Fei Lei City.
Outside the city.
The downpour was like pillars, as if the heavens had seen the evil of the human world and were pouring rain to cleanse it.
In a leisure pavilion.
A person sat upright, draped in black, their face covered by a cat-face mask, their body hunched, carving a wood carving in the pavilion with a carving knife.
The shockwaves of raindrops shattering on the ground merged together, the resultant gust of wind surged into the leisure pavilion, lifting the wood shavings slipping from the carving knife.
After a moment, the wood carving took shape.
It was neither a Buddha nor a deity.
Instead, it was the elegant and pure figure of a woman, wearing a gauzy dress, holding a fine sword with a python-shaped hilt, looking over her shoulder with a hint of heroism between her eyebrows.
The eyes beneath the cat-face mask rubbed against the coarse carving marks with complexity.
Forty years have flown by, and beauty has withered...
No one can be young again.
