Half a Flask of Longing, a Tribute to Heartbreak

“If only our first meeting could last forever, why must the autumn wind lament the painted fan? In an instant, an old friend’s heart can change, yet people say it is easy for an old friend’s heart to change.”

“I carried my medicine chest as I transmigrated into a mass grave in the Great Sheng Dynasty, inhabiting the body of Su Qingci, a wrongly killed female physician. I had hoped to save lives and heal the wounded, but though I could cure the world’s most baffling ailments, I could not heal the heartbreak in my own heart.

“He promised to ‘hold my hand,’ then turned around and pushed me into the depths of political intrigue. I said, ‘A physician should have a compassionate heart,’ yet in the end, for him, I concealed the deadliest poison within the heartbreak of reality.

“Beneath the moon in Chang’an, the pipa’s notes shattered. That blue robe was stained with blood, just like the half of ‘Everlasting Love’ that broke in his palm, and like the lonely purity of ‘Fallen to mud, crushed to dust, its fragrance remains unchanged’: silent, tragic, beautiful, and fragrant.”