The Unruly Immortals

After expressing these heartfelt thoughts, Dr. Li, with a smile on his face, gently rubbed Li Huowang's head and headed toward the door of the ward. Just as he was about to leave the ward, he suddenly stopped.

"Oh, Li, didn't you just say that because you can send things from that world to this one, you believe this world is fake? Have you ever tried sending something from this side to that one? You might find different results."

Having said that last sentence, Dr. Li then left.

Li Huowang stood rooted to the spot upon hearing these words, his mind subconsciously pondering the question. "If I can really send things from that side to this one, then which side is the real one?"

"Should I give it a try? What if it actually works?"

"No, I can't interact with these hallucinations any longer! It will only drag me deeper!"

"Just try it already, what are you so afraid of?"

Before he knew it, Li Huowang had fallen back into a state of confusion, with an extremely pained expression on his face.

While he was grappling with this question, Li Huowang felt the pristine white walls around him and the dripping sound of the machine beside him rapidly fade, and in no time at all, the bright energy-saving light quickly turned into a dim oil lamp.

When Li Huowang found himself lying on an old-fashioned wooden bed, looking up at the dusty rafters above his head, he immediately realized he was back.

After being stunned for a while, Li Huowang pulled back his quilt.

"Compared to bringing things from the hallucination, there's another more convincing method now, to determine if that side is a hallucination."

Li Huowang looked down at his stomach, and then, to his astonishment, he found his abdomen, which he himself had cut open, was now neatly wrapped in clean gauze. After pressing it with his hand, he found there was only a slight pain.

Previously, his intestines had been spilling out of his entire abdomen!

"The intestines were in such a bad state, and yet they recovered?" Li Huowang couldn't help but feel shocked.

At the time of the act, he had performed the ritual from the bamboo slips with the mindset that he would surely die, but against all odds, he was still alive.

"Could it be..." Li Huowang's mind invariably revisited the clean and tidy intensive care room from the hallucination, the beeping machines, and the two IV bags that were hanging.

Li Huowang wanted to escape it all, but he knew deep down that he had started to doubt again. He wanted to shake off these doubts but found that he just couldn't.

"Brother Li, you're awake!" Bai Lingmiao, carrying a bowl of chicken soup, ran over excitedly.

"Where are we?" Seeing Bai Lingmiao, Li Huowang quickly pushed his doubts to the deepest recesses of his mind.

"Wu Family Village," Bai Lingmiao carefully placed the chicken soup on the table, then started to reach under the quilt to check Li Huowang's wound.

"How did this wound heal? Why didn't I die?" Li Huowang directly voiced his most pressing question, his doubts that he had just withdrawn uncontrollably stirring again.

"Brother Li, what are you talking about? How could you die? We found you in the Bamboo Forest, then fed you some elixirs you had made. It must have been the elixirs that cured you."

Bai Lingmiao's head dangled low, almost pressing it against the quilt, not daring to meet Li Huowang's gaze.

The elixirs he had made, Li Huowang was very clear about them - they were just ordinary elixirs, not some Miraculous Immortal Elixirs. How could they possibly heal such a severe injury?

"Is your world really that logical?" The words of Doctor Li echoed again in Li Huowang's mind.

A terrifying thought took hold of Li Huowang's heart. "Could this place be fake?"

Suddenly, Li Huowang felt an extreme panic, unsure of what he was panicking about.

The next moment, Li Huowang's hands violently clutched Bai Lingmiao's face, pulling it close to his own, his expression becoming increasingly frantic.

"What on earth is going on!! Speak!! What exactly are you hiding, or is even you a fake?"

Two streams of clear tears slid down Bai Lingmiao's cheeks, as she was terrified by the ferocious Li Huowang before her.

The weeping girl without words pained Li Huowang's heart. He opened his arms wide and hugged Bai Lingmiao before him, muttering softly to himself while suppressing the pain in his heart.

"Miaomiao, please don't hide things from me, okay? These matters are really important to me, I'm begging you to tell me, how exactly was my injury healed?"

In the dim room, there was silence for a long time until Bai Lingmiao finally spoke softly, "Brother Li, actually... I've become an official disciple, and I asked Grandmother Bai of the Bai Family to heal you. There is only one Yangshou Pill left in your gourd."

Li Huowang's pupils constricted instantly, and various images shuttled through his mind. The Bai Lingmiao who had just recovered from a serious illness, and the drum skin she intentionally took away—there were early signs of all this. He simply hadn't thought in that direction before.

Bai Lingmiao shrank out of Li Huowang's embrace, her eyes timidly gazing at him, "Brother Li, I really didn't mean to deceive you, please don't blame me, okay?"

Yet at that moment, Li Huowang suddenly let out a sigh of relief and laughed in relief. "It's okay, it's okay, as long as it's real, that's all that matters."

"What's real?" Bai Lingmiao clearly hadn't understood what was going on.

"It's nothing, bring the chicken soup over, I'm a bit hungry." Li Huowang deliberately changed the subject. At this moment, he felt much more relaxed. No matter what the doctor said, this place was the reality, which meant the other side must be false.

After having eaten Black Taisui, everything from the other side hadn't appeared again. This was the most crucial evidence. He mustn't fall into an illusion a second time.

Picking up the delicious chicken soup, Li Huowang drank heartily, his stomach telling him that his body urgently needed nutrients.

Before long, he finished a bowl of chicken soup. Li Huowang passed the bowl to her, asking her to fill it up again,

"By the way, I was out of my mind just now, how did you feed me the soup?"

Bai Lingmiao didn't answer this question; instead, her cheeks turned red, and she ran outside with the bowl.

"How else to feed, of course by mouth. I said you could just spoon-feed forcibly, but Sister Bai didn't have the heart to do that," Xiaoman, who came in, answered Li Huowang's question.

Xiaoman came to the bedside, gazing at Li Huowang with a complicated expression, "Brother Li, Sister Bai really gave her all for you. You should treat her well."

"Cough cough," Li Huowang felt somewhat embarrassed; he didn't want to discuss that topic. "After everything that happened before, do the people of the Wu Family village still let us stay here?"

Hearing this question, Xiaoman's face showed some difficulty, and in the end, he said, "They're gone."

"Gone? Where did they go?" Li Huowang was full of confusion. Isn't this their village?

"I don't know either. Ever since the forest around us started blossoming and withering, it's as if the people of the Wu Family village changed into other people. No one recognized anyone anymore, not even the village chief's six sons recognized each other. It's as if they never bore the Wu surname or were brothers at all."