Jade of Another World

Where does the soul find its home? A world apart in ancient and modern times.

Lin Ning's spirit hovered in front of the glass display case in the G Palace courtyard, her fingertips passing through the sign that read "Qing Dynasty Crystal Coffin". In the glass reflection, she was wearing a plain gauze dress from Dayu, but a peach blossom sachet she bought in Jinli, Chengdu in 2023 hung at her waist—it turns out that obsession really can transcend time and space and linger for a long time.

"This is the most unique and mysterious exhibit in the museum," the guide's voice came through the headset. "The body inside the coffin is well preserved, and tests have shown that it contains modern preservatives, a topic that historians are still debating..." Lin Ning looked at the face in the display case that resembled her own and suddenly smiled—Nangong Jin had finally used the anti-corrosion formula she taught him. Those notes he secretly wrote in the dead of night were hidden in a camphor wood box under the bed; it turned out he had found and seen them all.

Her soul drifted towards the red walls of the G Palace, where the peach blossoms in the corner were in full bloom. She suddenly remembered a spring day many years ago when Nangong Jin held her in the Imperial Garden, watching the snow and building a snowman, saying, "After I abdicate, I will accompany you to Shu to see the endless peach blossoms." At that time, she did not know that this promise would lead him to plant peach trees all over the Imperial Garden after her death, until all the palace servants learned to call her "Consort Ning" in the Shu dialect.

"Miss, watch out!" A modern tour guide grabbed a girl who was running around, but Lin Ning's soul was pierced by this call. She remembered that the embroiderer from Dayu had called her that way too, when she first pricked her finger while threading a needle. It turned out that pain from two different times could cause the same ripples in her heart.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony was lit at midnight, and the flashlights of patrolling security guards swept across the dragon throne. Lin Ning suddenly saw Nangong Jin's shadow reflected on the dragon pillar. He wore a bright yellow dragon robe, his white hair at the temples gleaming silver in the moonlight, and he still clutched the old, blood-stained handkerchief in his hand. "Ning'er, I have conquered the territory of Nanzhao, I have reshaped it, and now it has been molded into the shape of a peach blossom," his voice, tinged with the dust of a century, said, "Perhaps if you return to the modern world you speak of, can you see it there?"

Her soul traversed the Golden Water River, its surface reflecting the starry sky of 2025. Lin Ning finally dared to touch the jade pendant around her neck—the safety buckle she wore when she time-traveled, now emitting a faint glow. It wasn't that she couldn't return to the modern world; it was her obsession that prevented her from letting go of the emperor who planted peach blossoms for her in the Imperial Garden throughout all four seasons. She had been running away, unaware that the seeds of love had already been sown in her heart. Only at the very end did she realize that Xuan Yuanche was actually a silhouette of Nangong Jin. Everything, everything, was given to her by Nangong Jin. Perhaps this was just a long dream, so long that even with a broken heart, she didn't feel the pain.

"It's time to go." The guide at the Gate of Rebirth held a lantern, behind which modern streets and ancient palaces could be vaguely seen overlapping. Lin Ning took one last look at her crystal coffin and noticed that the peach petals at the bottom had been replaced with white phoenix peaches from Longquanyi, Chengdu—it must have been Nangong Jin fulfilling her unspoken wish in the spring of a hundred years later through a tomb raider's dream. Now she had to escape back!

The moment the soul stepped into the light, the alarm at G Palace suddenly sounded. When the security guards rushed into the exhibition hall, they saw the corpse in the crystal coffin with a smile on her lips, looking very happy. She was tightly clutching half a withered peach blossom in her palm, with the character "Ning" faintly engraved on the petal, and traces of undried blood still visible between the strokes.

The later "Q History Anecdotes" records that during the reign of Emperor X, someone saw the figure of an emperor wandering around the Hall of Supreme Harmony late at night, holding large bunches of peach blossoms in his arms, and muttering to himself, "Ning'er, this time it's my turn to chase after you."

According to the elderly people in Longquanyi, Chengdu, a hundred years ago there was a strange man wearing a dragon robe who would cry and carve words in the peach grove every year during the Qingming Festival. The character "Ning" on the stone tablet was always three points deeper than the others.