A Single Thought, Snow Covers the Ashes of Ignorance

Two Lives, Reversed Identities, A Battle Against Fate First Life: A puppet family head × a rebellious orphan girl Second Life: A fallen strategist × a regent’s female official Xie Jin hates Xiao Ceyuan. She hates him for the day he ordered her entire family executed, when his dark cloak brushed her frostbitten fingers. She hates him for making the hidden crossbows in the Mechanism Pavilion so carelessly removed when she stole the frontier defense plans for him. She hates him for smiling as he stopped a poisoned arrow at the execution ground, where they were to have their knees broken, then adding, as blood splashed across her skirt: “Now neither of us will leave a complete corpse... We’ll make a perfect pair of souls.” The night the oil jars exploded, the twin-fish jade pendant fused together, and the palace beams collapsed into the shape of the “Yao” hexagram. The Book of Changes says this hexagram is called “Before Completion”: the task remains unfinished, and the cycle never ends. She thought that was the end. Until she opened her eyes again. They met once more at a poetry gathering, but their identities had long since been reversed. Both reached for the twin-fish jade pendants tied with red cords at their waists. He called her “Lord Xiao,” and she addressed him as “Strategist Xie.” Someone else now occupied each seat, and people could change the rules. He told her, “This time, you take the route of life.” She replied, “This time, I’ll defend the gates of the nation.” But on the day the city burned he dragged his broken leg back toward it. She charged into the flames with her sword. They could not help wondering: was being reborn really just being reborn? Or were they trapped in a vast causal loop created by the twin-fish jade pendant, two souls trying to break their fate, one loving in the most extreme way and the other repaying that love in the most tragic way? At the instant the twin-fish jade pendant melted into a Taiji symbol, they finally admitted: Some fates were never about who owed whom.