A mysterious scholar who appears at the Bone Buddha Temple. His fan bears the inscription “Tian Sheng Wo Cai” (Heaven Gave Me Talent). He can see through invisibility, detect anomalies in the Five Phases, and offers genuine kindness—though Li Huowang suspects he is a Zuowandao.
Definition
A mysterious scholar who appears at the Bone Buddha Temple. His fan bears the inscription “Tian Sheng Wo Cai” (Heaven Gave Me Talent). He can see through invisibility, detect anomalies in the Five Phases, and offers genuine kindness—though Li Huowang suspects he is a Zuowandao.
This chapter is a masterclass in mounting paranoia and identity collapse. Li Huowang, still invisible, decides to hang back and let the Zuowandao and Heart-Bewilderment tear each other apart. But his spectator’s perch is shattered when a mysterious scholar—who can *see through invisibility*—casually taps him on the shoulder. The scholar, who calls himself Zhuge Yuan, heals Li Huowang’s facial wounds, warns him about the Knife-Pawnbroker’s curse, and leaves a strange black spindle before vanishing. Meanwhile, the identity crisis escalates: a duplicate Li Huowang, a duplicate Hong Da, and a duplicate Heart-Bewilderment all pile into the same side hall, turning the hunt for the missing Chief Recorder into a farce of mirrors. Then the Chief Recorder himself appears—holding the shrunken head of Facai, one of the elusive Three Yuan. The revelation that Facai is already dead hits like a club: whatever killed him is far beyond anyone in this room.
**Buckle up for the wildest identity crisis yet.** This chapter throws three pairs of identical people into one room, and nobody—not even the readers—can tell who’s real and who’s a Zuowandao. The key is to track not appearances but *behavior*: the genuine Heart-Bewilderment is trying to protect himself; the fake one is trying to create confusion. Li Huowang’s tactic of staying disengaged and treating the chaos as entertainment is a sign of his growing coldness and flexibility.
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