Evidence of a Broken World

Two severed fingers, bleached pale from blood loss, lay on the mediation room table.

Everyone present, except Li Huowang, had turned pale.

As a matter of course, silver handcuffs clicked shut around Li Huowang’s wrists.

“I’m the one who was kidnapped! Are you people out of your minds? Why are you cuffing me?!”

Li Huowang suppressed the fury building in his chest and shouted at the people around him. But this time, no one listened. Except for the two officers guarding him, everyone else filed out of the room.

Outside the door, Sun Jianye listened to Li Huowang’s voice, observing this extraordinary young man through the iron bars.

These kinds of mental patients were the worst to deal with. Not only could everything they said be false, but their thought processes were utterly unpredictable, rendering his usual interrogation techniques useless.

If the suspect had no leads, you had to work from other angles.

He clicked open Li Huowang’s phone, scrolled through it quickly, and opened the call log. When he saw the record for today, he dialed the number directly.

“Hello? Li Huowang, why did you just hang up on me? Oh, sorry. Yes, I’m his primary doctor. What happened to Li Huowang? Any unusual behavior? He did call me today to ask if he might have persecutory delusions.”

Sun Jianye nodded knowingly as he listened, forming a preliminary judgment.

After carefully extracting more details from Yi Donglai, Sun Jianye walked back into the mediation room. He sat down across from Li Huowang and asked, “Student Li, can you tell me where those two fingers came from?”

“How many times do I have to say it? They’re from the kidnapper in the car!” Li Huowang explained to the man before him, forcing himself to stay patient.

Hearing this, Sun Jianye pulled out his phone and held it up. “Is that so? Except the security footage from your housing complex doesn’t show any car you mention. Nor any kidnappers.”

“How is that possible?!” Li Huowang leaned forward, staring intently at the video.

The upper right corner of the footage showed the date. It was today.

In the video, Li Huowang saw a slightly strange version of himself walking through the complex, heading toward the woman with the umbrella.

But in this surveillance footage, there was no woman with an umbrella. There was only him.

As he walked, the Li Huowang in the video suddenly stopped. He seemed to be struggling with something in thin air, staggering off balance into a blind spot of the camera.

“That’s impossible! Absolutely impossible! I clearly saw them, I clearly felt them! There’s no way they were fake!”

Hearing this, Sun Jianye leaned back in his chair, a headache brewing. “Is it possible that it was all an illusion?”

“Have you even read my medical file?! I’ve been discharged! I’m better! Second, there are many kinds of mental illness! The symptoms I had before were nothing like this!” Li Huowang shot up from his chair.

The two police officers on either side, trying not to provoke him, gently pressed on his shoulders, carefully coaxing him to sit back down.

“Student Li, of course, you’re not crazy, I understand that. But we police officers operate on evidence. The surveillance footage really doesn’t show any kidnappers. That is a fact, isn’t it?”

“What if the footage was tampered with?!”

As he said this, Li Huowang’s body suddenly froze, as if he remembered something. His eyes were filled with shock.

“From the time you called the police to when we pulled the footage, there wasn’t enough time. It’s impossible. How about this: to prevent those kidnappers from bothering you again, you stay at the station for a few days. We’ll protect you.”

“Wait! You wanted evidence, didn’t you? What about those two fingers? They are the evidence! And…”

Li Huowang pulled off his blood-stained shirt. “This has their blood on it. You can run a DNA test and find them!”

Li Huowang was absolutely certain those kidnappers were real. It wasn’t his imagination. Someone was really trying to harm him!

No matter which faction they were from, he was already in some kind of crisis! His life could be in danger at any moment.

Since they’d tried once, they’d definitely try again. Once meant a second time.

With all those people they’d used to watch him before, they weren’t going to just give up if they didn’t achieve their goal.

Li Huowang’s heart was starting to race. Not because of these mysterious people, but because of the mad, rambling things Qian Fu had said earlier. They seemed to be coming true.

“Who are they?”

“The Leoniceti Aliens! Their technology is extremely advanced! They can monitor everything easily! I didn’t put a needle in your food! It was them! They’re trying to drive a wedge between us!”

—

The cart’s wheels rolled slowly over the withered yellow grass. Yang Xiaohai, holding a horsewhip, surveyed the endless grassland around him.

He pulled out the Qingqiu map he had bought, a flicker of hesitation on his young face. “It should be this way, right? I haven’t gotten lost, have I?”

Even with a map, the landscape in Qingqiu was nothing but grass in every direction, with no landmarks. Yang Xiaohai had no idea if he was on the right track.

Just then, he spotted a tall hill rising abruptly from the ground in the distance.

From far away, this hill, wrapped in its layer of dead yellow grass, looked like a giant cornbread bun.

These things popped up from the plains from time to time. Yang Xiaohai had seen plenty over the past few days.

This one was just a special shape, which was why he remembered it.

“When I came through here with Brother Li, I think I saw this thing. We should be close to Sun Baolu’s place, right?”

As he was thinking this, a tent in the distance made Yang Xiaohai excited.

“Giddyup! Giddyup! Faster!” He whipped the horse, urging the cart forward.

Among the tents on the grassland, dark-skinned, wiry Qingqiu natives moved back and forth. Some were paler, and Sun Baolu was one of them.

When he saw that it was Yang Xiaohai who had arrived, Sun Baolu, who hadn’t seen him in a long time, became incredibly excited.

He never imagined, after their parting back then, that they would ever meet again.

“Brother Baolu! Gao Zhijian is the emperor now! Gouwa got married and had a kid! And Brother Li’s illness is cured!”

Yang Xiaohai excitedly reported all the good news that had happened recently.

As Sun Baolu asked for details, Yang Xiaohai told him everything that had happened since they left Qingqiu.

“Is that so? Everyone is doing so well? That’s wonderful.” Sun Baolu was genuinely happy for his old companions. They were fellow disciples who had shared life and death.

“By the way, Xiaohai, why did you come back to Qingqiu?”

“Gao Zhijian helped me find my parents. They’re Dan-min in the Later Shu. I want to go see them.” Yang Xiaohai stated his purpose.

“Later Shu?!” Hearing this, Sun Baolu’s face tightened with nervousness. He quickly reached out and grabbed him.

“No, you absolutely cannot go. The Later Shu is at war right now with that newly risen Yuer Nation. I hear the fighting is fierce. If you go to the Later Shu now, you’d be going to your death!”