Long Night

When a dynasty slowly sank in self-deception, two forgotten souls caught a glimpse of light in each other's abyss. The twilight is like rust, corroding through the cornices of the imperial city. The fingertips of the civil servant Shen Zhiyan hung between the book of peace and the old inkstone. The cinnabar annotations had long dried into blood scabs. The words "I would like to take advantage of the long wind to break the blue sky" in the palace examination three years ago are now only the ink stains on the bottom of the inkstone - it was countless late nights when he dipped in the still tea and rubbed away every word of his own. In the abandoned school grounds in the west of the city, General Yue Zheng drew his bow into the void. There was no arrow on the string, and the wind passed through his clenched fist, whimpering like a missing arrow from a frontier fortress. He once shot down the wolf flag in northern Xinjiang with an arrow, but now there is only the rough touch of rust and gravel in his palm, and the gentle exile imprinted on the order document. He is a crane trapped in a golden cage, with broken wings still looking at the ruined mountains and water; he is a sword hanging in a sheath, its sharp edge facing the drunken dreams of life and death. The two of them were supposed to have never crossed paths - until that night banquet, Shen Zhiyan raised his eyes from the crowd of flatterers, and saw Yue Zheng's back leaving the table with a cup thrown down, like a lonely knife cutting through the gorgeous warm wind. After that, the unapproved memorials and the rusty arrowheads began to have a secret dialogue deeper into the night: He deciphered for him the mottled footings of the military book, which were the border records written with blood stains mixed with snow; he transcribed for him the blank spaces between the lines of the memorial, which were the screams that could not be heard due to the strangulation of party stranglehold. One of them buried the flames among the papers, and the other pawned the moonlight on the battlefield. Until one day, Shen Zhiyan opened the door of Yue Zheng's humble room and saw the maps on the wall rekindled with cinnabar - the cities that the imperial court decided to cede were being carefully outlined and firmly nailed back to the territory by another kind of handwriting. "Look," Yue Zheng's voice was as hoarse as a whetstone, "some battles are not counted until they are won." "The Long Night" is a story about an era of betrayal - when everyone is kneeling to survive, they decide to stand side by side and look for the mountains and rivers that have not collapsed on each other's backs. Here is the ink that refuses to dry up in the depths of the inkstone, and the body temperature on the inside of the armor that has not yet cooled down. When the long night falls into the deepest hour, can the strength and passion that have been declared useless be able to tear open a gap of light before they are completely annihilated? "I would like to take advantage of the long wind to break through the mist——" This time, the cinnabar was still wet and the bowstring was stretched. Intention: When the long night is coming to an end, you and I will be each other's lights.