These countless Tingyun's seem to be fragments split off from her self.
At this moment, they were gathered together in little groups.
The food-loving Tingyun and the flower-loving Tingyun clustered together, sharing their hobbies with each other.
"I think, if you're really going to give a gift, a bright red bouquet is the most useful."
"But a delicately prepared, delicious gift… that's what really conveys feelings, isn't it?"
Between the two Tingyuns sat another Tingyun, smiling with crescent-shaped eyes.
When the food-loving Tingyun expressed her opinion, this Tingyun nodded with a smile: "Mm, what she said makes perfect sense."
And when the flower-loving Tingyun rebutted, she nodded with the same smile: "Oh my, I agree with that too."
Her main trait: not offending either side.
The audience didn't even need to think , this Tingyun was clearly the smooth-talking, socially adept personality.
Further down the street, there were even more extreme Tingyun personalities.
Some stood rooted in place, doubting themselves; others were so anxious they practically demanded isolation.
And of course, there was the childhood Tingyun whose memories were stuck at age five, constantly muttering about Yukong taking her flying through the sky.
When these emotions were displayed to the audience in such a manner, everyone felt a complicated mix of feelings.
It was funny, yet unbearably painful to watch.
...
: The way Miss Tingyun appears… she's almost identical to the Tingyun Phantylia showed me.
: Now, when I look at these Tingyuns, the image of the Xianzhou Tingyun immediately pops into my head. But I know that Tingyun was Phantylia.
: In a sense… Phantylia really did replace her completely.
: Isn't this also a form of ultimate destruction?
: The life that belonged to Tingyun has already become Phantylia's.
: Sigh.
...
The person in front of them looked so familiar. But the audience knew they had never actually met this person.
What they had seen before was a fake.
Yet after the real one appeared, every frown, every smile, the curve of her lips, the tone of her voice, what surfaced in their minds, instinctively, was still the Xianzhou's Tingyun.
Even the relationships between people, the very core of being human, were something the Phantylia had left behind.
In the scene, everyone surrounded the Tingyuns for quite a while.
Finally, Sunday gave a suggestion.
Let Stelle use Harmonization to try piecing these shattered consciousness fragments back together.
Naturally, the Express crew wasn't going to trust Sunday's idea so easily.
But Welt had secretly prepared a backup plan.
Thus, they let Stelle give it a try for now.
After everything was set, Stelle walked into the middle of the cluster of Tingyuns and closed her eyes.
The power of Harmonization began to take effect.
However, just as Stelle vaguely sensed the inner strings of Tingyun's consciousness… a disturbing, heart-piercing dissonance surged out from within.
The sound was like a heavy hammer, striking his mind hard.
Blood, screams, and a figure obscured by the splatter of crimson flashed within Stelle's mind.
In the haze, that figure let out a faint chuckle toward her.
", Tss!!"
"What the hell!" Stelle's face suddenly turned pale as paper, and her eyes snapped open.
"What happened?" Sunday was the first to notice and asked in concern.
"J-just now… there was a strange person. Did you see it?" Stelle said with fear and unease.
"?" Sunday was even more confused.
Only then did Stelle realize that what she had seen must have been the deepest part of Tingyun's mind. She shook his head, signalling that it was nothing.
But the anxiety in her eyes didn't fade.
The Express crew, however, didn't notice Stelle's odd state, because under the effect of Harmonization, those Tingyuns were gradually merging.
Their figures turned into drifting petals, gathering under the lights into a rose-colored bud.
The background music shifted into gentle, airy melodies.
Under everyone's gaze, the bud blossomed.
A pair of embroidered shoes touched the ground gracefully, followed by a foxian tail tracing a slender shadow over her flowing robes.
"Never expected… that every time I meet you all, it is always at a moment of distress." Tingyun's charming yet soft voice rippled like water along with the music.
As she spoke, her tails spread out one by one, revealing Tingyun's true form within.
Upright foxian ears, golden eyes, and those exquisitely shaped lips. Though some details had changed, there was no doubt, this Tingyun was the true one.
She folded her legs neatly at an angle, sitting elegantly atop her fox tails, floating in midair.
She lightly opened a painted folding fan, covering half her pretty face, and smiled shyly yet alluringly:
"Have I… behaved improperly in any way before?"
The audience was completely stunned by her entrance.
...
: She's so beautiful...
: So beautiful, so so beautiful ahhh! Damn, those eyes, I'm dying!
: So a whole group of Tingyuns can merge into one big Tingyun?!
: This entrance is unbelievably stunning!
: Wuwuwu, Tingyun's revival is just too gorgeous!!
: Slurp slurp slurp!! So I was Tingyun's loyal dog all along!
: All those chants for Tingyun's revival… finally worth it!
...
The comments went wild!
After Tingyun's revival, her looks and elegance hadn't decreased at all.
In fact it had only increased, now she was even more beautiful!
Her luxurious attire also appeared grander and more regal!
However, before the audience could admire her further, Stelle had reached her limit.
She held his head, staggering.
"This… Tingyun…"
"Something's wrong!"
"I just… almost went to see the Aeon of Destruction just now."
Stelle clenched her teeth, and the world went black as she collapsed onto the ground.
The Express crew, Sunday, and the newly restored Tingyun all jumped in shock.
"What happened?!"
"Stelle! Stelle!"
But the voice calling her name grew more and more distant.
The screen also began to blur.
