Snow Calls Huainan
The long sighs of the funeral service echoed from the light blue stream.
Amidst the fragrant and beautiful angelica grove, blood, diluted by the rosy mist, trickled down in streams.
Under the dark sky and earth, a lost man, clutching a bottle of wine, tremblingly drank it all in one gulp.
Heaven and earth. Where are heaven and earth? he asked.
Dreamside
If one falls asleep with compassion, the Buddha will deliver people from a brief period of darkness and bring them a glorious and enlightened future.
But one cannot abandon one's ex. The departed soul sang in his ear,
A person with no past relationships is a monster.
A monster without any bonds.
What would a reckless monster do?
We'll see it soon.
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"name."
"Huai Xiankun".
He sat in that dark room for four days without sleep.
"Is it true that someone has reported you for colluding with the Japanese?"
He slowly turned his bloodshot eyes, the pain of thirst burning in his body like a venomous insect, and the clumps of hair stuck to his forehead, but he could no longer feel them.
"Is it true?" the person on the other end asked again.
What to do? Should he try to argue? His muddled mind was still thinking, but his body felt like it was asleep.
Lying on the edge of death, he remembered the last time he met Yiling in the hall that day. She said, "Brother, let's not work for the Japanese anymore, okay?"
He remembered his sister, and the complex expression on her innocent face, a mixture of smiles and sorrow. Even after experiencing life's ups and downs, she still retained that purity and sweetness; perhaps she was born that way.
She wanted him to turn back, she so earnestly wanted him to turn back, but he could no longer turn back.
Once a person makes a mistake, there is no chance for redemption. A monster who abandons his ex has torn apart justice and truth; a broken mirror can never be mended.
He chuckled softly, his weak tone making it sound like a groan.
"Huai Xiankun, I'll ask you one more time: is it true that you colluded with the Japanese?"
Atonement was too painful, and he felt he could no longer endure such torment.
Then we must face death, right? But, death?
Huai Xiankun never imagined that after a lifetime of being a shrewd businessman, calculating and plotting, he would still be scheming about life and death on his deathbed.
Should I die? Should I go and die?
If I hadn't died, would I still have been able to turn the tide?
Such is the pathetic state of a businessman.
However, this world is full of lucky fools, and occasionally needs a shrewd idiot who will trade with monsters and a lifeless, obsessive madman to add some color.
A world that's all shades of color or black and white feels too dry.
Life needs style, and death is inseparable from value.
A person's life is worth a few taels of gold, but their death is worth a lot of money.
The reality is that there's no time to count the first time someone dies, and once someone dies, there's no chance to start over.
As his revolving lantern began to turn, he suddenly remembered that seventeen years ago, in his father's mansion, his father had seven concubines.
The fourth one was a strange woman who looked like a witch.
She wore no makeup, only a loose, grayish-purple robe, and sang day after day in that lonely, empty house. It is said that she was a woman from Huainan.
Her singing voice was beautiful. After hearing her sing through the screen, Huai Qiumin became infatuated with her and married her within a few months.
At that moment, countless red paper flowers swirled down, lifting the beautiful song high into the air. Her face was as delicate as a peach blossom, her lips slightly pursed, a mixture of sweetness and sorrow in her expression.
Therefore, joy and sorrow are always mixed.
Sima Qian lamented in the Records of the Grand Historian that those who rely on their beauty to please others will find their favor waning as their beauty fades.
Then one day, he heard the sound of that song fall to the ground. Like the shadow of a crack in the fabric of an era, like a porcelain vase shattering and splashing on the ground with a crisp, clanging sound.
Looking at a sweet face for too long loses its charm. Even the most beautiful melody becomes tiresome after a while.
So he had a fifth, a sixth, and a seventh wife.
Perhaps he was unable to marry his eighth wife because he died.
He looked at the woman, her lips pale and her face withered. Her thin, almost unrecognizable body floated with that swaying song, like a kite being released into the sky. She ran and ran, dragging that sound along, until she was exhausted, like a parched mare taking her last breath as she crossed the sand.
That day, she saw him through the crack in the window.
"Come in, young master, I'll sing you a song," she said.
She sang a song, a satisfied smile on her lips.
As he sang, he suddenly noticed an astonishing change in her.
Her withered body melted in the thin light streaming in through the cracks, then reformed into a soft shell.
That body became voluptuous and powerful, her lips were full and red, and her white teeth sang slowly and resolutely.
Then he heard her sing clearly.
"The snow calls for the green grass of Huainan," she sang.
She asked him, "Do you know what death feels like?"
She is a woman who has abandoned her ex; she has abandoned her life, her hometown, and her old flame, just like he is now.
A person went to his death with an empty past, but ended up unable to die.
Born into this world, man has nothing, so he begins to desperately search for his own path. One day, standing on the edge of death, God said,
Let me see your past, child.
But he couldn't see anything.
Looking around, only the lingering snow of Huainan, now fallen, calls out to the still-naive hopes of childhood amidst its howling.
Then, life flowed into a cycle that repeated itself.
That's just a bunch of silly, rambling talk, one person finishes singing while another takes the stage.
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