The malt candy they once threw at each other as children hardened into blood-red blades of ice. He called the other's opera robes a burial shroud; the other laughed that his armor was embroidered with the souls of fools.
After Zhuang Miao was reduced to an actor, he tore up all his poems. The only thing he kept was a notebook of foolish remarks, every page filled with the stupid things Xiang Duyang had said as a child. Yet the margins were covered with drawings of a guillotine in blood.
Xiang Duyang once used his knife to carve pears and little ice lanterns for Zhuang Miao. Later, the blade rusted with blood. When he forced Zhuang Miao to sing The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, he pressed the hilt to his throat and demanded to know how Yang Guifei had died: strangled to death, just like your father.
Xiang Duyang used to whip Zhuang Miao across the back with willow branches, laughing at the sour bookworm. Ten years later, when Luoyang fell, he knelt beside the stage where Zhuang Miao had killed himself and died with a willow branch driven through his throat.
On a summer night in Suzhou, two boys stole wine and fell asleep drunk in a black-canopied boat, whose bow bore the name Fool. In the pouring rain of Luoyang, Xiang Duyang personally scuttled the old boat carrying Zhuang Miao's corpse.
Theme: When an individual becomes the lubricant in the gears of an era, everything beautiful will be chewed up by the meat grinder and turned into a bloody ritual**. The sweetness engraved with the word Fool will ultimately become blades of ice driven into each other's hearts.
Author, please update me quickly!