Xuan'er died.
She died on a rainy night.
In the final moments of Feng Gu's life, the last of the many fragments of memory flashing through his mind was that rainy night.
He would never forget that rain. It was a gentle drizzle, yet to him, it was a raging storm. In his eyes, countless bolts of violet-red lightning had torn through the sky that night, striking his heart and shattering it.
He held Xuan'er's body and wept all night, without a moment of sleep. By the next morning, his entire body was weak, and his eyes could shed only bloody tears, with not a single ordinary tear left.
From then on, he never shed another tear.
He still remembered that dawn. Before the sky had fully brightened, a figure suddenly appeared in his courtyard. The man wore black robes and leaned against the jujube tree, less than three meters tall, that Feng Gu had planted himself when he first arrived.
"Do you want to?" Leaning there without moving, the man asked in a cold voice.
Feng Gu thought he was hallucinating and did not answer at first. Only after the man repeated his question did he ask, "Want what?"
"Bring the person you cherish back to life. If you want to."
At those words, the dazed Feng Gu suddenly came alive. He rushed up to the man in a few quick strides and asked, his voice rising to an excited shriek, "You have a way?"
Several seconds passed without an answer, and the light in his eyes dimmed again. He murmured to himself, "Forget it. This is a fantasy. How could the dead come back to life? I've actually forgotten even the most basic truth about life and death. How pathetic..." He turned to leave, his retreating figure like