When the red maple in Yanhui Mountain was burning at its peak, Ling Yunxiao held a rusty sword and shouted the three words "Lingxiao Alliance" in the ruined temple - Su Xiaotang holding a candied haws in his mouth, Bai Jingzhi holding a military book, Zhao Hu carrying a copper hammer, Lin Yueji holding a silver needle, and Xiao Che barging in with a little thief, a group of half-grown children, shouted the oath of "number one in the world" louder than the mountain wind.
They tramped on maple leaves in the rivers and lakes, knocked wild dogs with their scabbards, used flutes to attract butterflies, and rubbed candied haws dregs on each other's clothes, thinking that such a lively day could become as red as red maples year after year.
But Jianghu is not a joke in a broken temple. When the knife of "Hanyi Tower" cuts through the dusk, when the secret of the mountain and river map crushes the oath, when someone inserts the broken sword into the crack of the stone to protect someone, the red maple is still falling, but it can no longer fall on the shoulders of the group of people back then.
Later people said that under the maple trees in Yanhui Mountain, there always seemed to be a young man shouting "Leader", but at the end of the shouting, only the wind was left blowing the red leaves, guarding the rusty sword for those who had not returned.
Intention: Not to write about a happy reunion, nor to write about complete forgetfulness, but to focus on "the unspoken goodbye", "the half-eaten piece of cake" and "the rusty sword that has not returned to its place". Those oaths stopped midway and the concerns hidden in the details are precisely the regrets that are more poignant than "parting in life and death" - fresh friendship will never disappear due to separation, but will become an unhealed and sweet scar in everyone's heart over the years.