A faint pause settled over the table at those words, because the admission carried enough weight to make even the surrounding relatives sit more carefully in their seats.
"I thought if there was something wrong," he continued, his voice tightening slightly as he spoke, "someone would tell me honestly, but instead I was given reports and updates that made everything sound stable, I believed them when I should have checked for myself."
His eyes lifted again, sharper now, but not at Guiying.
At the room.
"At this point I do not even know what was real and what was arranged for me to see, but I do know this much," he said, and the firmness returned fully to his tone as he reached the end of the thought, "you were never the problem, don't let them deceive you."
The sentence landed cleanly in the silence.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
But firmly enough that it shifted the atmosphere around the table in a way that could not be ignored.
