Chapter 657
Chapter 657
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 657
>Chapter Title: Surveillance
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"Son, remember not to forget your medicine!"
Once the voice outside the house faded away, Li Huowang let out a sigh. He finally had a moment to sort out his thoughts and figure out exactly what had happened last night.
For now, he couldn't pin it down too definitively, because everything last night had been too hazy. Maybe he had seen it wrong.
To confirm whether someone was really tailing him, he needed solid proof.
Otherwise, everyone would just keep thinking he was losing it. His image in their eyes was already in the gutter.
Besides, Li Huowang didn't fully trust what he thought he had seen.
With that in mind, a flicker of hesitation crossed his face. He picked up his phone and quickly typed away.
*It feels like someone nearby is watching me with malicious intent. Why would they want to harm me?*
After typing that, a bunch of answers popped up. Li Huowang scrolled down rapidly until his finger paused on one line: persecutory delusion.
*Patients firmly believe, without basis, that certain people, groups, or organizations around them are engaging in harmful activities against them—such as poisoning their food, surveilling and stalking them, plotting conspiracies—to strike, frame, murder, sabotage, defame, frame, or suppress them.*
*The patient's delusions are distorted beliefs, pathological reasoning, and judgments formed on a pathological basis. They do not align with objective reality or the patient's level of education. The content of the delusions is utterly absurd, yet the patient believes it unwaveringly, cannot be persuaded otherwise, and cannot be corrected even by personal experience.*
Seeing this, Li Huowang's fingers trembled slightly. A terrifying possibility crept into his mind.
"Could I really have a mental illness?"
Li Huowang opened his contacts and scrolled to Yi Donglai's number.
But after a moment's hesitation, he closed it again.
He had finally gotten out—he really didn't want to go back, and he really didn't want to worry the people who cared about him anymore. If Mom found out about this, how heartbroken would she be?
Li Huowang kept searching on the browser, various results scrolling past his eyes.
He switched keywords over and over: surveillance, mental illness, persecution, searching for any alternative possibilities.
Then another entry caught his eye.
*In his later years, Hemingway's mental state collapsed. He told everyone everywhere about his harrowing experiences of being surveilled—wiretapped, his mail intercepted. During one meal, he even pointed at two people at the next table and declared them to be the agents inspecting him. This was dismissed as delusional disorder, seen as a sign of mental illness.*
*Under the pressure, Hemingway's mental state really did become unstable, which only convinced everyone more that he had persecutory delusions and had gone mad. So he was sent to a mental hospital for the then-popular electroshock therapy.*
*The final outcome is well-known: the broken Hemingway took his own life. Many textbooks and books claim it was due to unbearable life pressures and disillusionment with living.*
*But fifty years later, after declassification, it was revealed that Hemingway really had been under constant surveillance. Everything he said wasn't delusion—it was real. There truly was an organization monitoring him around the clock.*
"Ah!" Li Huowang squeezed his eyes shut in agony. He flung his phone onto the bed. The problem wasn't the difficulty itself—what was scary was that he had no idea what to do now. Every path felt like a dead end.
"What should I do? Is this real or not? Should I even try to find out?!"
Just as Li Huowang was caught in this dilemma, he suddenly felt that sensation return.
This time, Li Huowang didn't act rashly. The window was open, and it was broad daylight.
He slowly turned his back, silently pulling open the drawer on the left and taking out a mirror.
Keeping his head down, Li Huowang gradually angled the mirror in his hand, trying to spot the source of that gaze through the reflection.
Inch by inch upward, until he finally saw a pair of women's shoes! His heart rate spiked.
With a sharp flick of the mirror, Aunt Qi's wrinkled old face appeared in the reflection.
"Damn it!"
Li Huowang spun around in frustrated fury and stuck his head out the window, yelling toward her.
"Hey! Aunt Qi! Doesn't squatting there all day like that get tiring? No one to relieve you? Come on in and sit!"
Watching Aunt Qi casually walk off into the distance as if nothing had happened, the house phone rang.
Li Huowang recognized the ringtone—it was his mother's phone.
He stepped out, picked up the cracked-screen phone from the cabinet, swiped to answer, and held it to his ear.
"Hello? Who's this?"
But there was no response from the other end—just silence.
"Who is it? Sun Xiaoqin's not here, this is her son. Mom's out—who you looking for?"
"Li Huowang?" A voice finally came through.
It sounded strange, like it had been run through some computer processing.
Li Huowang's brows furrowed tighter, his earlier suspicions reigniting.
"This is Li Huowang. Who the hell are you people?"
But no further sound came from the phone. Li Huowang pressed it harder to his ear, listening intently.
Faintly, amid the murk, he thought he heard some kind of scream.
With his left hand, Li Huowang pulled out his own phone and slowly dialed the emergency line.
"Son, what are you doing?" Sun Xiaoqin walked in carrying a bag of fruit, looking puzzled at Li Huowang holding her phone.
"Nothing, someone called your phone—must've dialed the wrong number." Li Huowang set down the phone in his hand at the same time.
"A phone call? But my phone's broken."
"What!?" Li Huowang held the phone out in front of him. Apart from the crack on the screen and his own shocked face reflected on the black display, there was nothing else.
"Son, what's wrong? Son, don't scare me like that." The panicked Sun Xiaoqin rushed over, pulling Li Huowang into her arms and stroking the back of his head over and over.
Li Huowang suddenly burst out laughing.
"Mom, how about that? I got you good, didn't I? Was my acting convincing??"
Hearing this, Sun Xiaoqin released him, shoving him hard with her right hand, her face full of anger.
"You brat! You think that's something to joke about? You nearly scared me to death!"
"Haha, come on, you worry about this and that all the time. Just trying to cheer you up."
Li Huowang stood, casually heading back into the room like it was nothing.
The moment he stepped inside, his face twisted dramatically. He clenched his fists, baring his teeth in a silent, savage roar inside the room.
"What the hell is going on?! Is someone really surveilling me or not!!"
(End of chapter)