Yun Mengxi's mind palace completely collapsed, not with a loud crash, but with silent annihilation.
Her obsession with the stage, her promise to her brother, her longing for the future, and even that little bit of survival instinct just now, were all washed away by this overly vast and strange "painting" without a trace left.
Inside, only boundless, cold blankness remained, and deep within this blankness, a faint yet impossible-to-ignore, sharp negation.
This was not the world she knew.
This was not the world where her dreams should exist.
These colors, these sounds, these ways of existence... were all wrong.
No shouting, no crying.
She just watched, the last glint belonging to "Yun Mengxi" deep in her pupils completely extinguishing, replaced by a hollow indifference reflecting blood and sword light.
Then, in the center of that indifference, a deeper, more absolute "rejection" was born.
It spread silently, like a drop of ink falling into absolutely still water, not as ripples, but directly dyeing the entire "body of water."
The world, at this moment when she completely gave up understanding and completely refused to accept, perceived this pure and huge "incompatibility."
Thus, the string tightened again.
Time did not stop, but all movements—splashing paint, waving sword light, falling debris, wriggling shadows, and even the frozen expressions on people's faces—instantly lost their internal causal logic, reduced to a series of meaningless strokes about to be erased.
Colors began to fade and flow back from the edges, sounds were stretched and twisted into unrecognizable buzzes, forms of matter softened and dispersed...
The eraser of the second loop fell.
And Yun Mengxi, curled up in the corner, had one last blurry perception before her consciousness completely sank into nothingness—a drop of cold liquid, without warning, slid down her cheek.
Unknown if it was a tear, or splashing "paint."
Fu Hua parried the giant pincer swung by the Emperor-class Honkai Beast. The immense force numbed the web of her thumb and forefinger, and the sword in her hand hummed under the overwhelming burden.
She borrowed the force to float back, her toes plowing two shallow furrows in the ground, blood surging within her.
Her right arm holding the sword felt a clear soreness and slight numbness. That was the burden brought by the absolute gap in power levels, which couldn't be completely resolved by technique alone.
This absolute gap in power was exactly what she had been doing in both loops—teaching her seven disciples to adapt to this inhuman power.
At least... don't suffer a big loss at the first meeting due to carelessness or "habit."
It seemed now that her special training was very successful. With her taking over the ecological niche of Ma Feima and Su Mei's sword formation as the first contact, no one was significantly injured by this power.
Even this time, they did better than in the last loop.
But it's not enough—a voice in Fu Hua's heart faintly spoke this sentence.
This level is not enough.
Her eyes were calm, without the slightest discouragement or wavering, ready to throw herself forward again, fighting for even one more second for the survivors evacuating separately and the disciples struggling to hold on behind her.
Just at the moment when her breath was even and her sword momentum was about to rise—
The familiar "hum" originating from the root of the world swept through everything again.
Time was once again forcibly dragged back.
"Still not enough..."
A greedy murmur sounded faintly, so faintly that to Fu Hua, it even sounded like her own voice.
It was her own inner voice being unwilling, her own inner voice yearning for a better ending, a more beautiful future... a past more in line with her wishes.
Perhaps... everyone would think this was the unwillingness in her own heart, but Fu Hua alone wouldn't.
She wasn't that... greedy.
So this wasn't her inner voice.
Unlike the completely unprepared state last time where her mind was seized by the boundless scene, this time Fu Hua, after the initial tremor originating from her soul, quickly stabilized the anchor of "self" with astonishing willpower.
She didn't let her consciousness fully immerse in that magnificent, speech-robbing scene of time reversal, but separated a part of her clear mind.
Like the most patient observer, she began to capture and collect details in this "frozen scroll" before her eyes during the restart of this loop.
Fragments of buildings rose from the ground, purple-black Honkai energy flames shrank back into the Emperor's body, zombies retreated to regain human form and retreated to earlier positions... These scenes were still shocking, but they could no longer completely occupy her thoughts.
Her gaze, like a precise probe, swept over those human faces frozen in terror, flight, and despair.
The postures of most people were within her expectations—this was the most instinctive reaction of life facing force majeure.
Then, her gaze fixed on the corner of the passage, that recess piled with sundries.
There, a figure was curled up.
Yun Mengxi.
She wasn't holding her head and shivering, nor was she twisting her face trying to scream or run.
She just curled up there quietly, arms hugging her bent knees, face buried in the crook of her arms, revealing only a small part of her pale profile and scattered hair.
In this frozen world where everyone's posture was "vivid," her "stillness" appeared particularly abrupt. It wasn't a physical stagnation, but a deeper "detachment" that seemed out of tune with everything around her.
It was a sudden appearance of Girl with a Pearl Earring in this Guernica condensed with extreme dynamics.
Clear, beautiful... distinct from the crowd.
What moved Fu Hua's mind even more was that, even across frozen spacetime, even only seeing such a silhouette, she could clearly "feel" it!
Not seeing, not hearing, but a perception acting directly on the emotional level.
Emanating from that curled figure wasn't pure fear, but a more complex, deeper resistance and non-acceptance.
It was a silent yet incredibly resolute negation from the depths of her soul towards the entire status quo, towards everything happening and that had happened.
As if this scroll of blood, chaos, and despair around her was not a disaster to her, but a wrong, clumsy graffiti whose existence she refused to acknowledge.
This emotion was so strong, so pure, that it even penetrated the barrier of frozen spacetime, vaguely touching the observing Fu Hua.
In this instant, Fu Hua felt that deep within her heart lake, hard as ice, a corner never touched before was seemingly tapped lightly by a small stone from a distant shore, carrying the same cold and despairing temperature.
No fragments of memory flooded in, no exchange of thoughts.
There was only a pure emotional resonance beyond words.