Did the events on the ship really happen?

According to Ji Zai's new power, no. Because he stole the "True and False" Heavenly Law from Yin-Yang Doumu, all of her previous plans—including the ship and its horrors—have been retroactively turned from true to false. However, the chapter’s entire point is that we can’t trust any single explanation.

Why does Xu Shou's identity as Abbess Jingxin's son matter?

It creates a horrifying symmetry and raises the stakes. It means the Heart-Element condition is inherited, linking Li Huowang's enemy in the Dao-Twisted World (Abbess Jingxin) directly to a Xinsu in the modern world who was trying to target him. It suggests a deeper, more personal web of fate.

What is "thought fragmentation" and why is it important?

It’s a clinical term for a severe breakdown in logical thinking. Dr. Wu uses it as a "rational" explanation for Li Huowang’s experiences. Its importance lies in the dilemma it creates: the supernatural horror of Ji Zai is suddenly, and terrifyingly, interchangeable with a psychological disorder.

Is Ji Zai really Li Huowang's future self?

The narrative strongly implies he is. He speaks in the past tense about their shared history and refers to Li Huowang as "me" of the past. This creates a tragic loop where Li Huowang is literally arguing with the monster he is destined to become.

The False and the True

1,310 words

Chapter 609: The False and the True

"Xu’er…"

Although a long time had passed, Li Huowang still remembered. That was the nickname that Abbess Jingxin of Anci Nunnery had given her son.

But he had never imagined that this so-called "Xu’er" was the Xu Shou standing before him now.

The abbess’s son was a Heart-Element. And his other side existed in the modern world as well. This information hit Li Huowang like a bomb. It meant so many things. So many things.

But all of that could wait. Right now, Li Huowang urgently needed to ask Xu Shou one question. Why.

"Xu Shou!! Why did you do this to me?! What do you want?!" Li Huowang’s eyes were wide as he shouted at the old man before him.

"Cough… cough…" Propped up by Li Huowang, Xu Shou coughed up blood. His unfocused eyes fixed on Li Huowang, filled with what seemed like deep reluctance. His bloodless lips parted slightly, and he began to speak.

"…"

Li Huowang suddenly lifted his head in fury, glaring at the helicopter descending toward them. "Get the hell away from me! You’re too loud! I can’t hear!"

Hurriedly, he shifted Xu Shou, pressing his left ear to the old man’s mouth, desperate to catch whatever he was trying to say.

Finally, as Xu Shou’s lips parted once more, a familiar, clear voice reached his ears.

"Huowang? Hey, Huowang, you’re up."

Startled, Li Huowang snapped back to reality. He looked around in confusion. Everything had changed, completely and utterly.

The ship. Xu Shou. The roaring helicopter. All of it was gone. The shift from frantic motion to utter stillness happened in an instant, leaving Li Huowang completely off-balance.

His wounds, his severed arm… everything seemed to have reverted to how it was several days ago.

Li Huowang found himself sitting on a plastic chair, surrounded by the other patients of Kangning Hospital in a circle. The atmosphere in the hall was calm and peaceful.

"Li Huowang? What’s wrong?" Wu Cheng, dressed in a doctor’s white coat and holding a tablet, asked his patient with some surprise.

Li Huowang slowly turned his head to look at the man before him. This man’s face should have been chewed beyond recognition by Li Huowang himself. But now it was completely unmarked.

Not only that, but Wu Cheng showed no trace of any other emotion toward the man who had once tortured him, as if none of it had ever happened. There was even a hint of concern on his square face.

"Is it a new development with your condition? Don’t worry, tell me. I’m a doctor. As long as you’re in this hospital, I’ll do everything I can to help you."

His expression twisted with conflict, Li Huowang stared at him for a long moment before finally speaking. "Dr. Wu… something just happened. I think."

Then, slowly, Li Huowang recounted everything that had just occurred.

After hearing him out, Wu Cheng crossed his arms and furrowed his brow. "It’s not unusual for you to have hallucinations. It was noted in your previous medical records. But thought fragmentation, which we usually only see in autism, combined with hallucinations… manifesting together in you. That’s… quite unique."

Autism? Thought fragmentation? Li Huowang looked around, confused, his gaze settling on the face of an autistic patient beside him.

The man, with a simple, honest face, smiled more and more broadly. Then, abruptly, the smile vanished, replaced by a look of utter bewilderment, just like Li Huowang a moment ago. Then the cycle began again.

Was all of that fake? Just my imagination? How… how is that possible! It was so real! How can a hallucination be this real!

Li Huowang knew this wasn’t over. He had to get to the bottom of it.

