Why did Qian Fu put needles in Li Huowang’s food?

He believes Li Huowang is the only one who can understand the truth about alien infiltrators from Leo. The needle attack was a desperate, irrational act to get Li Huowang’s attention and force a confrontation.

Why is the roast duck significant?

It marks Li Huowang as a “privileged” patient to the other inmates, creating social tension and envy. It’s also a quiet moment of normalcy that gets instantly shattered by the discovery of watching eyes.

Sewn Mouths and Surveillance

1,135 words

The food at Kangning Hospital’s cafeteria wasn’t bad for lunch—one meat dish, one vegetable, one soup. It was mass-cooked, but still edible.

At the moment, though, Li Huowang’s mind was elsewhere.

Just now, Qian Fu had approached him again and said those same nonsensical things.

He’d assumed it was just a one-time thing before, but now it was clear that the man had latched onto him.

Since Qian Fu wasn’t going to let it go, Li Huowang was trying to figure out how to shake him.

There were cameras everywhere. He couldn’t kill the man, obviously. He couldn’t even beat him up or threaten him without consequences.

He was still mulling this over when he lifted a clump of water spinach with his chopsticks and shoved it into his mouth. The first bite hit him—

Shiiiit!

A searing pain and the taste of blood exploded through his mouth, making every muscle in his body lock up instantly.

He opened his mouth, reached in with a trembling finger, and felt around through the agony. Soon, his fingers found them: several sewing needles, stuck right into his tongue.

“You okay?” The orderly on watch noticed something was wrong and walked over.

When he saw Li Huowang pulling needles from his mouth, his face went pale. He understood the gravity of the situation immediately and shouted for the other patients to stop eating.

Someone had put needles in the food at a psychiatric hospital. This was serious. A catastrophe waiting to happen. For a moment, the entire ward was chaos.

But when they checked everyone else’s trays, they found no needles—only Li Huowang’s food was contaminated.

This kind of major safety incident couldn’t be brushed aside. The head of the hospital brought a team to review the surveillance footage, and all patients were ordered back to their rooms.

Alone in his dorm, Li Huowang turned the whole thing over in his mind. More than the pain, he was thinking about what it meant.

“Who put those needles in there? I haven’t made any enemies in this place that I know of.”

“Unless…” He thought back to the strange, cryptic things Qian Fu had said.

Just then, Wu Cheng walked in alone. “How are you holding up? This was definitely our hospital’s fault. To make up for it, we’ve decided to waive part of your fees.”

“Also, since you’re an adult, a small thing like this—we don’t have to notify your mother, do we?”

“What do you mean? So you’ve found who did it?” Li Huowang asked, surprised.

“Mm. Of course. The method wasn’t very sophisticated. Here’s the cafeteria’s surveillance footage.” Wu Cheng turned his phone sideways and held it in front of Li Huowang.

He tapped play, and Li Huowang soon saw who had put the needles in his food. “Qian Fu? It was him?”

“Yeah.” Wu Cheng put the phone back into the pocket of his white coat. “I checked the footage. He’s been coming over to you a lot lately. Did you two have some kind of conflict?”

“What conflict could I have with him?! Where is he now? I want to ask him myself!” Li Huowang was genuinely angry now. The lunatic had tried to make him believe his crazy talk by feeding him sewing needles.

What threat from aliens in Leo? The real threat in this entire psychiatric hospital was that man right there!

“Come on, Xiao Li. We’d appreciate your help. Find out where Qian Fu got those long needles. They shouldn’t have been able to bring them into the hospital.”

Li Huowang soon found himself inside the Intensive Suppression Room, where Qian Fu was strapped into a straitjacket.

The soft floor squelched under his feet as Li Huowang stared coldly at Qian Fu’s agitated face. “Why did you do it? What did I do to you?”

Hearing this, Qian Fu yelled frantically, “No! I didn’t do this to you! They did! The aliens from Leo!”

The orderly beside them snapped, “It’s on camera! Who else would it be?! Spill it! Where did you get those needles?!”

But Qian Fu didn’t even look at the orderly. He kept his eyes fixed on Li Huowang. “Don’t believe them! The footage was edited! Their tech is strong enough to do that! It wasn’t me! It really wasn’t me!”

“Do you know why they did it? They’re trying to drive a wedge between us! They want us to tear each other apart, so they can pick off the survivors one by one!”

“They’ve already infiltrated. Like lizard people, they’ve silently replaced our people!”

Li Huowang looked at him and felt like he was the crazy one—for trying to argue with a lunatic.

“Forget it. I’m done asking. Keep him locked up in here. Don’t let him out to hurt anyone else.” Li Huowang turned to Wu Cheng, then walked away.

As Li Huowang’s back disappeared, Qian Fu shouted passionately, “Xiao Li! You understand what I mean, don’t you? Don’t you? Other people won’t get it! Only you can!”

“The aliens from Leo have landed! Danger is closing in! You can’t just run from this! We have to strike first!” Li Huowang ignored him completely and headed for his room.

Now that the man was locked up, he figured he’d have some peace for a while.

He really didn’t want anything else to happen. He just wanted to get through his time here quietly, to walk out as a normal person.

He hadn’t finished his lunch. As a gesture of goodwill, Wu Cheng kindly ordered him a takeout of Beijing roast duck.

He took a few strips of scallion and cucumber, dabbed on some sweet bean sauce, spread it on a lotus-leaf pancake, added a few slices of duck, rolled it up, and took a bite.

