Prologue

The dinner was so lavish it genuinely moved me!

After eating and drinking our fill, Black Robe Number One brewed himself a cup of coffee, sat down in the middle of the tent, and just before he began his story, he suddenly turned to look at me and asked: “You just got married, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

“Did you wear a wedding gown?”

I shook my head. “The day after we decided to get married, the two of us ran off together.”

“What a shame. Every girl should get to wear one, at least once.” He shrugged, sat up straight, and said, “Everyone, what I’m about to tell you is a story that has something to do with a wedding gown. Any resemblance to real persons or events is purely coincidental.”

“We’re all ears.” I let out a satisfied belch, sprawled across the soft cushions, and waited to see what kind of story this strange fellow could possibly tell.

He cleared his throat. “In a museum in a certain city…”

Part One

“No one can put on this wedding gown. No one…”

Old Qin from the museum’s administrative office stroked the spotless glass display case at the very back of Exhibition Hall Three, gazing vacantly at what lay within, murmuring to himself.

A brilliant pomegranate red pierced through the sturdy glass and reflected in his already clouding eyes.

That color — as gentle as water, as dazzling as fire.

It was a wedding gown from ancient times.

The upper portion was a mandarin-collared gold-brocade embroidered gauze jacket; the lower, a twenty-four-panel pleated skirt, its hem neatly inlaid with delicate round pendants crafted from colorless glass. Over everything was draped a floor-length sheer gauze robe, all of it resting serenely upon a nanmu wood dress form. The pomegranate red blazing across the skirt and jacket, softened by the haze of thin gauze, was like a bride-to-be — bashfully hidden in the shadows, fervently yet timidly stealing glances at the one she loved. The bead curtains swayed gently; they concealed her face but could not conceal the two blossoming clouds of red that floated upon her cheeks.

It was a supremely beautiful garment. Any woman who laid eyes on it would surely feel the sweet, irresistible desire to wear it.

“Wedding gown of a noblewoman of the Southern Song dynasty. Excavated in 1977 from the ancient tomb cluster at Construction Site No. 2 in the northern outskirts of Wangchuan City.”

The crisp white label beside it described its origins in plain black characters. Then, at the very end of the placard, five small words — “This is a replica” — condemned it to the most neglected corner of the museum, where it had sat, aggrieved, for years.

Jun Xiuhan held a feather duster and distractedly swept at the display case beside her, her gaze drifting involuntarily toward Old Qin, and toward the object of his rapt attention.

Today was the seventh day of Jun Xiuhan’s employment at the museum. As an ordinary administrative staff member, her work was not demanding — sorting documents, maintaining exhibits, receiving visitors: a simple, day-after-day repetition. In truth, a museum as unpretentious and unremarkable as this one, tucked in the outskirts of a small city, saw precious few visitors on any given day. The local residents seemed to have little interest in history; they would rather sit in a teahouse playing mahjong than pay a few coins for a ticket to come here and reflect on the past. The liveliest time the museum ever saw was around National Day, when teachers would occasionally bring a group of students to enrich their extracurricular knowledge.

It was not difficult to imagine, therefore, that the museum’s income was far from plentiful. If it relied on ticket sales alone, there might come a day when it could not even afford cleaning supplies. Thankfully, a modest annual subsidy from the city government had kept the museum afloat until now.

Before Jun Xiuhan arrived, her position had changed hands many times. Not many young people could endure this austere place for more than three months. The lofty ideals of contributing to the preservation of the nation’s glorious history inevitably crumbled beneath the weight of cold reality.

Now the entire museum had only five staff members: apart from the director and the gatekeeper, there were three people in the administrative office. Even the cleaners were hourly workers, hired to save money. And the office was about to shrink to two — Old Qin was retiring soon, and this week would be the last seven days of his service to the museum.

“Teacher Qin, have you finished clearing out the documents in your filing cabinet? Would you like some help?” Jun Xiuhan walked over to Old Qin’s side, thinking of the old filing cabinet he had left in disarray from rummaging through it.

At her question, Old Qin pushed his faded glasses up his nose and gave her a grateful smile. “No need, it’s nearly all sorted out.”

With that, he turned back, his gaze lingering once more upon that swath of pomegranate red.

Xie Fei, who had started two months before Jun Xiuhan, had once privately told her that Old Qin paid an extraordinary amount of attention to this replica wedding gown. On multiple occasions after closing time, Xie Fei had seen Old Qin standing before the display case in exactly this posture — stock still, murmuring to himself.

Only someone hopelessly infatuated would have eyes like that.

Every time she brought it up, Xie Fei would end with a derisive laugh.

A few days ago, while organizing files, Jun Xiuhan had noticed that in the “Marital Status” field, Old Qin had written “Single.” Whether he had never married or was divorced, there was no way to know, and she had no interest in prying into another person’s private life. Besides, she had always felt a deep sense of gratitude and respect toward Old Qin. When she had been frantically job-hunting, on the verge of being thrown out by her mercenary landlord, it was Old Qin’s call of acceptance that had rescued her. She had packed her meager belongings and rushed to the museum that very day. After she awkwardly explained her current predicament, Old Qin had said not a word of objection — he simply pressed a key into her hand and told her she could stay in the office for the time being, that there was a camp bed in the small room she could make do with, until she found a place of her own.

In an age where trust had grown so scarce, Jun Xiuhan had timidly gripped that silver key, bowed deeply to Old Qin in sincere gratitude, and felt a warmth she hadn’t known in a long, long time fill her heart.

She had work, and a free place to stay. Jun Xiuhan had finally let out a long breath of relief.

Old Qin had taught her everything she was responsible for, carefully and in detail, even though none of it was particularly complicated — he still took every last thing seriously. It wasn’t just work, either. Noticing her throat was bothering her, he had braved the sweltering heat to walk all the way to a pharmacy far from the museum and bring back medicine. He had also brought her a thicker quilt, saying the museum was cold and damp at night and she ought not to catch a chill. Knowing she was short on money, he had gone specially to the director and arranged for her month’s salary to be paid out early.

Faced with such a kind and attentive elder and superior, Jun Xiuhan would never breathe a word against him behind his back.

She didn’t want him to leave. At the very least, not so soon.

“Teacher Qin…” Jun Xiuhan thought for a moment, then summoned the courage to interrupt Old Qin’s contemplation of the wedding gown. There were things she wanted to know before he left.

Old Qin turned his face toward her. The lamplight reflected off his lenses, two white panels of light obscuring his eyes.

“Could you tell me the story behind this wedding gown?” She asked the question she most wanted answered.

A long silence.

“It is waiting.”

The corners of Old Qin’s mouth curved upward slightly, and the lines etched across his face slowly relaxed — like a flower blooming in barren soil.

Jun Xiuhan had never seen such an expression on him before.

“Waiting?!” She was stunned. “Waiting for what?”

Old Qin’s palm moved slowly across the glass, the heat from his hand breathing a faint white mist onto the surface — and then it was gone.

“Happiness.”

A trace of relief, like something finally set down, drifted between those two short words.

“It’s terribly humid tonight. I fear there’ll be heavy rain. Make sure to close the windows properly before you sleep. I’ll be going now.”

Old Qin picked up the umbrella he had set down on the floor, turned a blind eye to Jun Xiuhan’s bewilderment, gave her shoulder a light pat, and cast one final, reluctant look at the wedding gown.

“I’m leaving it in your care.” Before he left, he gazed meaningfully out the window. “The day after tomorrow — Qixi. Will it rain, I wonder?”

Jun Xiuhan stood with her mouth slightly open until Old Qin’s figure disappeared through the doorway.

Part Two

A belly full of questions stopped up her throat, sealed there as though by an enchantment, impossible to voice.

She locked the museum doors and walked across the marble floor — cracked in countless places — her footsteps echoing through the empty exhibition halls.

She pushed closed the office door and began her small evening routines.

Glug-glug — boiling water from the thermos poured carefully into the bowl. The aroma of instant noodles rose in swirls of steam.

She tore open a small packet and shook it gently. Paste sauce sank into the water, blooming into a dark brown cloud. Dehydrated vegetables, green and white, floated on top, slowly drifting in lazy circles.

Tonight’s dinner had also been provided by Old Qin. He had an entire half-case of Kang Shifu noodles in his cabinet — he had given them all to Jun Xiuhan. She had tried to refuse, but he said he was leaving soon and couldn’t possibly take them with him, and they would just go to waste anyway, and besides, they weren’t worth anything.

A few minutes later she lifted the lid, stirred the softened noodles, and opened the old blue folder on the desk in front of her.

Inside were brief introductions to all the museum’s collection pieces, along with related press clippings and magazine articles. Apparently it had all been organized single-handedly by Old Qin. Yesterday he had handed it to Jun Xiuhan, saying it wasn’t of much practical use, but it wouldn’t hurt to browse through it when she had nothing to do.

Jun Xiuhan lifted a strand of noodles to her mouth, chewed slowly, and flipped through the pages at leisure, as though reading a storybook.

There wasn’t much in the museum that could truly be called remarkable. According to the records, even the few objects that qualified as first-class cultural relics had been promptly “received” by higher authorities years ago. In short, what Wangchuan Museum housed was all the stuff no one else particularly wanted. Jun Xiuhan thought of the building’s feeble security measures and the director’s indifferent attitude, and supposed that even professional artifact thieves found the pickings too slim to bother with here.

Old Qin had documented the origin of every piece in careful detail. Beneath the photographs were rows of handsome, flowing characters written in pen — a pleasure to look at.

When there was only half a bowl of broth left, Jun Xiuhan’s fingers paused near the last few pages.

It was the entry for the wedding gown. Unlike the others, it had no photograph — only a small painting sealed in a transparent cellophane sleeve, rendered in skilled polychrome brushwork on pale yellow rice paper. The wedding gown in the painting was identical to the one in the display case, resting serenely upon a large green stone, with countless tender shoots of grass poking their heads out from the crevices between stones, peering at the outside world like mischievous children.

It was just a garment — and yet it was beautiful enough to feel alive. An earnest, distant expectation radiated from the painting and seeped into Jun Xiuhan’s heart.

Could it have been Old Qin who painted this? If so, she was surprised by his talent.

The accompanying text about the gown was almost identical to what was written on the museum placard — Old Qin hadn’t gone into any further detail. Turning a few pages further, her attention was caught by a newspaper clipping with the headline: “Thousand-year-old wedding gown reduced to ash in an instant. Skilled craftsman recreates its original appearance.”

She set down her chopsticks, about to read it carefully, when the office door was suddenly thrown open.

“My phone, my phone — did I leave my phone here?!”

Xie Fei came rushing in, yanked open her own desk drawer, and then let out a long, relieved breath.

“Thank goodness I left it at the office.” She patted her chest, looking at the latest model phone she had saved up months to buy, and said to Jun Xiuhan, “I was just convinced I’d been pickpocketed. Scared me half to death. I even got off the bus halfway and rushed back.”

“Just be more careful in future.” Jun Xiuhan pulled out a tissue for the sweat-drenched girl. “Here, wipe yourself down.”

Taking the tissue and dabbing at her forehead, Xie Fei’s gaze fell on what Jun Xiuhan had been reading, and she immediately grew interested. “Oh, you’re looking at this?”

