Chapter 656: Monitoring

"Son, don't forget to take your medicine!"

Once the voice outside faded, Li Huowang sighed. He finally had a moment to sort out his thoughts and figure out what had happened last night.

First, he couldn't jump to conclusions. Last night was too hazy; perhaps he had misseen something. To confirm if someone was tracking him, he needed solid evidence. Otherwise, everyone would just think he was going crazy, and his image in their eyes was already terrible. Moreover, Li Huowang didn't entirely trust his own perceptions.

A trace of hesitation crossed Li Huowang's face as he thought this. He picked up his phone and quickly typed: "I always feel like someone is maliciously watching me, wanting to harm me. Why?" Various answers appeared after he typed the query. Li Huowang scrolled down quickly, and suddenly his finger stopped on a line: "Persecutory delusion."

The description read: "The patient groundlessly believes that certain individuals, groups, or organizations around them are engaging in adverse activities against them, such as attacks, entrapment, murder, destruction, slander, false accusation, or suppression. Examples include poisoning food, tracking and monitoring, or orchestrating conspiracies. The patient's delusions are distorted beliefs, pathological reasoning, and judgments arising from a pathological basis. They do not conform to objective reality or the patient's educational level. The delusional content is highly absurd, but the patient is deeply convinced of it, cannot be persuaded, and cannot be corrected by personal experience."

As Li Huowang read the content, his fingers trembled slightly, and a terrifying suspicion surfaced in his mind. "Could I really have a mental illness?"

He opened his phone's contacts and found Yi Donglai's number. But after a moment of hesitation, Li Huowang closed the contact list again. He had just managed to get out, and he truly didn't want to go back. He also didn't want to worry the people who cared about him anymore. How heartbroken would his mother be if she learned of this?

Li Huowang continued his search using the browser, various pieces of information floating before his eyes. He started switching keywords: surveillance, mental illness, persecution, trying to find different possibilities. Soon after, another piece of content appeared before him.

It described how Ernest Hemingway's mental state deteriorated in his later years. He told everyone about his terrible experiences of being monitored, claiming he was wiretapped and had his mail intercepted. Once, during a meal, he even pointed directly at two people across the table and declared they were agents surveilling him. This behavior was widely seen as a sign of paranoid delusions. Under pressure, Hemingway's mind did seem somewhat unstable, further solidifying the belief that he suffered from delusions and had become mentally ill. Consequently, Hemingway was sent to a psychiatric hospital and received electroshock therapy, which was popular at the time. The final outcome is well-known: a broken Hemingway took his own life. Many textbooks and books stated that he committed suicide because he couldn't bear the pressures of life and had lost hope. However, fifty years later, declassified documents revealed that Hemingway had indeed been constantly monitored. Everything he claimed was true; there was genuinely an organization surveilling him around the clock.

"Ah!" Li Huowang closed his eyes in anguish, throwing his phone onto the bed. Difficulty itself wasn't frightening, but what was terrifying was not knowing what to do now, feeling that every path he might take was wrong.

"What should I do? Is this real? Should I try to find out?"

Just as Li Huowang found himself in a dilemma, he suddenly felt that sensation again. This time, he didn't move rashly, as the window was open and it was daytime. Li Huowang slowly turned his back, quietly pulled open the left drawer, and took out a mirror.

With his head bowed, Li Huowang slowly moved the mirror in his hand, attempting to use its reflection to identify the source of the gaze. Inch by inch, he moved it upwards, finally catching sight of a pair of women's shoes! His heart began to race. As Li Huowang sharply shifted the mirror, old Auntie Qi's face appeared in the reflection. "Holy cow!"

Li Huowang turned around, somewhat exasperated, stuck his head out the window, and yelled, "Hey, Auntie Qi! Aren't you tired of squatting there every day? Doesn't anyone relieve you? Why don't you come in and sit down?"

He watched Auntie Qi casually walk away in the distance, just as the landline phone inside the house began to ring.

Li Huowang recognized the ringtone; it was his mother's phone. He walked out of the room, picked up the cracked-screen phone from the cabinet, swiped it with his finger, and held it to his ear. "Hello? Who is this?"

However, there was no sound from the other end of the line, just silence. "Who is this? Sun Xiaoqin isn't here. I'm her son. My mom isn't around. Who are you looking for?"

"Li Huowang?" a voice came from the other end. The voice was strange, as if it had been specially computer-processed. Li Huowang's brows furrowed as his recently quelled suspicion began to resurface. "Yes, I'm Li Huowang. Who are you?"

Yet, no further sound came from the phone. Li Huowang pressed the phone to his ear, listening intently. Faintly and indistinctly, he thought he heard a scream.

With his left hand, Li Huowang took out his own cell phone and slowly dialed the emergency number.

"Son, what are you doing?" Sun Xiaoqin walked in from outside, carrying a bag of fruit. She looked at Li Huowang, who was holding her phone, with a puzzled expression.

"Nothing, someone called your phone. I think it was a wrong number," Li Huowang said, lowering the phone in his hand.

"My phone? But it's broken."

"What!?" Li Huowang brought the phone from his ear to his face, only to find nothing on the screen except the crack and his own astonished reflection on the black surface.

"Son, what's wrong with you? Don't scare me like this," a flustered Sun Xiaoqin said, walking over and embracing Li Huowang, stroking the back of his head repeatedly.

Li Huowang suddenly burst into laughter. "Mom, I got you, didn't I? Was my acting convincing?"

Hearing this, Sun Xiaoqin released Li Huowang, her right hand pushing him forcefully with an angry expression. "You child! How can you joke about something like that? You nearly scared me to death!"

"Haha, I just wanted to cheer you up since you're always worrying about this and that," Li Huowang said, standing up and walking nonchalantly back into the room.

However, the moment he stepped inside, his expression drastically changed. With clenched fists, he silently raged in the room, his face contorted in a ferocious grimace. "What in the world is going on?! Is someone really watching me?!"