A tumultuous age gives rise to a love so silent it resounds like thunder.
She is the daughter of a disgraced official, poisoned and sent to a royal temple, condemned to never speak again.
He is a mute monk who sweeps the grounds and rings a string of bone wind chimes atop the pagoda every night to mourn the dead.
Robbed of their voices by the world, the two understand the abyss in each other’s eyes in the silence.
Until she discovers that the bone chimes are made from the remains of the lover he lost on the battlefield.
And the secret letter her father died protecting points to the very same bloody conspiracy.
“The north wind sweeps the land, bones ring like chimes. None know an old friend has come.”
As the chant for the dead begins, pursuers gather at the foot of the pagoda.
He dips his brush in blood and writes his final words: “I’ll take you away.”
But she tears off a strip of her skirt and writes with charcoal: “No. I’ll take you back to make them pay.”
“Gu Qingci, are you afraid?”
She writes in the snow: “Yes. But I’m more afraid of you ringing those chimes alone.”
When the mute begin to “speak,” all of Chang’an will hear the bone chimes’ mournful cry.
