Why does Li Huowang lecture Gao Jinyun to spit on his food?

Because in the Darwinian micro-society of a psychiatric hospital, the simple rule "make it disgusting to steal" is a practical survival tactic Li Huowang knows well.

What does Li Huowang mean by "the stupid have their own classes"?

He’s making a cynical observation that the quality of life for the intellectually disabled depends entirely on their family's wealth, just as it does for "normal" people.

Is the empty isolation wing significant?

In the context of this novel, yes. An "empty" high-security ward in a hospital connected to reality-bleeding is almost certainly a warning sign, not a relief.

Why is this chapter important?

It re-establishes Li Huowang’s baseline morality and the mundane horror of the healthcare system before the supernatural horror inevitably returns.

The Courtyard

1,206 words

Inside the clean white hospital room, Li Huowang raised the plastic cup filled with water in front of Wu Cheng, then lifted the yellow-and-green pills toward him for display.

He placed the pills into his mouth one by one, picked up the plastic cup, and washed them down with water.

And that wasn’t all. Li Huowang opened his mouth and lifted his tongue up and down to show that he hadn’t hidden any pills.

When Wu Cheng finished his inspection and was about to leave, Li Huowang spoke. “Are these pills expensive?”

“I can take more psychiatric drugs to reassure you and Yi Donglai, but that doesn’t mean you can prescribe expensive ones and treat my family like cash cows for kickbacks.”

“Heh heh.” Wu Cheng smiled without replying.

“I’m not joking. I know this game. I’ve seen too much of this in private hospitals.”

“When you have nothing to do, don’t stay cooped up alone. Go out for walks, get some sun, make some new friends. You might get discharged faster that way.”

After saying this, Wu Cheng pulled a key from the pocket of his white coat, bent down, and unlocked the shackles around Li Huowang’s feet.

Feeling his legs regain their freedom, Li Huowang’s expression softened slightly. This proved he was one step closer to leaving.

After Wu Cheng left, Li Huowang also walked out of his room.

He didn’t particularly want to follow Wu Cheng’s advice, but the single-occupancy room in a psychiatric hospital had nothing except a bed.

If he stayed in there any longer, he’d have to choose between staring blankly at the wall and sleeping.

Once he stepped into the hallway, the corridor felt considerably livelier. Though many psychiatric patients still kept their distance out of fear of Li Huowang’s “reputation,” it was much better than before.

The people in his mutual support group could now greet him quite naturally.

“Hey man, come to the common room to watch TV! They’re playing Titanic—the nude scene is about to come on!” the crew-cut young man with bipolar disorder shouted excitedly from the doorway.

“No thanks. I’m going out to get some sun.”

Li Huowang understood why people were so cheerful now. His condition had recently stabilized, and he was about to be discharged soon.

In a psychiatric hospital, only two things truly mattered: family visits, and discharge.

Li Huowang walked to the small garden behind the hospital, closed his eyes slightly, and sat down on the blue ceramic tiles, quietly enjoying the warm sunlight falling on him from above.

He savored this brief moment of peace. In truth, he didn’t want to experience all that despair and madness either. He also wanted to enjoy the beautiful things the world had to offer.

But in the past, it felt like the whole world was working against him, things piling on faster than he could dodge, with nowhere to hide. At least now, it seemed like everything was finally over.

Just as he was enjoying the stillness, a commotion broke out. He opened his eyes and looked over to see several people in blue-and-white striped hospital gowns fighting over something.

Li Huowang walked closer and found a thin, sharp-featured woman together with a young boy wrestling an apple away from another patient.

“Mine! It’s mine!” The man being robbed was drooling and struggling desperately. Li Huowang recognized him—he was the one others called moderately intellectually disabled.

The boy jerked his arms hard, forcibly snatched the apple away, and ran excitedly toward the building with the thin woman. But soon, Li Huowang blocked his path.

“Give me the apple.”

When the boy saw Li Huowang raise his hands with the silver handcuffs, his heart trembled. He remembered this guy. This was someone who had actually killed people.

