Chapter 417: Another Possibility

"Where's my head?" Li Huowang asked.

Li Sui, thinking the question was directed at him, quickly replied, "Father, I know. It fell off in the city earlier. Should we go back and pick it up?"

Li Sui's words seemed to drain the last bit of life from Li Huowang. His body went limp, and he collapsed forward onto the ground.

"Father? Father, what's wrong?" Li Sui anxiously nudged Li Huowang's body with his tentacles, but received no response. He couldn't understand why his father had stopped moving. Was it because he had no head? But Father hadn't had a head before either, and he had traveled so far. It shouldn't be because of the missing head.

Just then, Li Sui suddenly noticed movement from the small toy his father had given him. As he pulled the tiny leather figure out with a tentacle, it grew rapidly in the air, quickly reaching human height. Its face was Li Huowang's, but its body was shriveled, just a thin layer of skin.

This flat, ethereal Li Huowang instinctively crawled to the ground, bringing its mouth close to the shadow next to his body and began to suck forcefully. As the shadow was absorbed into its belly, the skin-bag rapidly inflated as if being pumped with air. Moments later, a naked Li Huowang with a head appeared beside his own corpse.

Li Huowang, having escaped death, breathed a sigh of relief as he looked at the headless corpse on the ground. When his head had fallen off, he was blind and hadn't seen who had taken it. He suspected it was very likely the revived Supervising Secretary.

The Directorate of Celestial Observation indeed had more tricks up its sleeve. If he hadn't possessed this magical artifact for protection, he might have truly perished there. "Next time I face the Directorate, I must be extremely careful," he thought. "Their methods are too bizarre and dangerous; carelessness could easily lead to death."

As Li Huowang pondered these things, everything around him began to tremble. Just as he suspected that members of the Directorate were ambushing him, his surroundings instantly turned a stark, pale white.

Li Huowang lay quietly on a hospital bed, wearing two restraint garments, staring blankly at the unlit white energy-saving lamp above him. "I'm back again," he murmured.

Li Huowang belatedly realized that he had revived by borrowing skin, but Li Sui was still inside his previous body. Without Li Sui to suppress the illusions, this false world had, as expected, reappeared.

"Li Sui, Li Sui," Li Huowang mumbled indistinctly, his mouth gagged. "Quick, come into my belly and help me get back!"

As soon as he finished speaking, Li Huowang immediately lifted his head and opened his gagged mouth as wide as possible.

The camera, flashing red in the upper-left corner of the ward, immediately rotated to focus on Li Huowang, who was restrained on the bed.

Perhaps because his mouth was gagged and he couldn't speak clearly, Li Sui did not bring him back to reality.

"Li Sui! Don't dawdle, hurry!" Seeing no reaction, Li Huowang grew anxious.

He knew that not only was Li Sui absent from his belly, but the black spindle was also gone. If anyone noticed him now, his identity as a 'Heart-Element' would be exposed!

With a clang, the ward door was pushed open.

When Sun Xiaoqin entered, holding a meal box, and saw Li Huowang staring intently at her, tears of excitement immediately welled up in her eyes.

"Son, son, are you awake? You're finally awake, aren't you?" Sun Xiaoqin rushed forward, cradling Li Huowang's head and examining him repeatedly.

After Sun Xiaoqin removed the cloth gag from Li Huowang's mouth, he was about to feign madness to get through the situation. But looking at the worried face before him, the words caught in his throat, and he couldn't speak.

"It's okay, it's okay. Just being able to look at people is enough. This means your condition is gradually improving, and you'll get better someday. Come, eat, let's eat first." Sun Xiaoqin wiped away her tears, picked up the meal box from the floor, and hugged it to her chest.

The four-tiered meal box was opened layer by layer, revealing a meat dish, a vegetable dish, a soup, and a staple food.

She picked up a short-handled plastic spoon, dipped half a spoonful of white rice into the egg drop soup, then picked up a piece of pork belly and brought it to Li Huowang's mouth.

Li Huowang opened his mouth and allowed the spoonful of food, which he didn't recognize from the 'real world', to be placed inside.

"Good boy, my son is the best behaved," she cooed. "Mom knows you'll always open your mouth to eat at this time. Compared to the other patients, my son is so much easier to take care of."

After swallowing the food, Li Huowang asked, "Mom, how did you get in here?"

Hearing Li Huowang finally respond, Sun Xiaoqin bit down hard on her lower lip. However, fearing she might scare her son back into his unresponsiveness, she suppressed her excitement and said, "This place is called a hospital, but it's really a prison. The food is terrible. I was afraid you wouldn't eat well, so I came to stay with you."

"Originally, it wasn't allowed by the rules, but the warden is quite reasonable. As soon as I told him my son is best behaved when I'm by his side, he immediately agreed. There are still many good people in this world."

Li Huowang nodded silently and opened his mouth again to eat the food. But after chewing a few times, he noticed Sun Xiaoqin acting strangely, looking left and right.

She took a small handful of rice from the main dish, walked over to a hole with a fine mesh, and used the grains of rice to completely block the listening device within.

Sun Xiaoqin then sat back down by the bed and whispered into Li Huowang's ear, "Son, if you're awake next time and I'm not here, and anyone asks you about the gold, tell them it's Grandma's family heirloom dowry! Do you hear me?"

"If that doesn't work, you can just keep quiet and say nothing. Whatever you do, don't say you took that gold from under the covers! People are wicked these days! Absolutely, absolutely do not say that!"

A helpless smile appeared on Li Huowang's face. "Mom, did you spend that gold?"

"What are you talking about, child! That's your grandma's family heirloom dowry! It can't be touched unless absolutely necessary!"

"Don't worry, this is a public place. It won't cost much money, and your father can still earn more."

"Mom, I gave you the gold, so spend it. Don't save it. Anyway, it's all an illusion; I can get as much gold as I want—"

As he said this, Li Huowang froze. Seeing his mother again, a terrifying question suddenly popped into his mind.

In the past, he had always believed this world was false, based on the fact that he could bring gold and jade pendants from the 'real world' and that many things here had happened too coincidentally and abruptly.

But if Zhuge Yuan was correct earlier, and a 'Heart-Element' truly possesses the ability to turn illusion into reality and create something out of nothing, then was it possible that the gold and the sudden events were things he had inadvertently manifested by using his 'Heart-Element' abilities?

Or, was there a possibility that this 'real world' could also be real?