The Window and the Pestle

Hearing the words from Qian Fu’s mouth, Li Huowang did not reply immediately.

He first picked up his pumpkin porridge bowl, took a sip, and washed down the lettuce in his mouth. Only after looking the man up and down for a long moment did he say, “Dissociative identity disorder, right?”

“You could say that. But I’m different from other DID cases. I have more than one condition. My other identity has a mental illness.”

“Two personalities? And one of them is normal, and the other has a mental illness?” The more Li Huowang thought about it, the stranger it felt. He muttered inwardly, Could this guy just be a severe delusional who hasn’t been diagnosed yet?

“I don’t mean anything by it. I just wanted to apologize. Since my other identity didn’t affect you, that’s really good. So, you eat your meal. I’ll be going.” Qian Fu finished speaking, turned, and left.

“This guy’s badly off. I shouldn’t have wandered into the high-security ward.” Li Huowang shook his head and continued his dinner.

After finishing his meal, he waited half an hour to take his medicine, then sat in the common room watching the evening news broadcast. When it was over, it was time for lights out.

To be honest, if you set aside the impact of his condition, life inside the psychiatric hospital was actually quite healthy and routine. Nobody stayed up late. Nobody ate unhealthy junk food. The quality of life was noticeably higher than outside.

Still, with such an early bedtime, Li Huowang naturally couldn’t fall asleep right away. There was no entertainment in the ward, so he could only lie in bed staring blankly at the ceiling.

Drowsiness began to creep over him. He closed his eyes, ready to drift into sleep.

But just then, Li Huowang’s entire body tensed. He shot up from the bed and snapped his eyes open, staring at the window.

There was Qian Fu, the man he had met during the day. Both hands pressed against the window, his eyes fixed on Li Huowang like a ghost’s.

Any normal person would have been frightened by the sight. For Li Huowang, however, it only provoked a mix of anger and irritation.

Throwing off the blanket, Li Huowang walked to the window and stared back at Qian Fu through the glass. “I don’t want trouble. But you’d better stay the hell away from me from now on, or I won’t be nice about it.”

He really hadn’t expected that a casual stroll through the ward would end up with someone clinging to him.

Yet, faced with Li Huowang’s threat, Qian Fu remained unmoved. The corners of his mouth split wider and wider until he let out a low, raspy laugh. His voice carried a fawning edge as he said, “Xiao Li, let’s cooperate. You can’t fight them alone. We need to find more allies.”

“That’s the only way we’ll have a chance. If we lose, it’s all over!”

“And who’s ‘them’? The aliens from Leo, right?”

“Yes!” Qian Fu nodded vigorously with excitement.

“Stop pretending to be crazy with me. If we’re talking about crazy, I’m crazier than you! Since you’ve seen my news, you should know what I’ve done.”

After delivering this final threat, Li Huowang grabbed the curtain and yanked it shut. Then he turned toward the surveillance camera in the corner of the room and said, “Is this how you people earn your pay? A mental patient sneaks out in the middle of the night, and no one’s in charge?”

Li Huowang finished speaking, lay back down, and closed his eyes. But the interruption had chased away most of his drowsiness.

Fortunately, the commotion outside died down, which put him somewhat at ease.

He tossed and turned for a long time before finally drifting into sleep.

In his dream, Li Huowang found himself back at school, seated behind Yang Na.

Watching the ribbon at the back of her neck, his hand tightened around his pen, and before he could stop it, the pen reached out toward her bow.

Just as it was about to hook through the knot, a dull thud came from far, far away.

Thump… thump… thump!

THUMP! A giant wooden mallet was raised high, slamming down repeatedly into a stone mortar filled with steamed glutinous rice. An old man crouched beside it, using a wet hand to flip the rice between blows.

Every time a person ran out of strength and was replaced by another, the change was accompanied by laughter and teasing.

Men, women, and children from the village gathered around with joyful faces, watching the mallet rise and fall like spectators at a show.

They watched the white rice in the middle. But Li Huowang was lying flat on the branch of a tree, watching them warily from the canopy above.

“Is it them? Is this one of the Fa Sect’s hideouts?” Li Huowang’s brow was furrowed, his heart uneasy as he muttered to himself.

Hands were traded back and forth, different people taking up the mallet and switching off. Before long, the freshly steamed sticky rice had been pounded into a sticky paste.

Then, while it was still hot, a small lump of the paste was squeezed out from between thumb and forefinger, tossed into a bowl of crushed black sesame and white sugar for a coating. The white, sticky rice paste, wrapped in black sesame and white sugar—maci—was complete.

For some reason, watching the villagers stuff the maci into their mouths, Li Huowang couldn’t help but think of that senior apprentice sister who had once made him congee.

That foolish senior sister had been just like this sticky rice. Danyangzi had hammered her into a pulp, one blow at a time.

Even though everything looked normal, since he was already here, Li Huowang felt it was necessary to check more thoroughly.

Li Huowang let go of the branch. His tentacles spread wide, and he descended from the canopy like a giant spider.

Twisting his body’s color to match the ground, he gripped his sword hilt with heightened alertness and crept toward the small mountain village.

As he drew closer, he caught more details. It seemed a family had just given birth to a set of twins—a boy and a girl. To celebrate, they had used precious grain and white sugar to make maci to share their joy with the neighbors.

The village children, who couldn’t normally get such rare treats as white sugar or white flour, were ecstatic. They held bowls in their hands, poking at the maci with chopsticks.

Their faces were dirty, but there was not a trace of suspicion in their smiles. Li Huowang continued deeper into the village.

Most of the villagers had gathered to eat maci, so the rest of the village was relatively empty, making his search much easier.

He quickly swept through every house, but found nothing suspicious.

Drawing on his experience from Ox-Heart Village, he made a special point to check the ancestral hall, but again found no hidden doors.

“Could the information the Sitian Jian got from He Xinlai’s head be false? Or did they relocate in advance?”

Just as Li Huowang was thinking this, a commotion arose from the village entrance.

He leaped across the tiled rooftops and, when he reached the village entrance, saw a nine-foot-tall man with a full-body tattoo, wielding a giant crescent-moon spade. With one swing, three heads flew into the air. The ground beneath him was already soaked red.

As the tattooed man prepared to charge toward a group of children, Li Huowang emerged from the shadows and blocked his path.

Clang! Sparks flew. The two separated instantly. Li Huowang was surprised by the sheer force of the man’s strike, while his opponent stared uneasily at the chipped edge of his own crescent-moon spade.

Li Huowang had not drawn his spine-sword. Instead, he noticed an identity token tied to the man’s waist—the mark of the Supervisory Heavenly Office.

“You’re from the Supervisory Heavenly Office?”

“Huh?!” The man’s bull-like eyes widened. After sizing up Li Huowang’s outfit, he shoved his crescent-moon spade blade-first into the ground. “Aiya! What a small world. We’re all the same family here, and I didn’t recognize my own kin. So you’re Lord Er, is it? My deepest apologies, my deepest apologies.”

“You just kill people like that? Not even sparing the children? What if you’re wrong?” Li Huowang asked, his eyes cold.

“If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong. But I didn’t miss, sir. Take a look for yourself.”

Li Huowang turned around and saw the villagers, who had only moments ago been fleeing in all directions, now staring back at him with venomous hatred in their eyes.

“Kill the imperial dogs!”

“KILL THE IMPERIAL DOGS!”

With each shout, they tore strips of black cloth from their waistbands and draped them over their shoulders.