Chapter 658: New

Two severed, bloodless fingers lay stark white on the mediation room table.

Everyone present, except Li Huowang, looked grim.

Naturally, silver handcuffs were placed on Li Huowang's wrists.

“I was kidnapped! Are you mistaken?! Why are you handcuffing me!” Li Huowang suppressed his anger and shouted at the others. This time, however, no one listened to him; everyone except the two officers guarding him left the room.

Outside the door, Sun Jianye listened to Li Huowang's voice, observing the unusual young man through the iron bars. Psychiatric patients like him were his biggest headache. Not only could their words be false, but their erratic logic rendered his usual interrogation methods useless. If a suspect offered no clues, he would have to look for answers elsewhere.

He tapped on Li Huowang's phone, quickly searched, and then opened the contacts. Seeing the time of today's call records, he dialed the number directly.

“Hello? Li Huowang, why did you hang up on me just now? Oh, I apologize, what happened to Li Huowang? Yes, I'm his attending physician.”“Anything unusual?” Sun Jianye asked.“He did call me today to ask if he had persecutory delusions,” the doctor replied.Hearing this, Sun Jianye nodded knowingly, forming a preliminary judgment.

After carefully asking Yi Donglai for more details, Sun Jianye walked into the mediation room, sat in front of Li Huowang, and asked, “Student Li, can you tell me where these two fingers came from?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? They belong to the kidnapper in the car!” Li Huowang patiently explained.

Hearing Li Huowang's words, Sun Jianye took out his phone and showed him. “Is that so? But the community surveillance footage doesn't show the car you mentioned, nor the kidnapper you spoke of.”

“How could there be nothing!” Li Huowang leaned forward, staring intently at the video. The top right corner displayed today's date. In the video, Li Huowang saw a somewhat strange version of himself, walking in the community, seemingly heading towards a woman with an umbrella. However, the surveillance footage showed no such woman, only himself. As he walked, the Li Huowang in the video suddenly stopped. He appeared to be struggling with someone unseen, staggering into a nearby surveillance blind spot.

“This is impossible! Absolutely impossible! I clearly and truly saw and felt them! They couldn't possibly be fake.” Hearing Li Huowang's words, Sun Jianye leaned back in his chair, a headache starting. “Then is it possible that those were all your hallucinations?”

“Have you even looked at my medical records? First, I’ve already been discharged! I’m cured! Second, there are many types of mental illness, and my past symptoms were completely different from this!” Li Huowang suddenly stood up from the stool. The two police officers, one on each side, gently pressed Li Huowang’s shoulders to avoid agitating him, carefully coaxing him to sit down.

“Student Li, you’re certainly not crazy; I know that. But as police officers, we handle cases based on evidence. The surveillance footage truly doesn’t show the kidnappers you mentioned. That’s a fact, isn’t it?”

“Then is it possible that this surveillance video was modified!” As he said this, Li Huowang’s body suddenly stiffened, as if remembering something, his eyes filled with shock.

“From the time you reported it until we retrieved the surveillance footage, the time frame is simply too short for it to be modified. How about this? To prevent those kidnappers from bothering you again, why don’t you stay at our station for the next few days? We’ll protect you.”

“Wait! Don’t you want evidence? What about those two fingers? They *are* evidence! And…”With that, Li Huowang tore off his blood-soaked clothes. “This has their blood on it! You can check the DNA! Find them!”

Li Huowang was absolutely certain that the kidnappers were real, not his hallucinations; someone truly wanted to harm him. Regardless of which faction they belonged to, he was now in a crisis, his life potentially in danger at any moment. If they had acted once, they would surely act again. Given the resources previously spent on monitoring him, these people wouldn’t give up until their goal was achieved. Li Huowang’s heart began to pound, not just because of these mysterious assailants, but because Qian Fu’s mad ramblings now seemed to be coming true.

“Who are they?”“The Leo aliens! Their technology is incredibly advanced! They can easily monitor you! I didn't put needles in your food; *they* did! They want to sow discord!”

The carriage wheels slowly rolled over the withered yellow grass. Yang Xiaohai held a horsewhip, gazing at the boundless prairie stretching around him. He pulled out the Qingqiu map he had bought, a hint of uncertainty on his youthful face. “It should be this way, right? I haven’t gone the wrong way, have I?” Although he had a map, with grass fields stretching in all directions in Qingqiu and no landmarks, Yang Xiaohai wasn’t sure if he was heading in the correct direction.

Just then, Yang Xiaohai spotted a towering hill rising from the ground in the distance. From afar, the hill, covered in withered yellow grass, resembled a yellow cornmeal bun. Such formations periodically emerged from the grassland, and Yang Xiaohai had seen many in recent days. However, this particular one had a unique shape, which made him remember it so clearly.

“When Senior Brother Li and I came through here, I think I saw this thing. We should be close to Sun Baolu’s house now, right?” Just as he murmured this, a distant canopy stirred Yang Xiaohai’s excitement. “Giddy up! Giddy up! Faster!” Yang Xiaohai quickly cracked the horsewhip, urging the horse to gallop.

Moving in and out of the tents on the grassland were lean, dark-skinned Qingqiu people, though some were fair-skinned, Sun Baolu among them. When Sun Baolu saw that it was Yang Xiaohai, whom he hadn’t seen in a long time, he was instantly excited. After their farewell that day, he had never imagined they would meet again.

“Brother Baolu! Gao Zhijian is emperor now! Gouwa got married and had children, and Senior Brother Li’s illness is cured!” Yang Xiaohai excitedly reported the recent joyful events.

As Sun Baolu asked for details, Yang Xiaohai meticulously recounted everything that had happened since they left Qingqiu. “Is that so? Everyone is doing so well? That’s truly wonderful.” Sun Baolu was sincerely happy for his companions, simply because they were fellow disciples who had once shared life and death.

“By the way, Xiaohai, what brings you to Qingqiu?”“Gao Zhijian helped me find my parents,” Yang Xiaohai explained his purpose. “They are Tanka people from Later Shu, and I want to see them.”

“Later Shu?!” Hearing this, Sun Baolu’s face tensed up, and he quickly grabbed Yang Xiaohai. “No, you absolutely cannot go! Later Shu is currently at war with the newly risen Yu’er Kingdom. I hear the fighting is fierce; going to Later Shu now would be seeking death!”