There Are Lotuses in the Palace

My next novel, “Bodhisattva Barbarian”:

A dancer from the Western Regions, a noblewoman of the Li family

Two golden magpie hairpins always sat on Yulinglong’s dressing table. Li Xiaogong once asked with a smile, “Why not wear that pair of entwined lotuses?” She didn’t answer, only spun into a dance, the jade sash around her waist turning into a wisp of smoke over the desert. Then, in the fourteenth year of the Zhenguan era, while serving as governor of Guanzhou, Li Xiaogong received one last gift: the brocade box containing the golden magpies, with a fragment of “Bodhisattva Barbarian” written in Sogdian pressed beneath them.

“General, does the scene in this painting remind you of when we first met?” Yulinglong wrote in her letter. Li Xiaogong suddenly remembered the Western Regions woman wearing a face veil on the streets of Chang’an twenty years earlier, adjusting it in the bronze mirror outside an apothecary. Now, the golden magpie in his hand gleamed coldly in the candlelight, just like the tear that had not yet dried at the corner of Yulinglong’s eye during her final dance.

Lianhua was a tribute girl sent from Beilu to Daxia. Having lived two lives, she knew the people of Daxia looked down on her for being a “grinding-belly child.” She thought: So what if I was born that way? Yuanshu was empress of Daxia, yet she served two emperors all the same. My mother, the sovereign of Beilu, served the late King Faxing, the current king, and Crown Prince Xiaowu, but her reasons were no different from Yuanshu’s. Yuanshu did it to ensure her own survival and that of her son, Prince Su. My mother did it to ensure that she and her daughter survived. Who’s really more lowly than the other?

After being reborn, Lianhua married Prince Su Li Cheng, the man who had killed her in her previous life with a black iron sword. On their wedding night, Prince Su wheeled himself over and demanded, “An Lianhua, what kind of slut did you bring here? How dare you climb into my bed!” Li Cheng’s roar shook the dust from the nine-phoenix-and-pearl hairpin at An Lianhua’s temple, as if even the air were trembling.

In her terror, Lianhua seemed to see the reflection of his past self raising his sword to strike her, overlapped with his hand gripping the armrest of his wheelchair, veins bulging, in this life.

Overwhelmed by Li Cheng’s presence, Lianhua remembered the moment his black iron sword had come down in her previous life. The blood-scent had surged toward her like a flood, engulfing her in despair.

She could hardly breathe. Her heart pounded violently, as if it might stop at any moment.

Theme: Life matters more than other people’s opinions.