Dusk Snow Returns to Dust

When she was four years old, he handed her a piece of sweet-scented osmanthus cake. She took a bite, her cheeks bulging, and said, "Then I will protect you too." He remembered this sentence for seventeen years. During the night when he was grounded, he clutched another wooden whistle. He didn't know that she was still alive, but he still handed a note outside the palace every month, writing the same two words: Be well. She survived. Climb out from the secret passage, crawl out from under the silver needle of the Valley of Broken Love, crawl out from the cold eyes and dark night of the Qinglong Gang for seven years. She hid her name, her face, and her hatred, thinking that if she hid it deeply enough, she could first pay off the debt for the dead person. But that look when they met again on the Baihe embankment - he didn't ask, she didn't say anything, it was just that the wooden whistle was pressed against her chest, causing pain. Later she found out that he had been hiding all these years. Hiding injuries, hiding illnesses, and hiding the loneliness of being trapped in a forbidden palace day after day. He gave her everything he could - his old department, hidden clues, evidence, and the word "stay" that he had waited fourteen years to say. This story only tells one thing from beginning to end: how two people who grew up in the darkest place lighted a light for each other that refused to go out.