Fifteen years ago, he was a rough butcher who killed pigs and sold meat in Nanyang City, and she was an orphan living in the market. He saved up meat money for half a month and gave her a plain silver hairpin. She put it on for him, but when the spring ice melted, she left without saying goodbye.
Fifteen years later, he is a powerful general who controls the world's troops, and she is the "Sword Lady" who sweeps across Liangzhou and kills people like crazy. Old friends from the past reunited across the beacon fire of Luoyang City - she broke through the city with three thousand Liangzhou cavalry, and he walked through the sea of fire holding a long curled sword.
"I'm back." She held up the old hairpin that had been worn for fifteen years in front of him.
"Why did you leave then?"
"Because if you don't leave, you will be harmed."
He has always believed that there are two most important things in the world - things that you can't get even if you risk your life, and things that you can't keep even if you risk your life. Until the fire engulfed the entire Changle Palace, he fell beside his sister's phoenix couch and could not put the hairpin on her with his own hands until his death. And she knelt on the bluestone ground outside the fire sea, holding the hairpin into the flesh and blood of her palm, and knelt all night long.
He held that hairpin in his chest until death, while she pinned it in her hair until death. One hairpin, two white heads. The biggest regret in this life is not that you left, but that you came back and we didn't even have time to say "put it on".