“Have you read it before?” Jun Xiuhan didn’t think this girl, who treated her work as something to be gotten through with minimum effort, would have any inclination to flip through such dusty old materials.

Xie Fei hopped up to sit on Jun Xiuhan’s desk, adopting the air of a senior explaining things to a junior. “Who needs to read it? You got here late — there are things Sister Xu told me that you wouldn’t know.”

Sister Xu was a middle-aged woman with a short bob haircut. The first day Jun Xiuhan had come to report for work was the very day Sister Xu had applied for early medical retirement. The seat Jun Xiuhan now occupied had once been hers.

“Did she ever tell you the story of this wedding gown?” Jun Xiuhan asked.

“Of course.” Xie Fei nodded, then immediately narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Why — don’t tell me you’re starting to take after that infatuated old Qin, about to become the second generation of wedding-gown-obsessives at Wangchuan Museum?”

“Be serious!” Jun Xiuhan pulled a straight face. “I’m genuinely curious.”

“Fine, fine, no more joking.” Xie Fei jumped down, pulled up a chair, sat down, and pointed to the painting. “That one — I heard Old Qin drew it himself, back in the day.”

So it really had been Old Qin’s work.

“This wedding gown was supposed to have had a genuine original.” Xie Fei dropped another piece of highly valuable old gossip, and Jun Xiuhan’s visibly eager expression filled her with the pride of a teacher imparting knowledge to a student. She began to tell the story with relish. “Back then, an ancient tomb cluster was discovered at Construction Site No. 2 on the outskirts of Wangchuan. Inside one of the burial chambers, workers unearthed a gold-patterned lacquered wooden coffin. The coffin was transported to the research institute attached to the museum at the time, and when the researchers opened it, they discovered inside it a wedding gown, vivid and fresh as the day it was made. Everyone was astounded — they thought they had found a national treasure of the highest order. But when they carefully lifted the wedding gown out of the coffin — something utterly bizarre happened. Something they would regret with every fiber of their being.”

“What happened?” Jun Xiuhan couldn’t help but inch her chair forward, eyes wide and unblinking.

“Heh.” Xie Fei struck the pose of a seasoned storyteller, pleased with herself, and said: “No one expected it — the moment the wedding gown crossed over the edge of the coffin, it instantly crumbled to black ash in their very hands, scattering everywhere. Everyone present was dumbfounded, and then began worrying desperately about their own futures. Word had long gotten out about the treasure found at Site No. 2, and the higher-ups had been paying close attention. Yet now not only had they nothing to show for it — they’d stood there and watched a national treasure inexplicably turn to ash right in their hands. Who could sit easy after that? The next day the whole affair was reported to the higher-ups. The cultural relics had been damaged without explanation; naturally the ones who bore the blame were the staff members who had been involved. Some were dismissed, others formally cautioned. Even the newspapers ran the story — not exactly flattering coverage. Those people were genuinely wronged, but they had genuinely no way to explain why the wedding gown had turned to ash. In the end the whole thing was put to rest with the flimsy excuse of ‘severe oxidation of the fabric due to age.'”

“The original was destroyed — such a rare and precious thing…” Jun Xiuhan nodded, thoughtfully. “So the museum made this replica to commemorate it, I suppose…”

Xie Fei shook her head vigorously. “This replica was made by Old Qin!”

Jun Xiuhan’s heart gave a thump.

“Old Qin came to work at the museum the day after the wedding gown was excavated. Although he was only an ordinary staff member and hadn’t been involved in the ‘wedding gown incident’ itself, he knew a great deal about every aspect of what had happened. One day, he proactively proposed to the museum that he wanted to make a perfect replica of the original — such a rare ancient wedding gown deserved, at the very least, to be preserved as a memorial for future generations. The museum agreed. And so, people saw Old Qin carrying a thick bundle of pomegranate-red fabric and shutting himself inside the research room where the ashes of the original were stored. He didn’t eat, didn’t drink, and didn’t come out for three whole days. Someone went to check on him partway through — from behind the locked door, all they could hear was the snip-snip of scissors, and a faint smell of something singed. Three days later, Old Qin walked out carrying this wedding gown, indistinguishable in every way from the original… and that is how we got the replica we see today!”

Hearing all of this, the tangle of doubts in Jun Xiuhan’s heart began to loosen somewhat.

Old Qin’s devotion to the wedding gown was perhaps akin to a painter’s love for their work — or even a mother’s love for her child…

The singular attachment human beings feel toward things that are their own can sometimes grow so fierce that no one else can understand it, and even they themselves cannot explain it.

“Since you know all this, why do you still mock Old Qin behind his back?” Jun Xiuhan gave Xie Fei a half-scolding, half-teasing look. “That’s a work he made with his own hands.”

“That still doesn’t explain why he has to stand there talking to a piece of clothing all day like a lovesick fool — it’s deeply unsettling!” Xie Fei stood up, unimpressed, glanced at the time, and made a farewell gesture in Jun Xiuhan’s direction. “It’s getting late. If I don’t leave now there’ll be no bus back to the city. I’ve told you so much tonight — next time you’ll have to buy me a meal as thanks! BYE!”

Xie Fei hurriedly stuffed her phone into her bag and dashed out in a rush of two steps to everyone else’s one.

“Don’t run so fast — the floor is slippery!”

This girl, two months younger than herself in age, was an absolute whirlwind in everything she said and did. Jun Xiuhan shook her head.

Xie Fei ran and typed on her phone at the same time, firing off text messages — always one of her greatest pastimes.

At the doorway, she crashed headlong into someone.

Xie Fei steadied herself, looked up — “Old Qin?!”

“Oh, it’s you, Little Xie.” Old Qin shook his not-yet-folded umbrella. “Still here so late? It’s already started to drizzle outside.”

“That’s fine, I brought an umbrella.” Xie Fei dug a folding umbrella out of her large shoulder bag, and as she snapped the clasp closed she asked, “What brings Teacher Qin back?”

Old Qin adjusted his glasses frames. The light above the entrance cast downward, catching on his lenses.

“Something I hadn’t quite finished.”

At the corners of his mouth — an uncommon smile, like rain striking glass: colorless and cold, gone the moment it appeared.

Part Three

It really did rain — drops larger than soybeans, hammering the windows with relentless thwacks.

Jun Xiuhan closed every window, drew the curtains, and in the stifling heat of the sealed room, switched on the small electric fan sitting beside the bed.

The thick quilt Old Qin had prepared for her became a superfluous burden on this night, piled uselessly on the folding chair in the corner.

She turned off the light and felt her way to the little bed with its bamboo mat, lying down in the darkness, quietly listening to the wind and rain outside, and to the sound of the fan blades turning.

She closed her eyes, but could not close her mind. Old Qin’s face, the vivid red wedding gown — they drifted back and forth before her like lantern shadows in a procession, blurring then sharpening, alternating and overlapping. The sound of wind and rain at the window was gradually replaced by the steady rhythm of the fan blades, which became a remarkably effective lullaby.

The bamboo mat beneath her, warmed to a gentle heat by her body, grew cool at some point she could not pinpoint — as though cold iron were spreading across its surface, then pressing close against her skin, then slowly seeping deeper into her flesh and marrow.

A breeze brushed past, carrying the fragrance of grass.

Silently it drifted into her nostrils, then in an instant transformed into a thick, raw stench — the smell of fresh blood newly sprayed from a body, the warm vapor dispersing the despair of death.

The thunderous roar of hooves drew closer from a great distance, pounding against the thin membranes of her ears. A dust-swirling grassland tipped before her eyes at a neurotic, unceasing angle. The ferocity of battle expanded in every unseen direction to its absolute limit, as if to shatter the vault of sky where clouds went scattering and flying.

A blade cold as silver light swept down from mid-sky in a diagonal arc. Blood drew a perfect curve through the air; a wide-eyed severed head rolled and tumbled, traced an equally perfect parabola, and fell into the chaos of churning hooves below.

A pair of ice-cold eyes froze upon the blood-streaked blade.

Whoosh!

The blade tip rose upright in an instant, pointed straight ahead — a command and an authority that brooked no defiance.

The sky itself changed color. Rolling thunder crashed forward in waves; brilliant lightning tore through banks of heavy cloud. A killing air pierced heaven and earth. Armored troops on horseback came thundering in from all directions — clashing, slaughtering, blades and spears striking brilliant sparks that scattered and died. Men fell from their screaming mounts; across the wildfire-ravaged grassland, corpse after corpse accumulated in all manner of postures, trampled by hooves until flesh and bone were indistinguishable.

With a tremendous blast, raging flames shot skyward, racing to connect the entire grassland into a sea of fire in an instant. Beneath the churning blaze, the cries of men and the screams of horses grew faint and then faded — leaving only that blade, its cold air undiminished, pointing stubbornly and unmovably forward, with no intention of ever turning back.

Eyes that held no feeling, only killing — drifting like wind. A deep black battle robe burned in the fire, billowing upward, filling the vision of another pair of eyes: terrified, and sorrowful…

A single crystalline teardrop slid down from the softest cloud, bathed in the gentle light of an undetermined source, refracting a beauty more dazzling than starlight. A curious gaze was drawn to the world encased within that teardrop — closer and closer, like a child entranced by a kaleidoscope.

As though someone had dropped a pebble into perfectly still water, the colorless tear spread outward in ripples, became a sky full of fine rain, washed the blood from the ground, restored the grassland to cleanliness, and returned the sky to clarity.

All things bound to death paused, in this one moment.

A gentle breeze carried fine rain, bringing with it the moist fragrance of earth and wild grass — pure, without the slightest trace of impurity.

A woman, wrapped in brilliant red, stood upon a smooth green stone, gazing into the distance.

An endless grassland stretched before her, a deep, lush green beneath the grey horizon.

Flecks of light glittered upon her garments, and the crisp tinkling sound passed through the thin veil of rain — the monotonous landscape becoming as translucent as glass.

Her face was indistinct; even her form was no more than a vague silhouette. And yet happiness — the unique happiness of someone waiting for a beloved person to come home — spread with absolute clarity across Jun Xiuhan’s heart. The woman’s beating heart, her urgent breathing — all of it was startlingly vivid.

The woman, herself — herself, the woman — they gradually blurred together, becoming one…

BOOM!

A crack of thunder split the air.

Jun Xiuhan jolted upright in bed.

A faint prickling at her temple — a line of cold sweat, crawling slowly down.

What a strange dream…

She panted lightly, pulled up the pillowcase, and wiped away the sweat.

Outside the window, lightning and thunder continued unabated. Inside the room, however, an unpleasant stuffiness pressed in from all sides. The small electric fan had stopped working at some point — its blue blades hung motionless and lazy. Jun Xiuhan got out of bed, pushed the switch forcefully — nothing. She pushed again; the blades still refused to move. She gave up, dejected, and lay back down.

She, who ordinarily slept without the slightest difficulty, experienced insomnia for the first time that night. As she tossed and turned, not only did drowsiness utterly abandon her, but the fragmented scenes from the dream grew clearer and clearer, flashing through her mind one after another like a film reel.

