Chapter 1: The Crane Prince
Wuyi Mountain was a thousand li away from Pujiang. Even though Zhenzhen traveled day and night by horse, it still took her many days to reach the foot of the mountain. By then, the horse was utterly exhausted, and with wind and snow raging in the mountains, Zhenzhen saw that the mountain path was slippery and the horse had no strength to continue forward. She left the horse in the care of a farming household at the foot of the mountain and carried her luggage up the mountain on her own back.
Zhao Huaiyu had said that Master Wen Qiao lived in the Wen Qiao Inn on Yinping Peak. Zhenzhen asked for general directions at the foot of the mountain and entered the mountains. Wuyi Mountain’s crimson peaks and azure waters, with winding streams meandering around them, originally presented exceptionally beautiful scenery. But it was now deep winter, with wind and snow at their peak, making the mountain paths treacherous and difficult to traverse. Zhenzhen had no mind to appreciate the scenery. Following along Jiuqu Stream, she saw a peak with precipitous cliffs rising a thousand xun high, square and upright like a screen. Guessing this must be Yinping Peak, she began climbing with great effort. All along the way, she felt the mountain terrain was steep and the dense forests vast and wild. She didn’t know how many times she fell and tumbled before finally climbing to the mountainside. Looking out as far as the eye could see, the surroundings were even more shrouded in misty clouds and water, with no human figures in sight.
Zhenzhen had been traveling alone for most of the day. The food and water she carried were completely exhausted. Now she was both cold and hungry. Before her lay snow over a foot deep, while the path ahead stretched endlessly with no sight of houses or buildings. Zhenzhen looked around and saw what appeared to be a cave not far away. She struggled forward, wanting to take shelter from the wind and snow in the cave. However, after just a few steps, she felt dizzy and her vision blurred. Her knees went weak and she collapsed in this world of glazed beauty where cold mist wove like silk.
Zhenzhen’s consciousness grew hazy and she was about to faint when she suddenly heard a cry. She felt as if a bird was circling down from the sky and landing in front of her.
Zhenzhen slowly opened her eyes. In her gradually clearing vision, there suddenly appeared a crane with a red crown and snow-white feathers. The crane had a slender, graceful neck with lustrous, pure white plumage, except for its neck, tail, and feet which were black. In its long beak, it held a branch of red plum blossoms. The flowers were a brilliant vermillion red, similar to its red crown, and the petals still held several dots of white snow, which complemented the red flowers beautifully, making them appear particularly crystalline.
The crane held the red plum blossoms and gazed quietly at Zhenzhen with a pair of bright, deep brown eyes. Its gaze was profound, quite resembling human eyes. Zhenzhen looked at it for a moment. The crane neither turned its head nor retreated, and their four eyes remained locked like this for a long time. Finally, Zhenzhen couldn’t help but sigh: “Are you female or male? If you’re male, staring at a young lady so boldly like this, don’t you feel ashamed?”
The crane still remained silent, but stepped forward, lowered its head, and shook the snow from a plum blossom onto Zhenzhen’s lips.
Those few drops of cool moisture fell lightly onto Zhenzhen’s nearly chapped lips that were frozen stiff. Zhenzhen instinctively pressed her lips together, feeling as if she had been kissed by snow.
While Zhenzhen was still in a daze, the crane had already dropped the plum branch, spread its wings and cried out, as if dancing. After a moment, it stretched its neck upward, spread both wings, and flew into the sky.
Zhenzhen raised her eyes to follow where it went, but again felt her head extremely heavy. Her vision went black and she collapsed to the ground. Before losing consciousness, she vaguely heard footsteps approaching from ahead—the subtle sound of shoes stepping into accumulated snow, occasionally mixed with the sound of stepping on and breaking dead branches. Step by step, in an unhurried rhythm, coming from far to near.
When that person walked close to her, Zhenzhen used all her remaining strength to open her eyes and look. However, she couldn’t lift her head, so she could only see the cloud-decorated wooden-soled black shoes the person wore, and the lower edge of a wide crane cloak as pure white as crane feathers.
