The capital, resplendent in all its glory.
Talented scholars and beautiful women, poetry, wine, calligraphy, and painting. Beneath this magnificent scene of wealth and tenderness lie heaps of bones, and one heartrending love story after another.
It took Zhang Qingxiao thirteen years to see this clearly.
On the day he returned to the capital in glory, every official gathered to welcome him.
But no one imagined that the silver-masked general, mounted and radiating murderous fury, was Ming Wumei, the wastrel son of the Left Chancellor's Ming family.
Nor could anyone have imagined that the woman who returned with him was the wife carried off after the Northern Kingdom's hostage prince sought her hand, and also the Qingping Commandery Princess who had once caused a sensation throughout the city: Zhang Qingxiao.
"It's snowing again. My lord, the snow in the capital is so gentle, unlike the bleak snow of the borderlands."
"My lady, look. That's the Taoist temple where you used to live. Back then, the few of us sat around a brazier beneath those three old pines on a snowy day just like this, drinking wine, admiring the snow, and composing poems. Such happy days feel like a dream now."
Following his pointing finger, Zhang Qingxiao saw a spot of ink-dark color in the distant, cold mountains.
Her thoughts did not return to that time. What appeared before her was not the first time she had met Ming Wumei, but the height of summer, the moment she first entered the capital.
"Old love is hard to forget, but no matter how much it hurts, you have to let it go!"
Ten years without a meeting. I wonder if the lofty Ninth Princess still remembers that she once had an unruly shadow in her place?
Thirteen years ago, in the summer, Guhong, a hostage prince from the Northern Kingdom, came to the capital to ask for the Ninth Princess's hand in marriage.
The handsome scholar Jin Liunian sat the imperial examination and placed third.
Ming Wumei, eldest son of the Left Chancellor's Ming family, was expelled from the Imperial Guard by the emperor and spent his days idling about.
It was only because the emperor did not want his Ninth Princess to marry far away in another country.
Zhang Qingxiao, a Taoist nun raised at the royal temple to serve as the Ninth Princess's double, was summoned back to the capital by imperial decree.
She shed her blue-and-white Taoist robes and donned splendid silks, transforming into the Qingping Commandery Princess and the Northern hostage prince's betrothed.
And so, the scheme of substituting one person for another was set in motion.
Yet Zhang Qingxiao, who had practiced Taoism for over a decade, acted by her own rules and stirred up a storm throughout the city.
Before she had even married, she had already formed a bond with Ming Wumei, eldest son of the Left Chancellor's Ming family, and begun a tale of lovers pursuing one another.
A Qingping Commandery Princess suddenly appeared in the princess's residence: capricious, exceptionally talented, brazen, and proud.
The Ninth Princess was deeply displeased, and she and Zhang Qingxiao clashed at every turn. The third-place scholar Jin Liunian was left to suffer as he tried to smooth things over between them.
From there, everything began spiraling out of control.
As the verse goes:
Between the water and clouds, the door is shut in quiet repose.
A spring breeze brushes your face from ten miles away.
A heart's devotion does not fail the longing it holds.
How can I show you the depth of my feelings?
I am leaving. Ask me no questions.
To the ends of the earth, until every stream runs dry.
Only because an old bond was mistaken,
The Flying Star stirs the Red Phoenix.
Theme: One vivid soul after another awakens beneath the crushing weight of Confucian propriety.
I feel like I read martial arts novels a long time ago