Please Let Me Solo-Follow, Dad!

Most of the teasing comments came from CP fans and casual viewers.

Chu Wangshu's fans, however, were focused on something entirely different. Their main feeling was sympathy.

After all, the girl's heartfelt words through tears had hurt not only Chu Yuanqing, her father, but also the fans who had come to know her better and better.

--I want Dad to notice me.

--I want to make Dad proud.

--I want to get Dad's attention.

Those two sentences had been filled with a sincerity that was both honest and adorable.

Once her fans saw that emotion, they didn't even need to put themselves in her shoes. Their hearts ached for her all the same:

"Waaah, Yue Bao, my Yue Bao. She really can't help crying whenever she sees Chu Yuanqing. She was so strong during training, too. I'm crying so hard."

"As Little Moons, we're really so grateful to Qing Mei. She's about to go onstage herself, and she comes from a background like that, but she still took the time to patiently comfort Yue Bao. It's so touching???!"

"Exactly! Qing Mei's been helping Yue Bao from the very beginning. You have to stay best friends forever, okay???"

On the other side, Chu Yuanqing's fans had an even bigger reaction. They were like boiling water, bubbling and bursting at every turn.

The reason was simple.

Chu Wangshu's background, as laid out on paper, was tragic.

But Chu Yuanqing, who had comforted her with such tenderness and motherly warmth, was an orphan whose parents had both died. Combined with the dazed look she'd worn afterward, the apparent dejection and loss, it was all too easy for fans to read into it and imagine all sorts of things. Before long, they were overcome with sympathy.

Yet in the Yuan Xiao Group's eyes,

the love Chu Yuanqing lacked wasn't something outsiders could casually make up for.

And what about material things? They didn't even have a way to send Chu Yuanqing money.

Sure, the address of the government-subsidized apartment where Chu Yuanqing lived had been exposed online, and fan mail and greeting cards had piled up outside her door. But there was nowhere to put them, and no one was foolish enough to send expensive gifts that might tempt thieves.

In other words, all that sympathy could only build into layer upon layer of fervor, eventually becoming a powerful fixation on helping someone make their debut.

Chu Yuanqing knew nothing about any of this.

Her daughter's heartfelt confession, after all these years, had struck like a hammer against her chest. Heavy guilt, sorrow, and joy drifted through her soul like rising steam.

Their scorching warmth peeled away the weighty old shell around her consciousness, as if they might force the will to live to flare up within her long-held desire for death. Yet in the end... reality crushed them.

Chu Yuanqing composed herself and walked back to the practice room without a word. She studied her reflection in the mirror, this new body that would still wither in time, then took out the Lantern Pendant that only she could see.

--The lantern.

--It was a Magical Girl's true form, the source of her magic, and the vessel that held her soul.

Magical Girls theoretically had no lifespan limit. To learn about a Magical Girl's condition, all you had to do was look at her Lantern Pendant. The brighter and more intact it was, the healthier and safer she was.

Her strength, potential, temperament, and rank could also be inferred from it.

Magic was a power of the heart. The more noble, pure, kind, resilient, and brave a soul was, the more powerful the lantern it could awaken, and the stronger the magic it could wield. Even the purity and quantity of its source of magic would exceed all expectations.

In the inherited memories Chu Yuanqing had received from the pendant, there was a line that read:

--Pure white is the highest praise one can give a lantern.

As the Savior, Chu Yuanqing had not only achieved epic feats, but had also shouldered the karma of tens of billions of people all by herself.

After transforming into a Magical Girl, she should theoretically have possessed an unprecedented amount of magic, wielded magic capable of surpassing multiple combined blessings, and awakened a lantern of the purest white.

And yet...

The Sea of Truth had eroded her soul, shattering that beautiful possibility.

The Lantern Pendant in Chu Yuanqing's hand had been covered in cracks from the very start. Its color was dim, its surface dull, and it looked as if it might fall apart at any moment.

Her pure white Magic Armor, her Tianshan Snow hair, and the flashes of pure white from her lantern all attested to her tremendous potential as a Magical Girl. None of it could change the fact that the lantern was on the verge of breaking.

