In Anxi grows a flower called safflower;
In Anxi flies a bird called the Longxi sparrow.
The soldiers of the Anxi Army believe that if safflower seeds are scattered into the eye sockets of the dead, their souls can return home with the birds.
Li Mo does not believe it.
For thirty years, he has lived for a promise made outside Shule City.
Thirty years sleeping in snow and swallowing felt, eight thousand days and nights surviving on raw meat and blood.
When he returns, all eight hundred elderly and infirm are dead. Only a single prison cart remains.
Outside Chang'an, the hills are ablaze with red flowers. The seeds scattered into his comrades' eye sockets have finally been carried here by Longxi sparrows, taking root in their native land.
The flowers bloom outside Chang'an. Their souls have returned home.
