Shen Tingxue: The Grief of an Old Friend

There will always be someone who makes you feel that life isn't worth living, but in the end, there will also be someone who understands all your hardships, crosses a sea of people to hold you, and never leaves again.

Shen Qingwan saves fifteen-year-old Xiao Yuan and takes in six-year-old Shen Chen. Like a lamp of warmth, she lights the way for the two lonely boys, never knowing that her brief life will become the deepest longing binding the three of them through their reincarnations.

Gazing toward the Shen estate in Jiangnan, Xiao Yuan remembers their first meeting: she looked out at the snow by the window, then praised his bright, star-and-moon-like eyes beneath the roses. In the end, they could not stay together, and all that remained was his unfulfilled love.

From the moment Shen Chen called her "older sister," he remembered her for a lifetime and guarded her for an age. From the Wanli era to the Chongzhen era, as the chaos of the times shifted around them, they were together every day in life and side by side in death. After nearly seventy years, they finally reunited.

Jiang Wenyuan remained devoted to the Shen family's estate as its son-in-law, waiting quietly for Shen Chen to return. Shen Chen buried him in the ancestral tomb in keeping with tradition, but did not place him in the same grave as Qingwan. In doing so, he honored the duty of protecting him while also remaining true to the feelings he had kept for a lifetime.

A lifetime of separation, a lifetime of sorrow. Some gave their lives for their country; others spent their final years devoted to one person. This love and vigil, spanning the years and consuming entire lives, finally became the most heartbreaking lament for those gone in the misty rain of Jiangnan.