Qian Fu

1,214 words

Li Huowang was not about to let this go. The more the orderly insisted that Qian Fu was too ill to receive visitors, the more Li Huowang felt something was off. He was going to see Qian Fu today if it killed him.

But he didn't let his agitation show. He knew this was a psychiatric hospital. If he acted too erratic, it would only backfire.

Because they were all familiar faces, Wu Cheng stepped in to help, and Li Huowang was finally granted permission to see Qian Fu.

This was a relief. At least it proved that they hadn't managed to infiltrate this part of the hospital. If they had, they would have done everything to block him.

Since he had to enter the ward, Li Huowang told Yang Na to wait outside and followed an orderly in.

Soon, he was standing before the heavy observation door of the intensive suppression room. As the brick-sized viewing window was slid open, he saw the man inside. Qian Fu was wearing a straitjacket, writhing on the soft floor like a maggot, muttering madly to himself.

"Qian Fu!" Li Huowang started forward, but the orderly grabbed his arm. "Hey, hey! What do you think you're doing? I said you could look. You're not planning on talking to this lunatic, are you?"

"Just cut me some slack. His family asked me to pass on a message." Li Huowang threw out a random excuse.

"No, no. That's against the rules. Why didn't you say so earlier?"

"Rules aren't that strict. Besides, this is a private hospital, not a public one." Li Huowang reached into his pocket and pressed the spare change Sun Xiaoqin had given him into the orderly's hand.

Li Huowang knew the drill. The doctors might make decent money, but orderlies were just hired muscle. Their pay was nothing special.

The orderly's reaction confirmed his suspicion. "Cough... fine. Make it quick. But I warn you, the guy's completely off his rocker. If he doesn't respond, don't come crying to me."

Hearing this, Li Huowang moved close to the iron door and shouted through it. "Qian Fu! Qian Fu!"

Hearing Li Huowang's voice, Qian Fu stirred. He squirmed inside his straitjacket, dragging himself toward the iron door.

Eight minutes later, his sweat-drenched face pressed against the iron bars of the window.

Qian Fu looked utterly unhinged. His bloodshot eyes were fixed on Li Huowang with a frightening intensity—excitement, collapse, terror, a whole parade of emotions flickering across his face. "You finally came to see me! You finally came!! I knew you'd see through their scheme!"

As he said this, he wept with joy, the sound thick with grievance.

"Keep your voice down! You'll attract the doctors!" Li Huowang hissed, glancing nervously down the corridor.

Qian Fu sucked in his breath, swallowing the snot that had run into his mouth. "I've been waiting so long for you! Do you know how they've been torturing me while you were gone?"

"Torturing you? They got into the hospital?" Li Huowang's face tensed.

Qian Fu lowered his voice to a near-whisper, his gaze darting suspiciously toward the orderly who was keeping watch down the hall. "A few got in. Not many. But you need to watch your back!"

"I'm asking you. Who are 'they'?" Li Huowang cut to the chase.

Qian Fu's eyes went wide with disbelief. "What!? You mean you still don't know who's been coming after us?"

"You do?! Who are they?!" Images of the woman with the umbrella flashed through Li Huowang's mind. The people who had kidnapped him. He'd racked his brains trying to figure out their identity, why they were doing this to him.

"Of course I do! Didn't I already tell you? They're the aliens from the constellation Leo!"

"Shit!" If it weren't for the iron door, Li Huowang would have punched him. He felt like the guy was screwing with him.

He took a breath and forced himself to accept that his ally was a mental patient. Even if Qian Fu knew some secrets, he was still a psychiatric patient first.

Luckily, Li Huowang had plenty of experience with crazy people. He knew how to talk to them. "So where's their spaceship, these Leo aliens?" he pressed.

"Their ship hasn't landed. It's still hiding among the stars. They can't come down yet! But some of them have already landed! And some people, for the sake of their high-tech toys... they've bowed down to them. They've betrayed us! They're traitors!"

Even though he had come here hoping for answers, actually hearing Qian Fu's explanation made Li Huowang's heart pound with doubt.

Half-truths from the mouth of a madman. He could only force himself to listen with the same degree of skepticism.

Frowning, he thought for a moment before asking hesitantly, "Where did you hear all this?"

If he couldn't get a clear answer from Qian Fu himself, maybe he could trace it back to the source.

"Hear it?! It's as plain as the nose on your face! I saw it with my own eyes! Don't tell me you haven't seen it, with everything that's been going on!" Qian Fu stared wide-eyed at Li Huowang.

Suddenly, a hand shot out through the window gap and latched onto Li Huowang's collar. "Li Huowang! You have to get me out of here! You have to find a way to get me out!! You're the only one who can save me!"

"Let go!" Li Huowang grabbed the man's hand, trying to pry it off, but Qian Fu's grip was like iron, impossible to break.

