Prologue

Yuchen is an excellent killer. When he kills, he never has any distracting thoughts; and after he kills, he fears nothing at all.

But after he killed Yingxin, Yuchen began to think of her often.

It was as if Yingxin had become what the world called a ghost. She threaded her way into his dreams, broke into his mind, and occasionally even appeared in the moments he blinked, which made him lose his mind.

The further he traveled, the more he thought. Suddenly, he remembered a word that Yingxin had spoken to him before, but he had not understood it— Longing.

It was almost like Yingxin had turned into the raindrops within the clouds, the breeze by the lakes, and the hills between his eyebrows.

Yuchen was very confused. He didn’t know what on earth was wrong with him. When he and Yingxin were together, seeing her smile was common, and her chaos was ordinary. But after he had killed her, Yingxin’s silhouette appeared in his life out of his control, at every moment and in every aspect, unrelenting.

A while later, the road had gotten too long. Yingxin appeared too much, almost affecting him to continue walking. So whenever he thought of her, he would go to the side of the road, finding some shade of a tree to sit beneath. Then he would take Yingxin’s heart out of his arms, open up the layers upon layers of bundled cloth, gaze at her heart that was blackened like stone, and stare at it blankly.

This was the heart he had cut out after he had killed Yingxin. The heart he intended to take back to make into a medicine primer.

Yingxin’s heart was firm and black, not the slightest bit like her usual smiling appearance.

When Yingxin smiled…

Yuchen raised his head, watching the forest’s rustling pear blossoms fall. He thought: Yingxin’s smile should be just like this, like the spring breeze and snap of flowers, able to be caressed from the cheek into the heart. And it was in this trance that it seemed like he had returned to the day where he made a move on Yingxin…