Why does Li Huowang trust Yi Donglai but not the police?

Yi Donglai is the doctor who treated him before—he represents the only institutional figure who might believe his story, whereas the police would likely write him off as a delusional patient.

Why does Li Huowang block Yi Donglai after pleading for help?

Because he knows Yi will try to physically hold him inside the hospital. He only needed Yi to deliver the warning to his family; the rest of the fight he intends to handle alone.

How is this not just a generic escape scene?

The escape is psychologically specific: Li Huowang weaponizes the image of a “crazy patient” against his captor, turning the very tools of psychiatric control—a mask, a gown, antipsychotics—into instruments of reversal. It’s a commentary on whose reality gets to be believed.

Intelligence

1,075 words

Li Huowang stood over Wu Cheng, who was on his knees, clutching his face and moaning through the pain. He picked up a fountain pen and held it in front of the man’s eyes. “Now tell me. Where does the man named Xu Shou live?”

Wu Cheng wasn’t the key. Xu Shou was. If he couldn’t deal with that man, the trouble around him would only keep piling up. Only when Xu Shou was gone would Yang Na be safe. Even if he himself had to rot in a cell for the rest of his life, he would never let anyone lay a hand on the people he cared about.

Wu Cheng just knelt there, groaning.

“Fine. I don’t know hypnosis. So let me show you another use for this pen.”

Li Huowang kicked him flat, straddled his chest, and drove the nib of the pen straight into Wu Cheng’s nostril. He pressed down on the back end and, as Wu Cheng watched in horror, began pushing it slowly deeper.

Faced with that kind of threat, Wu Cheng broke instantly. “He’s usually on a white yacht at Beihai New Port!!”

“Why does he live on a boat? Does he have any other safe houses?” Li Huowang’s hand kept moving. Bloody fluid was already starting to seep from Wu Cheng’s nose.

“Because he knows how dangerous this thing has gotten! He’s planning to sail off the moment things go south, so he only lives on the boat! As for his overseas holdings, I really don’t know!”

Li Huowang stopped. He slowly pulled the pen, now soaked in nasal blood, back out of Wu Cheng’s nostril.

He let go of the man and picked up the small hacksaw again, quickly cutting through his own handcuffs and leg shackles.

As Wu Cheng watched the saw throw sparks against the metal, the pain and fear in his eyes faded, replaced by excitement. “It’s real! You can really make things appear!!”

Li Huowang glanced at him and kept working. “Hah. So you didn’t actually believe me before. Don’t move. I don’t want to put this saw across your neck.”

He finished cutting off his restraints, then stripped off his blue-and-white-striped hospital gown. “Take off your clothes!”

Wu Cheng froze at the order, but with a clearly dangerous mental patient holding a weapon, he had no choice.

Moments later, they had swapped clothes. Li Huowang wore the white doctor’s coat, and Wu Cheng was in the bloodstained striped gown.

Under Li Huowang’s threats, Wu Cheng obediently put the iron mask back over his own mouth and slipped into the torn restraint gown. Their positions were completely reversed.

Li Huowang pulled Wu Cheng’s phone out of the white coat pocket. “What’s the unlock pattern?”

“Z.”

He slid the screen open, found Yi Donglai’s number in the messages, and pressed dial. This time, he didn’t use his own thumb; he pressed Wu Cheng’s finger to the sensor. The phone didn’t shock him. It rang.

As the dial tone sounded, Li Huowang paced anxiously around the ward. “Hello, Dr. Yi? It’s me!”

There was a pause on the other end. “Hm? Li Huowang? Why are you calling from Junior Wu’s personal phone? Where is Wu Cheng?”

Li Huowang shot a glance at the man lying on the floor. “Dr. Yi, this is urgent, so I’ll make it quick. Wu Cheng is in cahoots with Wang Wei! And there are others behind them!”

He quickly laid out the whole chain of events. Yi Donglai fell silent for a moment, then said, “Huowang. You haven’t forgotten to take your medication these past few days, have you?”

“Why won’t you believe me either? You were the one who treated me! Don’t you trust your own work? I’m not crazy!”

“All right, all right. Stay put at Kangning Hospital. I’ll have someone transfer you back to the White Tower Sector right now.”

“No! It’s too late! That man already has his eye on me. If I go back to the psych ward, I’ll be a sitting duck! I have to solve this problem at the root!”

Yi Donglai’s voice tightened, as if he already knew what Li Huowang was planning. “Li Huowang, don’t go anywhere. Stay right there, do you hear me? If what you’re saying is true, we can call the police!”

“There’s no time! They’re threatening my family! I don’t know what else he’s capable of! Dr. Yi, please—call my parents and Yang Na. Tell them to hide immediately. Someone’s coming after them!”

“Li Huowang, I’m telling you—don’t go anywhere! Do you understand? You tell them yourself!”

“I can’t! They… they think I’m crazy,” Li Huowang’s voice dropped. “Dr. Yi, you’re the only one I can trust now. Please. Help me.”

