Quick Wear Dream Qiqi

On the bluestone road of Gusu City, Xiao Jian and Xiao Yanzi jumped over the broken wall of the Fang family's old house.

His blue shirt fluttered in the wind, as light as a bamboo leaf. Little Swallow climbed up following his footsteps, but was always half a beat slower than him.

"Breathe in, and focus on your Dantian." Xiao Jian stood on the wall, the moonlight gilding his silhouette with a silver edge. "Imagine yourself as a feather, floating wherever the wind blows."

The little swallow was not convinced and jumped up suddenly, but fell into the pile of weeds under the wall with a "thump".

She touched her sore butt and looked up to see Xiao Jian spinning on the tiles. The bamboo leaf pattern on his clothes intertwined with the moonlight, like a night bird flapping its wings.

"Look, this is the introductory form of 'Treading Without a Trace on Snow.'" Xiao Jian tapped his toes, and several tiles fell, rearranging themselves into a butterfly shape beneath his feet. "Using the force of the opponent's opponent, and following the flow of the situation, is more important than brute force."

Xiaoyanzi suddenly remembered that when she was learning horse riding and archery in the Forbidden City, Yongqi always said that she was "using too much force."

She closed her eyes and imagined herself as Meng Qiqi's fluorescent butterfly, able to fly over the palace wall with a simple flap of her wings. When she opened her eyes again, she actually leaped lightly onto the top of the wall.

"Brother, I did it!" There was surprise in her voice, but she accidentally stepped on a tile and broke it.

Xiao Jian chuckled and took out a bamboo leaf dart from his sleeve: "Try to use this to gain leverage."

Ye Fei's dart immediately pierced the eaves of the opposite house. Xiaoyanzi stepped on the tail of the dart to gain leverage and jumped, landing steadily next to Xiao Jian.

The two sat side by side on the wall, looking at the Butterfly Teahouse in the distance.

Xiao Jian pointed at the starry sky: "Do you know why the highest level of Qinggong is called 'Chasing the Clouds and the Moon'? Because true freedom isn't about fighting the wind, but about becoming the wind."

Xiaoyanzi looked at her shadow overlapping with his, and suddenly remembered that rainy night twelve years ago, when he also ran on the roof with her on his back, avoiding the pursuit of soldiers.

She took out the butterfly whistle from her waist and blew a short tune - this was their new code word for brother and sister.

In the Zen room behind Hanshan Temple, Emperor Qianlong looked at the broken dart on Xiao Jian's waist and suddenly said, "The technique of this butterfly dart is very similar to the unique skills of the Jiangnan "Flying Butterfly School."

Xiao Jian raised his eyebrows: "Your Majesty is quite familiar with the martial arts world."

Qianlong pulled a bronze token from his sleeve. The front was engraved with "Four Seas Passage," and the back featured a dragon hidden in a cloud pattern. "Twenty years ago, while I was on an incognito tour of the south, I saved the life of the leader of the Feidie Sect. Before he died, he gave me this token, saying it would keep me safe while I roamed the martial arts world."

Yongqi took the token and looked at it carefully, and found that the dragon scales were the same pattern as the floor tiles in the palace.

Qianlong continued, "Like the imperial court, the Jianghu is full of swords and sabers on the surface, but underneath lies the human nature and sophistication of the world. This token is not a golden ticket to immunity from death, but a message to the world that I understand the 'rules'."

Xiao Jian touched the patina on the token and felt the warmth of time.

He suddenly remembered the rumors that the current emperor had listened to music in a brothel in Yangzhou and played chess with others in a teahouse in Jinan when he was young. It turned out that they were all true.

"Why give it to me?" He looked directly into Qianlong's eyes.

"Because your sister said," Qianlong's voice softened, "you should have a wider world than revenge."

Xiao Jian tightened his grip on the token, and the coolness of the bronze passed through his palm.

He remembered what Xiaoyanzi said in the dilapidated temple: "A true Jianghu shouldn't just be about blood feuds, it should also be about the fragrance of tea and moonlight."

----

At the beginning of the morning hour, the morning mist in Suzhou City had not yet dissipated.

Qing'er was walking in the backyard of the inn when she suddenly heard the sound of a bamboo flute coming from next door. The tune was the same "Quail Sky" that she had listened to in Hanshan Temple last night.

She went to find the sound and saw Xiao Jian leaning against a paulownia tree and playing the flute. The morning light passed through the old scar on his forehead, casting a spider-web-like shadow on the flute.

The flute sounds melodious, but there is a subtle sense of desolation hidden in the ending tone.

"What a wonderful piece of 'Quail Sky,'" Qing'er said softly, "but the last line, 'The waves at the riverbank are not so bad, but the road on earth is so difficult,' is too harsh."

Xiao Jian raised his eyes and saw a woman in a light blue skirt. The jade pendant hanging around her waist collided with Xiaoyanzi's butterfly whistle, making a crisp sound.

She had a white magnolia pinned to her temples, giving her a more wild and aura than the other concubines in the palace.

