Li Yuru was chained beside the window, watching Liu Wenxuan curl up in the rain like a stray dog on the verge of death. Suddenly, she began humming a Jiangnan water-chestnut-picking song. It was the tune he had hummed outside her window the day a kite drifted down.
His convulsing back went still. Rain mixed with blood and tears poured into his mouth, yet he struggled to sing the next two lines in a breathy voice. A guard shouted, “How dare a lowborn wretch spout filth!” His boot ground toward Liu's throat.
A piercing curse burst from inside the window:
“Rain falls beneath the eaves of the Li residence, yet it reeks of rust all year long! Because eight hundred corners of its roofs hang with eight thousand poor men's bones!”
Mad with rage, Madam Li slapped her daughter. “You lunatic, stop your nonsense!” But she did not know those were lines from the exam paper that had cost Liu Wenxuan his place. As a dark-red handprint appeared on her daughter's face, she murmured in her heart, “Liu Lang, look... The blood of this vermilion gate has long since splashed all over me.”