Perhaps it was an illusion; perhaps it was the discomfort of being unable to sleep. Either way, Jun Xiuhan suddenly felt a faint, sharp pain slip into her heart without warning. Unconsciously, she raised her hand to press it against her chest.

She shifted to lie flat on her back, thinking this might be more comfortable, but the pain in her chest — like countless fine needles pricking incessantly — did not ease.

Unable to bear it any longer, she sat up again, pulled on the light, and started toward the door to pour herself a glass of water.

Rustle… rustle…

She had just reached the door when Jun Xiuhan suddenly heard the slow, measured sound of pages being turned outside.

The flimsy door of thin wood planks had almost no soundproofing to speak of.

She glanced at her watch. 12:30 in the morning.

Who could possibly be in the office at this hour?

Peering through the gap in the door, she could see nothing but pitch darkness — there was no light on outside.

Who would be flipping through pages in an unlit office in the dead of night?

A flash of lightning swept past, flooding Jun Xiuhan’s face with white light.

Could it be a thief?

But there was nothing of value in the office. What thief would be foolish enough to come here?

Just as she was hesitating over whether to charge out, the sound of turning pages stopped.

Jun Xiuhan pressed her ear to the door and listened for a while longer. Once she was certain there was no other movement outside, she grabbed the stiff-handled broom from behind the door, drew a deep breath, steeled herself, and yanked the door open.

A brilliant pomegranate red burned through the darkness and overwhelmed her vision.

Jun Xiuhan stumbled back several steps, tripped, and sat down hard on the floor.

The wedding gown, which had been locked firmly inside its display case, was standing in the doorway like a person — its empty skirts swaying gently, half a foot above the floor.

The feeling of being seized by an icy, invisible stare was bone-chilling. Jun Xiuhan was so terrified she forgot even to scream.

Perhaps one second passed, perhaps an entire century — the concept of time had completely dissolved in Jun Xiuhan’s mind. She could not remember at what moment the uninvited guest at the doorway left, or disappeared. All she remembered was a thin gauze brushing across her face — cool and lightly ticklish — and then she saw that pomegranate red pivot in the air with a bewitching grace and drift away like the wind.

Jun Xiuhan clamped her hand over her mouth, forcing herself to be calm. Then she crawled on all fours out of the room, and flung on the overhead light.

Aside from the main door, which had been pushed open and was still swinging back and forth with a creak, everything appeared normal.

Jun Xiuhan bit her lip and walked quickly over, slammed the door shut, locked it, and wedged a chair firmly against it. Only then did she breathe slightly easier.

She walked to the desk and sat down heavily. Her still-shaken gaze fell on the blue folder, which lay open — and that flash of startling red was in her sight again.

She distinctly remembered closing the folder and putting it back in the cabinet before she went to sleep.

Jun Xiuhan trembled as she picked up the folder, and then stared in astonishment — on Old Qin’s painting, two additional lines of small characters had appeared:

My heart holds you, your heart holds me. Endless sorrow, an oath that knows no end.

The characters were in vermilion ink, exquisitely penned — yet the grief and despair emanating from beyond those strokes struck Jun Xiuhan like a crashing wave. The pain in her chest seemed to intensify.

She slumped forward onto the desk, exhausted and aching.

The thunderstorm showed no sign of relenting. The dense rain struck the windows in relentless volleys; bolt after bolt of lightning came blazing past. Jun Xiuhan, who had drifted into a fitful sleep, kept biting down on her lower lip, brow furrowed tight, her pale face flickering between light and shadow with each flash…

Part Four

“That’s simply not possible.” Old Qin squeezed a soft cloth, gently wiping down the gleaming display case. “Clothes cannot walk. Little Jun — you must have confused a dream with reality.”

Jun Xiuhan, dark circles beneath her eyes, shook her head firmly. “I’m certain it was not a dream. I can even still feel the sensation of that thin gauze brushing against my face!”

Old Qin breathed on the glass, and the soft cloth smoothed away the white haze, making the surface even more mirror-bright — and the wedding gown inside even more vivid.

“It was only a hallucination. Look — the wedding gown is sitting safe and sound in its locked case. Unless someone stole it and put it on to come and play ghost in the middle of the night.” He turned his face to one side, patted Jun Xiuhan on the head as one might comfort a child. “But you and I both know that’s impossible — only the director has the key; no one can open that glass case. Little Jun, don’t stay up so late at night. When you’re not rested, the mind can play tricks on you.”

“I said I’m certain it wasn’t a hallucination, wasn’t a dream! Teacher Qin, I swear to heaven, there’s not a single false word in what I’ve told you!” Jun Xiuhan instinctively pressed her hand to her chest — the inexplicable pain had not eased with the end of that seemingly absurd night; if anything, it was growing steadily worse. “You don’t know how terrifying it was at that moment…”

Old Qin paused his work and let out a long sigh, shaking his head with a mild smile. “Young girls are still young girls — always imagining things. If you’re truly uncomfortable staying there, I’ll speak to the director and let you have the small apartment the museum set aside for me. It’s not far — at most a stop and a half from here.”

“Give it to me? What about you?” Jun Xiuhan knew the place — Xie Fei had pointed it out to her the last time they went out to buy fruit together. It was a modest old single-story building, the museum’s only “staff dormitory,” which Old Qin had occupied for all these years.

Old Qin waved his hand, set down the cloth in the plastic bucket, and said: “I’m leaving next week anyway — planning to go back to my hometown. I won’t be needing it. Ha ha, just move in without any worries.”

Jun Xiuhan chewed her lower lip, then after a moment nodded. “All right. Thank you.”

After last night’s ordeal, she very much hoped she could move out today.

A trembling, guilt-tinged unease she could not reason through — an overbearing mess — had seized her soul and refused to let go, like a stubborn ghost. The suffering of a sleepless night was something she had never experienced before. Even in the direst straits, even on the eve of having no rice left to cook the next morning, she had always been able to sleep until the world turned dark again.

That bewitching red — she felt fear of it, yet beneath the fear there was an attachment she could not cut away, a familiarity, as though a piece of her own heart had been cut out and placed elsewhere, dyed, stretched, and sewn into the shape of this garment… what a strange and extraordinary feeling…

“Ha ha, no need to thank me.” Old Qin smiled, picked up the plastic bucket, and walked deeper into the hall. “If you really want to thank me, help me wipe down the other cases. I’ve been with them for so many years — I’ve grown attached. After this, I won’t have the chance to ‘wash their faces’ for them anymore.”

Jun Xiuhan caught a brief glimmer of something shining in Old Qin’s eyes.

Not knowing what to say, she fished another cloth from the plastic bucket and walked with purpose to the next display case, polishing it vigorously.

Old Qin drifted over to his beloved wedding gown and addressed it as he would an old friend, murmuring: “The day after tomorrow — it’s Qixi again. The last time I’ll spend it with you…”

Watching his slightly stooped figure standing so desolately before the glass case, bidding farewell to a garment, Jun Xiuhan felt an inexplicable sadness.

Perhaps even she could not fully understand the feeling Old Qin had for this gown. In his eyes, was it a child? A lover? Old Qin’s temples had long since gone white with frost, yet it was not difficult to see in his care-worn face that in his youth he must have been a handsome man. Such a cultivated, gentle, gifted man — still alone at this age. Beyond the regret this inspired, there was inevitably a measure of puzzlement.

“Qixi… is it a very important day?” Jun Xiuhan came to stand beside him, her gaze carefully avoiding meeting the wedding gown’s.

As though woken from a deep sleep by someone calling his name, Old Qin exhaled a long breath and smiled. “Young people nowadays only care about Valentine’s Day and those foreign holidays. How many still know what Qixi is… only old bones like me still remember.”

“I know it,” Jun Xiuhan took up the thread. “The Cowherd and the Weaving Maid can finally be reunited again — what a beautiful day.”

“They each hold fast to their most ardent hope for the other, enduring all suffering in the warmth of that hope — which is why they can ultimately claim their happiness.” Old Qin looked at Jun Xiuhan, the smile slowly fading from his face. “But if the Weaving Maid were to abandon hope — what would remain on the Bridge of Magpies on the seventh day of the seventh month? Air? Or a living corpse?”

Jun Xiuhan blinked, taken aback. From the beautiful reunion of Qixi to the sudden image of a living corpse — she was startled by how steeply Old Qin’s words had plummeted.

“The Weaving Maid would never abandon hope — they love each other so dearly,” Jun Xiuhan said with an awkward little laugh, hoping to steer the conversation back to its earlier lightness.

Old Qin laughed too — a faint desolation written at the corners of his mouth.

People who are about to leave always become like this — sentimental. It was the only explanation Jun Xiuhan could think of.

A dull roll of thunder came from far away.

It wasn’t even six o’clock, yet the sky had gone as dark as night.

“It’s going to rain again. The weather these past few days has really been dreadful.” Old Qin had returned to his usual composure, walking over to the window. “I forgot to bring in the laundry again. Ha ha — all that washing for nothing.”

Jun Xiuhan was quick to say, “Why don’t you head off first, before the rain starts? I’ll take care of the rest here.”

“Well… all right, I’ll go on ahead.” Old Qin didn’t stand on ceremony. He patted his hands clean, turned to go — and then paused, glancing back: “Xie Fei hasn’t been seen all day and hasn’t put in for leave. Remember to give her a call and find out what’s going on.”

“I will. I’ll contact her in a bit.”

It was a well-established fact that Xie Fei was chronically late. From the very first day of Jun Xiuhan’s employment, not once had Xie Fei arrived at the museum on time. Someone like that going absent for a day without notice was probably within the range of normal behavior.

After Old Qin left, Jun Xiuhan worked alone in the main hall. The only sound in the hushed space was the occasional scraping squeak of the cloth against glass.

With her back to the wedding gown, she suddenly felt a sensation crawl up her spine — the feeling of being watched. Just like last night.

Involuntarily she held her breath, her heart giving a frightened lurch as she wavered between turning around and not turning around.

She turned around.

The wedding gown stood docilely in its display case, no different from any other moment. Her gaze, without meaning to, became glued to that pomegranate red.

She stared for a long time — wanting to look away but finding she could not. Like a hallucination, she saw it multiply from one gown into two, two into many, crowding and swirling and twisting in the small glass case, becoming a river of red that churned and rolled behind the glass.

“Ah—”

A violent, stabbing pain seized her heart without warning. Jun Xiuhan pressed hard against her chest and crouched down in agony, nearly biting through her lower lip.

The pain was immense. No longer the degree of fine needles pricking — it was as though a knife had been plunged in savagely, then turned slowly and deliberately, carving through soft flesh.

Nearly collapsing several times, she held herself up by sheer willpower, telling herself over and over that this was only an illusion, a nerve pain brought on by hallucination — it was not real.

The forced self-numbing went on for a long time. The pain seemed to ease somewhat. Jun Xiuhan, gasping, drenched in sweat, used the display case to push herself to her feet, and made her way unsteadily toward the office.

She badly needed a bed to lie down on. Perhaps with some rest, or a bit of sleep, all the illusory pain would disappear. She reassured herself of this.

When Jun Xiuhan curled up on the bed like a wounded cat, she felt for the first time how vastly empty this tiny room was. Empty as though she had been abandoned by the entire world, lying alone in a desert wasteland where no other living thing existed. A despair a hundred times more heart-wrenching than the physical pain surged over her like a tide.

