Chapter 859: Illness

Chapter 859: Illness

Li Huowang gripped the iron bars of the window with both hands, his single eye staring blankly at the patients outside who were enjoying their outdoor time. He watched their strange actions.

He thought for a long time, and finally, trembling slightly, he opened his mouth and muttered to himself, "Are they all hallucinations? Did I really have mental illness all along?"

"You just realized that?!" Yi Donglai's voice, laced with suppressed anger, came from behind him.

"Then what about when you murdered someone, climbed over the electric fence, or gouged out your own eyeball—do you think you were normal then?"

Li Huowang's expression gradually twisted into something sinister, his hands bulging with veins as he clutched the iron bars tightly. "I had reasons for doing those things!"

"How many mentally ill people kill and hurt others without reason? But that reason only fits inside your head—it doesn't fit the real world!"

Li Huowang could no longer hold back. He turned around and glared furiously at his attending physician, Yi Donglai. "Why are you in such a hurry?! It's me who's sick now! Why are you so anxious?! 66!"

"You're not anxious? Can't I be anxious? Do you know what your situation means to me after the incident?" Yi Donglai stood up angrily.

"It means my paper is withdrawn, it means no promotion for me! It means I’ve been humiliated and laughed at by colleagues! I even gave an interview! I talked confidently on TV about your treatment process!"

"If you don’t get better now, my life is over!! I can’t accept this outcome!"

After finishing speaking, Yi Donglai sat back down, closed his eyes, and took deep breaths to calm himself.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw Li Huowang’s one eye, so close, staring straight at him.

"What about you?" "Yi Donglai, what do you mean by that? What kind of projection are you? Why does my change affect you?"

"Ahhhh!" He slammed his fists onto the table, and Yi Donglai’s already settled emotions were once again thrown into chaos.

"Look at him! I’m going to wash my face!" With a sudden slam of the door, Li Huowang found himself staring wide-eyed at the nurse beside him.

Li Huowang stopped looking at him and turned back to gaze at the wire mesh outside, and beside it, Gao Jinyun.

"Did I really go insane? Then why does it feel so real? They must all be real. So which of the things I saw before were real, and which were hallucinations?"

All his memories of the past began to become unstable in his mind.

Standing there, wrestling with his expression, Li Huowang kept thinking about this question until Yi Donglai returned.

After washing his face several times with cold water, Yi Donglai sat back down and saw Li Huowang sitting properly in front of him, hands resting on his knees.

"What are you doing?"

"Isn’t it true that I have mental illness? Aren’t you my attending physician? What else am I supposed to do? Of course, if I'm sick, I need to be treated. Yin."

Yi Donglai supported his chin with his hand, frowning as he looked at Li Huowang, guessing what trick this guy was up to.

He had always thought he understood Li Huowang well, but now he realized he didn’t understand him at all.

Yet Li Huowang wasn’t trying to pull any tricks—he truly just wanted to be cured. If he was indeed ill, then he should be treated.

And since Qingwang had completely given up on him, the only one who could save him was himself.

Once he cured his mental illness, he would be free. Then he could go find Qingwang and settle accounts—why hadn’t he shown up during the battle of Shiming?

"Do you really mean that? Are you sure you’ll fully cooperate with my treatment from now on?"

"Of course, do I need to ask? I want to get better as soon as possible," Li Huowang said naturally.

Yi Donglai shook his head with a light laugh. "I never saw that coming."

"Tsk, Yi Donglai, what do you mean? Hurry up and treat me. The previous treatment method worked pretty well."

"No rush yet." Yi Donglai pulled his chair closer. "Let’s sort things out first. You just said I was a projection of something. What did you mean?"

"I remember you told me this before. Could you repeat it now?"

"No, no, no." Li Huowang shook his head. "You don’t need to worry about that. Just cure the hallucinations."

Yi Donglai frowned at him. "So you think you only need to treat the hallucinations? And everything else like projections was real? Have you ever considered that maybe this so-called projection is also one of your hallucinations?"

Li Huowang sat there, frowning. After five minutes, he looked up at Yi Donglai. "You mean that from the beginning, Qingwang was lying to me?"

"No, what I mean is, Qingwang might also be a hallucination of yours. You know what delusion is, right? A false belief that is irrational, inconsistent with reality, impossible to achieve, yet firmly believed."

"I once treated a patient who, on the street, when another girl glanced at him, he thought she liked him. No matter how much she cursed, hated, or beat him, he held onto that belief with unwavering certainty."

"When she hit and scolded him, he rationalized it, believing that hitting meant love, scolding meant affection. When she cried and begged him to leave, he thought it was her way of playing hard to get. Whatever she did, in his mind, he twisted it to fit his understanding."

"Your situation is worse than his. You have hallucinations, and you may even be misinterpreting what the hallucinations say."

"I know you probably have your own bizarre but stable worldview now, and you’re very certain of it."

"But that worldview itself is a form of extreme delusion, just like that patient who believed other women loved him. In reality, no matter what the girl did, she couldn’t possibly like him. He was fifty-six years old, had three fingers missing, and his mouth was crooked."

"No, no, no! Maybe Qingwang was lying to me! But they’re all real! Absolutely real!"

"Absolutely real? Who can prove it? Just by yourself?"

"Nana!" Li Huowang suddenly raised his head. "Nana went with me!"

"You mean you want me to go ask another mentally ill person to help understand your delusions?"

"Can you let Yang Nana go? Haven’t you already ruined her enough?"

While Li Huowang was being treated, the guard beside him spoke to his colleague: "They say the previous doctor treating this guy went mad and got locked up in a psychiatric ward. I think if things keep going like this, Dr. Yi might go crazy too."

"In my opinion, Dr. Yi shouldn’t have taken this hot potato. The higher-ups have already issued a death sentence. Whether he cures him or not, he’s supposed to stay here for life."

"It should’ve been done long ago. The last time he killed so many people, I thought releasing him was too reckless. Letting such a ticking bomb wander around the streets—doesn’t that treat ordinary people’s lives like a joke?"