The person wearing the crane cloak stood quietly in front of her, but did not lower their head to speak with her. Zhenzhen now lacked even the strength to make a sound. She closed her eyes and fell into a long faint.
Before Zhenzhen awakened, she first smelled a delicate fragrance of plum blossoms. Opening her confused eyes, she found herself lying fully clothed on a bed with black lacquered posts at the four corners. Above the four posts, thin wooden strips of the same color were joined horizontally and vertically to form a canopy in a large square pattern. The wooden frame was covered with fine white paper mulberry. The paper mulberry was soft and pure white, making the canopy look like floating clouds and mist.
Looking left and right, she saw that three sides of the bed were also surrounded by paper mulberry screens, with only the side for getting on and off the bed left unenclosed. There hung curtains of the same color, with bamboo ribs inside and paper mulberry surfaces. The curtains were divided into two panels that could be opened and closed separately. Outside this white tent, candlelight penetrated through, like warm sunlight illuminating half a cliff of spring mist. Silver-white tin vases hung on each lacquered post, with several branches of plum blossoms inserted in the vases. Their sparse shadows crossed diagonally, and their subtle fragrance floated in the air, gathering in this space of elegant fabric and condensed mist, lingering without dissipating.
The bed used cloth sheets and paper mulberry covers, all extremely elegant and clean, fine and soft and light and warm. When turning over, it felt like embracing clouds, making no sound at all. The pillow seemed to be stuffed with chrysanthemum flowers, giving off a fresh plant fragrance when smelled.
Zhenzhen lifted the curtain and stepped down onto the small step-bed in front of the bed, emerging from the plum blossom paper tent. She saw a small high table standing before the bed, carved in the shape of a small lotus leaf and decorated with green lacquer. It rose gracefully from its base, supporting a small bronze incense tripod in which wisteria incense was burning over separated flames.
Zhenzhen marveled at the elegance of this place for a long time before finally moving her gaze from the bedside and directing it toward the window opposite.
By the window was a rattan chair, and a young man was half-reclining in the chair. His hair was bound with a soft cloth, and he wore white Daoist robes with black trim as decoration. Half of a crane cloak covered his knees while the other half flowed like water onto the floor. His right hand supported his forehead as he slept with eyes closed, while his left hand held a scroll of books placed on the crane cloak.
Zhenzhen silently walked to his side and, by the light from the lotus-shaped candlestick not far away, clearly saw his general outline.
For a moment, all wind and mist became still. The slanting shadows of plum branches, half-cliff spring mist, and floating fragrant lotus leaves all quietly dispersed. Outside the window, the cool moon was like an eyebrow, while inside the window, Zhenzhen’s eyes quietly reflected this man beautiful as moonlight. She slowly lowered herself and sat sideways on the floor to the left of the rattan chair, leaning against the chair diagonally, supporting her chin with her hand. She pressed her lips to contain the sigh that was about to escape and silently studied him without making a sound—from his knife-sharp eyebrows, the eyelashes that cast two wings of cicada shadows, his lips with their bowstring-like curve, to the slender finger joints holding the scroll. She felt that every part was beautiful, yet it was not merely beauty alone. He also possessed a thread of ethereal spirit that did not belong to the red dust and purple lanes of the mortal world. Zhenzhen couldn’t help but think that if she moved a little closer to him, she might be able to smell the grass and wood fragrance beneath his skin.
When she first awakened, Zhenzhen had been quite curious about where she was and very much hoped to find someone to ask why she was here and what this place was. However, now that she had seen this person, she was no longer eager to wake him up to ask questions. She dared not speak loudly, fearing to startle the person in the painting. When he slept peacefully, he was a scroll painting; to wake him would be a sin.
Suddenly, an abrupt rumbling sound from her stomach rang out in the quiet room, and only then did she remember that she hadn’t eaten anything. She pressed her abdomen, suddenly thinking that this stomach rumbling might be heard by the person in the painting, so she looked at him in alarm. Fortunately, he still slept with eyes closed, not moving a muscle.