Soaked in cold sweat, Jun Xiuhan could not determine whether she was genuinely ill or simply suffering from the aftermath of the terror that had visited her last night.

Clutching her chest, she tossed and turned on the bed for a long while. The pain seemed to ease slightly.

The brief comfort of the body temporarily released her tightly-wound nerves.

It isn’t illness. I’m definitely not ill.

Jun Xiuhan tried sitting up, and turned things over in her mind — she was certain her abnormal state had nothing to do with sickness.

The wedding gown — that gown that seemed to breathe like a person — was the culprit. It had to be.

But her own reasoning sounded absurd even to herself. How could she convince anyone else? Even Old Qin had said it was a hallucination.

She wiped the sweat from her brow in frustration — and then suddenly remembered the folder.

My heart holds you, your heart holds me. Endless sorrow, an oath that knows no end.

The four lines of text struck through her like a bolt of lightning, and her heart clenched in response.

Yes — those four inexplicably appearing characters weren’t they the best proof? Old Qin would certainly be able to tell that the handwriting was neither hers nor Xie Fei’s. He would also know that she was not the type of person to be bored enough to play such a joke.

Jun Xiuhan bitterly regretted not having brought this up with Old Qin earlier. She propped herself up and made her way, stumbling, out of the inner room, pulled open the desk drawer, and fished out the folder with its mysterious inscription.

Flap, flap — the rapid, anxious sound of turning pages, sharp in the closed and silent space.

Evidence. She needed to find evidence immediately to prove she had not been lying.

The orderly rows of characters remained orderly; the expressive brushwork painting remained exquisite and beautiful; even the clipped old newspaper still sat obediently in its place. Everything was unchanged.

Yet for Jun Xiuhan, no change at all was the most astonishing change of all —

In the painting, the wedding gown was as red as ever; the stone and grass were as before.

Only the four lines that had appeared — were gone.

Jun Xiuhan refused to believe her eyes had failed her. She refused even more to believe that her memory of those lines was nothing but a laughable hallucination.

Why was this happening?!

She slumped powerlessly into the chair. The pain that had only just eased away spread outward again from the innermost depths of her heart.

Jun Xiuhan sucked in a sharp breath. Instinctively she curved her spine inward; her chin struck the edge of the desk with a knock.

Her gaze, at the closest possible distance, locked with the wedding gown in the painting.

A cold, moist current of air drifted out from within the painting and ruffled her bangs.

Jun Xiuhan jolted — she tried to straighten up, but her head seemed to be pressed down by a giant hand, or perhaps was being sucked inward by some strange force emanating from within the painting, pulling with all its might. She could not move at all.

The air current grew heavier and heavier. The crimson shape began to move.

The skirt hem in the painting began to sway and float; even the grass beneath the stone rocked without ceasing.

A small painting — in her blurring vision it expanded, and expanded again, growing vast enough to contain her, and the entire world, within it…

Part Five

Ding-dong, ding-dong.

Crisp musical notes danced upon the wind.

Light from the horizon passed through colorless, transparent glass, flowing and turning through the vivid crimson of a billowing skirt. A light fragrance drifted all around.

Behind, grass heavy with dew spread lush as jade laid flat across the earth. A smooth green stone capable of reflecting one’s image rested quietly in the warm embrace of grass and soil.

The undulating slopes drew the line where sky met earth into a naturally sweeping, wide-open curve.

Between heaven and earth, it seemed as though this one pure place alone existed in all the world…

CRACK!

A resounding slap shattered the stillness and beauty of that first moment.

“Then go!” The woman’s eyes, fighting to hold back pearling tears, held a despair drowning in shimmering water. “I will… consider us strangers, as if we never knew each other!”

Across from her, a robe of charcoal black — old and worn — was caught by the wind. Beneath it, dark red bloodstains lay concealed upon the cold gleam of iron armor. A large hand, its wounds already scabbed over, gripped the long blade at his waist — its hilt wrapped in gold wire.

“You have given your command. Your servant obeys. In this life, we are destined for different roads.”

The man’s voice carried not the slightest inflection. A long silence followed.

“You said — wait for you to return from this campaign in triumph, and I would surely be waiting here in my wedding gown.” A face of breathtaking, world-overthrowing beauty, clear as snowmelt, could not contain the grief that emptied all its splendor into an endless, desolate laugh. “And now the wedding gown is as new as ever, while your heart is not as it was. Ha ha. Between the Emperor’s decree and myself — in the end, I am the one who loses. Go, then.”

A heavy sigh fell. The world of a thousand colors collapsed, in an instant, into a suffocating grey-white.

A small white porcelain vial, carved with delicate designs, was drawn from within his robe. It turned hesitantly between his large, rough hands.

“Your favorite wine — the Ziqing Brew.” The red stopper was pulled free; a sweet and intoxicating fragrance rose to cloud the mind. His voice began to go hoarse and dim. “This is the last time I will ever brew wine for you. Drink it down — and between us, all love, all obligation, is finished.”

Slender fingers paused in mid-air — but only for a brief instant. In the next moment they had already wrapped around the porcelain vial. With a tilt of the head, the colorless liquid poured between those crimson lips; the slender, fair throat moved in repeated swallows.

Whether what she drank was wine or tears — who, at this moment, could tell them apart?

The porcelain vial was upended. Not a drop remained.

“You may go now.” A gaze empty and impassive fell upon his face; the hand gripping the vial opened abruptly. “Between you and me, from this day on — clean as this empty vial. Nothing.”

The vial struck the muddy ground but did not shatter. Rolling in a series of bumps, it pressed down the innocent grass in its path, and came to rest beneath the large green stone.

A great wave of the hand, the hem of the robe swept to one side, and that tall, broad figure turned on its heel and strode away in the opposite direction. Beneath the rushing wind, not a shred of reluctance was left behind — only a ground full of footprints that crushed a heart to pieces.

Every last shred of strength dissolved the moment his figure disappeared into the vast, grey-green grassland.

She sank down onto the green stone. The palms bracing her body pressed against its cold surface, trembling faintly.

“This wedding gown — I wore it for you, and you alone.”

The tears that had been coiling and gathering in her eyes for so long finally fell, tracing a shallow line across the stone.

The vivid crimson skirt drooped to the ground, covering the grass, covering all vitality.

“Your heart holds me, my heart holds you…” A soft, quiet laugh spiraled upward, then cut short abruptly. “And yet — endless sorrow, an oath that knows no end.”

Endless sorrow, an oath that knows no end.

Endless sorrow, an oath that knows no end.

Those eight characters struck the deepest recesses of her mind like a curse. Amid the tumbling visions, she seemed to catch a glimpse of the woman sitting on the green stone — doubled over in agony, clutching her chest, prostrate upon the stone, fragile fingernails clawing at the crevices, liable to snap at any moment.

The familiar pain pulled at her own most delicate nerves. The one in pain was not only the woman — it was also herself. The red wedding gown, the world-overthrowing beauty, the grassland and the horizon — all of it was split into scattered, tumbling fragments beneath the chanting that seemed to come from far away and close at hand alike. The only memory that remained was a face of overwhelming beauty, and a figure that walked away without looking back, and — an identical pain in her chest.

Jun Xiuhan’s eyes snapped open.

The sweat on her spine was blown cold by the night wind pouring in from the window, chilling her to the heart.

Had she been dreaming again?

She looked around in alarm, searching and confirming every familiar scene and object, terrified she had fallen into another nightmare.

Desk, chairs, bookcase, the tilted telephone, the cloth hanging by the door — and a sharp pinch on the back of her own hand. Jun Xiuhan confirmed she had woken from that strange dream.

The pain in her chest persisted — but it seemed, at least, to have not returned to the unbearable intensity of before. She got up and closed the window, then sat back down at the desk. Her gaze, with nowhere else to go, stared blankly at the painting.

The woman’s face and her slender hands began to slowly materialize upon the otherwise empty wedding gown in the painting, as though a skilled hand were at this very moment adding them in fine and careful strokes.

Jun Xiuhan blinked hard. Where was there any woman’s face or woman’s hands? The wedding gown still stood alone upon stone and grass, stubbornly keeping its vigil.

Time passed minute by minute. Jun Xiuhan, without any trace of drowsiness, found herself to her own surprise remembering the woman’s appearance from the dream — though she had only caught uncertain glimpses of her face, she was certain she could recognize her instantly if she appeared among a crowd. The woman she remembered. The man, however — she had no memory of his face. To be precise, she had never once seen his face during any of it. Even when they were close enough that she could see the wound on his palm, his features had remained beyond her grasp.

Why?

Examining the logic of a dream that made no sense at all was an absurd and ridiculous undertaking. Jun Xiuhan knew this perfectly well, yet was still unable to rein in her curiosity. An inexplicable confusion had taken complete possession of her body and mind.

“Little Jun! Little Jun!” A warm, slightly urgent call echoed in her ears.

Jun Xiuhan slowly opened her eyes. Through a haze, Old Qin’s face wavered before her; beside him stood a short, round figure.

The director?!

Bleary-eyed, she jolted upright, looking at both of them with tense unease. The hands of the old-fashioned alarm clock on the desk were pointing to ten o’clock in the morning.

She had fallen asleep?! And slept this late?!

“Little Jun, are you all right?” The director, ordinarily strict, stared at her face, pale as paper, with evident concern. “If you’re ill, don’t force yourself. I can give you sick leave.”

“I’m fine, Director!” Jun Xiuhan stood up quickly, flustered, waving both hands. She wasn’t afraid of sick leave itself — she was afraid of being put on extended leave. In her current circumstances, she absolutely could not afford to lose this job.

The director stared at her for a long moment and muttered, “Your lips have gone purple…”

“I really am fine!” Jun Xiuhan took a step toward the director, pressing her lips together as hard as she could to squeeze out some color. “Just a bit of a cold these past few days — I think the cold medicine I took last night put me so deeply under I overslept. Director, I’m sorry, this won’t happen again.”

“I’m not blaming you. I just mean, if you’re genuinely unwell, don’t hide it — letting things get serious isn’t good for anyone.” The director shook his head, starting toward the door, then turned back to address Old Qin: “Old Qin, I have to go to the provincial capital for a meeting — I won’t be back until the day after tomorrow. Keep an eye on Little Jun and make sure nothing goes wrong. And Xie Fei — why isn’t she here yet? Call her! That girl is getting more and more undisciplined!”

Old Qin gave a quiet laugh. “Director, I already called her before you arrived. She says she twisted her ankle going home the night before last and is resting at home.”

The director’s round face went from white to red and back to white again. He strode out, flinging one last exasperated parting shot: “Every time she skips work she makes up something about injuring this or spraining that! This time, when she comes back, if I don’t fire her I’ll write my surname Wang backwards, hmph!”

Old Qin watched the director’s indignant figure retreat into the distance and chuckled: “Xie Fei’s in trouble now. The director may be slow to anger, but when he’s angry, watch out.”

On an ordinary day, she would have been stifling laughter at the director swearing to write his surname backwards — but right now Jun Xiuhan could not manage so much as a smile.

“Your color is even worse than yesterday.” Old Qin looked at her face, grey as dead ash from exhaustion, with undisguised concern. “You really should see a doctor, in case the cold really hasn’t cleared up.”

