In Chang'an City, women are not human beings.
At the banquets of the powerful, they were called "meat trays" - they knelt beside the table and held up the food for the nobles to knead and play with at will. They were not allowed to make a sound or tremble, otherwise their hands and feet would be broken. Late at night, the black-robed soul searcher walked between the rooftops, peeling off the soul of a living woman and embedding it in the robe on her chest. The body with its soul taken away fell on the street, like a bag with its skeleton removed.
But the soul of the dead refused to rest in peace.
A dark red fungus grew from the bone seams and blood mud. People call it meat plum. It contains broken souls and unsatisfied resentments. It grows all over the barren graves outside the city, seeps into the walls of wells and floor tiles, and quietly takes root in every corner that has been trampled on.
Aying is fourteen years old and lives in an ordinary alley in Chang'an City. She watched the neighbor's sister being dragged away, and watched countless women transform from human beings into utensils and then into ingredients. She thought she could only wait until one day she would become one of the Soul Faces. Until the woman named Honggu appeared under the moon, handed her a clay pot, and told her:
Enough rooting, it's time to spring.
When the lights at the banquet were lit to their fullest, and when the face of "Yang Guozhong" supported by hundreds of soul faces opened the banquet again, the fleshy plum blossoms in the ground finally broke through. The broken soul returned to its place, the roots of resentment were strangled, and a revenge grew from the bones, completely overturning the night of Chang'an City.
This is a story about objectification and resistance, silence and rooting. What can people grow in desperate situations? The answer is a bit chewy.
Intent: In the desperate situation of being completely materialized and deprived of all dignity, the only thing that cannot be taken away from a person is the living will itself; and when countless broken wills are quietly connected underground, one day, they will be stronger than the palace of the oppressor and longer than the face of the powerful.