In the season when grass grows and orioles fly, the assassin Qin Zong receives a secret letter ordering him to abduct a young woman from Jiangnan and take her back to the desert.
He isn't allowed to kill her? For the first time, the bloodthirsty weapon in his hand has no blood to taste.
The terrified girl in the embroidered bed curtains thinks she's as good as dead.
“Could you please not kill me?” The girl trembles, looking so pitiful she seems on the verge of tears.
Perhaps the spring sunshine is too bright, or perhaps the night is too deep. The girl's underclothes are thin, and the incense in the tent is intoxicating. For the first time in his life, the man gives the person under his blade a chance to speak. “Give me a reason.”
Standing on the bed, the girl studies the pair of deep, sharp eyes above his face covering for a long moment, then asks softly, “Would you like a wife?”
When the masked man says nothing, the girl tugs at the hem of her clothes, her face red enough to bleed. “If that doesn't work, I could be your maid...”
The long saber slides into its scabbard.
That spring, Qin Zong, the most renowned assassin in the martial world, sets off down the road to becoming a competent maid and never turns back.
Qin Zong, I want a cat.
I want a horse.
I also want a bouquet of flowers.
Later, the assassin leads a white horse with his left hand and carries red flowers in his right, while a girl holding a cat is strapped to his back. Together, they storm the lairs of Jiangnan river bandits, rout the armies of the Central Plains strongmen, and burn down the camps of the northern desert bandits. They write the clouds and rain of youth across three thousand days and nights, and thirty thousand miles of mountains and rivers.
Many years later, old Yu Guifei grabs one of Qin Zong's ears in each hand, glares at his handsome face, and demands, “You fell in love with me first, didn't you!”
Qin Zong has never read Shen Congwen. Otherwise, he would surely say, “I have crossed the bridges of many places, watched the clouds many times, and drunk many kinds of wine, but I have only loved one person, at the best age of their life.”
Theme: Spring is beautiful, and so is young love.