“Here… here you go!” The boy, his face full of fear, tossed the apple into Li Huowang’s arms and abandoned his companion, scrambling away as fast as he could.

Li Huowang caught the apple steadily. He glanced at the name written on it and learned that the intellectually disabled man was called Gao Jinyun.

Li Huowang walked over to the man, who was crying on the ground with snot and tears streaming down his face, and handed the apple back to him.

“Th… thank you, big brother!”

Gao Jinyun was simple-minded. The moment he got his apple back, he stopped crying immediately and looked up at Li Huowang with grateful eyes while sitting on the ground.

“Next time you get food and you don’t want it stolen, remember to smear your spit all over it first thing. Got that?”

Seeing the man nod repeatedly, Li Huowang stood up and headed toward the building. He ran into Zhao Ting, who had depression, coming the other way. It seemed she had witnessed everything.

“Thank you for taking pity on him. A lot of people think he’s stupid and always bully him behind his back.”

“It’s not pity. A guy like this—intellectually disabled, locked up in a private hospital for life—his family is probably richer than mine. I just can’t stand watching it.”

“His family is that rich? Then why do they never visit him?” Zhao Ting quickened her pace to catch up with Li Huowang.

Other people might be afraid of him, but after interacting with him, she felt he was actually pretty decent.

“Heh. How different are the stupid from the crazy? Idiots have their own classes, just like the rest of us. Rich idiots stay in private hospitals, not-so-rich idiots stay in public hospitals. If the family really has no money or just doesn’t want to spend it, the responsible ones chain them up with an iron leash, and the irresponsible ones kick them out to dig through trash and fend for themselves.”

Zhao Ting seemed to be connecting his words to something painful. She stopped in her tracks and began to think, a tormented expression on her face.

Li Huowang didn’t notice. He kept walking. He didn’t go to the break room to watch TV—he figured the lobby was probably packed by now.

Instead, he wandered down the corridors, floor by floor, meticulously measuring every inch of the psychiatric hospital with his feet, observing this unfamiliar new environment.

Other wards and bathrooms weren’t worth exploring, and the kitchen and doctors’ offices were off-limits. As he wandered, he eventually arrived at the severe-case isolation wing.

The isolation wing wasn’t particularly big or small, but the entire corridor was dead quiet. Standing there, Li Huowang felt like he was in a prison.

He approached a thick door and, with a mix of caution and curiosity, peered through the glass window inside.

But after scanning the room with some nervousness, he found it embarrassingly empty.

Li Huowang moved to the second isolation room. It, too, was completely empty.

“What’s going on? Does this place only accept mild to moderate cases? Easy money, I guess.”

Just as he was about to turn back, a faint banging sound came from a room at the far end of the corridor.

“Oh? There actually is someone?” Surprised, Li Huowang looked toward the sound and approached cautiously. As he got closer, the banging grew louder.

“BAM! BAM!! BAM!!!”

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Reading Guide Decoding

Breather Before the Bang: A Quiet Walk in Kangning

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

The Three-Six-Nine of the Weak (三六九等): Li Huowang’s speech about how the “stupid and crazy” are sorted by wealth is a sharp, cynical reflection of a real-world Chinese phenomenon. This idiom (sān liù jiǔ děng) describes a rigid hierarchy with clear grades; here, it’s applied to the mental healthcare system, where the quality of life depends entirely on the patient’s family bank account. It’s a stark moment of social commentary that grounds the cosmic horror in mundane, structural cruelty.

Private vs. Public Psychiatry in China: The novel casually drops a grim reality: wealthy families can stash an inconvenient relative in a private hospital indefinitely, while the poor end up in underfunded public wards or worse—chained at home or abandoned to the streets. This isn’t genre flavor; it’s a recognizable critique woven into the setting.