“I’m all right… I’m all right…” Jun Xiuhan sank back weakly into her chair, thoroughly vexed. “Sleeping during work hours — I can only hope the director doesn’t mind too much.”

Old Qin walked over and poured her a cup of hot water, setting it in front of her. “He won’t. Ah, I suppose it’s partly my fault. I came in this morning and you were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t have the heart to wake you. I didn’t expect the director to arrive as well.”

She wrapped her hands around the warm cup. Her dry lips had barely touched the rim when she stopped — and grabbed hold of Old Qin with one hand. “I had an extremely strange dream last night! And also — what I said about seeing the wedding gown come alive, and the folder with the painting that you gave me — those four strange lines that appeared, written in ink, something about endless sorrow and an oath that knows no end — they were there, I know they were, but last night when I looked again the characters had all vanished! I wasn’t lying!”

“Little Jun, calm down.” Old Qin leaned forward and pressed his hand to her forehead, brow creasing. “You’re running a fever! You’re burning up!”

He thought her incoherent, jumbled words were the ravings of a sick person?

“I am not ill, and I am not raving!” She suddenly flared up, wrenching Old Qin’s hand away, and pointed toward the door. “That wedding gown is wrong. Something is wrong with it. Believe me!”

Old Qin sighed, adjusted his glasses out of habit, and said slowly: “That wedding gown was made by my own hands. If there were something wrong with it, I would know before anyone else. Little Jun — you’re ill. Don’t be stubborn. Come to the doctor with me.”

Jun Xiuhan’s anger shifted into outrage. An inexplicable bitterness and grievance circled her body for a long time without finding any outlet, until at last it erupted from her in the first shout she had ever let loose in her life: “I won’t go!!!”

Perhaps he had grown so accustomed to the polite, gentle girl she normally was that this Jun Xiuhan gave Old Qin a momentary start.

Then came a brief, awkward silence.

“I’m sorry… Teacher Qin.” Jun Xiuhan’s trembling lashes covered her reddening eyes; her lips moved. “I didn’t mean it… I suddenly felt very agitated…”

“Ha ha, I think you need some peace and quiet.” Old Qin laughed generously, walked over to his own seat, and retrieved a half-finished box of cold medicine from a drawer, placing it in front of Jun Xiuhan. “I have to go out to work now. Stay here and rest today. Remember to take your medicine — and if it doesn’t get better, you still have to come to the hospital with me!”

Jun Xiuhan didn’t argue further. She gave a quiet nod. “Thank you…”

Outside the window, a sliver of summer sun filtered in, falling on her cold back, then gradually penetrating her body — layers of obstruction around her heart melting away in that warmth — until she felt an urgent sense that something was on the verge of crying out.

She seemed to have forgotten something. And her body, her thoughts, were remembering against her will.

She sat in the office for the entire day. The lunch Old Qin had brought her she left untouched.

As the sky deepened toward evening, Old Qin picked up the stone-cold lunch box and said, worried: “You need to eat something at least.”

“I’m not hungry.”

She stared without blinking out the window. A few impatient stars had already vaulted into the sky, blinking at each other in eager competition.

“Little Jun…”

“Teacher Qin, please go on ahead. I’m fine — there’s no need to worry. I’m just a bit tired.” She cut Old Qin off.

Those who did not believe, would never believe no matter how many words she spent. She extinguished every thought of making others believe her.

Old Qin looked at her still, silent profile and sighed. “All right. I’ll go ahead. If anything happens, remember to call me!”

“Goodbye,” she murmured.

Old Qin gathered his things, walked to the door, then glanced back. A faint smile at the corner of his mouth: “See you on Qixi.”

Qixi?

That’s right — tomorrow was Qixi. The Chinese Valentine’s Day.

For a lonely person, Qixi held no meaning at all.

Qixi… the wedding gown…

That deeply vexing garment surfaced in her mind unbidden. Jun Xiuhan smiled a bleak smile, and the pain that had not troubled her all day long resumed its rampage against her chest.

She groaned in suffering, her body curled and trembling in the chair.

The worse the physical pain, the clearer her mind grew — the scenes from last night’s dream, the woman’s eyes, the man’s hands, even the pattern on the white porcelain vial, were all vividly present before her. This was nothing like a dream; it felt more like something that had actually happened.

Dear heaven — what had she been bewitched by?!

Jun Xiuhan collapsed on the floor, gazing helplessly at the ceiling, praying for the heart-piercing agony to pass quickly — or for her own breathing to simply stop, so she would not have to endure this pain any longer.

The clock ticked and tocked. The red hour hand slowly reached midnight.

The pain at last withdrew. Jun Xiuhan did not dare move, and lay there a while longer before forcing herself off the floor.

She wiped the sweat from her face, lifted the water cup, and drained it in a single long swallow.

The bracing coolness spread from her throat outward through her whole body. Her spirits lifted.

She shook her head. Every discomfort in her body vanished at that moment — the pain, the rage, the grievance, all of it settled into stillness.

She even felt a little hungry.

The human body is such a strange thing. A moment ago it was half-dead; now, not a trace of illness remains.

Suddenly — from within her bag, a brief sharp chime.

Who would be sending a message at this hour?

Jun Xiuhan had very few friends. No one would be sending her texts at a time like this.

She reached into the bag, pulled out her phone — a flash of surprise crossed her eyes.

Xie Fei’s name was right there, and in the message field below it, only eight characters:

“Endless sorrow, an oath that knows no end.”

Jun Xiuhan’s hand jerked; the phone nearly slipped to the floor.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she called Xie Fei immediately.

It connected.

Pick up! Pick up!

She urged frantically in her heart.

I see you off, a thousand miles away…

A faint melody drifted past from the corridor outside the door.

Jun Xiuhan’s heart seized. She knew Xie Fei was a die-hard Jay Chou fan — A Thousand Miles Away was that girl’s all-time favorite ringtone.

She dashed out of the office without a second thought.

In the dim corridor, the ringtone of A Thousand Miles Away repeated again and again — and the closer she drew to Exhibition Hall Three, the louder it became.

Jun Xiuhan raised her phone and moved quickly through the faint light, following the sound, heading straight for the empty exhibition hall.

At last her footsteps halted before the wedding gown. The stingy overhead light fell upon one side of the display case; scattered specks of light flickered across it, and the red garment inside, disrupted by the glinting light, seemed momentarily to take on a human quality — standing quietly, looking quietly, waiting quietly…

I see you off, a thousand miles away…

The ringtone soared and echoed in her ears. Jun Xiuhan ended the call, and her gaze fixed straight on the wall behind the display case — a large wall cabinet, concealed by a floor-length golden velvet curtain.

Old Qin had once mentioned that in earlier years the cabinet had been used to store documents. After the museum was renovated, it became a place to keep odds and ends.

The ringtone, without any doubt, was coming from inside the cabinet.

“Xie Fei…” Jun Xiuhan’s drained lips moved with frightened hesitation. After wavering for a long moment, she lifted her trembling hands and pushed aside the curtain, grasping the cold iron handle of the now-exposed cabinet.

CLANG!

The heavy sound of the opening door rang through the entire hall.

Jun Xiuhan’s fearful, questioning gaze fell on the dust-covered interior of the cabinet — and instantly froze.

In the wide space, tall enough for a person, the slight-framed Xie Fei hung suspended with her arms stretched out to both sides in a straight line — like a marionette floating barely half a foot from the cabinet floor. Her large eyes, framed by her signature smoky makeup, stared wide and open, yet held no life at all — clouded and unseeing, looking toward the space ahead. Her phone lay on its side in one corner of the cabinet; the screen’s backlight had not yet gone dark.

Jun Xiuhan clamped both hands over her mouth and backed away by instinct.

Then her heel came into contact with someone else’s toes. In her terror, before she could even turn around, Jun Xiuhan felt a searing, stabbing pain shoot up the back of her skull — as though a long needle had bored through the bone and was twisting left and right, intent on grinding the contents of her head to fragments.

Everything before her eyes began to tip and swirl. Jun Xiuhan fell hard to the ground, and in the very last instant before her consciousness went dark, the final thing she saw was the wedding gown, standing serenely within its case — drifting serenely through the thick glass, wearing an indecipherable faint smile, and floating slowly toward her…

Can a garment smile?

The final question that rose in Jun Xiuhan’s mind before she lost consciousness.

The vivid pomegranate red, effortlessly consuming all of her vision…

Part Six

Dust mixed with withered yellow grass chaff swirled through the air, blanketing the slope that jutted out from the grassland.

Against the wind, two men stood facing it. One wore a purple official’s robe, the other crimson — both in the wide-sleeved attire of court, headbands and official shoes, leather belts cinching their waists. They squinted their eyes and raised their wide sleeves to half-shield their faces, straining to stare through the foul weather at a low-lying depression in the ground below the slope.

Three or five burly soldiers gripped hoes and iron shovels, digging tensely at the earth beneath their feet. The ground where they stood had already become a rectangular deep pit; black and yellow soil was heaped at the edges like small mountains. To one side rested a black gold-patterned lacquered wooden coffin.

“A princess of the court, and she ends up buried in the wilderness.” The younger of the two — in crimson robes — sighed with pity. “His Majesty is too heartless…”

The elder, in purple, reacted as though he’d heard something profoundly forbidden. He immediately hissed in a low, stern voice: “Watch your tongue! His Majesty is not for the likes of us to discuss at will! Mind your rank and your life!”

The man in crimson was unmoved. “On the strength of a single word from the Royal Diviner about an evil omen at court, he had his own daughter killed. What crime did the princess commit? Only that she was gifted with the rare ability to foretell the future. If you ask me, that so-called holy man is a far greater menace to the court than she ever was!”

“You… ahem…” The man in purple went pale, then gave the ground a single heavy stomp — his long-suppressed emotions finding release in that one gesture. At last he shook his head and sighed: “Her only mistake was saying aloud that Lin’an would fall and the Emperor himself would become a prisoner. His Majesty already viewed her as an aberration; exiling her to a side palace in this desolate place was already a great act of grace. Now, with the war raging and our armies losing more than winning, with the Royal Diviner at his side feeding his fears — His Majesty is naturally convinced it is the princess who brings disaster upon the nation’s fortune. Killing her is the only way to rescue the country from its dire straits. Such a young girl… how pitiable…”

After a long silence, the man in crimson let out two cold laughs and said: “The Son of Heaven executing a princess is beyond reproach. But why resort to this underhanded method, this sneaking about in the dark? It is not the princess who dooms this country — it is this fool of an emperor!”

“Say that to me and no further! If anyone else hears it, ten heads wouldn’t be enough for you to lose!” The man in purple cast a wary glance around, then continued more quietly: “The princess possesses remarkable gifts — His Majesty fears her as much as he despises her. Without sending someone she truly trusted, the task might fail and provoke her instead, and create more trouble.”

“Ha ha. The Tianwu General — I once believed he was a rare true hero in this court…” The man in crimson lowered his sleeve, flicked the grime from his face and shook it away with contempt. “But in the end, he turned out to be nothing but an unfeeling coward. To feed poison wine to the woman he once swore his heart to — so much for the great man he was meant to be. A false hero in truth.”

