Snow Blade in the Flowing Light

He had locked it up so securely that it was clear he didn't want me to know about the secret inside. I didn't want to go against his wishes, so I gently closed it again. But in the faint starlight, I saw a withered flower inside.

It looked so familiar. Memories came rushing back with it. A few years ago, when I traveled to Hangzhou and stayed for three months, it was the first water lily I'd grown. I picked it and sent it to him.

Every year, except for the three months when I took on jobs, I wandered from place to place with a fortune in my pockets. Sometimes I wrote him letters. Sometimes I sent him things, like a leaf or a feather. It didn't matter what. If I felt like sending him something at that moment, I did.

He was always cautious. He never kept anything related to the Flowing Light Snow Blade's assassinations in plain sight. I never saw the things I'd sent him when I was by his side, so I assumed he'd destroyed them too.

I never imagined they were all here.

A fig. Back then, I thought figs were pretty good, so I recommended he try them too.

A sheet of paper covered in hurried handwriting. I'd spent almost all my money in Duanzhou, with only five hundred taels left, and wrote to him to send help at once.

A sheet of paper folded into the shape of a fangsheng. When I was in Junzhou, I dressed as a man and received countless love letters. That's where I learned to fold paper like this.

...Deepest inside was a painting. The person in it had long, unbound hair and a lively, spirited expression, brimming with youthful confidence.

It was me.

When I was twenty, I asked him to paint me a portrait as a birthday present. He agreed. But when my birthday came, I heard there was a lunar eclipse to see in Cangzhou and went there instead. By the time I returned, my birthday had passed. I shamelessly asked him for the painting, but he refused.

I never thought it would be here.

It was all here.

From the age of sixteen to twenty-two, the most vibrant years of my youth, all here.

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