Heaven Knows Nothing

During a late-night conversation, the two of us talked about a pair of brothers and their grudges and convictions in a time of turmoil. “The brothers' family name was Xiao, and they had a fair bit of property. The elder brother was called Xiao Kun, and the younger one Xiao Peng.” He dipped a finger in tea and wrote the two characters for Kunpeng on the table, citing the source for me: “In the Northern Darkness there is a fish called Kun. The Kun is so huge that no one knows how many thousand li it stretches. It transforms into a bird called Peng. The Peng's back is so enormous that no one knows how many thousand li it spans. When it rises in a mighty flight, its wings are like clouds hanging from the sky. It beats the water for three thousand li, then rides the whirlwind ninety thousand li upward. It cuts through the clouds, bears up against the blue sky, and then sets its course south.” After finishing at an unhurried pace, he asked me, “Which do you think is more powerful, the Kun or the Peng?” I smiled faintly. “Thank you for giving this story such a wonderful beginning.” Volume One BGM: “Though We Bear Grudges, We Rejoice to Meet Again” Thanks to Cuocuo. Duan Yi will be a star! Link: http://www.yyfc.com/play.aspx?reg_id=2357094&song_id=3904119 First, thanks to Duan Yi for singing me a song (Cuocuo). And thanks to Conan, who reads my stories so often, for letting me huddle in a tiny corner for 99 Days amid the vast worlds of The Captain and The Soldier, sticking with this dry little story and the tangled world of Kun and Peng. In the TV series, Xiao Kun and Xiao Peng are both men incapable of loving, or powerless to love. One uses his dashing charm to attract Qing Sun, the young female spy, though his motives are far from pure. The other, apart from drawing out women's maternal instincts with his gloom and tragic childhood, has no idea how to pursue someone or how to turn them away. Only between the two of them does one say, “Big brother,” while the other sighs quietly and replies, “Brother.” Xiao Peng stubbornly goes his own way. Neither a cause nor a sense of duty gives him anything to stand on. Though he cannot conceal the dark hatred he feels for his brother, he still longs for the care and sincerity of a man who shares no blood ties with him. They say you only learn to cherish something after you lose it. Xiao Peng had been back in the country for a long time, yet refused to see his big brother and went straight back to serve his teacher. But when he learned that his brother had kept so much from him, he looked like someone who had lost his last refuge. 99 Days is neither as upbeat as The Soldier nor as grand and tragic as The Captain. It is a song of troubled times about ordinary people with no control over their own fates. In the end, Xiao Peng can accept defeat, but he cannot accept the destruction of his faith. To discover that the cause he had devoted himself to was founded on a false premise is tantamount to having his entire world torn apart. For a man as confident and proud as Xiao Peng, it is devastating. One wrong move led to total defeat. Proud yet humble to his core, he always saw himself as a chess piece. After the board was overturned, all that remained was a wasteland of blood and bones. He does not know that when the players sweep the pieces aside, they can still begin another game. Through it all, I only hope you can steal a little happiness. Like Chen An and Chu Lanyun meeting for the first time, like Xiao Peng embracing his big brother at the station, like Zhang Momei having her hand taken by the dashing Xiao Kun in the ballroom, like Jia Chengcheng smiling at the crossroads in the brightest years of summer. Because no one can take anything with them. Along the way, we gather so much and carry so much. In the end, we have to put it all down. So I truly hope I can write their story, sing their songs, and carve their poems into words. Whether the pages are filled with sunshine or pouring rain, whether brothers turn against each other or embrace in anguish, I can still look out the quiet window along the way. Xiao Peng, look. Back then, all you could think about was how to make Xiao Kun join you in your grave. You didn't care who ruled the land, or about other people's lives, deaths, grief, or happiness. But your brother did. Still, I want to believe you should see what they yearned for and brought into being with their lives and blood... A peaceful age.