"Dr. Wu, can I borrow your phone? I want to call Dr. Yi."

"Alright. Hospital rules normally forbid using personal phones, but…" Wu Cheng unlocked his screen and naturally handed the phone to Li Huowang.

That gesture erased the last shred of doubt in Li Huowang’s heart. This Wu Cheng really had changed.

Li Huowang pulled out the slip of paper with Yi Donglai’s number that he’d kept in his pocket and began dialing quickly.

Brring… brring… brring… The dial tone rang out, one after another.

Accompanied by that sound, Li Huowang looked at the pond before him. He knew this pond. It was the pond in Niuxin Village.

The Doumu Heart-Pan, the ship, and the worms that had filled his stomach were all gone. He felt as if he had returned to the moment before the Grand Scholar of Daliang had laid his hands on him.

The ringing stopped. Li Huowang suddenly looked up and shouted at the sky. "Come out! Did you do all this?! What exactly have you done?!"

Then, a strange thing happened. Li Huowang saw his own reflection in the pond slowly step out of the water.

"What’s wrong? Isn’t this good? Everything is fine."

"Fine? What’s fine?! I’m asking you; what was that just now?! What happened to my time on that ship?! How did it just disappear?! How did I suddenly have ‘thought fragmentation’?!" Li Huowang yelled at him.

Ji Zai paused for a moment, thinking, then spoke again. "Because I have now taken the True and False Heavenly Law from Yin-Yang Doumu. Everything that Doumu had arranged has now become false."

A flash of irritation crossed Li Huowang’s face. "What the hell are you talking about?!"

"I told you before, Li Huowang. Once you set foot on this path, everything you care about might turn into an illusion. And what was once an illusion might become real. You didn’t think that was just a gimmick, did you?"

Hearing this, the irritation on Li Huowang’s face grew. "But those things really happened!! They were real! How can they just vanish into thin air?!"

"What is real? What is false? Just because you can see it and touch it, does that make it real? Is what you are experiencing now real? How can you prove it? Show me." Ji Zai’s words left Li Huowang speechless.

"Don’t dwell on what’s already past. It’s over. We should look forward." Ji Zai said, his body slowly leaning backward, merging back into the reflection in the water.

"Let me give you some good news. I now control three and a half Heavenly Laws. Bewilderment. Truth. Falsehood. And the Chaos of Ghostly Mountain."

"You don’t need to worry about the rest. I can take care of myself now."

"Stop making me guess! Explain it to me! Explain in detail what the hell is going on! I can’t figure it out anymore!"

But Ji Zai didn’t answer his question directly. "Good. Keep it that way."

"Go to hell!!" Feeling like he was being toyed with, Li Huowang lashed out with his spine-sword, sending a crack cutting through the pond’s surface, repeatedly slashing at his reflection.

Li Huowang had never hated his future self as much as he did at this moment.

But no matter how many times he cut, no matter how much water he displaced, the reflection in the water remained unharmed.

"I am becoming stronger. You are my Heart-Pan. You will share in that strength. You should be happy."

"I don’t want it!" Li Huowang swung his blade with all his might. A long fissure flew out, splitting the pond in two.

As the water on both sides crashed back together, Li Huowang shouted at him again. "We’re done here! Don’t bother me anymore! I’m sick of you! Get lost!"

"You should understand… one day, you will stand where I am, listening to yourself now saying these words, shouldn’t you?"

With that, Li Huowang’s reflection in the water fell silent. But as Li Huowang stared at it, he felt as if it was still watching him, always watching.

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Reading Guide Decoding

A Collapse of the Senses: The Battle Over What’s Real

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

This chapter dives deep into the novel’s core philosophical horror, which is a twisted re-imagining of Daoist concepts. The phrase "真假" (True and False) here is not just about trickery; it’s a Heavenly Law (天道). In traditional Chinese thought, the Dao is the ultimate principle of order and reality. Here, it has been broken into splintered, malevolent pieces that can be "stolen" and "controlled." Ji Zai now controls the "Heavenly Law of Bewilderment," which directly parallels the core tenet of the Zuowangdao—the beautiful nihilism of cognitive collapse. The concept of a "Heart-Pan (心蟠)" is also central; as Li Huowang is Ji Zai's past self and link to the world, the changes to Ji Zai's power retroactively affect Li Huowang’s reality. This is a brutal inversion of the classic "cause and effect" (因果) that governs most xianxia worlds. Here, a future action can erase a past event, making memory and experience unreliable. Finally, the term "思維破裂" (thought fragmentation), a clinical term used by Dr. Wu, provides a terrifying counterpoint to the supernatural explanation. It suggests that all of this cosmic horror could simply be a mental disorder, a diagnosis that is equally as damning as being a puppet of a Siming.

