She had only seen him nine times in her life.
The first time, he was the young general walking against the light at the corner of Weiyang Palace.
For the last time, he was the unparalleled hero in the coffin who would never wake up again.
Ayao, the palace maid who entered the palace at the age of fourteen, polished the green bricks day after day in the humblest corner of Yongxiang. She thought her life was like those floor tiles that could never be wiped clean, dusty and endless.
In the autumn of the sixth year of Yuan Shuo, she bumped into a young man at the corner of Weiyang Palace.
He was wearing dark black clothes and a jade-inlaid leather belt around his waist. His whole figure looked like a sword that had just been tempered. The case fell to the ground, and she knelt down to apologize, but he just knelt down, put the case back into her arms, and said -
"Wipe it clean."
He asked: "What's your name?"
At that moment, sixteen-year-old Ayao didn't know that she would remember this name for the rest of her life.
He is Huo Qubing. At the age of eighteen, he was awarded the title of Champion Marquis. At the age of twenty-one, he was appointed as General of Hussars. Eight hundred cavalry went deep into the desert. Fifty thousand cavalry were granted the title of wolf. He is the sharpest sword of the Han Dynasty, the most proud man of the Emperor, and the star that the whole city of Chang'an looks up to.
And she is just a palace maid in Yongxiang whose name should not even be remembered.
Xue Ye gave her a fox fur coat, and the warmth in his palm burned her for life. The flowers in Yanzhi Mountain withered, but she still hid them under her pillow like a treasure. He handed the riding crop he carried with him into her hand and said, "Wait until I come back to get it" - then he went to Mobei and never came back.
At the age of twenty-four, General Hussar passed away.
She kowtowed before his soul and buried the fox fur, dried flowers and riding crop under the old locust tree.
