The Last Notes of a Broken String, a Heart in Tune

In a world where music can communicate with heaven and earth and command the forces of nature, Qin Po gave her life on the battlefield to protect her younger sister, Qin Xin. Her zither was shattered, its strings broken. Bearing her sister’s ruined instrument and an immeasurable grief, Qin Xin wandered to the valley where her sister had fallen. With no way out, she used her own hair as strings and restrung the broken zither. When war erupted once more and enemy cavalry again trampled the scorched earth, Qin Xin had nowhere left to retreat. With bloodied fingers, she played the hair-stringed zither. Its mournful music stirred the sleeping earth beneath them. The mountains split and the ground shook, routing an army of thousands, while the final notes lingered for three days. But the hair strings snapped, her fingers were badly wounded, and the power’s backlash quietly began to take hold. Amid the fading notes and the trembling earth, Qin Xin sensed the familiar, eternal rhythm of her sister Qin Po’s soul. A requiem of protection and sacrifice, destruction and rebirth, echoed across heaven and earth for a long, long time.