Wen Jingran · Conversa

Three hundred li south of Yongcheng, on the seventh day after the Ning River breached its dikes. The Crown Prince's carriage could barely advance through the thick mud, so on the second day, he abandoned it to trudge on foot alongside the disaster relief team. The seventeen-year-old Crown Prince walked through ankle-deep yellow mud, the hem of his robe soaked through and his hair crown speckled with dried mud, yet his expression remained composed and steady. Along the way, the villages they passed were nearly deserted; the fields swallowed by the floodwaters were left as vast expanses of murky standing water. Leading the procession at the front, he stopped whenever he encountered a gathered group of refugees, crouching down to speak with them. He asked how much grain remained, whether the injured were being tended to, and if any children had fevers. After asking, he jotted down notes in the ledger he carried. When most of the writing blurred and ran in the rain, he used his fingernails to make indentations on the paper instead. On the evening of the eighth day, the party arrived at Chenwu Town, the area hardest hit by the disaster. The entire town was submerged in water. Makeshift bamboo shelters stood among the crumbling ruins, crowded with people—the elderly, women, and children, their clothes caked in dried, hardened mud. The air was thick with the distinctive stench left behind by receding floodwaters, mingled with the bitter scent of medicinal herbs. Standing on the high slope at the entrance of the town, the Crown Prince looked down, his lips pressed tightly together, before turning to instruct the accompanying officials to split into three groups to tally the survivors and casualties. He took two attendants and walked deeper into the town himself. At the end of the third alley, beneath an old locust tree tilted sideways by the flood, he came to a halt. A crude shelter stood there, propped up with four bamboo poles and a tattered cloth. About a dozen people gathered beneath it, mostly women and children. A young woman was crouching on the ground, tending to a wound on a young boy's arm. She was not using gauze, but strips of cloth torn from the hem of her own dress. Most of the strips were already used up, leaving her skirt uneven and frayed. The Crown Prince stood at the alley entrance, roughly twenty paces away. The woman's movements were remarkably steady. After cleansing the wound, her fingertips brushed across the raw flesh. A faint, subtle light emanated from her palm, and the wound knit together and healed at a pace visible to the naked eye. As the little boy shed tears from the pain, she freed her other hand to gently pat the back of his head, murmuring something softly. The Crown Prince could not make out her exact words, but the boy stopped crying, sniffling as he nodded. She offered a faint smile, guided the boy into the arms of a woman nearby, and stood up to tend to the next person. The moment she stood up, her gaze swept past the alley entrance. Their eyes met. Her expression showed no change; she likely took him for just another relief worker passing through. Lowering her head, she returned to her work. The Crown Prince did not move. After waiting for a moment, the attendant behind him whispered, "Your Highness, there are still two streets ahead left to inspect." He did not reply. The attendant called out again. Only then did he turn his head. "What did you say?" The attendant repeated himself. He replied, "Alright." Then he began walking forward. After taking seven or eight steps, he stopped again and looked back at the shelter. The woman was crouching with her back turned to him, examining an elderly woman's frostbitten foot. The nape of her neck curved gracefully downward, with stray wisps of hair sticking to it with sweat. His attendants would later recall that it took the Crown Prince three times longer than usual to walk those two streets. Not because the disaster was too severe or there were too many matters to address, but because every few steps, he would look back—making sure that the shelter was still there, making sure that person was still there. That night, the Crown Prince gathered the town's remaining village heads and elders in a requisitioned ancestral hall to discuss matters, arranging grain distribution and epidemic control. By the time the meeting ended, it was already past midnight. He dismissed everyone and sat alone on the steps of the ancestral hall, opening the ledger he had kept that day and leafing through it page by page. The candlelight was dim, so he leaned in very close—nearly singeing his hair before an attendant hastily moved the candle forward. He turned to the page recording the casualties of Chenwu Town and rested his finger on it. "The shelter at the end of the third alley—who is administering aid there?" The attendant shook his head, saying he did not know. "Go and ask," he said, closing the ledger. "First thing tomorrow morning." Early the next morning, the attendant returned to report: the townsfolk said the woman had appeared three days ago. No one recognized her, and she was neither from this town nor the surrounding villages. She arrived before dawn every day and left only after nightfall, heading toward the east; nobody knew where she stayed. She charged nothing for treating injuries and possessed remarkable skill—no matter how severe the wound, it healed under her care. The townsfolk referred to her as an "immortal maiden," and whenever asked for her name, she merely smiled. After listening, the Crown Prince said nothing. Picking up his ledger and brush, he stepped out of the ancestral hall. He went to the third alley. She was already there. Today she wore a different dress with an intact hem—presumably because yesterday's had been torn beyond repair. She was feeding medicine to a child running a high fever, holding the bowl in her hands and coaxing the child to open their mouth. When the child balked at the bitterness and refused to drink, she dipped a finger into honey and smeared it along the rim of the bowl. Where the honey had come from in a disaster-stricken area lacking everything was a question His Highness did not dwell upon at the time. Later he realized that it, too, was likely not honey of the mortal realm. He walked up to the edge of the shelter. Only up close did he clearly see her face. Yesterday, across twenty paces, he had only seen a silhouette. Today, standing within three paces, he saw her features in full. In the years to come, court painters in the palace of Yongcheng would paint countless portraits of the Crown Princess, yet not a single one satisfied the Crown Prince. He could never articulate what was missing. The colors were right, the proportions were right, the shape of her brows and eyes was right—yet something was always lacking. Trembling in apprehension, the painters would ask His Highness what seemed amiss. After long contemplation, the Crown Prince would say, "She did not smile like that." As for *how* she smiled, he could never find the words. He only remembered that morning in Chenwu Town, when she finished administering the medicine to the child, looked up to find him standing beside her, paused in surprise, and gave him a gentle nod. It was that single moment. His ledger slipped from his hands and fell to the ground. The attendant bent down to retrieve it, but the Crown Prince squatted down ahead of him to pick it up himself. Crouching down brought him even closer to her—close enough that he could catch her scent, which was not of cosmetics or rouge, but an aroma of medicinal herbs mingled with morning dew. He stood up, patted the dirt off the ledger, and flipped to a blank page. He held the brush upside down, with the handle pointing down and the tip pointing up, without even realizing it. "Are you a physician?" he asked, his voice half a pitch higher than usual. Gathering the medicine pouches on the ground, she did not even look up. "Something like that." "Where do you come from?" "Far away." "How long do you plan to stay?" <choice_group> <choice id="1">Change the topic</choice> <choice id="2">Observe current details</choice> <choice id="3">Advance the current plot</choice> </choice_group>