Chapter 38

Chapter 38

Before they even reached room 309, they heard a series of wails and lamentations from inside.

“Alas, alas! The Great Way is difficult, more difficult than ascending to the blue sky!” The voice was sorrowful, aged, and deep, as if the speaker had experienced the most tragic blow in the world, finally turning into a long, mournful sigh, “My path is cut off, my path is cut off!”

Peering through the window, they saw a man with long hair and a beard, draped in a bedsheet, standing on the bed, looking up to the sky in despair, his eyes filled with hopelessness.

It seemed as if he was not standing on a hospital bed but at the edge of a towering cliff, about to leap off and end his life.

“Alas, go! I go! My path to immortality is severed in this life. When I am reborn, I must return to the path of immortality!” He gazed deeply at the ground, stepping forward with an air of unparalleled elegance.

With a “thud,” the man fell flat on the floor. Due to the soft carpet covering the ground, he didn’t even get a bump, completely unscathed.

He sat on the ground, lifted his head dazedly, and covered his face, crying, “How merciless is the Heavenly Dao! You cut off my path to immortality and won’t let me die! The Heavenly Dao is heartless, the Heavenly Dao is heartless!”

While crying and cursing, the man climbed back onto the bed and started repeating his “cliff-jumping” behavior, but no matter what, he couldn’t die.

Nurse Xiao Pang’s mouth twitched, and she tried to explain to Bai Yi in the calmest tone possible, “Half a month ago, he had an appendectomy. After returning, he cried and said his spiritual root was ruined and he couldn’t cultivate anymore... and then, it became like this.”

Seeing her utterly exhausted expression, Bai Yi suddenly spoke in a leisurely tone, “I bet he didn’t want the surgery in the first place. Hmm, when his appendicitis flared up, he was probably quite happy. That’s the sign of being at the peak of foundation building, ready to form the golden core if he succeeded in his tribulation.”

“How do you know that?” Nurse Xiao Pang was dumbfounded and couldn’t help but murmur, “Yes, he refused the surgery at the time, saying he was undergoing tribulation and about to form his golden core...”

Bai Yi nodded seriously.

“Exactly! This time, not only did he fail his tribulation, but he also lost his golden core and ruined his spiritual root. With such a huge disparity before and after, think about it—wouldn’t you break down too?”

Nurse Xiao Pang subconsciously nodded along, “Yes, if it were me, I’d also...” Wait, something’s off. It wasn’t a real failed cultivation; why was she empathizing with a psychiatric patient?

...Also, being able to guess a mentally ill person’s thoughts so accurately, don’t you think there’s something wrong with yourself?

“So, the fact that he can be so strong now, just jumping off a cliff in his room without causing a bigger issue, is already quite well-behaved.” Bai Yi finally comforted, “Thinking about it this way, doesn’t it feel much better?”

Nurse Xiao Pang: ???

...Thank you, I feel comforted. You win, I surrender.

Watching the young man who had already walked into the ward by himself, she subconsciously wanted to reach out to stop him. Then she realized that this patient wasn’t aggressive and could be classified as harmless, so she immediately withdrew her hand and silently waited outside.

In the ward, Li Daotian, who called himself “Li Xianke” and was addressed as “Li Xianke” by many other mental patients, was still lamenting and sighing, repeatedly “jumping off cliffs” but not dying, and then began to curse the Heaven Dao for being unkind. At this moment, a voice sounded.

“It’s not you who is wrong, it’s this world!”

The man who was wailing and howling stopped his actions.

“It must be this world deliberately targeting you!”

The man quickly raised his head and looked towards the door.

He smiled and thanked him, turned, and left the ward, the corners of his mouth gradually lifting, “As expected, mental patients have a broad perspective. Just chatting with him has really opened my mind.”

At this moment, he noticed the two people in the hallway.

The nurse beside her was just a passing background. His gaze focused mainly on the other person.

It was an elderly woman, dressed in a white lab coat, wearing reading glasses, with a head full of silver hair, and a kind expression.

“Director Grandma!” Bai Yi’s face lit up with a standard, well-behaved smile, “You’ve returned.”

“You!” The old director smiled and pointed at him, leading him towards the director’s office, “You’re still the same, loving to chat with them so much. Be careful not to be led astray.”

“They’re all old friends. It’s rare for me to come back and visit.”

Bai Yi’s demeanor was relaxed and casual.

In the entire mental hospital, the chaotic mental fluctuations from all directions felt like countless hands lifting his skull and crawling inside.

As a result, his mind became a whirlpool of chaos.

Bai Yi’s expression remained unchanged, quite accustomed to it.

“You still say that!” The old director laughed at the memory, “You probably don’t remember, but when you were a few years old, you behaved strangely, often repeating the mad words of those patients and asking bizarre questions. You scared me half to death, I almost diagnosed you with a mental disorder.”

“Later, I realized it was a misunderstanding. It turned out that children naturally love to imitate adults. If someone said that a square was round, you’d think a square was round too. I don’t know when you were led astray by those patients...”

At this point, her voice carried a hint of puzzlement, as if facing an unsolved mystery. “I distinctly remember that the residential area and this side were separated, and I always kept an eye on it. Except for visiting your mother, you were not allowed to come to this inpatient department... I really don’t know when you sneaked over and interacted with the patients, getting led astray! Hearing you confidently talk about cultivating immortality, I was both angry and amused. Luckily, when you grew older and had basic cognitive abilities, I corrected you!”

She looked at the young man beside her with eyes full of affection and teased, “Otherwise, we’d have to keep an extra room in our hospital!”

The chaotic mental fluctuations from all directions, along with the old director’s laughing voice, crashed into Bai Yi’s mind. Laughter, crying, screaming, red, black, yellow, white, chaotic waves rippled through this world.

Bai Yi seemed to tread on the edge of chaos, navigating through a world of disorder and noise with clarity.

He smiled slightly and whispered, “Yes, I have always been very grateful to you.”

“...All these years, it has always been this way.”

Author’s Note: The protagonist’s worldview was shaped by both the mental patients and the director. Without interacting with patients, he was bombarded by mental impacts every day. So when he didn’t understand anything, he mistook the mental patients’ thoughts as the real world. It wasn’t until he grew older that he could distinguish between reality and delusion.

The former gave him a blurred line between falsehood and reality, right and wrong, with no absolute definitions. Hence, he feels detached from the morals and laws that most people adhere to and doesn’t see the necessity to follow them. The latter taught him a normal worldview, universal values, and how a normal person should live in this world, allowing the protagonist to maintain certain principles and boundaries, enabling him to be an ordinary person. In chaos, there is absolute clarity—perhaps he can be considered part of the chaos faction?

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