately began to well in her eyes.

“Son… son… are you awake? You’re finally awake, right?” Sun Xiaoqin rushed over, cupping Li Huowang’s face and examining him carefully.

When Sun Xiaoqin untied the cloth from his mouth, he was about to pretend to be crazy and muddle through. But seeing the face before him, so full of worry, the words stuck in his throat and wouldn’t come out.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Being able to look at people is a good sign. It means your condition is gradually improving. One day, you’ll get better. Here, eat. Eat first.” Sun Xiaoqin wiped her tears, picked up the lunchbox from the floor, and held it close to her chest.

The four-tiered lunchbox was opened layer by layer, revealing exactly one meat dish, one vegetable dish, one soup, and one serving of staple food.

Picking up the short-handled plastic spoon, she first scooped up half a spoonful of rice, dipped it in the egg drop soup, then picked up a piece of braised pork and brought it to Li Huowang’s lips.

Staring at the thing in front of him, which came from a world he didn’t know, Li Huowang opened his mouth and let the spoon enter.

“Good boy. My son is the best. Mom knows you always open your mouth to eat at this time. Compared to the other patients in this ward, my son is much easier to take care of.”

After swallowing what was in his mouth, Li Huowang spoke. “Mom, how did you get in?”

Hearing Li Huowang finally respond, Sun Xiaoqin instantly bit her lower lip hard. But she was afraid of scaring him back into his shell, so she suppressed her excitement and said, “This place—it’s called a hospital, but it’s really a prison. The food is terrible. I was worried you wouldn’t eat well, so I came to be your caregiver.”

“Originally… originally it wasn’t allowed by the rules, but the warden is a pretty reasonable guy. The moment I said my son is at his best when I’m around, he agreed right away. There are still good people in this world.”

Li Huowang nodded silently and opened his mouth again to eat the food. But he had only chewed a few times when he saw Sun Xiaoqin acting strangely, glancing around left and right.

She took a small handful of rice from the main dish, walked over to the hole with the fine mesh covering, and used the grains to plug up the sound pickup area.

Then Sun Xiaoqin sat back down by the bed and, in the lowest possible voice, whispered into Li Huowang’s ear. “Son, if you ever wake up again and I’m not by your side, and anyone asks you about the gold, you tell them it was your grandmother’s heirloom dowry! You hear me!”

“If you absolutely can’t get out of it, just keep your mouth shut and don’t say anything! Don’t ever say you found that gold from under the covers! People nowadays are bad! Don’t you ever tell them!”

A helpless smile spread across Li Huowang’s face. “Mom, did you spend that gold?”

“What are you talking about, child! That was your grandmother’s heirloom dowry! We can’t touch it unless we absolutely have to!”

“Don’t worry. This place is public land. It doesn’t cost much. Your dad can still earn money.”

“Mom, I gave you that gold. You should… you should spend it. Don’t scrimp. Anyway, it’s all an illusion. I can get as much gold as I want…”

He stopped mid-sentence, frozen. Looking at his mother again, a terrifying, chilling question suddenly sprang into his mind.

In the past, he had always believed this world was false. His reasons were that he could bring gold and jade pendants over from the real world, and that many things that happened here were too coincidental and abrupt.

But if what Zhuge Yuan had said was correct—that a Heart-Element really could turn falsehood into truth, create something from nothing—then was it possible that those gold pieces and those sudden events had happened because he had unconsciously used his Heart-Element ability to alter them?

Or, to put it another way, was it possible that this real world was also… real?