"What... what is this?" Princess Changling looked at the object in Yuan Ya's hand, utterly baffled. "I have never seen it before!"
Astonishment appeared on Princess Changling's face, but Granny Ji beside her was indeed slightly startled. A look of great shock immediately rose in her eyes, only to be wiped away at once without a trace. Yet though that expression had flashed by, Xiao Hua had still seen it clearly.
Seeing that Princess Changling did not recognize the xun, Yuan Ya asked no more. He raised it to his lips, and the sorrowful tune he played every day slowly flowed from the xun, drifting into Princess Changling's ears and soaking even deeper into her heart. Gradually, two crystalline tears welled from her eyes and slid down her picturesque, snow-white cheeks.
When the tune ended, Yuan Ya carefully asked, "Has Your Highness the Princess heard this melody before?"
"Yuan Ya..." Princess Changling drew a deep breath and said, "I have never heard this tune."
A look of desolation immediately appeared on Yuan Ya's face, but Princess Changling continued, "Yet when you played it, it somehow felt familiar to me, as though I heard it every night in my dreams. How strange indeed!"
"Of course Your Highness the Princess finds it familiar!" Xiao Hua said with a smile. "Because you grew up listening to this tune!"
"How could that be?" Princess Changling's expression changed drastically. "I grew up in the Royal Palace from childhood. How could I have grown up listening to such a tune?"
Xiao Hua was not surprised. Yuan Ya had said that Butterfly Dance had been abducted when she was three years old. How could she possibly remember anything from before the age of three?
"Yuan Ya, tell them how it all happened," Xiao Hua said with a