The wind of the first year of Jiatai still carried the clearness of the Yin Stream in Kuaiji Mountain. When it blew over the glazed tiles of Lin'an Imperial City, it became three-quarters gloomy and seven-tenths long.
Yang Yunlan rubbed the ink for a long time, and her wrists were stained with flower marks like stars. The volume of "Hundred Flowers" on the desk is slowly spreading to the page of wild chrysanthemums - there is a very faint, almost invisible tear stain hidden on the petals outlined in ink.
She recalled that many years ago, her mother sang "Lotus Plucking Song" by the stream, and the birds couldn't go away; she recalled that under the moonlight in the painting studio, someone held her pen and corrected her holding posture, and her fingertips felt slightly cold; she recalled that rainy night deep in the palace wall, the emperor's sigh fell on her shoulders, as gentle as a dream that she did not want to wake up from.
Life is like a dream, flowers are like smoke.
Her whole life has been hidden in this volume of paintings, written into a series of palace poems that no one can sing.