Rather, had her potential not been so high, had she not used a saint's heart to convert an utterly terrifying amount of magic, there would have been no reason for her to survive for several more months after merely changing her Life Form, not against a colossal force like the Sea of Truth.

It was a miracle created by a Magical Girl.

But miracles and magic always came at a price.

Chu Yuanqing held the pendant, her eyes lowered, and listened closely.

The countdown of her life ticked away.

Like sand slipping through an hourglass, it never stopped.

Chu Yuanqing traced the cracks in the lantern. After calculating the little time she had left, she stared blankly for a long while, then smiled ruefully and murmured:

"Xiao Shu, becoming the moon seems... so lonely."

At the same time,

outside the practice room,

Tang Liuli had appeared at some point. She sat against the wall with her head buried between her knees, arms wrapped around her legs. She looked as if she were on her period. Like a small animal shivering from the cold, she trembled now and then, and even her neatly placed little feet kept wriggling.

The viewers watching this angle were thoroughly confused:

"Damn, what's Little Liuli doing?"

"I'm dead. Did she watch Yue Bao steal all of Chu Yuanqing's maternal love, realize she'd been totally outdone, and have a complete breakdown?"

"Unbelievable. What kind of twisted rule is this? You win onstage, but lose in love????"

"Fuck, Qing Bao really is the Myriad Female King. Count how many women have come to see her so far! Great Demon King, Little Sakura, Yue Bao, Liuli. Is someone else gonna show up next????"

"I'm so annoyed. My daughter Qing Bao has always been the prettiest one around. She'd be fine on her own, but can all these awful women just get lost????"

No matter how perverted the viewers were, they couldn't have imagined what Tang Liuli was going through.

The former child star wasn't suppressing sadness or dejection. She was trying to hold back a delight that had reached straight into her mind and soul.

That was right.

Tang Liuli had once again drawn an immense amount of emotion from that person. Her uncontrollable talent had treated it as food, gulping it down and filling her belly. In return, it had left her feeling satisfied down to every last nerve ending.

This time, she hadn't merely empathized with the Savior's sorrow.

There was also...

Chu Yuanqing's love for her daughter.

Tang Liuli's unnaturally pale skin had flushed all over. A rosy hue colored her slender neck, and mist welled in her eyes, as if it might form hearts. Then, with the hot breath escaping her lips, it turned into glistening tears that ran down her cheeks.

The girl clutched her skirt in a tight fist. Her thighs and calves trembled together, and a sheen of cold sweat dampened her back. Her eyes gradually lost focus, going blank for a brief moment.

A long, long while passed.

Only after nearly all the remaining B-Class contestants had left the stage did Tang Liuli come back to her senses.

She struggled to her feet, bracing herself against the wall. Her calves were sore and numb, and higher up, she felt even more sensitive. Her hair was damp and disheveled, covering most of her face. She looked rather wretched and even more gloomy than usual.

But the blush that lingered on her cheeks, her glistening lips, and the tear mole at the corner of her eye, reddened by the heat, all made her look irresistibly vulnerable, as if she were begging to be ravished and conquered.

Tang Liuli limped away with one hand on the wall, still unable to get over what had happened.

It was like a succubus who'd been starved for ages, approaching the protagonist of an erotic novel with nothing more in mind than a sweet treat, only to squeeze him dry—then get stuffed to the brim by his cheat-like stamina until she didn't want to eat for a month.

That was exactly what Chu Yuanqing's emotions had done to her this time.

So Chu Wangshu was really that important to her?

That emotion held no selfish desire or impurity, only a pure wish to give. It was as gentle as spring, and even if Tang Liuli tasted it ten thousand, a hundred million times, it would always satisfy her completely and let her enter Flow State as often as she pleased.

It was almost like real maternal love.

That was it. Maternal love.

Only great, selfless maternal love was among the most untouchable emotions humanity had. It was also a special feeling that wouldn't be worn away by repeated exposure to the black hole of her talent.

Wait...

Didn't that make her a real thief of maternal love?

Tang Liuli felt incredibly guilty and blinked her emerald-green eyes.

