Projection

1,198 words

Hearing that this guy was still asking if he had eaten at a time like this, Li Huowang was at a loss for words. "Mr. Qing, I've finished eating. Can we talk about business now?"

"Then please wait a moment. I haven't finished yet." Qing Wanglai picked up his bowl.

Hearing this, Li Huowang couldn't help but frown. What was wrong with this Qing Wanglai? "Can't you talk while you eat?"

"The ancients said, 'When eating, do not talk; when sleeping, do not speak.' Besides, talking while eating means you don't chew thoroughly, which makes it easy to get indigestion. And it's easy to bite your tongue or choke." Having said this, Qing Wanglai handed the phone back to Yang Na.

Since the other party had so clearly refused, and since he was the one asking for a favor, Li Huowang could only wait.

When he saw his girlfriend Yang Na's hesitant expression, Li Huowang said, "Don't just stand there. If they're eating, you eat too. Don't starve yourself. Have some more."

"Oh, alright. Huowang, I'll hang up the video first. We'll talk after we eat." As Yang Na finished speaking, the screen went dark with a beep.

Staring at the motionless screen, Li Huowang let out a sigh. How come everyone Qian Fu found was so strange? This Qing Wanglai, even if he wasn't a mental patient, sure didn't seem very reliable.

Li Huowang stood up, walked to the window, pulled back the corner of the starry-patterned curtain, and sneaked a look outside. It was already dark out there, but he could feel that there were even more gazes now. They were still there!

"Swoosh!" The starry-patterned curtain was yanked open again. Li Huowang exposed himself directly to their stares.

"If you've got the guts, come on in! I'll make sure you walk in standing and get carried out lying down!!" Li Huowang gripped the dagger, his teeth clenched, his eyes filled with hostility.

Yet it was obvious that after Wang Wei's move earlier, these people didn't seem inclined to act again anytime soon.

Maybe they were plotting something. For now, they just watched. Even when the invitation chime for a video call rang out again, there was still no movement.

The starry-patterned curtain was quickly drawn shut. When Li Huowang reopened his phone, the scene inside had changed to a new environment—small, looking like a single-person dormitory.

Compared to an ordinary male dorm, it was noticeably cleaner and tidier. Most of the items in the room were white. There were no anime posters or anything like that on the walls, only a single piece of calligraphy scroll, making the place look spotless.

Qing Wanglai held a cup of green tea, took a sip, and let it rest at his lips. "Hello, Li Huowang. Let me reintroduce myself. My name is Qing Wanglai. They've already told me about your situation. Now let me share my thoughts."

"First of all, the restrictions on you are very severe. Being watched like this, you can't do anything. We need to find a way to temporarily restore some of your freedom."

"Wait... wait a minute." Li Huowang interrupted Qing Wanglai's words.

"What's wrong? You don't want your freedom back? You want to keep being trapped in this neighborhood?"

"No. Before we get down to business, I need to clarify one thing first. About them—those people trying to kidnap me—what do you think they are?"

"Do you think they're aliens from Leo, or some underground group after my special abilities?"

Qing Wanglai smiled. "Why would you think I'd think that? Do I look like a mental patient to you?"

"Then what do you think? What's the real truth behind all this? What kind of people are they?" Finally having someone offer a normal explanation, Li Huowang felt his palms start to sweat.

Qing Wanglai took a slow sip of tea and said, "Physicist Julian Maddalena proposed a hypothesis: our universe might be a holographic projection. Everything you see, everything you perceive, is a kind of projection. I agree with that hypothesis."

"Huh?!" Li Huowang was momentarily stunned. What the hell was this guy talking about? And hadn't he heard these words somewhere before?

"What do you think is real? What is false?" Qing Wanglai asked.

"Is it possible that the world is a giant illusion, a refraction of some kind of existence? Like our shadows. We are their shadows."

...Li Huowang stared silently at the man on the screen, suspicion growing in his mind. This guy... is he also a mental patient, just one that hasn't been diagnosed yet?

"I don't agree with your view." The speaker was none other than Yang Na.

She seemed to have become a different person. Gone was the gentle, fragile girl beside Li Huowang; she was now aggressive and sharp.

She clutched the cup in her hands tightly, her gaze turning unusually fierce. "So-called science is bold hypothesis and careful verification. Every hypothesis is just a hypothesis until it's confirmed. Do you have any key evidence to prove your hypothesis?"

"Heh heh, of course I do."

"Show me. I don't believe you have any." Yang Na's tone was clearly dismissive. "If you really had definitive evidence, you could win the Nobel Prize. You wouldn't be here."

"I can't show it to you. It's like asking: how could my shadow explain to your shadow what our world is like? They don't even have thoughts. They move only because we move. How am I supposed to explain?"

"Fallacy! What makes you any different from those pseudo-scientists sprouting nonsense online? I really doubt how you got your Master's degree!" Yang Na stood up angrily. The favorable impression she had gained from his appearance vanished without a trace.

"Imagine it. Compared to us, how simple our shadows are. If we—living, breathing people of flesh and blood and matter—are the shadows of some existence, can you imagine what kind of existence that would be?"

Seeing Yang Na trapped in confusion, Qing Wanglai continued. "What if their projection isn't just a single, thin figure? What if it's our entire world? If our whole world is merely the projection of a single existence, what kind of existence would that be?"

