The sound of gunshots sent the bells flying off the eaves.
Cheng Jingming staggered open the mottled red lacquer door. The front of his military uniform was soaked in blood and turned dark. The code book he held tightly in his arms scattered its pages as he ran, much like the playbills falling from Guanghe Tower back then.
"Yanqiu... Accept... Comrade..."
Shen Yanqiu knelt down on one knee to catch his sliding body, and his palms were immediately soaked with warm liquid. The moonlight leaked from the collapsed caisson and illuminated Cheng Jingming's pale face - the mole that once obsessed the ladies was now mixed with smoke and blood.
"Idiot!" Shen Yanqiu tore open his shirt and pressed the hideous wound on his abdomen, "Didn't you agree that I would go to Shanghai to find you?"
Cheng Jingming suddenly coughed violently, and blood splashed on Shen Yanqiu's face. Trembling, he took out his pocket watch. The key to the theater from that time was still hanging on the watch chain.
"Tian... Anmen... Red flag..."
The mechanical sound of the pocket watch is getting slower and slower. Only then did Shen Yanqiu realize that his back had been beaten into a sieve, and the military uniform was stuck to the exposed spine, like a pipa string stained red with blood.
The barking of the pursuer's dogs could be heard in the distance.
"Sing... A section..." Cheng Jingming's pupils began to expand, "It's like when we... Met for the first time..."
Shen Yanqiu bit the tip of his tongue and swallowed the taste of blood mixed with tears. He cleared his throat and sang "A Dream in the Garden":
"It turns out that the flowers are blooming all over—"
Gunshots burst out.
Cheng Jingming used his last strength to turn over and hold down Shen Yanqiu. When the bullet penetrated his chest, the pocket watch cover popped open, revealing the yellowed photo inside - a photo of them together backstage in the early snow of 1935.
"... Like this... All given..."
The unfinished opera ended with blood gushing from the throat. Shen Yanqiu touched the three bullet holes in his back heart, and the warm blood flowed along the cracks between his fingers and into the cracks of the stage, watering a wild camellia plant in the cracks of the bricks.
Early the next morning, the first five-star red flag was raised on Tiananmen Square
Amid the cheers, Shen Yanqiu stood at the end of the crowd. His left sleeve was empty, and his right hand was clutching a blood-stained pocket watch. The hands of the clock will always stop at 23:57 on September 30, 1949.
A child asked him why he was crying.
He looked at Lielie Hongqi and chuckled: "One of my... Old friends..."
The wind blew past his gray temples, and a new line of words was added to the back of the photo in his pocket watch:
"You see, this is our year of peace."
Intention: Every man is responsible for the rise and fall of the world.