The girl secretly suspected that it was the bloodline of the Glorious Country within her that was to blame. In any case, she definitely hadn't meant to be a homewrecker!

Besides, they were just sharing. Chu Wangshu wasn't losing anything, and Xiao Liuli wasn't being harmed. What was wrong with letting her have a taste?

It all made perfect sense, right?

Tang Liuli gradually hypnotized herself into feeling entirely justified.

--Thump!

As she walked, her legs suddenly gave way and she fell hard to the floor. But she quietly got back up at once, leaning against the wall like a short-legged cat that refused to be beaten. She stood there proudly, not only not upset, but even smiling smugly.

Even if the fall was probably karma, it couldn't ruin her excellent mood.

Because that little trip to mooch off someone had let her fill up once again—and had also given her a crucial piece of information!

In Xiao Liuli's eyes, Chu Wangshu was positioned as—her real daughter!

In other words, she wasn't just no threat at all. She was also an excellent way in.

Did Xie Qingxuan know? Did Sakura Girl know? Did Liang Xiaoxiao know?

No! No one knew. Only she did!

Tang Liuli felt she'd already won too much today.

She proudly walked back to the dormitory, completely unaware that she'd left tens of thousands of viewers in the Live Broadcast Room bewildered, giving them a classic moment worthy of a compilation of the most baffling behavior by idol trainees.

"She's smiling even after falling? Little Liuli must've gone crazy. Tragic."

"So why was this girl squatting outside the C-Class practice room for twenty minutes? Didn't her legs get sore?"

"LMAO, does she think she absorbed Qing Bao's energy just by doing that? She didn't dare go in and say hello the whole time. What an antisocial, gloomy little sister."

"I'm starting to wonder if Tang Liuli hired a body double for the stage. She's a completely different person onstage and off."

"Aww, she's obviously been shaken up! The antisocial little sister can't express her love, so she can only watch from the sidelines like a thief. So cute???"

Of course, the people who thought Tang Liuli had changed the most were her longtime fans.

Back then, Tang Liuli had won the industry's favor with her superb skills, but her true appeal was her sunny, cheerful nature and her innocent child's smile—the kind of smile so full of happiness that it could make the public forget their troubles.

Now, the girl was gloomy and antisocial, irritable and tsundere, brimming with teenage rebellion and so depressed she seemed as if she'd never smile again.

That enormous contrast had, of course, disappointed some longtime fans and driven them away. But it had also made many true fans feel sorry for her. They couldn't help wondering what she'd been through all these years, and following that thread of thought inevitably led to a major scene of fans being emotionally devastated.

At the same time,

the C-Class contestants gradually received word that their training had ended in batches. Following the sequence arranged by the Program Group, they prepared for the Second Evaluation.

Chu Yuanqing was among them. She wore a brand-new white blouse, and the movement of her skirt occasionally revealed a glimpse of her full thighs. The lines of her legs were graceful, but they disappeared beneath her white ankle socks, leaving the shape of her ankles hidden from view.

Each batch in the Waiting Room had only ten contestants.

There was no recording equipment here. After waiting for a while, each contestant would walk into a passageway like the mouth of some giant beast, swallowing darkness and hope, and step onto the stage where her fate would be decided.

Meanwhile, the contestants who had finished their performances would leave through the same Waiting Room. Their expressions and demeanor put even more pressure on those who came in afterward.

--An unknown path ahead, an unknown trial, an unknown ending.

The moment they started thinking about those things, their previously calm minds would be thrown into disarray.

Chu Yuanqing could clearly tell that the girls around her were anxious.

Fortunately, she was the first to be called over the loudspeaker:

"C-Class contestant number one, please get ready to go onstage."

The mentor group.

Zhao Dapan considered his words.

"The next contestant is the most popular one in C-Class. Teacher Chen, what kind of performance do you think she'll give us?"

Even though this was a livestream, the footage would be edited into the show later, so a little conversation to build suspense for the audience was undoubtedly a good thing.

Luo Siling smoothly picked up the conversation first.

"As for Chu Yuanqing, she should have no trouble maintaining her rank, even if advancing might be a challenge, right?"