During the Qingming season, rain as fine as ox hair and as dense as a spiderweb blanketed the entire Beishan Cemetery.
It was already ten at night. The cemetery should have been empty, but a slender figure stood quietly before a gravestone in the farthest corner. She held a plain, pale-green oil-paper umbrella. A few elegant white plum blossoms were embroidered on its canopy, looking especially cold and austere beneath the dim yellow streetlights.
“Mom, I’ve come to see you again.”
Yun Qingyue placed a bouquet of white bellflowers before the grave and gently ran her fingertips over the yellowed photograph on the headstone. The woman in the picture was gentle and beautiful, her features bearing a striking resemblance to hers.
“This is my fifteenth year studying at Xuanqing Temple. Master says I’m exceptionally gifted, and that I’ve already mastered seventy percent of his medical skills.” Her voice was soft, as if sharing a secret only a mother and daughter could know. “Don’t worry. I’m doing well now. I can protect myself.”
The rain fell on her long hair, yet, strangely, it did not wet a single strand. Instead, it silently slid away a few inches above her scalp, as if blocked by an invisible barrier. Anyone knowledgeable who saw it would recognize a protective layer formed by countless silver needles, fine as hair, arranged among her locks.
“Last month, I cured the old master of the Chen family in the southwest. They wanted to reward me with five million, but I accepted only a piece of their family’s heirloom jade.” Yun Qingyue took a smooth white jade ring from her clothes and set it before the gravestone. “This jade can soothe the soul. Wear it, and you’ll surely be born into a good family in your next life.” ...
