Lonely Shadow on the Cold River, Luo Wuxin

Luo Wuxin raised his teacup. "Brother Lin, that Timeless Poem you wrote that day—'At Huangkong Beach, I speak of terror; in Lingdingyang, I lament loneliness'—moved me deeply."

Lin Su smiled faintly. "Why were those two lines the ones that moved you?"

He had his doubts about Luo Wuxin's words. Every poem had its poetic eye, and the poetic eye of this poem was not those two lines, but rather: "Since ancient times, who among men has not died? Leave behind a loyal heart to shine upon the annals of history." Across the world, among all people, even ten thousand generations later, anyone mentioning this poem should have been most stirred by its final two lines, not by "At Huangkong Beach, I speak of terror; in Lingdingyang, I lament loneliness."

Even while writing it, Lin Su had hesitated over whether to alter Huangkong Beach and Lingdingyang. When Wen Tianxiang wrote this poem, there had been a special context behind it. Huangkong Beach and Lingdingyang were special names from another world, and forcing them in would have seemed out of tune. Yet this world also had Huangkong Beach and Lingdingyang, and history had likewise bestowed special meaning upon them, so he had left them unchanged and used them directly.

Unexpectedly, those were precisely the two lines Luo Wuxin felt most deeply about.

Why?

"Because I, too, was once a terrified traveler at Huangkong Beach, a lone walker upon Lingdingyang."

"You are from Great Jin?"

Luo Wuxin slowly raised his head and gazed northward. "If a person could choose their ancestral homeland, I certainly would not choose Great Jin. But one's ancestral homeland is not something one can choose."

Lin Su smiled lightly. "A person cannot choose their ancestral homeland, but there is no need to choose it either. Even if one's hometown