Ten years after Jiang Ciwan died, her spirit still wandered the world. She watched with her own eyes as Xie Yanqing, the powerful official she had once pursued relentlessly and who had avoided her like the plague, sat motionless before her grave all night, his temples turning white.
When she was alive, she was the capital’s most notorious lovesick fool. To pursue Xie Yanqing, she stopped his horse in the street, drunkenly blocked his sedan chair, and even spread a false rumor that they were engaged. He was driven to reject her publicly, turning her into a laughingstock throughout the city. Humiliated, she left the capital and died of illness in a foreign land at just nineteen.
But after her spirit wandered for ten years, she finally learned the truth:
The day she stopped his horse, he was on his way to propose to her.
The night before she made up the engagement rumor, he had just finished writing a petition asking to marry her.
After she left the capital, he went after her, but he was seven days too late.
That night before her grave, he sat there until dawn, and his temples turned white from then on.
What she had thought was unrequited love had actually been mutual affection, which she had somehow turned into an irreparable tragedy.
Then she woke up.
She was leaning over the railing of a teahouse, still clutching half a jug of wine. Below, the young Xie Yanqing was riding by.
This time, she set down the jug and quietly went downstairs. When she passed him, she didn’t even look up.
She thought: Stay away from him. Don’t hurt him again.
But he noticed that the person who used to chase after him now looked at him with nothing but panicked avoidance.
