Grass and Trees Sometimes

Plants and trees have their time, and so do people. Plants and trees have their own seasons, and people also have their own seasons. When Shen Heng was six years old, her mother held her in her arms, said half a sentence in her ear, and then closed her eyes. Eighteen years later, she entered a garden in the capital wearing the sapphire bracelet left by her mother. The inner ring of the bracelet was engraved with the word "cicada". She had worn it for eighteen years and had no idea what it meant. The garden was called Qionglin Garden, and there lived talented women selected from various places, studying medicine, embroidery, singing opera, and composing poetry. But Shen Heng soon discovered three strange things: on the fifteenth day of every month, the garden owner would give a bowl of soup, and those who drank it would not remember anything the next day; the last color of the embroiderer's thirty-six-color silk thread was a relic of her mother; the man on the top of the tower who had not spoken for ten years had been holding something in his hand and never let go. Shen Heng didn't want to check this. She just wanted to find the half of her mother's unfinished sentence. But the more she searched, the more she discovered that there were traces of the same person in broken porcelain, wood chips, and broken threads. Following those traces, she dug to the bottom of the well of Hupao Spring and found an answer she had not expected: her mother did not die of illness, but escaped from the garden. Someone blocked the knife for her back then, and that person is still alive now, waiting at the bottom of the well for thirteen years, waiting for someone to replace her. Shen Heng finally understood what his mother had not finished saying. She could choose to walk on and finish the unfinished journey for her mother; or she could turn around and go back to Cao Mu Zhai, pretending not to see anything. But she chose the third path - not to walk for her mother, nor to escape for herself. She only wanted to know one thing: who put the bracelet on her wrist for her.