"Get me out first! Then we can join forces with the others and take on the Leo aliens! They're too strong! Too strong! If we fight alone, they'll pick us off one by one. They're afraid of us uniting! That's why they're driving us apart!"

Qian Fu's words rattled Li Huowang. For a moment, he felt like he almost understood something in the rambling, but then it slipped away again. "And you can fight them? What's a madman like you going to fight them with? Tell me that, and I'll figure out a way to get you out."

"I'm crazy, but aren't you crazy too? We might not know each other well, but we're on the same side!"

Just then, the orderly in the distance noticed something was wrong and came running over, panicked. "Hey, hey! Let go! Let go of him right now!"

He yanked at Qian Fu's arm, finally freeing Li Huowang. "What the hell are you doing? Getting into a tussle with him? Get out of here, now! If something had happened, I'd be in huge trouble!"

Li Huowang hesitated, glancing back at Qian Fu in the suppression room, then turned to leave. His mind was a mess. He needed to go back and sort through it.

Seeing Li Huowang's reaction, Qian Fu grew frantic. "Don't go! Save me! Save me!"

As Li Huowang was about to reach the end of the corridor, Qian Fu pressed his whole face against the bars and screamed at the top of his lungs. "Ji Zai! Ji Zai! Get me out of here!"

Li Huowang stopped. He turned and looked back at the suppression room. "What did you call me?"

"You're Ji Zai! You're Ji Zai!"

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Reading Guide Decoding

The Madman's Truth and the Name of Ji Zai

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

The "Madman's Truth" in Chinese Fiction: A recurring trope in Chinese web novels and horror is the "madman" or "fool" who speaks truths that the sane world cannot see. This archetype draws from a long cultural tradition where madness (疯癫, fēngdiān) is sometimes seen not as a mental illness but as a state of being that has seen beyond the veil. The Dao Gui Yi Xian gives this trope a horrifying twist. Qian Fu isn't a wise fool; his mind is genuinely shattered. But the pieces he's assembled form a narrative that, from Li Huowang's perspective, might be more accurate than reality. The horror is not that a madman is wrong, but that he might be the only one who is right.

white tower psychiatric hospital

The modern-world counterpart to the White Jade Capital, a site of reality-bleeding where the line between madness and cosmic truth is blurred.

Chapter Overview

Get ready, folks, because we’re back in the White Tower Psychiatric Hospital, and the horror has taken on a new, distinctly schizophrenic flavor. After everything he’s been through in the Dao-Twisted World, Li Huowang is trying to play detective in the real world, hunting down a lead. And that lead is a man named Qian Fu, locked in the intensive suppression room. What Li Huowang gets, however, isn't a set of clear answers about the mysterious "them" who have been haunting him. Instead, he gets a masterclass in how madness can sound almost like the truth. This chapter is a tense, claustrophobic interrogation where the biggest question isn't "Who are the enemies?" but "Can I afford to believe the one person who claims to know?"

Key Plot Points

Li Huowang uses a bribe and Wu Cheng's connections to bypass hospital rules and secure a face-to-face visit with Qian Fu.
Qian Fu is in a terrible state, restrained in a straitjacket, appearing both frantic and persecuted. He immediately recognizes Li Huowang as an ally.
Qian Fu claims to have been "tortured" by a group that has infiltrated the hospital, but he is evasive about their identity.
Under pressure, Qian Fu finally reveals the source of his torment: he claims they are "aliens from the constellation Leo" and that some humans are collaborating with them.
Li Huowang is frustrated and disgusted by the absurd answer, but he can't fully dismiss it, lamenting that his only source of information is a madman.
When Qian Fu realizes Li Huowang is about to leave, he desperately grabs him and begs for rescue, claiming they need to unite against the alien threat.
The orderly intervenes, separates them, and forces Li Huowang to leave.
Just as Li Huowang reaches the end of the hall, Qian Fu screams a final, devastating line: "Ji Zai! Get me out of here!" This is the name only the Siming of Bewilderment has called him, and it stops Li Huowang dead in his tracks.

Reading Guide

This chapter is a masterful distillation of the novel's central horror. It doesn't rely on flesh-monsters or cosmic entities. Instead, it traps Li Huowang in a terrifying epistemological loop. He needs information, but the only source of that information is a clinically insane man. His frustration is our frustration. Are the "Leo aliens" the specific, named enemy Li Huowang has been hunting? Probably not. But the underlying structure—that a hostile force has infiltrated the world to isolate him—is consistent with everything he knows. The absolute bombshell comes at the very end: the name "Ji Zai." Qian Fu, a stranger in the modern world, is the first person to call Li Huowang by the name the Siming uses. This isn't just a coincidence; it's a cascading failure of the boundary between reality and madness, proving that the Dao-Twisted World's influence has the power to bleed into a man's psychotic break and speak the truth through it. Pay close attention to Li Huowang's shock. This single name shatters his assumption that the hospital is a safe zone.