A Woman's Hands Open a New Era

Three years in the Marquis's residence: she was not enduring it, she was waiting. Waiting for a dream that had nothing to do with her to end, waiting for a chance to walk out with her head held high. When she handed over those three copper coins, was that really a gift? It was clearly an end, using the lightest of objects to sever the heaviest of shackles. Kaiyuan Tongbao: was it not her own new life that it opened?

The half-finished tapestry of a hundred butterflies among flowers was the most poignant part.

The butterfly missing its right wing had, it turned out, flown away from her heart three years ago. Her needlework stopped at its fullest point, not because she could not finish it, but because there was no need. A real butterfly had never been on the silk.

The scene of the marquis later drowning his sorrows at a tavern was written with such a cruel touch.

The stitches on the plum blossom in his sleeve from years ago had not yet faded, and now he had to pour his heart out to the woman he had once claimed to have no marital affection for. Did he ever suddenly remember, while sobering up one day, that she had smiled so freely in the hall that day? It had not been a forced smile. She had simply let go.