Chapter 917: 唯心

"Here, take a look at this." Zhao Shuangdian, who had been typing on her keyboard for a long time, turned her computer screen towards Li Huowang.

"What do you want me to look at? I can't understand any of this." Li Huowang felt dizzy just looking at the strings of formulas.

Zhao Shuangdian frowned in thought for a few seconds before looking at Li Huowang and asking, "Are you willing to learn from scratch? I can teach you. If what you're saying is true, then perhaps there are only three explanations."

"Why do I have to adapt to your worldview? Is your worldview necessarily the truth? Why couldn't everything in my worldview be real, and yours be fake?"

"My worldview conflicts with yours. Now my worldview is self-consistent, but yours has contradictions. Shouldn't you be looking for the cause within your own worldview?"

"I won't learn, and I don't intend to! That's just how things are. I've told you the points of contradiction. Believe it or not, that's up to you!"

Banan Xu, who was standing by, chuckled and said, "Make us adapt to your worldview? Are you trying to drive us all insane?"

"Shut up." As Zhao Shuangdian glanced at Banan Xu, she shrugged and sat down on the sofa to watch TV.

Zhao Shuangdian quickly switched interfaces on her computer and created a new document. "Alright, Li Huowang, I believe you. Tell me your worldview again, in more detail."

Seeing that Zhao Shuangdian genuinely believed him, Li Huowang took a deep breath, calmed himself, and began to narrate. "Okay, this starts from Qingfeng Temple. I was still receiving treatment in the hospital at the time, and I just thought it was fake..."

Over the next few hours, Li Huowang recounted everything about that bizarre and colorful world to her. By the time he finished, it was already dark outside.

"Let's review after we eat. The food's gone cold. I saved you a portion," Banan Xu said to Zhao Shuangdian, walking over with a beer bottle.

"Shh, be quiet for a moment. I need to sort this out properly." Zhao Shuangdian quickly clicked the up and down arrows, organizing Li Huowang's records.

"Did you save some for me? I'm hungry too." Li Huowang stood up; the past few hours had calmed him down.

"Oh, so lunatics still know how to eat," Banan Xu turned and left with a look of disgust.

"Come on, sit here. I saved you a portion," Wu Qi, sitting at the dining table, waved to Li Huowang.

Li Huowang glanced at the thoughtful Zhao Shuangdian, then walked over, picked up the plate of chicken and potato over rice, and began to eat.

By the time he was halfway through his meal, Zhao Shuangdian had finished organizing. She placed her laptop next to Li Huowang.

"Li Huowang, I've organized everything carefully. While I truly want to believe you, I've found that your world isn't as self-consistent as you claim. In fact, it's less self-consistent than other people's worlds. In many aspects, it's even idealistic."

Li Huowang swallowed the chicken in his mouth. "Don't you understand yet? This world isn't normal. It's insane. Nothing that happens in it is strange."

"And is your materialistic worldview necessarily the truth? Perhaps our world is also idealistic; we just haven't discovered it yet." After Li Huowang finished speaking, he continued eating.

Upon hearing this, Zhao Shuangdian began to think seriously. Her fingers clattered on the keyboard, as if she were calculating something.

Just as Li Huowang was almost finished eating, her hands stopped. "Alright, you've convinced me."

"Huh?" Li Huowang was stunned. She believed him so easily? It was completely unexpected. This was the first person to believe everything he said so readily since he left Qingfeng Temple; it was almost too easy.

He had been mentally preparing for Zhao Shuangdian to disagree with his subsequent explanations.

"What do you mean? That's all it took to convince you? Is it possible that our world is also idealistic?"

"Our world doesn't have an idealistic macro-world, but it does have one in the micro-world, and quite a bit of it," Zhao Shuangdian said, closing her laptop.

"Idealistic?" With food still in his mouth, Li Huowang looked up at the crystal chandelier above, then turned to the leather sofa on his left, and finally back at Zhao Shuangdian's delicate face. Nothing seemed to have changed.

"Don't worry, even if it is idealistic, we can still make bold assumptions and carefully verify them. Thank you for your help; it's greatly assisting my research."

Li Huowang lowered his head and continued eating. "You're welcome. What I'm afraid of now is that if on February 6th, I kill that Sima again, everything will reset, and I'll probably have to explain all of this to you again."

"It's fine. If you truly can reverse time, then we can use you to synchronize information with my past self. You are a variable."

"Whatever you say, as long as you can understand." Li Huowang said this, then put down his plate. After a moment of very serious thought, he continued, "Since everything I'm saying is true, then some things need to be re-evaluated, like your previous 'elephant theory'."

"Perhaps the 'elephant' you spoke of isn't spread out, with its tusks, legs, and trunk drawn on separate sheets of paper, all stacked on top of each other at the same time."

"Only this way can we explain why, when we jumped to another elephant's tusk and solved a problem, and then wanted to go to its trunk to solve another, we had to go back to this time point and start over."

"That's a possibility, a very unique hypothesis."

"Isn't what's even more remarkable that an elephant like that is still alive?" Li Huowang picked up his chopsticks and scraped the remaining rice from his plate into his mouth.

"It's still too early to say for sure. We need more corroborating evidence, but regardless, thank you." Zhao Shuangdian was about to leave, but Li Huowang stopped her.

"Whether it's your possibility or my hypothesis, how much longer do we have to keep going like this? I'm truly tired, so tired."

"I can't answer that. Now there are even more variables. If you want to end this quickly, then you should try to help us as much as possible," Zhao Shuangdian said, standing up again and walking towards the door.

Li Huowang had finished eating, but he remained seated at the table, guarding his empty plate, deep in thought about his own situation.

Although he now understood part of the truth of reality, it didn't significantly improve his current predicament. If Zhao Shuangdian was right, the Sima on the other 'elephant' was still lurking, watching him.

If he couldn't completely resolve this trouble, he would forever live with the label of a mental patient.

He didn't want that. Now that he finally understood why, he wanted to live properly, to live a normal life.