Jade Pendant

When he confirmed that the sugar on his chest was truly real, Li Huowang's heart pounded wildly, and the first thought that instinctively surfaced in his mind was, "I need to tell Doctor Li!"

But as soon as he lifted his right foot, it hung suspended in midair, as other thoughts burst forth in his mind.

He knew that his hallucinations contained not just lumps of sugar but other things too—things of far greater value!

Savoring the sweetness melting in his mouth, Li Huowang paced slowly within the hospital room.

"This is an opportunity! A chance for Yang Na and me to get rich overnight! Even a shot at reaching the peak of my life!" Excited beyond control, he quickly confirmed this conclusion.

"I can't tell Doctor Li. I don't want to end up on a lab table being sliced open, and besides, this isn't his jurisdiction anyway," Li Huowang thought to himself.

"But I can't jump to conclusions about this yet. I need to thoroughly figure out what's really going on." He silently resolved what he wanted to do.

Just as he was thinking this, the surroundings began to warp and shift, the clean and tidy hospital room receding away.

Long accustomed to this, Li Huowang first hurriedly stuffed the test papers and books into his satchel and tossed it into a far corner of the wall, to prevent himself from tearing them apart while trapped in the hallucination.

Then he pressed the red button beside the bed. A few seconds later, the last thing he saw was several nurses walking in and strapping him down with restraints.

When he opened his eyes again, the crude, cold cave environment had returned, and the physically flawed "junior brothers and sisters" beside him stared at him with curiosity.

Sitting up from the icy stone floor, Li Huowang once again surveyed everything around him with a unique perspective—it all felt utterly real.

Though this was a hallucination, in his eyes it was now a treasure vault piled high with riches.

Perhaps he wasn't sick at all, but possessed an extremely rare special ability—those quack doctors just couldn't detect it.

"Maybe I'm not sick at all. Yeah, that's right, I'm not sick."

Over the years, he had truly grown sick of the label "mentally ill." Everyone looked at him with strange eyes.

As if the moment he fell ill, he ceased to be human and became something alien.

Just thinking about the possibility of shedding that label in the future made Li Huowang tremble with excitement.

In high spirits, he reached out and cheerfully rubbed the bald head of a large, round-faced person who had come closer. "Haha, this is really interesting."

"What are you all gathered here for? Why aren't you working? If the Medicinal Guide Master needs isn't prepared properly and ruins his grand plan for immortality, he'll skin you all alive!" A particularly grating voice came from the cave entrance.

Li Huowang turned his head and saw that the speaker was the aloof Daoist who had delivered the message earlier. His face still wore that arrogant expression, as if even speaking to Medicinal Guides like Li Huowang sullied his eyes.

Li Huowang remembered this guy's name—this hallucination's Daoist title seemed to be Xuan Yang.

Facing Li Huowang's unabashed scrutiny, Xuan Yang clearly felt provoked. He flicked his horsetail whisk and walked up to Li Huowang. "Junior Brother Li, what a pity you didn't become Master's Medicinal Guide this time."

Li Huowang couldn't be bothered to respond to his sarcasm; his attention was fixed on a round jade pendant hanging from Xuan Yang's waist.

"This thing must be an antique, right? If I could send this to the real world and sell it, it'd probably be worth a lot of money, wouldn't it?"

"But how do I do it? Same as that sugar—snatch it and press it against my chest?"

After saying a few words and getting no reaction from Li Huowang, Xuan Yang assumed the other was afraid. With a contemptuous tilt of his head, he turned and left this place where Medicinal Guides belonged.

Watching his retreating back, Li Huowang settled on an idea. This jade pendant would be his next test subject for the transmission experiment.

As for how to get it, that was simple enough—just steal it at night. "That jade pendant is nice, but soon it'll be mine."

A small hand, so pale it almost reflected light, reached out from the side and gently tugged at Li Huowang's linen sleeve. A soft, sticky-sweet voice sounded by his ear.

"Senior Brother Li, hurry up and work. If we don't finish, there won't be any food."

Li Huowang turned his head and saw it was the albino girl he had helped before.

After a moment's thought, he reached into his robe, pulled out the remaining half-melted black sugar, and placed it in her hand. Then he turned, went to his own spot, picked up his pestle, and began working.

For now, whether here in this place or back at the hospital, he decided not to do anything too extreme.

This earth-shattering matter wasn't suitable to tell anyone. He had to slowly figure out the rules behind it before making any other plans.

The day's work ended amid the dull thud of pestles grinding medicine. Late at night, lying on the large common bed, listening to the snoring and teeth-grinding around him, Li Huowang slowly opened his eyes.

The windowless cave was pitch black, so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Li Huowang groped his way toward the entrance.

He first went to his workstation and picked up a piece of glowing stone he had ground down. Its faint luminescence allowed Li Huowang to navigate the dark karst cave without stumbling blindly.

Though carrying such a stone in the pitch-black darkness was a bit too conspicuous, Li Huowang didn't care at all.

"If I get caught, I'll just retreat back to the hospital. I have an escape route—what am I afraid of?" He muttered smugly to himself as he walked alone through the cave.

This entire hallucination existed because of him. How could he be afraid of something he himself had created? Even if he couldn't control it yet.

The karst cave had been extensively developed, and Li Huowang had been here long enough to know his way around.

Soon he slipped into Xuan Yang's cave. Though it was still crude, the single large bed lying there alone was enough to show the fundamental difference between him and Medicinal Guides like Li Huowang.

But to Li Huowang's surprise, Xuan Yang wasn't in the cave. The man wasn't there, but his clothes were. Li Huowang couldn't be bothered with that; he reached his right hand into the Daoist robe and yanked the jade pendant off.

Sneaking outside the cave, he examined the round jade pendant closely by the light of the glowstone.

The pendant was crystal clear, smooth and glossy, carved with exquisite cloud patterns. Even someone like him, who knew nothing about such things, could tell this was fine jade.

The more he looked, the happier he felt. If he could really bring this thing to the real world, this single pendant could at least cover the tuition for his and Yang Na's four years of college.

"Hehehe~ Yang Na, Yang Na, get ready to be a little rich girl." After saying this, Li Huowang tucked the pendant into his pocket and started heading back.

Everything had gone smoothly, but some things can't stay smooth forever. Just as he was about to reach the entrance, he turned a corner on the stone staircase and came face to face with a group of people.

They were a crowd of young men and women around Li Huowang's age, their terrified faces flickering in and out of the light cast by the fire boxes in their hands.

Both parties were startled by each other, freezing in place for a long moment without a word.

In the end, it was Li Huowang who spoke. Pointing the glowstone in his hand at the figure in linen robes among the crowd, he asked, "Senior Brother Xuan Yang, dressed like this—have you been sent down to the Material Room?"

Among these people was not only Xuan Yang but also Daoist Children responsible for other tasks, including one who had been fanning the Alchemy Furnace earlier.

Yet no matter what they had been doing before, now they were all clad in linen robes and linen pants, carrying nothing else.

At this moment, Xuan Yang lacked the arrogant, smug demeanor he had shown during the day. His expression flickered rapidly a few times before he stepped up to Li Huowang and lowered his voice.

"Come! Come with us! We're escaping this cursed place! The senior brother on gate duty has already been bribed."

"Escape? Oh! So you're all trying to—"

Before Li Huowang could utter the word "escape," Xuan Yang clamped his hand tightly over his mouth.