Chapter Overview

Hold onto your hats, fellow seekers of the bizarre, because this chapter is a masterclass in ontological vertigo. "The False and the True" doesn't just blur the line between reality and delusion—it yanks it out from under you and then asks you to prove the ground was ever there. Li Huowang is yanked between three realities in a single heartbeat: a dying Xu Shou revealing his origin, a Kangning therapy session that recontextualizes everything as a psychotic break, and a philosophical showdown with his own future self, Ji Zai, who now holds the keys to the kingdom of lies and truth. This isn’t a chapter that answers questions; it’s a chapter that makes you wonder if the questions themselves are even real. Get ready for a trip.

Key Plot Points

The chapter opens with the aftermath of the last chapter’s confrontation. Li Huowang, holding the dying Xu Shou, learns that Xu Shou is the son of Abbess Jingxin and a Heart-Element whose existence bridges both worlds. This revelation is immediately cut short by a helicopter's roar, preventing Li Huowang from hearing Xu Shou's final words.
Reality abruptly shifts. Li Huowang finds himself back in Kangning Hospital, in a group therapy session. All his wounds are gone. Dr. Wu Cheng, his face unmarred, calmly listens to Li Huowang's account of the "hallucination" and diagnoses it as a combination of psychosis and "thought fragmentation."
Li Huowang, desperate for a stable anchor, borrows Wu Cheng's phone to call Dr. Yi Donglai. The moment he dials, reality shifts again, this time to Niuxin Village’s pond.
From this new reality, Li Huowang summons his future self, Ji Zai, demanding an explanation for the chaos. Ji Zai reveals that he has stolen the "True and False" Heavenly Law from Yin-Yang Doumu. Because of this, all of Doumu’s prior arrangements—including the events on the ship—have been retroactively nullified, turned into "falsehoods."
The core of the chapter is a brutal philosophical debate: Li Huowang insists that his experiences were real, while Ji Zai dismantles the very concept of proof. Ji Zai states that he now holds three and a half Heavenly Laws: Bewilderment, Truth, Falsehood, and the Chaos of Ghostly Mountain.
Frustrated and unable to accept Ji Zai’s cryptic explanation, Li Huowang attacks his own reflection. The attack is ineffective. Ji Zai leaves Li Huowang with the chilling prediction that he will one day be the one speaking these words to a past self.

Reading Guide

This chapter is a test of faith for the reader. Do you trust the visceral, bloody reality of the Dao-Twisted World, or the clean, sterile, "rational" diagnosis of the modern world? The genius of Dao Gui Yi Xian is that it gives you no comfortable place to stand. The guide here is not to find "the truth" but to track the shift. Pay close attention to the transitional objects: the helicopter, the phone call, the pond. These are the seams in the world. Also, watch how Li Huowang’s language changes. He moves from aggressive interrogation ("Why did you do this to me?") to desperate questioning ("What is real?") to a raw, frustrated plea ("Stop making me guess!"). The growth of the character is not in power level, but in the depth of his existential crisis. He is being trained to see the world not as a sequence of solid events, but as a malleable narrative written by gods. And the most horrifying part? The author is implying that the very process of reading this story is just another layer of the same constructed reality. Don't try to "win" the chapter. Just feel the dread of a world where the answer to "Did this happen?" is a patient, pitying smile.

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.

Did the events on the ship really happen?: According to Ji Zai's new power, no. Because he stole the "True and False" Heavenly Law from Yin-Yang Doumu, all of her previous plans—including the ship and its horrors—have been retroactively turned from true to false. However, the chapter’s entire point is that we can’t trust any single explanation.
Why does Xu Shou's identity as Abbess Jingxin's son matter?: It creates a horrifying symmetry and raises the stakes. It means the Heart-Element condition is inherited, linking Li Huowang's enemy in the Dao-Twisted World (Abbess Jingxin) directly to a Xinsu in the modern world who was trying to target him. It suggests a deeper, more personal web of fate.
What is "thought fragmentation" and why is it important?: It’s a clinical term for a severe breakdown in logical thinking. Dr. Wu uses it as a "rational" explanation for Li Huowang’s experiences. Its importance lies in the dilemma it creates: the supernatural horror of Ji Zai is suddenly, and terrifyingly, interchangeable with a psychological disorder.
Is Ji Zai really Li Huowang's future self?: The narrative strongly implies he is. He speaks in the past tense about their shared history and refers to Li Huowang as "me" of the past. This creates a tragic loop where Li Huowang is literally arguing with the monster he is destined to become.