At three o'clock in the morning, before dawn, the wind stopped.
Without warning, a red gap opened in the sky above the capital, like a wound opened by an invisible giant blade, and blood poured down.
Gray mist rolled out from the cracks like a tide, spreading silently over the palace walls, streets, and eaves. Wherever it went, the vegetation twitched and withered, and the birds fell to the ground and died.
In the back room of the medicine garden, the remaining warmth of the pottery stove is still there, and rows of evening primroses are drying quietly on bamboo racks.
Su Wanying squatted in the corner, her fingertips gently brushing the leaf tip of a purple heart orchid - this was the only spiritual seed that could stably extract the calming dew after three years of hard work.
But at the moment of touching it, the leaves quickly turned gray and curled as if being roasted by a fierce fire, and the entire plant turned into powder in the blink of an eye, falling into the palm of my hand.
