Do you believe it? The narrow, overcrowded streets of the poor district echoed every day with the cries of peddlers advertising their wares and customers endlessly haggling over a few coins.
Somewhere nearby, another family was scolding a child for failing to live up to expectations.
Elsewhere, another drunken father had collapsed in the middle of the road after another night of drinking, cursing his descendants as worthless disappointments.
It was five o'clock in the morning. Night-shift workers returning home crossed paths with people just beginning another exhausting day, while socialites stumbled through the streets after a night of indulgence.
This was the place where everything began.
An aging apartment building left behind by a previous era, renovated countless times but never truly renewed. Inside one of its tiny rooms lived a man in his thirties with brain cancer that had already spread throughout his body. Only after his daughter left the house each day did he dare reveal the brilliance he had kept hidden for so long.
At this moment...
He was happy.
His loneliness.
His happiness.
They quietly coexisted.
Inside the television studio, Sheng Yue quietly watched the screen before speaking in a voice filled with melancholy. "The story behind this song happened beside the sea. When Ye asked me to recite it, he suddenly said something very strange. He looked at the ocean and said, 'This world is so beautiful. You should see more of it.'"
"At that time, he was painfully thin. His face was pale with sickness, and his voice was hoarse. He held a bottle of wine in one hand while staring silently into the endless sea. His eyes... they were filled with loneliness."
"So I smiled and told him, 'Then you should go see more of it too.' He only smiled, and he didn't answer. He simply continued gazing toward the shoreline."
"Because the one he truly wanted to watch was that child."
After Sheng Yue finished speaking, silence enveloped the studio. Her words painted an unforgettable picture.
A lonely man stood by the sea.
His eyes were fixed upon the tiny figure playing along the beach.
Every emotion hidden within her gaze...
Every tremble within her voice...
They all belonged to him.
"He just wanted to look at you... a little longer. This world is truly absurd." Yue sighed softly.
Even now, she still could not understand why Shuying had hated Ye so deeply afterward. Because back then... he had been utterly alone. Forgotten by the entire world.
That thought made another question quietly emerge in her mind. Had anyone ever devoted themselves so completely to another person during their lifetime?
Shuying remained exactly as everyone remembered her. Elegant and mature. Both courageous and breathtakingly beautiful.
From singing Under the Sea...
To personally offering candy at the tomb...
Everything she did possessed a beauty unlike anyone else's, an almost dreamlike beauty. Her romantic temperament had long been praised by the literary world as something almost divine.
Her command of language was celebrated as the pinnacle of modern prose. Even the short poems she casually composed had been selected among the loneliest and most moving works of the era.
At only seven years old, she had already served as the commentator of literary competitions, displaying literary accomplishments so astonishing that countless scholars were left speechless.
Such a person...
Perfect.
Flawless.
Yet now, a tiny crack had appeared within that flawless image. Like a pure white flower, people suddenly realized that its roots had always grown from ordinary soil, nourished by ordinary water.
She looked straight at Ye on the screen. "I have no idea how many talents you've kept hidden, but I owe you nothing, and I have never believed you are better than me. You took most of my earnings during my childhood, including the payment from nearly every performance."
"Even after I became an adult, you demanded living expenses from me every single month, and I never once failed to give them to you. So... In this duel... I have never lost." Shuying's eyes became identical to those of the character years ago.
The man standing before her was indeed frighteningly powerful, but she was Yu Shuying. A woman who had climbed to the summit of countless fields entirely through her own efforts. For the first half of her life, her greatest goal had always been to surpass the man before her. Once... She believed she had already accomplished that. Now she realized she had not.
But it didn't matter; she would defeat him eventually. In the lifelong battle between daughter and father... She firmly believed the final victor would be herself.
Therefore... For the very first time... Shuying spoke not as a distant celebrity, but as a daughter returning home. Her words sounded both like a declaration of war... And like the long-overdue voice of someone finally coming back.
"Since childhood, I have competed in poetry. I earned my own fame. I interpreted classics through my own understanding. I became the commentator of literary competitions through plans I created with my own ability."
"You may have been more talented than I was in the past. But from today onward... That has nothing to do with me. Just like every cent I ever gave you, those things no longer belong to me."
Shuying did not seek sympathy; she never had. Everything she had done during the first half of her life had been to prove herself. Nothing more and nothing less.
On the stage.
The female commentator, Nana, gripped her microphone tightly as tears streamed uncontrollably down her face. She cried openly.
"Exactly! This is exactly who she is, fearless and bold. Yu Shuying is still the brightest light in the sky. Yu Ye may possess extraordinary talent, but compared to seven-year-old Shuying... His so-called talent wasn't even worth mentioning."
Nana truly could not stop crying as she had always adored Little Shuying's poetry.
Poems like:
"Since childhood, I have walked alone, guarding the stars of every dynasty."
She loved Shuying's breathtaking literary masterpieces.
"One String, One Pillar, Forever Thinking of Love."
"From the age of seven... You have always been the strongest. The most outstanding child this world has ever seen. No one could truly stand against you. Or perhaps... No one was ever worthy of becoming your opponent." The third special guest, former principal Zhao Guochang, also spoke.
At his age, he rarely praised anyone so directly. But he had personally witnessed the birth of an unparalleled genius, someone whose brilliance extended into every imaginable field.
Even the male commentator, Tao, quietly wiped away the tears gathering in his eyes before speaking with heartfelt emotion. "I've listened to countless songs you've created. I've also heard every bold declaration you've ever made."
Shuying had composed customized songs for numerous people.
There was also her unforgettable tribute:
"For thousands of years, he has never poured a cup of wine. Yet he still carries the untamed spirit preserved within the wine of time itself. Entranced by the fragrance of a single fleeting moment, he engraved this civilization into history three thousand years ago, burying it deep beneath the earth. Three thousand years later, upon the same land spanning 9.6 million square kilometers, connected forever to that sacred soil, he gave it a name..."
"Shenzhou."