He had to admit, after eating hospital food, a sudden takeout order tasted really good.

But just as he was enjoying the meal alone, he felt a gaze on him from outside the window.

He jerked his head up to look—there was no one there. “Someone’s watching me?” Li Huowang’s brow furrowed.

A few minutes later, the two figures cautiously poked their heads out again—and found themselves staring straight at Li Huowang, who was waiting at the window.

They jumped, stumbling back several steps.

Li Huowang recognized them. It was the new guy—the one with glasses, Wang Gang—and the old man, Yuan Heping.

When they saw the dark look on Li Huowang’s face, Glasses shook his head indignantly and led the old man away. “Unbelievable. How come he gets to eat roast duck?”

“Ah, let it go. Don’t stir up trouble. Maybe he knows someone at the hospital.”

“Seriously. For a meal, you can pull strings and get special treatment even in a mental hospital. Unreal.”

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Reading Guide Decoding

Needles, Roast Duck, and the Unblinking Window

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

Beijing Roast Duck (北京烤鸭) isn’t just a meal in this context—it’s a conspicuous marker of privilege. In the tightly controlled ecosystem of a Chinese psychiatric hospital, a takeout order of high-end cuisine is an anomaly that screams “special treatment.” For the other patients, it’s a tangible symbol that Li Huowang is being handled differently. The cultural subtext here is that food, especially in an institutional setting, is a class signifier. The roasted duck’s arrival signals to the reader—and to Wang Gang and Yuan Heping—that Li Huowang is not an ordinary patient; he’s someone the system is willing to coddle. This is a quiet, mundane observation, but it perfectly sets up the envy and suspicion that will fuel the next chapter’s tension.

Intensive Suppression Room (重症抑制室) is a clinical-sounding term for a psychiatric containment cell, distinct from a general isolation room. In Chinese hospital settings, such rooms are reserved for patients deemed a high risk to themselves or others. The term “suppression” carries a distinctly authoritarian overtone, implying that the patient’s behavior must be forcefully controlled. In the context of Dao Gui Yi Xian, the room becomes a symbol of institutional power—one that Li Huowang himself was subjected to in earlier arcs, and one that Qian Fu now occupies not as a threat, but as a figure of tragic delusion.

Chapter Overview

Li Huowang has a very bad lunch, and it’s not just the mass-cooked cafeteria slop. Someone has planted sewing needles in his food—right into his tongue. The hospital’s response is swift and bureaucratic: cameras are checked, blame is pinned, and the culprit is revealed as the paranoid Qian Fu. But the chapter isn’t about the needles; it’s about the fracture lines they expose. The real meat (pun intended) comes later, when Li Huowang is treated to a compensatory roast duck and notices something worse than poison: a pair of familiar faces watching him from outside his window. It’s a quiet, slow-burn chapter that thickens the atmosphere of institutional dread—proof that even in a locked ward, the most dangerous things aren’t always the ones behind bars. Get ready, fellow Daoists—the observation has begun.

Key Plot Points

Li Huowang’s lunch is sabotaged with sewing needles, which he discovers only by chewing into a mouthful of blood and pain.
The hospital’s investigation, shown via surveillance footage, reveals Qian Fu as the perpetrator. He is confined to the Intensive Suppression Room in a straitjacket.
Li Huowang confronts Qian Fu, who insists he is being framed by shape-shifting alien infiltrators from Leo and that the camera footage has been faked. Li Huowang gives up, realizing he is arguing with a delusion.
Wu Cheng offers a compromise—waiving part of Li Huowang’s fees in exchange for not reporting the incident or notifying his mother.
A compensatory takeout meal of Beijing roast duck arrives. Li Huowang enjoys a rare moment of normalcy.
The peace is broken when he catches two new patients—Wang Gang (the bespectacled one) and Yuan Heping (the old man)—spying on him from outside his window. They retreat indignantly, complaining about his “privileged” meal.

Reading Guide

This chapter is a masterclass in atmospheric paranoia. It works on two levels: the obvious “someone poisoned my food” mystery, and the much subtler “someone is watching me” dread. Notice how Li Huowang’s internal monologue shifts from the concrete (needles in his tongue) to the abstract (who is watching and why). The real horror isn’t Qian Fu—it’s the fact that the hospital’s most seductive weapon is surveillance, and Li Huowang is being observed by forces he doesn’t yet understand. Also, pay attention to the roast duck. It’s not just a reward; it’s a visual cue that Li Huowang is being treated as special. That special treatment will inevitably create resentment, and the chapter ends with that resentment staring right back at him from outside the window. The stage is set for a confrontation, and it won’t be settled with needles.

The scene with Qian Fu is also psychologically acute. He isn’t just a delusional patient—he’s a mirror. His obsession with aliens and shape-shifters echoes Li Huowang’s own battles with Siming and the ontological madness of the Dao-Twisted World. The difference is that Li Huowang has learned to choose when to believe in the impossible. Qian Fu has not. The tragedy here is that they are both fighting the same war, but on different fronts.

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 did Qian Fu put needles in Li Huowang’s food?: He believes Li Huowang is the only one who can understand the truth about alien infiltrators from Leo. The needle attack was a desperate, irrational act to get Li Huowang’s attention and force a confrontation.
Why is the roast duck significant?: It marks Li Huowang as a “privileged” patient to the other inmates, creating social tension and envy. It’s also a quiet moment of normalcy that gets instantly shattered by the discovery of watching eyes.