The Zhang Family’s Ancient Tower Holds Xie Yuchen’s Crabapple Blossom

She was the cherished jewel of Zhang Rishan and Yin Nanfeng, the most pampered young lady of the Ninth Gate’s third generation. Yet she was always chasing after Xie Yuchen, calling him “Handsome Brother.” Using “paying respects to Second Grandpa Er Yuehong” as an excuse, she would linger at the Xie residence. When she watched him practice opera, his water sleeves sweeping through the air, she would slip candied fruit into his costume. When she saw him frown over the account books, she would hand him a begonia handkerchief and gently coax him. Begonia petals drifted over their shoulders beneath the red walls, and even the breeze seemed wrapped in her laughter. Everyone was waiting for her coming-of-age ceremony, after which the Xie family would exchange betrothal letters with hers.

But the Ninth Gate could not escape its fate. Wu Xie fell into a deadly puzzle, and Xie Yuchen entered the fray in armor. She quietly brought the New Moon Hotel’s connections and Zhang family retainers to his aid, but all she got in return was his disappearance after he set out for Zhang territory. Ignoring her parents’ pleas, she broke into the ancient tower to find him. She feared neither the strong acid eating through her clothes nor the mechanisms cutting her palms. Just as she found traces of him trapped inside, the tower collapsed. In the darkness, she clutched the begonia handkerchief she had never given him. She had meant to tie it on him herself when he came back.

Xie Yuchen escaped alive and frantically dug through the ruins, but found only half of a bloodstained handkerchief. Later, he became the respected head of the Xie family. He never wore his begonia-patterned opera costume again, and never spoke of the snow on Changbai Mountain. Every year when the begonias bloomed, he stood beneath the red walls, clutching the handkerchief. Sometimes, the wind seemed to carry the cry of “Handsome Brother,” but was his girl buried in the ancient tower, or had she become a wanderer lost forever in the snows of Changbai, someone he would never again see return?