“Enough. Say no more.” The man in purple patted his companion’s shoulder, his gaze drifting toward the gradually darkening horizon. “There is only fate to blame for a beauty with such poor fortune. On the night of Qixi, buried alone in yellow earth… Princess, in your next life — do not be born into the imperial family. Find yourself a common household instead.”

Above them, in one corner of the sky, two faint stars blinked into view, struggling toward each other — then, with a blink, they knew it for an illusion. Not a single star was visible across the vast dark vault of heaven. Black, and utterly without hope.

The night wind, which had briefly diminished, regained its force. Both men turned their backs to avoid the irritating dust and grass chaff, bowed their heads, crossed their arms, and said nothing.

A long while later, a soldier came sprinting breathlessly up the slope, bowing before the two men. “My Lords — the burial chamber is complete!”

The two men exchanged a glance and followed the soldier down into the depression.

Torchlight wavered in the wind, illuminating several sweat-streaked, dust-covered faces.

The man in purple looked at the black coffin, nearly swallowed by the darkness, with an expression of complicated emotion. After a moment’s hesitation, he slowly reached into his robe and drew out a small brocade box. He opened it, removed a small piece of pale yellow paper.

“Go on then. Since His Majesty has issued these orders, we must carry them out.” He handed the yellow paper to the man in crimson, whose expression had grown grave. “The Royal Diviner’s words are the Emperor’s decree. We should not go against the will of heaven.”

Accepting the yellow paper, the man in crimson’s mocking smile flickered in the torchlight. “A demon-sealing talisman… is there anything more preposterous under this sky? Do they truly fear the princess will turn into a demon and crawl out of her grave to devour them? If they feared her so deeply, why ever resort to such cruelty in the first place?”

“Affix it to the coffin lid and say no more!” The man in purple said, mildly irritated by his companion’s forthright tongue.

The man in crimson snorted with indignation, swept back his sleeve, and strode toward the coffin.

Before he could draw near, however — with a sudden jolt — a wind cold and sharp as a blade’s edge, frigid as frost, came howling out of the newly dug burial chamber, extinguishing every last torch, and hurling itself straight at the coffin.

BANG!

The coffin lid, though already sealed shut, tore free of the iron spikes driven deep through it, flipped upward, and fell backward, landing face-up in the earth behind the coffin. A layer of shimmering pale green light rose from within the coffin and swirled through the air above it, wrapping the entire box in a dense coil. In the darkness, the sight was hauntingly, inexplicably eerie.

At this, every person present blanched and recoiled in shock. Two of the more faint-hearted soldiers turned and bolted.

“Stand fast!” The man in purple, being the elder, had not yet let sudden terror drown his reason. He swept a fierce glare at the two would-be deserters. “No one leaves without my command! Anyone who dares take one unauthorized step — will be killed on the spot!”

“Master…” The hand holding the yellow paper trembled slightly; the man in crimson turned his head with a rigid jerk. “This…”

The man in purple said nothing. He deliberated for a brief moment, then snatched the yellow paper from his companion’s grip, steadied his nerves, and stepped toward the coffin.

“Be careful!” The man in crimson, terrified something might happen to him, hurried after.

With every step closer to the coffin, the rise and fall of both men’s chests became more pronounced.

A single step away, the man in purple murmured — as much to reassure his companion as to reassure himself: “We have no enmity with the princess. Even if she has become a vengeful spirit, she would have no cause to harm us.”

The wind gradually stilled. At the edge of the coffin, a beam of light illuminated two faces revealed there — cloaking the terror at their hearts beneath an extreme, rigid composure.

“Princess…”

After a long silence, both men breathed the word at once, barely audible.

Lying within the coffin was that breathtaking beauty — dressed in her magnificent wedding gown. Against the crimson fabric, her face had lost all color. Long lashes rested upon eyelids so delicate you could see the faint tracery of veins beneath the skin. Something glimmered at the corner of her eye, like a tear.

The two men outside seemed to be struck by some nameless force in their most fragile nerves.

“Your Highness… your servant knows you are not at peace. But things being as they are, you would be better off…”

The man in purple gripped the edge of the coffin, his earnest words of counsel unfinished — he had already closed his own mouth.

The man in crimson beside him was so shaken by what he now saw that he stumbled backward three steps —

The woman in the coffin had opened her eyes. The black irises, without luster, carried a cold and hopeless gaze directed straight at the sky above.

Clang — a sharp, ringing sound, like crystal shattering across the floor. Her face, and every part of her that was exposed to the air, was suddenly covered in crisscrossing fractures — like porcelain struck by something heavy.

A force stronger than a gale erupted from the center of the coffin, churning the green light on all sides into a vortex. The woman’s shattered body was seized by this force — blown upward, separating from the wedding gown — and in the blink of an eye it had crumbled into particles finer than ash. Before the astonished eyes of all who watched, those particles spun and danced, growing gradually colorless, merging into the air itself — until at last only a wisp of mist-like pale smoke remained, which plunged straight into the empty wedding gown lying at the bottom of the coffin.

The coffin began to shudder, up and down, pressing deeper and deeper imprints into the muddy earth.

A grief so dense it pierced to the heart closed in from all directions. The man in purple staggered back, clapping his hand to his chest, and shouted: “Men — seal the coffin lid at once!”

The soldiers dared not disobey. Gritting their teeth, they surged forward, grabbed the coffin lid, and slammed it shut with a tremendous crash.

The man in purple seized the moment, leapt forward, pressed the yellow paper flat against the center of the coffin lid, then jumped clear.

The characters sprawling across the yellow paper flared with a blood-red radiance, casting the entire coffin in a deep crimson — much like a layer of blood, neither quite dried nor still wet.

The coffin, like a dying fish refusing to be still, continued to shudder with defiant, reluctant movement. From within came the sound of something striking the lid, again and again.

The soldiers present had already frightened themselves into a huddled mass; only the two men they called their Lords still maintained enough concern for their dignity to force themselves to remain standing.

The convulsing coffin, the silent slope — the most uncanny of oppositions.

It was not until a faint scattering of stars emerged from one corner of the sky — and those on the ground had been pushed nearly to the limit of what their nerves could bear — that the coffin, after one final heavy crash to the earth, went still. The talisman that had been affixed to it was gone without trace, leaving only a neat square impression on the coffin lid, which had returned to its natural color.

After waiting still longer, once it was certain the coffin was truly calm, the man in purple wiped the cold sweat from his brow and barked at the soldiers: “What are you standing there for?! Bury the coffin! Now!”

The stunned and exhausted soldiers did not dare delay. They forced their weakened legs to cooperate, shuffled toward the coffin, looked at one another — and still could not bring themselves to touch it.

“Useless fools! What are you dragging your feet about?!” The man in purple’s patience broke. “Move, or I’ll have every one of your heads!”

The soldiers quivered, clenched their jaws, and — in one collective burst of resolve — hoisted the coffin and walked it quickly to the burial chamber, setting this thing that had nearly frightened the life out of them into the very center.

Torches were relit. Earth and stones flew. Hoes and shovels flew. The soldiers shoveled as though possessed, filling the chamber with frantic speed.

The black coffin slowly disappeared beneath layer after layer of earth.

The deep burial chamber was filled to a flat surface in the shortest time possible.

“My— my Lord…” The lead soldier ran to the man in purple’s side and pointed at the level ground, stuttering: “That — it’s — it’s already…”

His words were not yet finished when the level ground where the burial had just been completed suddenly threw up a violent gust of wind, scooping up the surface soil that had not yet been tamped down and hurling it skyward, then scattering it in all directions.

Ahh!

Another round of cries erupted from the soldiers.

The man in purple and the man in crimson, whose complexion had gone white, looked at each other, and stepped forward together.

Staring at that abnormal patch of level ground, both their faces had become grimmer than at any moment before.

Across the disordered yellow-black earth, the fallen soil had arranged itself, in sharp and unmistakable strokes, into eight large characters —

This sorrow endures without end. This oath knows no conclusion.

They stood motionless for a long moment. The man in purple turned, and said only one sentence: “We leave.”

The soldiers, as though receiving a pardon, flung down whatever tools they held — heedless of any distinction between servant and lord — and every last one scrambled and stumbled and ran out of the depression. Behind them came their two Lords, lurching and stumbling as they ran.

Jun Xiuhan rubbed her eyes hard. Everything that had just occurred, she had witnessed from beginning to end, without missing a single moment.

She stared at the soft grass and damp earth beneath her feet, then looked at the vast grassland all around her and the hazy sky above it — indeterminate between day and night — and she stood there, struck dumb, her soul apparently left behind.

Where was this? What manner of people had those just been?

Clap, clap — footsteps shattered her thoughts. Several terror-stricken soldiers suddenly rushed past her. Close behind them came the two men in purple and crimson whose robes she had just seen.

It was them. But where had they run from?

“Hey! Wait!”

Jun Xiuhan lurched forward, reaching out to grab the man in purple, who had fallen behind.

But her hand passed straight through his arm.

Jun Xiuhan stared at the handful of empty air in her palm, and had no courage left to give chase. She could only watch helplessly as the group disappeared into the distance.

“Who… am I… where am I…”

She could not find her direction; she could not move her feet. She stood alone on the slope, murmuring, wrapped in the despair of the utterly abandoned. Above her head, the moon that had hidden for so long revealed half its face.

Behind her, a swaying light suddenly drifted near — like countless candles stirred by the wind — and a thread of faint sandalwood incense drifted quietly through the shifting light and shadow.

She turned around.

Beneath eaves curving up at their corners, four plain-colored lanterns shed their clean and gentle light. An octagonal pavilion stood with railings of jade-green and delicate gold carvings, its four sides hung with curtains of white gauze gathered with red silk, swaying gracefully. A pure black incense burner occupied the very center of the pavilion; pale smoke curled upward, blurring the two figures behind it. Outside the pavilion, a vast spread of exotic flowers and strange grasses competed in brilliant color, outshining even the lovely moonlight that poured across the ground like silver.

Such a scene should have been an otherworldly beauty to stun all who saw it. Yet to Jun Xiuhan, it was no different from the realm of the dead.

An invisible dividing line split the world she could see in two. Before her was a pavilion scene of perfect beauty beneath a full moon; behind her was a dust-swirling, boundlessly desolate wasteland. Like two completely unrelated paintings, each torn in half and pieced together — and she stood precisely on the seam between them. She could go neither forward nor back.

“This is what His Majesty asked me to pass to the General.”

Inside the pavilion, someone spoke. Through the thin smoke, a man walked out — his collar fallen open, his hair loosely pinned, his feet bare. His face was indistinct — look as she might, she could not make it out. Only the white porcelain vial he held between his fingers she could not only see clearly, but recognized.

She was clearly far away, yet Jun Xiuhan had the illusion of being close enough to reach out and touch it — just as she had when watching the scene in the depression moments before.

Swirling smoke was scattered by the sweep of a black robe that came rushing out of the shadows. A tall figure reached out its hand — and stopped, hovering half a finger’s width from the vial, unable to move forward.

Several cold laughs floated past.

“I always thought the Tianwu General to be an exceptional hero of the court. I never expected he would go soft over a demon woman.”

