Moonlight flowed like water, and all was hushed. It should have been a fine night for sleeping. Yet on this night, with the bright moon shining down and a cool breeze brushing his bed, the young man lying on the bamboo cot could not sleep.
Even at daybreak, Xing Yan remained half asleep and half awake. In his daze, the soul-stirring events beside the green bamboo under last night's moon kept circling through his mind, as impossible to dispel as the faint fragrance lingering in the room. Only after the rooster had crowed three times and the dark window lattice began to brighten did the young man gradually emerge from his drunken stupor. Then, as dawn approached in the east, a thought long hidden in his heart quietly surfaced:
Though Lingyi, the divine maiden of the Four Rivers, was filled with affection for him, could he, Zhang Xingyan, truly indulge in that tenderness without restraint? After all, she was a noble princess of the Four Rivers Dragon Clan. He could never hope to reach so far above his station. Even setting everything else aside, the gulf between mortal and divine was as vast as that between earth and heaven, making a shared future all but impossible.
At this thought, the young man who had only just tasted love grew sorrowful:
...Why did I have to understand these things? And why, even after understanding them, could I still not help taking her into my arms?
A trace of bitterness thus seeped into those once-sweet memories. When daylight flooded the world outside the window and birds sang everywhere, the young man, who had slept poorly all night, began pondering his lifelong marriage prospects:
Since a future with the Dragon Clan's divine maiden was almost impossible, whose daughter would he eventually marry?
Thinking