Zhang Tie had thought he was dead. At least, when that hazy consciousness, like the flickering ember of a dying candle swaying in the wind, reappeared in his mind, Zhang Tie had thought he was already dead...
As that frail, wavering consciousness emerged in Zhang Tie's mind, his brain began functioning again like a steam engine restarting—slowly yet resolutely, cell by cell, regaining awareness. As his consciousness returned, the final scene in his mind before he had fallen unconscious slowly became vivid once more.
Moonlight, a mountain valley, a narrow path, a bamboo grove...
A woman in a red dress bathed in the bright moonlight, sitting atop a massive boulder beside the stream, green as a water buffalo. Holding an emerald jade flute, she played a lingering melody.
Seated on the bluestone, the woman possessed a graceful figure and skin whiter than snow. Her black hair cascaded like a waterfall. Like a fairy stepped out of a painting, she had her pair of jade feet bare, gently washing them in the stream.
If death was a dream, then Zhang Tie had wanted to die in such a poetic, picturesque dream, gazing upon that beautiful face which haunted his soul.
As long as he could watch that woman sit upon the bluestone, washing her feet and playing her flute in his dream, what did it matter if he could never wake again?
That final image in his mind rippled like water, then dissolved. An immense exhaustion and weakness swept over him. Zhang Tie felt as if his entire head had been brutally pressed into a mass of unsupported cotton. Darkness surrounded him, and his head kept sinking deeper and deeper into that cotton...
The sensation made Zhang Tie feel so wretched he wanted to vomit blood.
Yet that miserable feeling vanished