Now, people were witnessing the recreation of a song that had been born years ago. But what truly shook them was not the song itself; it was the story behind it. The process of creating this song had been unimaginably painful.
It belonged to a man who had been beaten down by fate time and time again, a man who had wandered countless times on the thin line between life and death before finally understanding the emotions contained within this melody.
Across many different discussion forums and program broadcasts, silence spread.
"No wonder he became ill..." Zhang Cihai spoke in a complicated voice. "On the surface, he always looked calm. But perhaps this was the only place where he could release the pressure that had been crushing him all these years."
As he spoke, he suddenly realized something. This man... Outside, he had suffered countless grievances and humiliations. Yet because of his daughter, he swallowed every ounce of pain and endured it all alone. When he finally reached his limit and could no longer bear the burden, he came to Erhai Lake intending to end everything. But in the end, he didn't.
Because he had a daughter.
Because there was still someone in this world who depended on him.
So he gritted his teeth and continued living. Again and again. Through countless desperate nights and through endless struggles and failures. Again and again, he stared into the night sky, watching the stars and moonlight, telling himself to keep going.
To survive.
To endure.
To live one more day.
Only after countless battles against despair had he become the man standing before them now.
"How could such a person possibly be ordinary? How could the child of such a person be mediocre?" When Cihai finished speaking, Tian Haibo fell silent.
No one answered, but everyone continued watching. Because every intellectual present, every person capable of rational thought, felt the same thing. A man who had experienced so much suffering and still survived could never be ordinary. Yet the question remained. Why did Yu Shuying resent him so deeply?
On the program screen, the replay continued.
When Ye's thin figure appeared by the seaside once more, walking alone into the dark ocean, Shuying's expression became complicated. At this moment, she admitted that she had once felt sorry for him. But she still refused to forgive him.
"He returned very late that night. When he came back, it was as if he had become a completely different person. His temper became irritable and unpredictable. At the same time, he began drinking heavily. He gained weight, became sluggish, and gradually lost his motivation."
"And worst of all, he started suffering from severe sleep-talking, nightmares, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses. Later, his condition became so serious that it even developed into symptoms resembling multiple personality disorder. This was my life from the ages of six to ten."
"With a father like that... Tell me, what was I supposed to do?" Shuying's voice carried mixed emotions.
The replay showed that Ye had entered the sea that night, but everyone already knew the outcome. He had not died; he would return the next morning alive. Since he survived, it meant that after this incident he had not become stronger. Instead, he had become more irritable. More broken. More difficult.
According to Shuying, during those years she had been deprived of nearly all her hobbies and interests. She was constantly criticized. Constantly forced to study. Constantly reprimanded. That suffocating environment had caused her to hate her family deeply.
Sure enough, after Shuying finished speaking, many viewers who had previously been immersed in sorrow gradually regained their composure. That was right.
Ye had only gone to the beach. He had not actually died, at least not physically. Perhaps he had merely gone there to grieve. To vent. To clear his mind. Or perhaps to escape reality for a while.
Commentator Hai Tao analyzed calmly: "I think all of his emotional pillars collapsed that night. When he walked into the sea, it wasn't necessarily because he wanted to die. It may have been because he wanted to abandon reason itself. He stopped resisting fate. He stopped fighting. From that point on, he simply began drifting wherever life carried him."
His analysis, combined with Shuying's testimony, immediately gained the approval of many people.
Cheng nodded.
Guochang nodded.
Nana nodded as well.
In their eyes, the conclusion seemed obvious. This man was indeed pitiful. But after that night by the sea, the strength that had supported him for years finally collapsed. The determination that had kept him alive shattered completely.
From then on, he gradually became like those aging men in the slums who had given up on life, doing nothing all day except venting their frustrations on their children. A complete fall from grace.
At this moment, the comments surged, and countless viewers sighed.
"The more powerless some families are, the easier it becomes for parents to take their frustrations out on their children."
"That's true. Little Shuying said he became fat because he gave up on himself. You have to remember how thin Ye used to be."
"Looks like all of his strength disappeared after that night."
Meanwhile, the replay continued.
Ye walked through seawater that had already reached his calves, and his worn white shirt fluttered gently in the wind. Moonlight broke through the clouds, and his face was illuminated by a pale silver glow. Lonely and desolate, as though no one in the entire world could understand him. It was a loneliness carved deep into his bones.
The waves soaked his clothes; it was almost as if the ocean itself was trying to stop him from moving forward.
The seawater washed over his hands. The scars left by years of hardship and labor appeared especially vivid beneath the moonlight. Yet he continued walking, step after step, deeper into the sea.
Soon, the water reached his chest, then his shoulders. At that moment, a low voice drifted across the ocean. A quiet murmur. A gentle hum.
"Listen to the depths of the sea..."
"Whose sobbing calls your name..."
"The soul falls into silence..."
"And no one comes to wake you..."
When he sang those lines, only his head remained above the water. In that instant...
The ocean.
The waves.
The moonlight.
The clouds.
The song.
Everything merged into one scene.
Everyone understood. The true origin of this song had absolutely nothing to do with Shuying because this was a man singing with the last traces of despair remaining in his heart. What he expressed was not music; it was death itself.
The freezing seawater swallowing his body.
His calm breathing.
His body tumbling beneath the waves.
Scarlet blood slowly spreading into the ocean.
The sea stained faintly red.
His lonely soul finally finding release.
As if all traces of his existence had vanished. As if he had never lived in this world at all.
The first half of the song was so sorrowful that it left countless viewers unable to breathe.
"So this is the true background of the song..." Sheng Yue finally understood, and a sigh escaped her lips.
At that moment, she seemed to see the well-dressed and handsome Ye from years ago, standing calmly before her and quietly telling the story of the sea. It turned out that he had been the true protagonist of the story all along.
The real experiencer.
The real witness.
The real sufferer.
And then, years later, the story had been broken apart and reconstructed.
Through paintings.
Through narration.
Through memories.
Through the testimony of the ocean itself.
Shuying had transformed it piece by piece into the masterpiece known today.
Without this replay, perhaps nobody would have ever imagined that such a famous song had been born in a way so heartbreaking. Or that behind those beautiful lyrics stood a lonely man who had once walked alone into the sea under the moonlight, carrying the weight of an entire lifetime's despair.