Mutated Tao

Li Huowang was furious at suddenly being stopped like this. “Are you trying to crash into me? Learn how to drive!”

Li Huowang saw the car door open and was shocked to see who the driver was—Doctor Yi Donglai from the White Tower Hospital!

He never expected to see his attending doctor in a place like this.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice someone snooping through your medical records?” Yi Donglai explained. It was clear that he had been secretly following him.

Li Huowang gripped the handlebars of his motorcycle and quickly scanned his surroundings, wary of any orderlies who might suddenly appear to drag him back.

“Stop looking around. It’s just me today. I want to talk, Li Huowang. I’m genuinely curious—how did you escape from the White Tower Hospital? That’s a maximum-security facility.”

Yi Donglai was eager to learn how Li Huowang always managed to break free, no matter how tight the security was. This wasn’t the first time he had escaped.

“How did I escape? I had help. How so? Because everything that happened was real! None of it was just a hallucination!”

“Dr. Yi, you’re a good doctor, but you’re wrong about this. Terribly wrong!” Li Huowang said with conviction.

Yi Donglai responded to Li Huowang’s outburst with a simple smile, showing no signs of being bothered. His focus remained on bringing Li Huowang back, curing him, reclaiming his own reputation, and regaining what he believed he deserved.

“Do you truly believe that? Would you say the same in front of your mother?”

Yi Donglai raised his phone, and Sun Xiaoqin, Li Huowang’s mother, appeared on the screen. She was crying and had visibly aged. “Huowang, where are you? Please come back. I beg you. Seeing your eye like this breaks my heart.”

Li Huowang’s headache intensified. His face contorted in agony as he gripped his head tightly.

Yi Donglai approached with the phone in hand, but the screen went black with a soft pop.

“Damn it! Why now?” Yi Donglai cursed and angrily tapped the phone.

When he noticed that Li Huowang had stopped struggling, he tossed the phone aside and composed himself. “Li Huowang, no matter what you’ve been through, remember one thing—you are ill.

“All your logic—all the bizarre things you’ve experienced—might just be your delusions.”

“No! You’re wrong! Terribly wrong!” Li Huowang shouted. “Come with me. I’ll show you what’s real! As absurd as it seems, it’s the truth!”

He grabbed Yi Donglai and dragged him toward Qing Wanglai’s villa. He wanted to prove that the people he had encountered were real.

As they hurried along, Li Huowang incoherently recounted everything he had experienced to Yi Donglai.

“Ha! You think killing Simings will let you reverse time? Does that even sound believable?” Yi Donglai’s voice dripped with skepticism.

However, he was rational enough to not put up a fight, opting to continue walking alongside Li Huowang. “If you’re saying that time can be reversed and that the world is purely idealistic, you might as well say the whole world is fake.”

He continued, “Even in a world with magic, there has to be logic, right? Everything has to follow strict rules. If time and causality could be altered at will, the world would be so chaotic that it wouldn’t function. It wouldn’t hold together at all.”

Yi Donglai’s words hit Li Huowang like an electric shock. Fear flickered in his eyes as he stared at Yi Donglai. “What nonsense are you talking about?”

“I’m saying there are only two possibilities: either everything you’ve seen is fake and a result of your delusions, or you’re right, and the entire world itself is fake.

“By your logic, you’re not the one who’s wrong—the entire world is.

“Li Huowang, which possibility do you think is more likely?”

Li Huowang clenched his teeth, and Yi Donglai adjusted his glasses with a confident smile.

Just as Yi Donglai was about to continue, a test tube dropped in front of him, shattering on the ground and spilling its contents.

The next moment, Yi Donglai blacked out.

Qing Wanglai stepped forward and stood over the unconscious Yi Donglai. “Don’t let Order come near us. Their presence will destroy everything.”

His expression was serious, devoid of his usual friendly smile. “I told you that Order won’t help you. Even if you don’t believe in me or Zhao Shuangdian, you need to believe in yourself.”

Qing Wanglai knelt and searched Yi Donglai’s belongings. He found a recording device and multiple tracking devices. Yi Donglai had clearly come prepared.

“We need to move up our plan. Order is closing in. Let’s get through customs first.”

Li Huowang glanced at Yi Donglai, propped him against a wall, then got on his motorcycle and sped away.

Perhaps due to Yi Donglai’s earlier scare, Li Huowang felt more mentally stable than before. If nothing else, his headache had disappeared.

Leaving ahead of schedule wasn’t a problem for Li Huowang, but he couldn’t leave Yang Na alone—someone needed to take care of her.

Fortunately, Zhao Shuangdian stepped in to help. “I can have my nanny take care of your girlfriend for a while. Still, since you’re bound to return to the same point in time sooner or later, what’s the point of all this?”

Her words didn’t stop Li Huowang from whispering to Yang Na. He eventually convinced her to let the Heavenly Mater help from a distance. With that, they prepared to leave.

“We don’t need to rush. We could just kill that doctor and bury him somewhere,” Ba Nanxu said. Her suggestion drew everyone’s attention.

“No, temporarily cutting off Order won’t help. It will only attract more of them. We need to go,” Qing Wanglai said, making the final decision.

Everyone got into the car and went to the dock. Li Huowang was lost in thought, thinking about everything that had happened, including Yi Donglai’s words.

Zhao Shuangdian’s voice broke through his thoughts.

“Li Huowang, regarding what you said about reversing time, I have another theory. Have you heard of parallel worlds?

“Maybe you’re not reversing time. Maybe the people you interacted with were in a different parallel world. Perhaps due to some event, maybe a Siming’s death or something else, you were pushed into another parallel world. As such, you met new versions of ourselves and everything started over.”