Lotus in Bloom

The grand clans who have long since retreated from Jinshao are said to have inspired the saying, "The old Chen clan is gone, leaving only the dream of Jinshao." The Bo family has lived here for generations, bound to this place from long ago. Jinshao, vermilion, Daughter Red wine, and the Bo family are inseparable, like the glazed tiles of the imperial palace. The Bo family owns ten miles of riverside estates, and "the women of the Bo family" are a wistful refrain in Jinshao's dream.

The women of the Bo family are petals from the Buddha's lotus throne, endowed with spiritual essence and made real. The incense that burns before them day after day has given them their airy, detached nature, or so generations of Jinshao residents have said.

So the Bo family always marries within its own branch, taking close relatives as spouses. And with each generation of intermarriage, the lotus-petal women of the Bo family grow fewer.

When the morning mist drifted softly over the water, the people of the riverside estates were still sleeping off the previous night's banquet. The smell of red paper and firecrackers lingered faintly across the ground. The Bo men lay in the beds of women whose names no one knew, while one man's mistress sat in the cool morning, winding red silk around a patterned design. Her belly showed a slight swell beneath her skirt.

She had just chosen a name for the child in her womb: "Ying," meaning to wind around, to drift through life in this place like the mist that swept over Jinshao's waters each day.

It really wasn't a good name.

As she thought this, she felt her belly tremble faintly.

A Ying...

This is a story about a girl from a Jiangnan water town and an assassin who makes his life alongside wind and frost.