The evening passed quickly, and even Li Hua managed to get out of her stupor for a moment to truly enjoy the festival. Her father kept his promise about the tanghulu, buying the sugar-glazed hawthorn fruits from an elderly vendor's wooden cart. The candied treats gleamed like red jewels in the light of paper lanterns, their crystallized coating crackling pleasantly as the family shared them.
They wandered through the village's main street, where red lanterns swayed gently between the thatched roofs. Her mother's clean coarse linen robes rustled as she guided Li Hao away from a merchant's display of spirit beast teeth, while Li Wei paused to admire a collection of cultivation scrolls laid out on a bamboo mat.