The one being mocked said nothing. The hand still remained where it was.

“This woman must die for our dynasty to reassert its might. If the General were to rid His Majesty of this scourge, can you imagine what glorious fortune awaits you in the years to come?” The barefooted man shook his head in a show of regret. “His Majesty once confided to me that he has long intended to bestow his most beloved seventh princess upon the General. What a perfect match — can it truly not compare to one demon woman cast out and forsaken?”

The outstretched palm, made pale as paper by the lantern light, shifted slightly.

“The court and the common people alike now know there is an evil omen in the land, and the common folk suffer under the flames of war. If the General still has ties to this demon woman and ruins his own reputation — to say nothing of incurring the Emperor’s wrath, or bringing disaster upon the nation’s fortune — the consequences would be…”

“Enough!”

From beneath polished armor came the sound of knuckles clenching, bone against bone.

“Ha ha. Two roads before you. Which leads to ruin and which to glory — surely the General, being a man of keen mind, sees it more clearly than anyone. This vial of Ziqing Brew — will the General take it or not?”

The smooth vial rolled back and forth between his fingers, catching the light with a taunting gleam.

“What… poison has been put inside it?”

That hand at last closed around the porcelain vial and took it.

“His Majesty’s original choice was crane’s crest crimson.” A smile seemed to spread across that indistinct face. “But I thought that insufficient.”

A small brocade pouch was drawn from within his robe. Tiny fragments of green — crushed plant leaves, apparently — fell onto the palm creased with deep lines.

“Water Hemlock. Those who ingest it die of heart pain within three days. After death, they cannot enter the cycle of reincarnation. With my spirit talisman added — this demon woman will be sealed beneath the earth for life after life. Neither of us need fear she will return to haunt us after death. Ha ha. Clean and simple.”

A finger slipped; the vial nearly fell.

“Be on your way.” A wide sleeve swept outward; the barefooted man issued his dismissal. “The demon woman is by nature suspicious and shuns strangers. Only the General can do what must be done. Do not disappoint His Majesty.”

The smoke rising from the incense burner grew denser and denser. The figure, the pavilion, the flowers and grass — were swallowed up in it, just as someone had said moments ago. Utterly buried.

Jun Xiuhan sank crumbling to the ground. The pain in her chest came surging back in waves.

Through the smoke now turned to dense mist, a figure walked out — moving in great rapid strides, heading straight toward her.

It was him.

The man who had made the woman drink wine on the grassland, who had just now taken the vial from the barefooted man, and whose face she still could not see — no matter how close he was.

Even now, standing face to face with him, Jun Xiuhan still could not see his features. Something was disrupting the space between them with an abnormal force.

The man came closer and closer. In another moment he would crash right into her.

Jun Xiuhan wanted to step aside; her body would not obey.

In the instant of their collision, a sharp, heavy current of air tore through Jun Xiuhan’s body. The enormous force threw her to the ground — and she began to roll down the slope.

As the world spun end over end, a terrifying thought filled her heart to bursting —

She would fall forever. All the way down into hell.

Jun Xiuhan flailed her arms helplessly, praying someone — anyone — would pull her back.

The woman’s tear-filled eyes, the man’s black cloak billowing in the wind, the crushed green leaves shaken from the brocade pouch — all of it flashed before her eyes in alternation, mixed with the grassland night sky wheeling overhead…

Part Seven

Answering the desperate silent plea of her frightened heart, a rough, cold hand closed around Jun Xiuhan’s wrist — and arrested her endless, half-conscious fall.

Her body finally came to rest somewhere. Beneath her palms was a moist, soft texture.

Jun Xiuhan opened her eyes. A face blurred and swayed before her, then gradually came into focus.

“Teacher Qin?!”

When she could finally see clearly who stood before her, it was as though a powerful stimulant had been injected directly into her veins. She sat bolt upright, seized Old Qin by the arm, and her voice broke with overwhelming emotion: “Is it really you? Is it truly you?”

“It’s me, Little Jun.” Old Qin, as warm as ever, adjusted his glasses and looked down at her visibly trembling fingers. “What’s this… so frightened?”

Tears circled in Jun Xiuhan’s eyes. She shook her head hard. “I had such a long dream… a terrible nightmare… I saw grassland and a hillside, and a coffin and a wedding gown… and a pavilion…”

Her incoherent description came to an abrupt stop when her gaze drifted from Old Qin to the landscape around them.

She had expected to see the mottled walls and battered old filing cabinets of the office — because Old Qin was crouched right there in front of her, so real, so solid, which ought to mean she had already woken up from her dream.

But what she saw was still a boundless grassland, and above it, that indeterminate sky — neither day nor night.

Old Qin, like herself, had become a part of this “world.”

Jun Xiuhan pulled back her hand as though from an electric shock, her voice trembling: “Teacher Qin… how are you in my dream? No — you can’t be Teacher Qin! You can’t be!!”

“You are not dreaming.” Old Qin straightened the sleeve that Jun Xiuhan had crumpled in her grip, stood up, and smiled as he gazed into the distance. “This is the place you should have returned to long ago. Tianwu General.”

Jun Xiuhan stared at him blankly, stuttering like a fool: “What… what are you saying… who… who are you calling…?”

Old Qin’s voice was low but not muddled, and the four words “Tianwu General” reached her with perfect clarity.

“Ha ha. The Tianwu General — I once believed he was a rare true hero in this court…”

“I always thought the Tianwu General to be an exceptional hero of the court. I never expected he would go soft over a demon woman.”

The words of the man in crimson, and of the barefooted man, still rang in her ears.

“Turn around and look behind you,” said Old Qin, pointing past her.

Jun Xiuhan turned around with great apprehension. A simple black stone grave marker stood before a low, gently rounded mound of earth. On the stone were carved:

Tomb of Jun Xiuhan, Tianwu General of the Song.

“This invincible general never imagined, I suppose, that you would be betrayed by one of your own at the Battle of Thousand Mile Plain, and die under the blades of Jin soldiers.” Old Qin looked at the grave marker with contempt. “What a pity that the Emperor, unable even to save himself, could not afford you even a proper burial with honors.”

Jun Xiuhan shot to her feet, broke out in cold sweat, and stared at the grave marker — her feet moving backward without her willing it: “That’s impossible… it can’t be…”

A small, round mirror was held out before her face.

Thick brows and large eyes, a high nose and thin lips, a face with sharp, angular contours, bronzed to a light brown by the sun.

The face in the mirror — where was the fine-browed, clear-eyed, fair-complexioned self she knew? The most foreign and yet most familiar of men looked back at her from the mirror, contorted in fear.

Jun Xiuhan let out a sharp cry, knocked the mirror away with a slap, and desperately touched her own face — confirming thereby, with even more certainty, the changes that were undeniably, irrefutably taking place!

Large hands covered in calluses, hair pinned up at the crown, a tall and powerfully built frame — every single feature spoke clearly: this body no longer belonged to the person she had been…

“Who is this?! Who?!” Jun Xiuhan clutched Old Qin, weeping too hard to speak coherently. “Why have I become this? What is this Tianwu General? I’m not the Tianwu General — I’m me! Teacher Qin, tell me! Tell me!”

Old Qin’s smile vanished. He coldly pried away Jun Xiuhan’s helpless gripping hands and said: “There are some memories that can never be erased. No matter how many times you are reborn.”

Memory. Reincarnation. Jun Xiuhan could not understand him. All she could do was clench her lips tight in anguish and shake her head — using the most futile method available to make herself believe this was only a bizarre dream.

“Everything you just witnessed — the soldiers digging the burial chamber, the man in the garden pavilion — none of it was a dream. Those were the memories that have slumbered within you for a long time. I woke them for you.” Old Qin removed his glasses and rubbed the slightly blurred lenses against his sleeve. “I called them back for you.”

“I don’t understand! Not a single word!” Jun Xiuhan pressed her hands to her head in anguish, losing all composure in the chaos. “Teacher Qin, I’m Little Jun! Look at me clearly! I am not any general — I’m not, I’m not! Why are you doing all of this to me?! I haven’t wronged you!”

“The one you wronged was not me. It was someone else.” Old Qin stepped forward suddenly, pressing his index finger to Jun Xiuhan’s brow. “My heart holds you, your heart holds me. I wonder if the General has forgotten. Never mind a mere line of words — even the face of the one you once murmured intimately with, pillow to pillow — I imagine you’ve forgotten that as well. Ha ha. Otherwise, why could you never quite see the face of the wedding gown’s owner throughout your ‘dream’?”

An electric current seemed to pass through her brow, jolting every meridian — forcing out something hidden deep inside that had long since been forgotten.

My heart holds you, your heart holds me.

I will not fail you. I swear it.

Wait for my triumphant return, and I will surely be here in my wedding gown.

It’s a promise. Come next Qixi — I will take you as my wife!

A woman’s voice, clear and melodious; a man’s voice, firm and steady — spiraling upward from the deepest recesses of her body. Ahead, the silhouettes of a man and a woman suddenly appeared — leaning together on the green stone, bathed in the gentle light of the moon, which scattered its sweet radiance over them.

In an instant, the scene vanished. Before her was still a desolate grassland, with no other life besides herself and Old Qin.

Tenderness. Love. Longing. Helplessness. Every emotion she had never once experienced rose in sequence from her heart, stirring through it one by one — and what they left behind, beyond those increasingly vivid fragments of memory, was an unbearable pain.

“I thought, once, that the princess had found happiness.” Old Qin put his glasses back on; behind the lenses, his eyes had lost some of their usual cloudiness and held a faint, clear light. “Seeing her dancing and singing before me with such joy, I thought: that poor girl who always had no smile, who wandered alone between the vast grassland and a cheerless, humble side palace — she has finally gone. Thank heaven for that…”

Jun Xiuhan barely managed to straighten her body, looking at Old Qin — who was lost in a beautiful memory — in pure disbelief.

“I still remember her wearing that red wedding gown, standing on my shoulder and gazing toward the horizon for your return.” Old Qin wore the innocent, contented smile of a child. “I have never forgotten what she gave me — the excitement and happiness buried within her deep, deep love. Ha ha. Only someone with a heart so purely simple as hers could let me feel what she felt.”

“You… who are you?”

Jun Xiuhan’s voice had suddenly become low and hoarse. She — or perhaps, he — lowered the hands pressed against his head and looked at Old Qin, who was recounting all of this with the ease of a storyteller, with both bewilderment and dread.

Old Qin seemed not to hear the question; he went on of his own accord: “I believed she would wear this gown — the only gown in the world worthy of her — and walk the rest of her life with the happiness she had long awaited. But I was wrong. She waited for that person’s return — and it did not bring the happiness she had imagined. It brought something far worse. It brought the end of her life.”

A wave of cold swept through Jun Xiuhan.

That white porcelain vial, glinting with icy light, leapt over and over in her mind.

Old Qin’s eyes shifted — a silent, sharp gaze turned toward him: “Even if you cannot remember the past, having seen those ‘fragments,’ surely even you can understand what you did?”

“You… I…” Jun Xiuhan was at a loss for words. Everything she had seen could easily be strung together by anyone of reasonable intelligence into a complete story.

