Paint Pot

In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, when Yun Wei woke up, there was a smell of blood in his mouth. Not his blood. He became the most disliked cross talk apprentice of Qingyun Club. When Eunuch Zhao pressed for debt, he used "listening to identify forgeries" to see through the bluff; when his senior brother rebelled, he used "not forgetting what he heard" to tear up the pretense in public. He thought that his survival depended on his ability, until his master set himself on fire in the theater, leaving him an empty box and half a black fingernail. When the Qing soldiers entered the pass, they were ordered to shave their heads. He went on stage to sing, praising the saints literally and keeping his heart secretly. In order to keep his apprenticeship, he signed the deed of sale with his own hands and burned all the deed papers in public - the paper was burned and the blood dripped into the soil. He had seen Mr. Huangge give him an official uniform before he starved to death, he had seen Yun Che being shot dead by his outcast after his rebellion, and he had seen Bachelor Qian freeze to death on the street after being surrendered to the Qing Dynasty. He spent his whole life organizing his notes from the Three Dynasties and hiding the truth in his plays. Before he died, he handed the wooden box to his son: "You don't have to sing, but you have to remember." Many years later, someone asked what the empty box contained. Yun Wei's son said: "It used to hold bones, but now it holds air. Because it is empty, it can hold new things."