She debuted after having a child with a celestial being.

On the day "Mud" was released, Taihe Music's marketing machine went into full swing for the third time.

QQ Music's startup screen, NetEase Cloud Music's homepage featured image, Kugou's pop-up recommendations, and Douyin's information feed all feature GG.

Hu Yiyou once again staked out all the resources he could mobilize.

With the success of the previous two campaigns, Chen Zhu no longer needed to personally oversee the details of this round of promotion. He simply sent a message in the work group: "HF's third single, Taihe continues to provide full support."

But this time, before the song was even released, the haters were already sitting on their stools, waiting for it to be released.

The hashtag #LiuYifeiNewSongMud# trended on social media during the pre-release phase, with the top comments section filled with familiar sarcastic remarks.

"Here we go again, the machines with the full budget are running again."

"You were lucky the first two times, are you brave enough to come again this time?"

"I bet five cents that this is another song by Liu Yifei that's been edited so badly that even her own mother wouldn't recognize it."

Xiao He leaned against the mixing console in the recording studio, finished reading the comments, and tossed his phone onto the sofa.

Liu Yifei is doing her final rehearsal in front of the microphone stand.

After singing the last line, "I don't dodge, I only see flowers," she took off her headphones, turned to look at him, and her eyes shone brightly.

The first time Xiao He saw Liu Yifei in the recording studio, she didn't care about the pitch or the breath control; she was just singing to herself.

"Sister Sisi, you seem a little different today."

"What's different?"

"In the past, after each recording, you would ask Lao Zhou if it was stable. Today, you didn't ask even once."

Liu Yifei paused for a moment, then smiled, her eyes curving into crescent moons.

"Because this song isn't sung for them. It's sung for myself."

The recording began. Han Dong turned up the monitor volume, and as soon as the piano prelude started, she closed her eyes.

When singing the line "Mom said to be upright and honest," the singer didn't deliberately try to keep the last note steady, as if they had found the person in their memories who told them to stand up straight.

When she sang "The mute can also be happy," the corners of her mouth turned up slightly. It wasn't a perfect smile, but a smile that she herself wasn't even aware of, a smile that came from the bottom of her heart.

"She had a lot on her mind, but no one to talk to. After turning off her phone, she seemed to be crying."

As she sang this, she recalled the scene last winter in the living room of her villa in Shunyi, where she was curled up on a white leather sofa, clutching her phone, with those offensive comments on the screen. She looked up at Xiao He and said, "I didn't do anything wrong, so why won't those people stop?"

At that time, she was still silently shedding tears, and even wanted to retire from acting and go abroad to have a baby.

She was still singing the same melody when she turned on her phone, read through all the insults line by line, and then wrote them into the song.

The chorus is coming.

"They threw mud at me, so I used the mud to plant lotus flowers. They threw stones at me, so I used the stones to build a small house."

Her voice suddenly rose in pitch, but it didn't drift.

It's not the kind of tremolo that used to be carefully controlled at the boundary between the true voice and falsetto; it's a completely unrestrained, reckless, almost screaming singing style.

Old Zhou's hand trembled slightly behind the mixing console. The recording showed that the high note of this sentence was tuned to one and a half degrees higher than all previous recordings, and she sang it, standing steadily on that note, like a bird that had finally flown out of its cage.

"Oh oh—I won't dodge—I only see flowers—oh oh—I won't dodge—"

Xiao listened carefully and noticed that in the original arrangement, the string section in the chorus quietly disappeared in the last part, leaving only the piano and her voice.

She stood in front of the microphone stand, like a gardener planting flowers on ruins, piling up the stones thrown at her one by one into steps.

She didn't stop when the last note landed on the word "build a small building".

It is to let the breath continue to grind between the teeth.

If you've heard the original, you'll feel that the sustained note contains everything.

The film that was criticized, the crossover that was not respected, and those who said she was not good enough to sing.

"Mud may be a source of shame, but if you have a good mindset, whatever the other person gives you, you can actually process it in your own way."

Much later, someone described the significance of this song on a music variety show.

"I'll accept whatever you give me, and I don't care what you say to me. I just have a good attitude."

But at this moment, in the recording studio in 2018, Liu Yifei had no idea that someone would evaluate her in this way in the future.

All she knew was that after singing that song, all the words that had been weighing on her mind suddenly disappeared.

The music ends.

As the last piano note faded, Liu Yifei slowly opened her eyes, her eyelashes still glistening with moisture.

But not tears; like after a heavy rain, the water droplets on the leaves evaporate in the sun and then slowly slide down the veins.

She turned to look at Lao Zhou and asked him into the microphone in a hoarse voice how this time went.

In his equally hoarse voice, Lao Zhou told her that all live performances of this song should follow this version, and not a single word should be changed.

This emotion is irreplaceable.

Han Dong automatically saved the main track to the backup disk and glanced at Lao Zhou.