A man, for the sake of so-called “glorious fortune,” persuaded by the temptation and manipulation of others, poisoned the woman to whom he had once sworn an eternal vow — a story neither unusual nor original. In fact, quite commonplace.

Yet when the one who would hear that story discovers they themselves are the person at its center — the feeling is something entirely beyond words.

“You knew the wine held Water Hemlock, and still you placed the vial in the princess’s hands and watched her drink it down…” Old Qin’s hanging arms shook faintly. “Was your heart made of flesh at all?”

Remorse crashed over Jun Xiuhan in wave after wave — drowning her until she could not breathe. Both legs gave way; she dropped to her knees.

Every last shred of doubt dissolved at this moment.

“The princess could foretell the future of others, but never her own.” Old Qin gave a bitter smile. “Perhaps that is just as well. If she had foreseen such an end, even those brief moments of happiness that came before would have been taken from her… the most brilliant woman in the world was she, and the most foolishly trusting.”

“Why… did you wait so many years before coming to find me?!” Jun Xiuhan fought past the discomfort throughout her body and forced herself to stand, her eyes dazed and unfocused. “Who are you, exactly… in all my memories, you never appeared.”

Old Qin smiled, stooped to pick up a small stone from the ground, and tossed it lightly up and down, as if at play: “The princess gave me a name: Qing. For a long time, she had no friends — except me. I loved it when she sat on my shoulder, resting her chin on her hands, looking into the distance; I truly felt her joys and her sorrows. She never knew that the rough, unassuming green stone beneath her feet actually had eyes, and ears… and a heart.”

Qing… Qin. Green stone… Teacher Qin.

Jun Xiuhan suddenly remembered the large green stone resting so naturally among the grass — that ubiquitous backdrop in the painting that she had always passed over without a thought.

She had sat upon it to await happiness. And upon it she had lost her life…

The companion that had stayed with her from the beginning to the end of her life had been a stone that could not speak.

“You’re… a creature of the spirit world?” Jun Xiuhan paused for a long time before managing, with difficulty, to say the last two words.

“How I wish I had become one sooner.” Old Qin sighed with regret, and then his expression changed entirely; his voice turned sharp and cutting: “If I had, you wretched creature would never have had the opportunity to harm the princess!”

Jun Xiuhan recoiled as from a blow, stumbling back two steps.

“You have no idea what it was like for me — watching those soldiers carry the princess away — how desperate, how full of rage I was. I hated that I was nothing but a minor stone spirit: not even human form, not even the ability to move, let alone any possibility of wresting the princess back.” Old Qin bit down hard, looked up at the sky. “From that day forward, I endured unimaginable suffering and hardship to cultivate my powers. I swore that one day I would achieve human form — and find the princess again.”

At these words, Jun Xiuhan suddenly recalled something Xie Fei had told her — the story of when the wedding gown was first excavated — and a thought took shape in her mind.

“The museum’s wedding gown… it was never actually a replica, was it?”

Old Qin still gazed at the grey-black, turbulent sky, and let out a cold laugh. “That so-called holy man feared the princess’s spirit would give him no peace. He not only gave you the Water Hemlock to prevent her from reincarnating — he used a talisman to seal the princess’s soul within the coffin. I tried many times to break through it. All attempts failed. Until thirty years ago, when the workers who discovered the tomb — being human — accidentally broke the seal on the talisman. But in doing so they destroyed the wedding gown, which had been bound by that same seal.”

“You… went in carrying a pile of red fabric, just to deceive them… you had no intention of making a new gown at all. You used your inhuman power to restore the gown that had turned to ash?” Jun Xiuhan murmured, lips barely moving, piecing it together.

“Ha ha. Much sharper now than a moment ago.” Old Qin pulled his gaze from the sky and said with mild sarcasm, then removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “The princess’s soul had long since merged with the wedding gown. To restore it, I was willing to sacrifice a hundred years of cultivation. As long as the princess could return, it would not matter to me if I were reduced to an ordinary mortal and died of old age.”

He blinked his reddening eyes, replaced his freshly polished glasses, and pressed a hand to his chest, coughing several times — making his already somewhat stooped back stoop further still, looking more aged than ever.

“I imagine it never occurred to you that before she died, the princess laid a curse upon you: no matter how many times you were reborn, your name would never change. Jun Xiuhan — those three characters are the mark she branded upon you. One day, she would find you.” Old Qin lightly struck his chest and smiled with a look of relief. “Heaven is not blind after all. In the end, before this year’s Qixi, I found you for the princess.”

And so it was that Jun Xiuhan remembered — among all the job applications she had sent out, not a single one had been addressed to the museum. That “call of salvation” from Old Qin, seemingly out of nowhere — it had been nothing more than a trap, a please-walk-into-my-snare, arranged so as to arouse no suspicion whatsoever. She could not help but admire the thoroughness of his planning — and the stubborn perversity of fate.

“You… and she…” Jun Xiuhan still could not forget that night — the moment she opened the door, and that beautiful gown staring at her without expression. From the beginning, the two of them had “lured” her into the museum without a single suspicious move, then feigned warmth and kindness to dismantle all her defenses. Old Qin’s purpose was surely not as simple as merely awakening her memories.

“What do you intend to do with me…?”

When that initial panic reached its peak, something like the reversal of extremes took hold — and Jun Xiuhan grew strangely calm.

“It is not about what we intend.” Old Qin shook his head. “We only want to see whether a person, faced with two situations of the same essential nature, will make the same choice twice. If you choose to live…”

“I am already dead.”

Jun Xiuhan clutched her chest and cut Old Qin short.

She was suddenly exhausted. A heart worn to tatters by every extreme of emotion beat slower and slower within a remorse that was quiet but bone-deep.

A lover. A killer. Had anyone ever truly loved her? Had she ever truly loved anyone?

Or perhaps she had never truly loved anyone at all — only attending, through the passage of time, to her own gain and loss, forgetting the past in her own selfishness.

Those beautiful eyes — from hope to despair — appeared in the empty air, and shed a single tear through their rage and sorrow.

No matter how many times she was reborn, Jun Xiuhan was still Jun Xiuhan. When even she herself could not accept who she was — what else was there left to do?

She only wanted to say she was sorry. If she could still see her.

Jun Xiuhan lay back down on the ground, motionless as a corpse, staring at the sky without blinking.

My heart holds you, your heart holds me.

Wait for my triumphant return, and I will surely be here in my wedding gown.

It’s a promise. Come next Qixi — I will take you as my wife.

Words that had sunk into memory for so long, so long — they rang in her ears again. Most foreign, most familiar.

“Will she not come to see me? Why, from beginning to end, has she refused to appear… does she still despise me?”

These were the last words Jun Xiuhan spoke before her eyes closed.

As she spoke them, the grey at the horizon slowly receded. Two stars slowly brightened, slowly drew closer together…

“She is not refusing to appear… she has been waiting for you all along…”

Somewhere in the night, someone was speaking…

Midnight had long since passed. Today — was Qixi.

Part Eight

Jun Xiuhan was gone.

Old Qin was gone too.

Xie Fei was found unconscious inside an open wall cabinet — but alive.

The museum had never been this lively. The ambulance, the police cars, the onlookers — all came.

The director was beside himself, his round frame rolling frantically back and forth throughout the museum, trying to manage the sudden chaos.

The police station had one more unsolved missing persons case on its hands. Only heaven knew when it might be resolved.

The once still-as-standing-water museum was draped overnight in an air of profound mystery, and the people of Wangchuan City had fresh new material for conversation over tea and meals.

Several months later: National Day.

A young mother held her son’s hand — he was happily sucking on a lollipop — and strolled through Exhibition Hall Three of the museum.

“Look at this — it’s a bowl from the Three Kingdoms period. The Three Kingdoms were over a thousand years ago!”

“And this is Tang Tri-color Glazed Pottery. A beautiful work of art.”

Never mind whether her child could understand a word of it; the mother explained the contents of the hall to him with great enthusiasm.

Their footsteps came to a stop before the wedding gown in its corner.

The mother’s dazzled gaze lingered for a long time.

“A noblewoman’s wedding gown from the Southern Song dynasty. Goodness, how beautiful! Son — this is what you call a work of art! Just look at how magnificent Chinese culture is!”

The child licked his lollipop, tilting his head back with innocent curiosity, staring at the vivid, unchanged red garment in the glass display case.

“Mama!” He licked his lips, tugged at his mother’s finger, and said: “The older sister wearing this gown inside is so pretty! And she’s standing on a big stone!”

“Older sister?! A stone?!” The mother peered inside. The only thing supporting the gown was a smooth nanmu wood dress form.

“Children should not tell lies!” The mother shot her son a stern look, tugged him by the hand, and walked away, scolding: “In the future, describe exactly what you see. No making things up! Do you understand?”

The newly replaced light bulb was far brighter than the old one. Light dissolved all sense of time. The transparent glass display case, bathed in its brilliant glow, sparkled more vividly than it ever had — as though it had drawn breath and come alive, impossible to look away from.

Within the wedding gown, there was no longer only a lifeless nanmu wood dress form. There was now a woman, still as deep water, the corners of her lips curved upward in a faint smile, treading lightly upon a large green stone. Eyes as clear as glass gazed forward; the light falling upon the glass pendants of the skirt hem reflected back a face of radiant beauty.

Who was the one wearing the wedding gown?

Perhaps it was Jun Xiuhan — who had gone to her end carrying a heart of repentance. Perhaps it was the princess — who had kept her vigil across a thousand years and more.

But none of that mattered anymore.

What mattered was: within the wedding gown, there was one more soul that had long since been waiting to come home.

My heart holds you, your heart holds me. You within me, I within you. Never again to reincarnate. Never again to be apart…

If a garment could wear an expression, then this one — right now — must be smiling.

And the stone beneath it was also smiling.

Epilogue

“That was not a happy story.” I sat up, and said flatly.

“But I told it brilliantly, didn’t I?” Black Robe Number One was unperturbed. “Just look at you and your husband — not a trace of drowsiness while you were listening.”

Ao Chi gave a dismissive “hmph.” “You tell this kind of sorrowful story to a pair of blissfully happy newlyweds. What sort of ulterior motive is that?”

“No ulterior motive.” Black Robe Number One shook his head. “This, in fact, is my blessing for you.”

“This counts as a blessing?” I laughed. “It nearly broke my heart listening to it.”

“Compared to that girl, you two are far, far more fortunate. At the very least, you haven’t missed a single stretch of time.” Black Robe Number One said slowly. “Never again to reincarnate. Never again to be apart. Perhaps the two of you can truly achieve that.”

Never again to reincarnate. Never again to be apart… Ao Chi and I looked at each other. Perhaps we truly could?

“Where did you hear a story like this?” I asked. “Or were you one of the people involved?”

“I’m only someone who occasionally wanders through museums,” said Black Robe Number One. “I happened to hear it by chance.”

“I hope the Queen’s Majesty likes your story,” I said with a smile. “Otherwise in seven days, we’ll have to hold hands and disappear from this earth.”

“I have complete confidence!” Black Robe Number One made a fist.

I poked my head out of the tent. The night was still deep, the sand dunes silent. With a beloved person at my side, a bizarre storyteller in my company, food and drink to hand — this desert night made me feel that staying had been absolutely the right decision.