Unlike the quickly stabilized mood of the crowd in the background, Yun Mengxi had been completely stunned by this series of stormy questions.
After the initial shock came the instinctive desire to refute.
She wanted to say "I don't regret it," wanted to say "I have achieved a lot," wanted to say...
But Fu Hua's questions were too fast and dense, giving her no time to organize language or build defenses, dragging her directly into the vortex of self-interrogation.
Do I regret it?
...If I regret it, does it mean denying everything?
Not only denying Brother, but also denying myself who has worked desperately hard all these years?
What have I achieved?
...Replicated the stage? Sang songs? Danced?
But are these really "achievements"? Or just clumsy imitations?
Satisfy myself?
Myself...
Do I... really have a "self"?
Has the wish of that "self" long been covered by the bigger goal of "letting Brother see"?
Under Fu Hua's cold and direct questioning, Yun Mengxi was forced to examine her own heart in an equally sharp way.
Those blurred areas usually wrapped in warmth, effort, and sense of responsibility were ruthlessly illuminated and magnified at this moment.
The heavy pressure made her begin to precipitate a specious but terrifying conclusion.
Perhaps... am I really just satisfying myself?
Using the noble reason of "realizing Brother's dream" to cover up my mediocrity and lack of goals truly belonging to me.
Is my effort just a kind of self-moving?
Am I deceiving myself, and also deceiving Brother, making everyone think I carry his dream, but in fact I am just stubbornly chasing a phantom of a forever shining "Brother" that I fantasized about?
When Fu Hua's gaze, which seemed to penetrate everything, still lingered on her, the third round of silent self-torture reached its peak.
Yun Mengxi, with a pessimistic perspective bordering on despair, saw the possibility she had deliberately ignored all along—
From beginning to end, maybe what she chased wasn't "Brother's dream," but she needed the fact that "Brother has a dream" to give her life direction and meaning.
Her so-called "shouldering" might just be a deeper dependence and... selfishness.
"I... I..."
Yun Mengxi's lips trembled, her face pale, her eyes reddening rapidly, accumulated tears gushing out uncontrollably.
Those pillars of belief that had supported her for many years seemed to start groaning under the overwhelming burden of Fu Hua's few questions and her self-analysis, on the verge of collapse.
The feeling that "the sky has fallen" struck again like an overwhelming mountain, even more violently than when she learned her brother was giving up his dream back then.
Because what collapsed this time was the "meaning" itself that she built with her entire youth and relied on for survival.
"Wuu..." Suppressed, broken sobs spilled from her throat.
Yun Mengxi's body began to tremble slightly, and the surrounding air seemed to have a subtle, abnormal stagnation.
Under the exposed skin of her wrist, extremely faint, ominous purple light patterns flashed and disappeared—that was the sign of passive agitation of Honkai energy, a slight manifestation of Herrscher potential.
Emotional fluctuations reached a peak. Despair and self-negation were like black tides, about to swallow her completely.
—
"As expected..."
At this very moment, Fu Hua moved.
"You must be very tired from these thoughts already..."
She didn't retreat, didn't guard, but instead stepped forward at the moment Yun Mengxi was most fragile and on the verge of collapse, extending her arms.
That wasn't an aggressive or oppressive action. On the contrary, it was incredibly gentle, carrying a tolerance almost like a sigh, completely opposite to the sharp questioning before.
She gently embraced the trembling, tear-stained, almost unstable Yun Mengxi into her arms.
Fu Hua lowered her head slightly, approaching Yun Mengxi's ear. The cold and sharp voice from before disappeared, replaced by a low, gentle, soft voice that seemed capable of smoothing all frays.
Like a slow-release medicine, it temporarily stabilized Yun Mengxi's emotional torrent that was about to burst.
But what Fu Hua did was far more than this.
Her sharp-as-knife questioning just now did not come from the stance of a superior judge or mentor holding standard answers.
Quite the opposite, at the moment of questioning, what Fu Hua played was just the "voice" deep inside Yun Mengxi that constantly interrogated herself but was never truly heard.
Those questions were not external harshness imposed by Fu Hua, but self-doubt and questioning that repeatedly crushed Yun Mengxi's heart in countless late nights, in the silence after applause faded, when facing the tired face in the mirror.
It was the wailing of a "Ms. Good Enough" oppressed to the limit by her own "perfectionism."
Only these voices were usually covered by louder slogans like "I must persist" and "this is for Brother," buried at the bottom of consciousness, turning into invisible pressure and internal friction.
What Fu Hua did was merely relying on her keen insight and that strange "emotional link" to clearly "extract" these deep-buried, blurred self-inquiries, concretizing them into language that could be heard and examined.
This was like a brilliant doctor facing stagnation syndrome, not blindly tonifying and soothing, but first using appropriate techniques to guide the accumulated "lesion" or disordered "Qi mechanism" to the body surface, making it visible, observable, and touchable.
In ancient medical theory, this is called "guiding evil out" or "giving the disease a way out." Only by first clarifying where the crux lies can one talk about true dredging and harmonization.
Now, the "problem" had been extracted, laid bare between the two.
And what Fu Hua embraced at this moment was the more authentic and fragile Yun Mengxi herself, temporarily "stripped" from these heavy problems.
She wasn't bearing or solving these problems on behalf of Yun Mengxi. The position of the "lesion" was too deep, so deep that anyone in this world could only wait for Yun Mengxi to heal herself.
Therefore, Fu Hua could only stand side by side with Yun Mengxi, facing, understanding, and confronting these troubles together.
Feeling the trembling of the girl in her arms gradually subside, leaving only slight sobbing and dependent leaning, Fu Hua loosened the embrace slightly but still maintained a supportive posture, letting Yun Mengxi lean back into the sofa while she sat beside her.
"Actually..." Fu Hua's voice returned to its usual stability, but with a bit more gentleness of recounting past events.
"I have a disciple. she... in some aspects, is very much like you."
Yun Mengxi raised her teary eyes, looking at Fu Hua somewhat blankly.