Stelle had only lost consciousness.
While the audience was still stunned, the screen went black, and text appeared:
[What Stelle saw… was the deepest, darkest shadow within Tingyun's heart.]
When the subtitle faded, a pair of eyes opened in the darkness, and the world around them changed instantly.
In a pitch-black corridor, Tingyun stood there in confusion.
"Don't be afraid."
"No matter what you see, just remember one thing."
"You are not alone."
A cool, soft voice, almost devoid of emotion, echoed in the darkness.
The audience instantly recognized it.
Ruan Mei's voice.
So… was this the memory that Stelle just saw?
Or could it be that… MiHoYo simply wanted to remind everyone, at this moment, of what Tingyun had gone through…?
With curiosity and anticipation, the viewers continued watching.
In the scene:
Tingyun moved like someone in a dream.
She didn't know how she ended up in this corridor, nor why there was a voice inside her head.
She only felt that she had to walk forward, so she stepped toward the deeper part of the hallway.
The corridor was pitch black. Only two faint safety lights lit up around Tingyun.
"Am… I alive?"
"Is that… where I come from?"
Tingyun muttered in confusion, though her feet never stopped.
She walked forward and saw a shadow that looked almost identical to herself.
The shadow seemed to be guiding her; whenever Tingyun couldn't keep up, it would stop and wait.
As she walked… Both the corridor and the shadow disappeared.
The scene instantly shifted into a research lab.
Two researchers were having some strange conversation.
"The life-support pod is ready; everything's been calibrated."
"Good. Otherwise, this person might not hold on."
"You're still trying? There's no successful precedent at all. Can someone destroyed by a Lord Ravager really be saved?"
"I'm not her, so I don't understand the underlying logic. But if that genius says it's possible… then it definitely can be done."
Tingyun stepped forward and politely asked, "Excuse me, the two of you, where is this place?"
But the two researchers didn't even spare her a glance.
Tingyun shook her head and continued walking.
And the next second, she arrived before an empty desk, with a report laid out on it.
It described a subject who could not speak long sentences and would suffer intense pain when trying to speak.
After a long period of recovery, during one question and answer session, the subject took three seconds of thought and gave this answer:
"Tingyun?"
"That name… it sounds so familiar. Is it someone I know?"
Tingyun looked at the report, her expression becoming complicated.
She couldn't understand, Why did she feel sad?
When the camera froze on Tingyun's face, confused, and hurting without knowing why, the audience finally couldn't hold it in.
This was Tingyun's own experience.
A dream.
And in this dream, Tingyun didn't question where she was, nor did she find it strange that she appeared in different places within seconds.
However, the Tingyun in this dream had nothing.
Those researchers' conversations, the report on the desk, all told Tingyun the same thing.
How her "resurrection" happened. Compared to the death of the body, the death of the mind was far more painful.
Because she no longer knew who she was.
In the scene:
Tingyun continued walking deeper in. The surroundings kept changing.
This time, the scenes were even more extreme.
A shattered room stained with golden blood and scars. A catastrophic chamber filled with screams and fire.
"Tingyun."
"Tingyun."
"Tingyun."
Without exception, in all these scenes, different voices called out the same name.
Tingyun's little face grew paler and paler.
She could barely breathe.
Who is Tingyun? Why is everyone calling Tingyun? And… why am I here again?
Fragments of memory flickered like breaking waves.
Sometimes she saw herself enjoying the sight of star skiff's.
Sometimes she was bent over her desk working.
Sometimes she sat beside a foxian lady…
"I am… Tingyun." Through the intense pain, Tingyun clutched her head and finally remembered something.
She jerked her head up.
And in the blink of an eye, she was back in that place filled with golden blood and wounds.
Ruan Mei's voice rang out again.
"This is the wound left behind by Destruction. It has already taken root inside you and cannot be removed."
"Do not try to resist it. Try to accept it. Coexist with it."
After Ruan Mei finished, Tingyun still didn't understand, but she knew one thing.
This voice in her head was saving her.
With that belief, Tingyun approached the golden color.
But even getting close made her feel like her body was being torn apart.
"Coexist… with this…? Can I really do that?" Tingyun endured the pain and gritted her teeth.
"If you want to return, then you must do so." Ruan Mei responded.
Biting her lip, Tingyun closed her eyes, steeled herself, and reached her hand into the golden color.
The screen flickered violently at that moment!
In just one instant, Tingyun seemed to have fought a life-or-death battle with the monster inside the color countless times.
But no matter how many times she fought, the color was never erased.
So coexistence was it something she had to repeat day after day, endlessly?
A sudden realization rose within Tingyun. But that pain also helped her find more memories in this chaotic dream.
Most of them, all took place inside the life-support pod.
Eyes tightly shut, body covered in wounds, she lay there silently.
"So… I had already turned into a ghost."
"No wonder those two didn't see me."
"The Lord Ravager… stole my identity from me."
"So that's how it was."
This trial of heart ended here.
Tingyun no longer remembered how she walked out of that life-support pod.
She only felt that the power of Destruction continuously tormented this resurrected body.
And after that, she met the genius named Ruan Mei.
She was sent to the Astral Express, and from the nameless passengers, learned what her previous self had been like…
And, how a Lord Ravager had used the name "Tingyun" to form connections with the Nameless.
It was at that moment, that a feeling she had never dared to hope for before stirred in the heart of this gentle woman.