No one knew how much time had passed. The pipa and chanting within the mist gradually fell silent, until someone among the mountains finally asked hesitantly, "It's time, isn't it?"
It was more than time—it had long since run over!
Only the lingering echoes still wound around the mountains, leaving everyone drunk on their spell. Now that cry shattered it, countless gazes stabbed over.
At midnight, rain poured down in torrents. The blue flowers along the outer wall of Bangkok Prison drooped beneath the rain, their petal edges glimmering with a faint, ghostly fluorescence. Ruan Qing sat in the corner of her cell, her fingertips rubbing the tattered cover of that poetry collection. Between its pages lay a long-dried specimen of a Wulong Mountain blue flower. She heard a rustling outside—not rain, but the scratch of a pen moving over paper.
The warden crouched on the wet concrete floor, using a charcoal stick to teach new prisoners, stroke by stroke, how to write their ancestors' names on a stone slab. Those names came from Burmese mountain villages, Laotian river valleys, and little settlements beside ancient Cambodian temples. Every syllable carried the breath of soil and rice ears. "Your father was called Tongchai," he said softly. "Your grandfather was called Panong. He was the last person in the village who could sing the Song of Guiding Lost Souls." The young prisoner copied the words with trembling hands, tears mingling with the rain.
Ruan Qing suddenly recited in a low voice, "I remember, therefore I am."
Her voice was not loud, yet it was like an electric current racing through the entire prison block. Every prisoner copying names lifted their head at once, their eyes clear as fresh snow settling on the ground. Even the guards froze, the stun batons in their