"Miss, do you also know about the flute?" He put down the flute and showed an interested look.

Qing'er picked up some bamboo leaves from the ground, rolled them into a flute, and played a southern folk tune: "In the palace, I could only play 'Qing Ping Le'; after leaving the palace, I realized there were so many wonderful folk songs."

Xiao Jian looked at the bamboo leaf flute at her fingertips and recalled the time when he taught his sister to sing songs by blowing grass stems when they were young.

He pulled a jade flute from his sleeve. Carved on the flute were the words "Sword Qi, Flute Heart." "This was given to me by an elder who said that people of the Jianghu should behave like this."

Qing'er took the jade flute and felt his warmth on her fingertips.

She suddenly remembered what Meng Qiqi (Xinrong) had said about the "butterfly effect" - this river and lake flute and the palace flute actually composed an unexpected chord in the morning mist.

----

The midday sun shone through the window lattices of the inn, casting grid-like shadows on Yongqi's manuscript of "Theory of Women's Economics".

He looked at the figures of Xiaoyanzi and Xiaojian chasing each other outside the window, and the pen in his hand drew deep ink marks on the word "freedom".

"Is the Fifth Prince worried?" Meng Qiqi's voice came from behind. She was wearing a newly made short skirt and an abacus for calculating the cost of spices hung around her waist.

Yongqi closed the manuscript and said, "Can a person both uphold responsibility and hold onto freedom?"

Meng Qiqi followed his gaze and saw Xiaoyanzi stepping on Xiao Jian's shoulders and jumping onto the eaves, her laughter falling like silver bells.

She remembered her struggle in the Tonggiya clan's ancestral hall, and the struggle in Yongqi's eyes when they divorced. She suddenly understood why he always looked at Xiaoyanzi with envy in his eyes.

“The red walls of the Forbidden City,” she whispered, “can confine the body, but not the heart. Just like this book of yours, one day it will fly out of the palace walls.”

Yongqi turned his head and saw the butterfly hairpin in her hair sparkling in the sunlight.

He thought of the letter Xiaoyanzi had left him. The last sentence was: "Yongqi, you look very beautiful wearing the imperial crown, but I like seeing you smile more."

Outside the window, Xiao Jian was teaching Xiao Yanzi how to carve words with a leaf dart, and the word "free" gradually appeared on the blue brick.

Yongqi touched the jade pendant around his waist. It was the "loyalty, filial piety, chastity and righteousness" pendant bestowed by Emperor Qianlong himself, but at this moment it felt as heavy as a thousand pounds.

----

At three quarters past the hour of You, Benjamin set up his easel and looked at the people gathered by Maple Bridge.

Qianlong sat on a stone bench, holding Xiao Jian's bamboo flute in his hand with a gentle look; Xiaoyanzi stood beside him, with the bandage Xiao Jian gave her wrapped around her fingertips, smiling heartily; Xiao Jian leaned against a maple tree, talking in a low voice with Qing'er, with the jade flute and the bamboo leaf flute placed side by side; Yongqi and Meng Qiqi stood a little further away, the former looking at Xiaoyanzi and the latter looking at the account book; Erkang and Ziwei sat at the bow of the boat, and Erkang was explaining Benjamin's painting supplies to Ziwei in English.

"This is the most wonderful combination I've ever seen," Benjamin muttered to himself, scraping out the mist and water vapor of Suzhou with his palette knife. "Emperor and assassin, princess and knight, East and West."

He first painted Qianlong's eyes, using ochre as the base and then mixing in a little ultramarine - that was the emperor's depth and the old man's kindness; Xiaoyanzi's smile was portrayed with lemon yellow and cinnabar, and his brushstrokes were as unrestrained as her personality; Xiao Jian's shadow was outlined with Prussian blue, but the edges were blended with warm brown, symbolizing his inner hatred and softness; Qing'er's folds were painted with light purple and silver gray, as if shrouded in a layer of palace mist, but ripples appeared when she looked at Xiao Jian.

When it came to painting Yongqi, Benjamin hesitated.

There was a heaviness of responsibility and a lightness of envy in his eyes. Benjamin decided to use rose red and iron gray to interweave and add a butterfly with spread wings to his cuffs - that was the embroidery that Xiaoyanzi gave him, and it also represented his unspoken feelings.

Finally, he painted a group of butterflies at the top of the picture, mixing the pigments with fluorescent powder so that they seemed as if they would flap their wings and fly out of the canvas at any time in the twilight.

Erkang came closer and saw that the shadows of everyone in the painting were intertwined to form a giant butterfly shape.

“It’s called ‘Breaking the Cocoon,’” Benjamin said in English, “because everyone is trying to break free from some kind of bondage and fly to a wider world.”

Erkang translated this to everyone. Xiaoyanzi looked at herself in the painting, suddenly grabbed Xiao Jian's hand, and pressed a painted handprint in the corner of the canvas.

Xiao Jian was stunned for a moment, then also pressed his own handprint. The two handprints overlapped, looking like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.