She continued to examine the surroundings and discovered that beside the rattan chair stood a small crane-knee table—a small table at about the same height as the chair, with slender legs and a raised middle section like bamboo joints. On the crane-knee table were placed some cups and bowls, including a white porcelain soup bowl with a lid. Next to the crane-knee table was a wind stove with date-pit charcoal flames flickering inside, and on the stove a kettle was still boiling water.
Zhenzhen slowly walked over and lifted the lid of the soup bowl to look inside. It contained light yellow soup broth, and when Zhenzhen smelled it slightly, she recognized it as chicken soup—clear and transparent, still retaining warmth. In the soup were some noodle pieces shaped like five-petaled plum blossoms, accumulated at the bottom of the bowl. When Zhenzhen picked up the soup spoon beside it and stirred, the plum blossom noodle pieces immediately floated up and fell down again, like flower rain sinking into an abyss, quite beautiful to behold.
Zhenzhen looked at the man who continued to sleep peacefully, thinking this must be his late-night snack, and disappointedly set down the spoon. Then she reconsidered, thinking that she had obviously been rescued by him, and everything about him from head to toe proclaimed “beautiful person with kind heart,” so these plum blossom noodle pieces must have been cooked by him to prepare for her to eat. Thus, she happily picked up the spoon again and quickly finished the chicken soup noodles.
After tidying up the soup bowl, Zhenzhen looked at the tea cups on the crane-knee table again. She saw that the tea cup was transparent, as if carved from crystal, with several honey-preserved flower buds at the bottom of the cup. At this moment, the spring water in the kettle was bubbling like pine wind and mountain stream water. Zhenzhen waited for the water to boil like rolling waves and surging billows, then lifted the kettle and poured a small amount into the tea pot. After waiting a moment longer, she lifted the tea pot and poured water into the tea cup. The flower buds at the bottom of the cup were stirred up by the hot water, swirling and unfolding in the cup. The petals bloomed one by one, revealing themselves to be wintersweet with jade stamens and sandalwood hearts and wide-open mouths. The outer petals were honey-wax yellow, while the center was purple. The flower shape was half-contained, very elegant, and carried a unique fragrance that rose with the heat of the boiling water. Wherever the wisps of steam passed, all was rich with floral fragrance.
Zhenzhen drank this wintersweet flower tea and felt quite warm in her heart. After putting away the tea utensils, she sat down again beside the rattan chair. Only then did she discover that the floor of this place was warm, as if there were furnace fires beneath the bricks, providing endless heat that made this room as warm as spring and caused her to completely forget what kind of desolate, cold forest lay outside.
This warm feeling made her eyelids gradually grow heavy. She leaned against the rattan chair and, like the man in the chair, fell into deep sleep.
She was awakened by the cold. She was so cold that she sneezed before waking up. She was startled by the sound she made and suddenly sat up, discovering that she was in a cave, where a peasant woman was spreading a pile of dry grass onto her body.
The peasant woman appeared to be in her forties, and while she was quite clean from head to toe, she wore a cold expression with a long face. Seeing Zhenzhen wake up, she didn’t stop her actions but continued spreading the dry grass onto Zhenzhen to cover her. Then she sat down beside a nearby pile of burning firewood and said: “Stop sleeping. If I hadn’t discovered you, you would have frozen to death long ago.”
Zhenzhen looked around in confusion and after a long moment asked the peasant woman: “Why am I here?”
The peasant woman replied: “You don’t even know why you’re here—how would I know?”
Her tone was cold and hard, and also carried implicit mockery. Zhenzhen was displeased and said angrily: “I clearly was sleeping in a fragrant and beautiful room, with a very handsome young master beside me.”
Only after the words left her mouth did she feel something was inappropriate, and the peasant woman’s contemptuous glance had already struck her face: “How can young ladies nowadays speak of spring dreams so brazenly?”