Chen Shao sat perched on a smooth river stone near the edge of the spring, a cup of steaming wild mint tea held between his slightly trembling hands. The "Clarity" radiating from Chen Ying's presence was no longer just a soft, background light in his mind; it was starting to feel like a cold, sharp scalpel, cutting through the thick, fuzzy layers of lies he had been conditioned to believe for years.
With every sip of the bitter, refreshing brew, a jagged fragment of a suppressed memory would flash across his vision like a bolt of lightning in a dark sky.
He remembered his sister's tenth birthday. The image in his mind—the warped, tainted version—had always depicted Chen Ying as a bratty child who had made a mess of the kitchen just to annoy the staff. But now, as the fog thinned, the true memory surfaced with agonizing detail. He saw a small, flour-covered girl who had stayed up all night to bake him a lopsided, burnt strawberry cake because it was his favorite. He saw the pure, sparkling hope in her eyes as she presented it to him... and then he heard his own voice, cold and influenced by a "suggestion" from the head maid, telling her to go to her room because she was "being an attention-seeking nuisance."
A sharp, physical pang of grief suddenly hit his chest, making him catch his breath.
[System: Ding! Target Chen Shao is undergoing 'Memory Resonance'. The false narrative is collapsing. Brainwashing Level: 75% and falling rapidly.]
"Is the tea not to your liking, President Chen?"
Chen Ying's voice, steady and devoid of its old emotional volatility, broke his trance. She was sitting a few feet away, meticulously cleaning the survival case they had just won. She didn't look at him with the longing or the need for approval of a younger sister; she looked at him with the coldness of a stranger.
"The tea is fine," Chen Shao managed to say, his voice sounding thick and unfamiliar to his own ears. He looked at her soot-stained hands, the skin raw and red in places. "Yingying... your hands. You used to refuse to touch anything that wasn't silk or cashmere. You used to cry if you broke a fingernail. When did you learn to... to handle blood and dirt like this?"
"In the years when I realized that no one was coming to save me, and that crying only wasted the salt in my body," she replied casually, her eyes never leaving the lock on the case. She didn't say it to hurt him—there was no spite in her tone—which somehow made the words feel like a hot iron against his soul. "Survival is a very effective teacher, President Chen. It strips away the things that don't matter."
The formal title "President Chen" felt like a bucket of ice water over his head. Every time she used it, it reinforced the wall she had built between them.
Meanwhile, Wang Bai was watching the scene with gritted teeth, her face twisted in a mask of fury that the cameras, focused on the "touching reunion," completely missed. Her fingers were white as she clutched the jade hidden beneath the neckline of her dress. She could feel the psychic connection to Chen Shao fraying, the "leash" she had held over the Chen family CEO losing its tension.
'No,' she hissed internally, her eyes flashing with a predatory malice. 'He is my ladder. The Chen family's wealth and status belong to me. I won't let her take back what I've stolen.'
She waited for the production drones to pan toward Yang Zixuan and Wu Haoran, who were busy securing the meat, before she scurried toward the spring with a look of feigned concern. "Brother Shao! I found some cooling medicinal herbs in the woods! You look so pale... I think they'll help with your headache!"
She reached out her hand, her fingers trembling with the intent to touch his forehead—intending to use the artifact at point-blank range to "re-anchor" the brainwashing and force his mind back into the fog.
But just as her fingers were an inch from his skin, Chen Ying's hand shot out in a blink of an eye. She didn't grab Wang Bai's hand; instead, she reached up and firmly grasped the **jade pendant** hanging around Wang Bai's neck.
"That's a beautiful piece of jewelry, Xiao Bai," Chen Ying said, her voice dropping to a low, melodic whisper that only the three of them could hear over the sound of the spring. "But I think it's been working a bit too hard lately. It looks... tired. Perhaps it needs a break."
Chen Ying didn't just hold the stone; she channeled a concentrated burst of the "Neutralizing Energy" she had painstakingly refined during her decades in the Mission Worlds directly into the core of the jade.
*Crack.*
A microscopic, spider-web fissure appeared on the surface of the emerald-green stone.
Wang Bai gasped, stumbling back as if she had been hit by a physical bolt of electricity. To the hovering cameras, it looked like Chen Ying had simply been a bit rough or aggressive, but to Chen Shao, the effect was simply mind blowing. It felt as if a heavy, suffocating veil had just been ripped off his face, allowing him to see the world in high-definition for the first time in five years.
He gasped for air, his lungs burning, his eyes widening as he looked at Chen Ying—really *looked* at the sister he had neglected and ridiculed—and felt the first true wave of horror at his own actions.
"Ying... Ying?" he stammered, his eyes filling with a sudden, overwhelming, and agonizing clarity.
[System: Ding! Artifact Integrity compromised! 15% Damage. Chen Shao's Brainwashing Level: 50%!]
[Points Earned: 20. Account Balance: 112 Points.]