He hung up. The phone rang again immediately—Yi Donglai calling back. Li Huowang rejected the call. It rang again. Finally, he blocked the number.

He turned back to Wu Cheng. After a few seconds of thought, he pulled a pill bottle from the white coat pocket and tipped a small handful into his palm. “Swallow these.”

Wu Cheng swallowed hard. “These psych meds work on you, but not on me.”

“What happens if you take them?”

“Tremors. Slowed thinking. Endocrine imbalance. Memory loss.”

“Good. That’s exactly what I need.” Li Huowang pried the iron mask open and shoved the pills into his mouth.

Wu Cheng’s movements soon turned sluggish. His face went slack. Drool ran from the corner of his mouth. He looked no different from any of the other patients.

Li Huowang glanced up at the darkened surveillance camera, picked up the hacksaw, and drew it across Wu Cheng’s skin. He cut only the surface—it bled profusely and looked horrific, but wasn’t fatal.

A moment later, the locked ward door was pushed open from inside. A doctor in a white coat with blood splattered across his face burst out. “Get the stretcher over here! The patient’s self-harmed! He’s in critical condition! He’s bleeding out!”

Hearing his shout, nurses and orderlies rushed over. When they got inside, they saw a patient lying in a blood-soaked restraint gown, his face bloodied and hidden behind an iron mask, the wounds on his body looking appallingly serious—like he was just about dead.

A dying patient was a disaster wherever you were. The staff swarmed in.

In the chaos of the emergency response, no one noticed that the doctor who had come running out for help was already gone.

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Reading Guide Decoding

The Fountain Pen and the Iron Mask

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

A psychological ward in modern China isn’t just a medical setting—it’s a layered symbol. Mental illness carries heavy stigma, and a “mental patient’s word” is almost automatically discredited in both legal and interpersonal contexts. That is why Li Huowang’s plan is so precarious: every move he makes looks to outsiders like a psychotic break, not a justified response to a real conspiracy. The white coat he steals isn’t just a disguise—it’s the one uniform that society trusts, while the striped gown and iron mask he forces onto Wu Cheng are visual shorthand for “unreliable narrator.” When a doctor asks if you’ve “forgotten to take your medication,” the question itself becomes an accusation: reality is up for debate only if you’re the one holding the pills.

Chapter Overview

Li Huowang finally flips the board, but it’s not a flashy power move—it’s a desperate, bloody scramble to seize the initiative. He brutalizes Wu Cheng for intel, swaps identities with the man who was trying to drug him, and calls the one doctor he still trusts—only to hear that trust tested. This chapter is Li Huowang at his most cornered: calm when he needs to be cruel, clear-headed enough to lie to the entire hospital, and terrifyingly determined to take the fight directly to Xu Shou before his family pays the price. The question hanging over every breath: is this a breakout or a breakdown?

Key Plot Points

Li Huowang tortures Wu Cheng with a fountain pen to extract Xu Shou’s location: a white yacht at Beihai New Port. No other safe houses are known.
He saws off his own restraints, swaps clothes with Wu Cheng, forces him into the iron mask and restraint gown, and stuffs a handful of antipsychotics down the man’s throat to leave him docile and mute.
He calls Dr. Yi Donglai using Wu Cheng’s finger to unlock the phone, hoping to find an ally. Yi’s response sounds like he suspects Li Huowang has relapsed.
Li Huowang begs Yi to warn his parents and Yang Na to hide, since they think he’s just a paranoid psychotic. Yi is clearly unconvinced and urges him to stay put.
He hangs up, blocks Yi’s number, then stages a fake emergency—leaving a bloodied, masked Wu Cheng in the room while he slips out as the “doctor” who ran for help.

Reading Guide

Think of this chapter as an emergency lesson in why you never corner a man who’s already been broken by a world that won’t stop lying. Li Huowang is not a slick escape artist; he’s a man who has learned to weaponize the things everyone else takes for granted—a fountain pen as an interrogation tool, a doctor’s coat as camouflage, a psychotic’s mask as a jail he can lock someone else inside. The scene with Yi Donglai is especially painful: here is the one professional who helped him, and even he reads Li Huowang’s desperation as a sign of relapse. This is Dao Gui Yi Xian’s real horror—not the monsters, but the way the truth sounds exactly like madness when you’re the one shouting it. Keep your eyes on the white yacht. That’s where the next trap is waiting.

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 does Li Huowang trust Yi Donglai but not the police?: Yi Donglai is the doctor who treated him before—he represents the only institutional figure who might believe his story, whereas the police would likely write him off as a delusional patient.
Why does Li Huowang block Yi Donglai after pleading for help?: Because he knows Yi will try to physically hold him inside the hospital. He only needed Yi to deliver the warning to his family; the rest of the fight he intends to handle alone.
How is this not just a generic escape scene?: The escape is psychologically specific: Li Huowang weaponizes the image of a “crazy patient” against his captor, turning the very tools of psychiatric control—a mask, a gown, antipsychotics—into instruments of reversal. It’s a commentary on whose reality gets to be believed.