……
Afterward, Shen Yi went to speak with Shen Sixing alone once more.
The father she remembered had rarely been as silent as he was today.
Throughout their conversation just now, he had barely said a word. He had only stared at her, studying her in silence.
She followed Shen Sixing into the study.
The door closed, shutting out the sounds from the living room. The study immediately fell quiet.
“Dad, isn’t there anything you want to say?”
After sitting in silence for a while, Shen Yi was the first to break it.
She thought her old man was really quite amusing. He was clearly a man as mature as anyone could be, yet he was the most awkward person in the family.
“The world has been destroyed, you know.”
“As the villain who brought about the end of the world, do you have an acceptance speech you’d like to give?”
She tried to choose a lighter topic to start the conversation.
Shen Yi knew her father. Whenever the atmosphere grew too heavy, he would instinctively try to escape.
She had to help him relax a little.
But Shen Sixing’s expression stiffened slightly, becoming even more unnatural.
“The world has been destroyed?”
A crack appeared in that calm face. The corners of his mouth twitched as he tried to deny it. “So what? What does that have to do with me?”
He finished speaking in a last, futile struggle. But when he saw the look on Shen Yi’s face—the look of someone absolutely certain he was the culprit—he pressed his lips together. Then, all at once, he gave up and decided to come clean.
“How did you know I did it?”
“……”
“That world consciousness told you?”
Shen Yi parted her lips, but before she could say anything, he continued.
All traces of his earlier aloofness had vanished without a trace. Shen Sixing suddenly became extremely talkative.
“What villain? I already told you in my past life that I’m not a villain. I’m just your dad.”
“I never had any intention of wiping out humanity, nor did I harbor some grand ambition to destroy the world.”
After saying this, he paused, feeling that his words sounded rather feeble even to himself.
A man had personally crushed the so-called male and female protagonists and the plot itself in order to bring his child back, tearing the entire framework of the story to pieces and indirectly causing the world to collapse.
In any narrative, that was textbook villain behavior.
And yet he still tried to argue.
Because the identity of “father” came with a strange, stubborn pride—one that refused to reveal its vulnerability in front of his child.
Hearing those familiar words again, Shen Yi’s lips curved into a smile, though her tears nearly betrayed her.
She bit down on her lip to hold them back, then nodded firmly.
“I know.”
“I know you never wanted to be a villain.”
“Actually, Dad…” Her voice trembled a little. She cleared her throat before continuing. “At first, I didn’t disappear completely. I accidentally met another version of myself, and then I was erased. I existed as a ghost for a very long time.”
The study fell silent for several seconds.
Dust continued to drift lazily through the sunlight.
Shen Sixing stared at her blankly. He quickly understood what she meant, and his voice turned hoarse.
“…You didn’t leave back then? You existed as a ghost all that time?”
Shen Yi nodded.
He drew in a deep breath, his voice trembling. “When I died, you were there too?”
Shen Yi nodded again.
Shen Sixing buried his face in his hands.
His thin shoulders slumped. After a long while, a laugh escaped through the gaps between his fingers, carrying an indescribable sense of relief.
“So that’s how it was.” His voice was still hoarse. “Xiao Yi, actually, right up until the moment I died, I still resented everything I had been through.”
He closed his eyes, and those scenes surfaced effortlessly in his mind.
When he had collapsed on the road, blood had poured from his neck. Plane-tree leaves had covered the ground, and even his tears had been washed away by the rain.
If ghosts existed in this world, the resentment Shen Sixing had carried at that moment would have been enough to turn him into a vengeful spirit bound to that place.
He had sacrificed everything.
Yet he had never once seen that child with his own eyes.
“But if I’d known you were there before I died…” Shen Sixing lowered his hands and continued murmuring, “maybe I wouldn’t have gone on hating.”
With his eyes closed, he could imagine Shen Yi’s soul quietly leaning against him at the time. She had no physical form, as light as a breath, simply staying by his side.
The world had been collapsing bit by bit.
The logic of the story had fractured. Cracks had split open across the sky, and everything had eventually returned to nothingness.
But she had been there, quietly beside him.
And so the thick resentment that had lingered and festered for so long suddenly found somewhere to rest.
It calmed, no longer spilling outward.
“You worked so hard, Dad.”
Shen Yi stepped forward and pulled him into a tight, forceful embrace.
Shen Sixing froze for a moment.
Then he quickly raised his arms and gently returned the hug.
In their previous life, the number of times they had embraced could be counted on one hand.
The Shen Sixing who had no memories had been extremely guarded and refused to let Shen Yi come near him. She could only embrace Wen Ya each time.
Later, when he finally wanted to reach out and hold her, she was already gone.
This embrace was one he had owed her for a very long time.
So long that it had crossed the span of an entire world’s destruction and rebirth.
“After all that time…” Afraid of stirring up her painful memories, Shen Sixing swallowed back his sobs and softened his voice. “You must have been lonely, all by yourself.”
“Not really. I wasn’t all that lonely. I used to visit you and chat with you quite often,” Shen Yi said with a smile. “Besides, if it meant I could see all of you again, then none of it mattered.”
To her, it didn’t matter.
Not even if her soul had long since grown exhausted, covered in scars.
Because if the ending of every cycle—
was being able to meet you all again,
then no matter how many times she had to choose,
her answer would always be:
“I’m willing.”