There's almost nothing that can be fixed about this vocal track.

It's not a matter of technique; it's that the woman standing in front of the microphone stand no longer cares about auto-tuning.

Her voice is no longer the result of technical training; it is her own voice, which she has been forced out of countless hours in the recording studio by Han Dong and Lao Zhou, one after another.

In the first week after its launch, the data began to skyrocket.

When the statistics came out on the third day, Chen Zhu sent three exclamation marks in the work group.

"Mud" topped the Kugou Rising Chart for 24 hours, received over 50,000 comments on NetEase Cloud Music in a single week, and was featured on the homepage for a full seven days.

It climbed into the top three on QQ Music's new song chart faster than "Insomnia Flight" and "Mohe Dance Hall".

The former took nearly a week to climb into the top three, the latter took four days, and "Mud" only took three days.

Xiao He saved a screenshot of the rankings to his phone and then pulled up Chen Zhu's WeChat: "President Chen, is there any budget left for this round of marketing?"

Chen Zhu replied as quickly as if he'd been waiting for his message: "It was approved a long time ago. Your group is now the ace of Taihe's publicity department."

The comments section has completely turned into a massive cathartic session.

Although this song was released by a group, Xiao He chose to sing it as a duet, giving all the spotlight to Liu Yifei.

Liu Yifei nestled on the sofa in her Shunyi villa, hugging her orange cat, scrolling through the comments on NetEase Cloud Music one by one.

The top-rated comment in the front row reads:

"Those of you who threw mud at Liu Yifei, did you see that? She turned all the mud you threw into lotus flowers."

This comment has received tens of thousands of replies. Some people are still stubbornly arguing their point.

"It's just good auto-tuning; try going live with all the microphones on."

Soon after, the hashtags #LiuYifeiMud# and #FairySisterWrittenForHates# appeared on the trending topics list like conjoined twins.

The hashtag "Written for Haters" stayed on Weibo's trending topics all night. It wasn't pushed up by fans; it was found spontaneously by passersby after seeing the lyrics.

Someone started a thread on Douban analyzing: "This song wasn't written by HF for the market, it was written by Liu Yifei for herself. Every line isn't meant to please anyone, it's telling everyone: Go ahead and throw it away, I'll watch you throw it away, and then I'll grow flowers myself, to make you haters and trolls furious."

This review has been shared over 100,000 times, and there have been replies in the comments section.

"From 'Insomnia Flight' to 'Mohe Dance Hall' to 'Mud,' the HF group completed a full journey with three songs: being questioned, attacked, buried, and then getting back up on their own. This is not idol making, this is a real documentary."

The haters are still making a last-ditch effort.

The vocal blogger who previously said that Liu Yifei's trembling at the end of "Mohe Dance Hall" indicated poor singing skills posted again, but with a much more hesitant tone: "In the chorus of 'Mud,' Liu Yifei's high notes did have flaws; you could hear that her breath support was still insufficient. But this time, her emotions were truly impeccable."

This time, the Yi family did not offer a lengthy explanation.

The fan only replied with one sentence: "She doesn't care if what you hear is flawed. She sings this song to tell everyone: From now on, I can catch anything you throw at me."

The topic escalated into the late hours of the night, and public opinion shifted completely.

Many people have noticed that the marketing accounts that were most aggressive in criticizing Liu Yifei have been losing followers one after another. A music review post from a former fan who turned against her has become a trending topic: "I've been a hater for so many years, and this is the first time I've listened to a song and no longer wanted to criticize it. It's not that Liu Yifei's singing has improved, it's that she's using the loudest voice to tell everyone: I don't care what you say about me. When a woman no longer cares what you think of her, you can no longer hurt her."

This former staunch hater wrote the last sentence at the end of the post: "I used to hate her because I thought she was too clean, so clean that I wanted to pour dirty water on her to test it. But now I find that I can't pour this water in anymore. She turned all the dirty water into nutrients to grow flowers, can you believe it? Fine, I'm not going to continue being a clown."

Xiao He liked all the posts from beginning to end, from the first fan leader to the last long-time fan, and then cut the long post from the hater into several segments and sent them to Liu Yifei.

When he got to the second page of the screenshot, his finger paused for a moment. That passage reminded him of the time last winter when he first helped her analyze the true nature of the entertainment industry on the sofa in her villa in Shunyi.

At that time, he said, "The common purpose of these smears is to suppress an outlier who did not rely on capital and quickly rose to the top based on his strength."

Now she doesn't need anyone's help; she's responding to everyone in her own way.

Silence is not escapism, but a way of accumulating strength.

Planting flowers is not a compromise, but another kind of battle.

Liu Yifei nestled on the sofa, the light from her phone screen reflecting on her face.

"You brat."

"Um?"

"Thank you. You were the only one who believed I could sing in the beginning."

"Then...can I give you a hug?"

"You can hug me as much as you want, I'm in a good mood today, but don't go too far!"