Quiet, Beautiful Days

Prologue: How can such a fine day, such beautiful scenery, be ruined? Whose courtyard holds such delightful pleasures? Fu Liangchen has always known that all the riotous blooms would only give way to ruined walls once more. She has never dared to be too happy, never dared to be too content. She knows that after the height of bliss lies an abyss, and she never wants to experience again that panic and pain of weightlessness, as if falling from a great height. Not even once. A long life amounts to no more than a few square yards. What is there to grieve, or rejoice over? A person comes and goes through this vast mortal world. What they cherish gradually slips away, while what they loathe can never be escaped. In the end, is life not just a great dream, with autumn's chill returning year after year? At twenty-eight, she had already lived out her whole life.