The Actor

At the midnight hour, on the stage, a heart-wrenching performance of "The Red-Maned Warhorse". One actor, A Meng, is utterly lost in the role. The tangled loves and hates, the truths and lies of her life, recede with the story, with the final note, and with the shock of awakening from the play and stepping back into the world. Emotion surges up, and an indescribable sorrow clings tight to the heart.

Her name is A Meng. Born to a poor family, she endured a hard life, at one point falling into prostitution before becoming an actress. In the end, she was taken as the fourth concubine by Wu Songhuai, a young master of the Wu family, and gave birth to a daughter called Yue Mei. After more than ten years, she finally waited for the "King of Chu" in her heart. She cast aside all her ties and eloped by night for her old lover, Song Zichu. But the world changes, and nothing turns out as she imagined or expected. Even after her lover left, she refused to give up: she schemed to obtain countless treasures for him, then married Wu Songhuai again.

By the time Song Zichu died, she had already lost her mind. In the final midnight play to send off the soul, A Meng could no longer tell whether she was Wang Baochuan, who spent eighteen springs in a cold cave, or Princess Daizan of Xiliang. All the schemes and counterplots were nothing but a dream. Life is like a play, and we have all become too deeply immersed in it!

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