The "Empty" Isolation Wing: For readers of Dao Gui Yi Xian, an empty severe-case ward in a psychiatric hospital is not a relief. It’s a red flag. Given the novel’s established pattern of reality bleeding, the word "empty" here should feel less like "no patients" and more like "the patients were never recorded" or "something has already been removed."

Three-six-nine classes (三六九等)

An idiom describing a strict, tiered hierarchy where everything and everyone is categorized into clear grades of rank and value.

Kangning Hospital (康宁医院)

The private psychiatric hospital where Li Huowang is treated, representing the "modern reality" side of the novel’s dual-world structure.

Chapter Overview

Get ready for a breather chapter—though in Dao Gui Yi Xian, "breather" means "Li Huowang walks around a psychiatric hospital feeling almost normal, which is suspicious in itself." Fresh off having his ankle shackles removed (a good sign for discharge!), our protagonist wanders the corridors of Kangning Hospital. He mediates a minor food theft, drops some harsh truths about the Chinese mental health caste system, and makes a chilling discovery about the empty severe-case ward. It’s a meditative, observational chapter that lets the reader catch their breath before the inevitable supernatural storm. But don’t get too comfortable—that banging at the far end of the hall? Yeah, that’s not nothing.

Key Plot Points

Wu Cheng unlocks Li Huowang’s ankle shackles as a reward for compliance, signaling a potential discharge timeline.
Li Huowang confronts Wu Cheng about the cost of his medication, warning him against treating his family as cash cows for kickbacks.
He enjoys a rare moment of peace in the hospital garden, reflecting on how the world used to be constantly against him but now seems finally settled.
He intervenes when a bully and a thin woman steal an apple from Gao Jinyun, a moderately intellectually disabled patient.
Li Huowang returns the apple and teaches Gao Jinyun to spit on his food to deter thieves.
Zhao Ting (depressed patient) thanks Li Huowang for his kindness, leading to a brutally class-conscious monologue about the tiered system of care for the disabled in China.
Li Huowang explores the hospital, deliberately avoiding the crowded common room, and stumbles upon the severe-case isolation wing—which is entirely empty except for one distant cell.
The chapter ends with the sound of violent banging coming from that last, occupied isolation room.

Reading Guide

This is a palate-cleanser chapter that serves a few crucial narrative functions. First, it re-establishes Li Huowang’s baseline humanity and morality—he’s still the guy who will step in for the weak, even in a padded room. Second, it deepens the contrast between the mundane horror of systematic neglect (the rich idiot vs. the chained poor idiot) and the supernatural horror that usually plagues him. The world is broken even without the Dao-Twisted stuff. Finally, it plants a seed: that empty wing with a single banging door. In this story, empty spaces are never truly empty. They’re waiting. Fellow Daoists, I wouldn't get too attached to this quiet interlude—the other shoe is very likely a flesh-shoe, and it’s about to drop.

Why This "Quiet" Chapter Matters

Don’t skip past the apple scene. On the surface, it’s just a simple act of justice, but for Li Huowang, this is therapy. He’s not the monster the other patients fear; he’s the one who knows the unspoken rules of survival in this institution. Teaching a disabled man to spit on his food? That’s practical, street-level kindness from someone who has been ground down by a much crueler world. It confirms that Li Huowang’s moral compass, however battered, still points vaguely in the right direction—a critical anchor for when the reality-bending madness inevitably resumes.

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 lecture Gao Jinyun to spit on his food?: Because in the Darwinian micro-society of a psychiatric hospital, the simple rule "make it disgusting to steal" is a practical survival tactic Li Huowang knows well.
What does Li Huowang mean by "the stupid have their own classes"?: He’s making a cynical observation that the quality of life for the intellectually disabled depends entirely on their family's wealth, just as it does for "normal" people.
Is the empty isolation wing significant?: In the context of this novel, yes. An "empty" high-security ward in a hospital connected to reality-bleeding is almost certainly a warning sign, not a relief.
Why is this chapter important?: It re-establishes Li Huowang’s baseline morality and the mundane horror of the healthcare system before the supernatural horror inevitably returns.