When Cai Xiaoqi followed that faint, elusive pull into the park, a honeysuckle mark suddenly surfaced on her wrist, burning as if seared by fire. Its pattern crept along her veins toward her heart, resonating with the star-map pendant in her pocket in a series of tiny chimes. The flowers on the windowsill grew wildly, and the moment they burst through the glass, a glazed mirror suddenly lit up. In a thousand-year-old medicinal garden, Ruoxi was bent over, grinding herbs. Peach blossom juice stained her blue cloth skirt, and the flower tucked in her hair was exactly like the one in Grandma's old photograph.
From the fleeting shadow of a white dress glimpsed through a crack to the bowl of medicine she offered in a dream; from the dark red seepage on a stone stele unearthed at Lingyuan Temple to the sudden golden flash when the pendant opened the bronze lock in the underground palace, everything pointed to the same mystery. The peachwood plaques engraved with "Qi" and "Xi" met in her palm, numbing her fingertips. Peach blossom patterns rose from the carved grooves and intertwined into an unbreakable knot.
The herbal compendium guarded for generations lay open in the morning light. The purple-tipped veins of the mint leaves and the serrated edges of the stonecrop crept toward each other across the yellowed pages, like two vines spanning time, following the patterns of fate as they burrowed into each other's roots. The star-map pendant's light reflected the constellations on the compendium, joining the bonds between past and present into a complete circle.
This journey, "Questioning the Old Soul in This Life," had never been a one-sided search. She used her soul as a lock, trapping the malevolent force in the rift for a thousand years; the dark red mark on her white dress was a vow of protection etched into her very bones. He used plants as his guide, letting mint's sharpness and honeysuckle's sweetness carry kindness forward through the scent of medicine. The concern hidden at the bottom of clay jars and the wooden plaque buried deep in the underground palace finally broke through time's frozen earth in the morning light of the present day, putting down new roots.
