In the third year of Rongjing, rites and music had fallen into disarray, and the great clans were no longer as strict about propriety as they once had been. Lu Shijia, the second legitimate son of the aristocratic Lu family, was deeply devoted to his widowed cousin. They met often, walking shoulder to shoulder, and made no effort to hide their comings and goings.
Lu Shijia was as bright as a clear sky after rain, graceful as a spring willow and imposing as a solitary mountain. Everyone wanted to know why someone so brilliantly gifted had placed his plain-looking cousin, born into a disgraced family, above all others in his heart.
Lu Shijia blushed and said, "I don't know."
Xian Yang didn't know either, though of course she wanted to know more than anyone.
What she wanted most to know was why, on the first day after she married him, her husband Lu Shijia would rather spend the night in a wild temple outside the city than even look at her, a noblewoman from a prominent family.
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"The world praises them for breaking through the shackles of propriety. I ought to applaud these lovers too, but their steeds galloped past, kicking dust all over me."
It was then that Xian Yang suddenly remembered how, at fourteen, she and her sisters had once fallen asleep drunk in the fragrant grass, their hair in twin buns and spring dresses on, making a promise to gather chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge and ride horses to the southern hills.
Now Luoyang's peonies had bloomed and withered again and again, and the steeds had grown old and died in their stalls.
At last, she understood: the gentleman she had glimpsed among the peonies that year had a butterfly of his own.
Fortunately, she was reborn at sixteen, and her own butterfly had only just begun to emerge from its cocoon.
Note: The male lead will change.
Theme: Strive tirelessly to improve yourself.