Watching Yang Na open her mouth only to close it again, Qing Wanglai pressed on. "You can't imagine it, because you don't even have the organ to carry such a thought."

As he said this, Qing Wanglai's expression grew distant. "But I've seen it. I saw it once. Even though I immediately forgot, I still remember that moment—how insignificant I was."

"What we call thoughts are merely the refraction of their breathing. We exist only because they exist. Even our..." At this point, Qing Wanglai seemed unable to continue. He clutched his head, a look of pain crossing his face.

He turned, opened a drawer, pulled out a few capsules, and stuffed them into his mouth. Then he washed them down with the already cold tea.

For a moment, the room fell silent. No one spoke.

After a while, Qian Fu's voice sounded in the room. "What a load of nonsense. You just made that up. I still think it's aliens from Leo."

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Reading Guide Decoding

When Your Coffee Date Believes You're a Shadow

Cultural / Xianxia Notes

The Holographic Projection Hypothesis & Daoist Roots. Qing Wanglai's theory—that our universe is a projection of a higher, unimaginable existence—may sound like modern physics (Julian Maddalena's holographic principle), but it strikes a deeply familiar chord in Chinese xianxia. The idea that the "real" world is a shadow or dream of a higher realm is a common Daoist trope, often linked to Zhuangzi's butterfly dream or the notion that immortality lies in waking from the "dream of dust." What makes this terrifying in Dao Gui Yi Xian is the direction of the projection: the Dao-Twisted World, with its flesh Buddhas and Siming, is the higher "real" one. We are its shadow. Our thoughts are its breath. Our existence is incidental. "The organ to carry such thought." Qing Wanglai's cruelest line implies that the human brain is simply not equipped to comprehend the higher reality. This is a direct echo of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, but adapted to a Chinese philosophical framework: it's not just that the truth is maddening—it's that we literally lack the hardware to process it. You can't see a color no eye can perceive. Yang Na's sharp turn. This chapter provides a rare look at Yang Na's analytical side. She is not just the gentle girlfriend; she has the spine to call out pseudo-science and demand rigor. For long-time readers, this intellectual aggression hints at her deeper nature—the projection of Wusheng Laomu is not a passive, gentle mother, but a being that argues for the truth of its own framework.

Chapter Overview

After the wire-hanger ambush of last chapter, Li Huowang finally gets his video call with Qing Wanglai—the mysterious "normal person" Qian Fu dug up. But "normal" is a very relative term in Dao Gui Yi Xian. What starts as a pragmatic discussion about getting Li Huowang out of surveillance quickly spirals into a full-blown philosophical confrontation about the nature of reality. Qing Wanglai drops a holographic projection hypothesis that sounds suspiciously like something Li Huowang has heard before, and Yang Na—our gentle, modern-world anchor—erupts into a sharp-tongued intellectual brawler. This chapter isn't about flesh-and-blood monsters; it's about the terrifying possibility that we are the monsters' shadow on the wall.

Key Plot Points

Li Huowang's video call with Qing Wanglai begins awkwardly; Qing insists on finishing his meal before talking business, citing ancient proverbs ("When eating, do not talk").
Li Huowang, still paranoid, checks the window again and dares his watchers to attack. They don't.
Qing Wanglai's environment: a spotless, white dorm room. No anime posters—just a single calligraphy scroll. He looks clean, organized, and intellectual.
Qing proposes to "temporarily restore Li Huowang's freedom" but Li interrupts him before he can explain.
Li Huowang asks the big question: What do you think they are? Expecting a "they're a cult" or "they're from the government" answer.
Qing Wanglai drops the hypothesis: the universe might be a holographic projection—we are the shadows of a higher existence. He explicitly endorses this view.
Li Huowang is stunned and immediately suspects Qing is just another undiagnosed mental patient.
Yang Na explodes. She transforms from Li Huowang's gentle girlfriend into a fierce intellectual debater, attacking Qing's hypothesis as unscientific pseudoscience.
Yang Na demands evidence; Qing Wanglai admits he has seen proof but can't show it—"It's like asking a shadow to speak."
Qing describes the moment he glimpsed the higher existence: "How insignificant I was."
He struggles with a headache, takes pills from a drawer, and down them with cold tea.
Qian Fu's voice cuts through the silence to declare it all nonsense; he still thinks it's aliens from Leo.

Reading Guide

Get ready to flex your brain, fellow Daoists. This chapter is a pure, uncut philosophical slap-fight. No monster attacks, no self-mutilation, no escape. Just Li Huowang, a polite stranger with a holographic universe theory, and his girlfriend turning into a ferocious science defender. The horror here is not in the visuals but in the implication: if Qing Wanglai is right, then everything Li Huowang has suffered—his schizophrenia diagnosis, the Azathothian horror of the Siming—is not a curse but a leak. He is a shadow that briefly touched the wall and saw the light source. Pay close attention to Qing Wanglai’s headache and pill-taking. This is not just a lecture; it’s a performance of a man who has been broken by the truth he is trying to describe. Also, Yang Na. Watch her. The fierceness she shows here is not just "girlfriend defense mode"—it is the voice of Wusheng Laomu’s projection refusing to accept a reality that diminishes her own significance. When she demands proof, she is not being a skeptic; she is being a god who refuses to be called a lie.