Projection

Seeing that the tattooist had glanced at him and walked off to a corner with his phone, speaking in low tones, Li Huowang furrowed his brows, thinking hard. “If those two siblings are Bashe, and Chen Hongyu is the Siming of Decay... then which Siming is Qing Wanglai? What does he know about this world?”

So many Simings gathered in one place—one of them had to be able to tell him what the hell was going on.

After a short phone conversation, Ba Nanxu’s expression soured. She tossed the phone directly at Li Huowang. “When you’re done, get the hell out of my shop! Don’t ever come back! Bite the hand that feeds you.”

Li Huowang caught the phone and watched the two siblings shove the cabinet back into place. He pressed it to his ear and spoke slowly. “Hello?”

“It’s me, Qing Wanglai. Yang Na told me what just happened. Don’t panic. Tell me—what’s going on? What did you experience that made you snap like this?”

Li Huowang hesitated for a moment. But he remembered what Qing Wanglai had said earlier, about the projection theory. After a brief internal struggle, he began to speak, the words spilling out in a slow stream.

“I finally understand who I am. I finally understand what this is all about. Why everything has felt so wrong. Because this isn’t the world I was in anymore!”

After listening to Li Huowang’s explanation, Qing Wanglai paused, then spoke again, his voice calm. “Li Huowang, now I get it. The reason you’re so shaken is that you think everything here is fake, right? That your real girlfriend and your real parents are somewhere else? That you’ve crossed over? That everything here is an illusion?”

Li Huowang looked at Yang Na standing beside him, so solid, so real. His expression warred with itself, his breathing heavy. “Isn’t it? Isn’t that what you said?”

“True, I did say the whole world is a projection. But a projection isn’t the same as a falsehood.”

“I told you before: we have flesh and blood, we have thoughts, we are real. We are real projections. Do you understand?”

“So what makes you so sure that your past experiences weren’t projections too? Do you see what I mean? When I say ‘projection,’ I mean that you have been a projection your whole life, ever since you were a child.”

“You have always been here. Yang Na is still the Yang Na you knew. Your parents are still your parents. Don’t be bewildered. It’s just that they, like you and me, are projections of another side.”

“They’re all projections? Everything from my past is a projection?” Fragments of memory flashed through Li Huowang’s mind: kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school. “All of that was a projection?”

“Impossible! Absolutely impossible!”

“What makes you so sure it’s impossible? Nothing is impossible. You just never noticed it before.”

“Don’t let it get to you. Clear-sighted people are always a minority. Look around—apart from the few who realize they’re projections, the other billions just drift through life without ever waking up.”

Hearing Li Huowang’s silence on the other end of the line, Qing Wanglai continued in a comforting tone. “Don’t worry. You haven’t crossed worlds. They are still who they were. They’ve been right here with you the whole time. Nothing has changed, as long as you can accept this hypothesis.”

Compared to the despair he had felt before, this explanation was far gentler. Nothing had changed. Even if they had always been projections.

After a long silence, Li Huowang spoke again. “Evidence. I need proof. Proof that my past and my present are both projections. You can’t just say it—I won’t believe it.”

“Then do you have proof that your past wasn’t a projection?”

“Yes, I do.” The absolute certainty in Li Huowang’s voice caught Qing Wanglai off guard. “Oh? Go on, then.”

“I am a Siming now—but I was just recently Cultivated into the True as a Siming. That means the past version of myself was not a projection.”

Silence.

Both inside the phone and outside it, the air went dead.

“Li Huowang... let’s be practical here. If we keep arguing like this, we’ll go in circles.”

“Forget it! I’ll figure it out myself.” Li Huowang hung up the call without waiting for a reply.

Even so, his mood was noticeably better than it had been moments ago.

Qing Wanglai had offered a hypothesis: that his past and present were both projections. Li Huowang didn’t actually care whether he was a projection or not. What he wanted was proof that the family he had now was the same family he had always had—no matter what form they took.

It sounded absurd. But Li Huowang was already living through things far more absurd than this. For now, he shelved the question. He needed to find the answer himself.

He wiped the blood off the phone screen with his shirt and handed it back to Yang Na.

He looked at her, thought about asking something, then held back. If she was a completely different person from the Yang Na of his past, what would be the point of asking?

“Let’s go. We’ll talk when we get back.” Li Huowang supported Yang Na as they walked toward the door.

Just as he reached the threshold, he turned back to look at the two Ba siblings.

“Bashe. We’re old acquaintances by now. If you can help me figure out what’s really going on, I’m willing to form an alliance. Better than getting jumped alone with no one to back you up.”

“Their target is the Simings. Other Simings have already died. Are you so sure you won’t be next?”

“Fucking lunatic.” The siblings didn’t spare him another word. They slammed the door shut.

Li Huowang frowned. “Strange. Bashe clearly knows me. He’s even met me several times. Could I have been wrong?”

He thought for a few seconds, then shook his head. “No. They are Bashe. He even warned me before. I’m sure of it. But... why won’t he talk to me?”

“Could it be... because of the projection? Does the projection distort the meaning of what I say? And what does this projection thing even mean, anyway? Why, now that I’ve become a Siming, am I trapped behind a layer of projection?”

He replayed the memory of those people attacking him earlier, and his expression turned grave.

He had been so tangled up in his own identity crisis that he hadn’t thought about them. If this whole group were Simings from the White Jade Capital, then who were those others?

The thought that there might be beings powerful enough to threaten so many Simings made Li Huowang’s stomach clench.

“Li Huowang... let’s go home. You need to take your medicine. Maybe you’re like this because you haven’t been taking it?”

“Screw the medicine. I finally understand what’s going on with me. And I finally understand who they are. They must be Yuer Shen—it all fits now.”

Feeling like everything was finally clicking into place, Li Huowang led Yang Na away from the bustling pedestrian street and disappeared into the crowd.