"Mother, is my hand too high?" The gold archer's ring inlaid with water-green glass was too large, wrapped halfway with silk thread just to fit snugly on the child's right thumb as he drew his bow.
"Weiyun, when shooting an arrow, if your mind is still preoccupied with the notion of 'self,' your aim will never be true." The woman behind him, her hair tied in a simple bun adorned only with a plain phoenix-head hairpin, smiled at the child. "Have you forgotten all that I taught you?" The child's face was full of stubborn defiance, unwilling to concede. He drew the specially made small bow to its full arc, and with a clear, crisp twang of the bowstring, the tiny arrow struck the target fifty paces away, landing just an inch from the bullseye. The court attendants nearby burst into cheers, filling the child with pride.
"Mother, look!" The child ran over, tugging at the hem of her robe. His youthful features already bore a striking resemblance to Emperor Xu's spirited expression, yet they retained an innocence and joy never seen on the emperor's face.
"Very well. When you hit the bullseye, I will give you a pony." A faint smile touched Haishi's lips as she stroked Weiyun's head with one hand while flipping through the newly arrived border reports with the other.
A small crimson flower drifted down and landed softly upon the neat, orderly lines of black ink. Its vibrant red, like a spark of fire, seemed for a moment to burn through the intricately decorated paper and brocade in her hands. Her gaze, too, sank into the tangled depths of memory, lost and directionless.
That year, in the seventh month, the Huku King, Duohan, conquered Juzi, finally unifying the vast northern deserts spanning seven thousand li. All the tribes hailed Duohan as "Bolahahan," which in the Huku language meant "King of the Black Mane." He established a royal capital named Ponggerani, meaning "City of Crimson Pomegranate Blossoms." His descendants ruled for nearly five hundred years, a period historians refer to as the Ponggerani Dynasty, with the thousand-petaled crimson pomegranate blossom as the royal emblem.
It was the summer of the ninth year of Jingheng. In the imperial capital, pomegranate blossoms blazed like fire, and the scorching wind swept mournfully through the city, scattering remnants of crimson under the clear blue sky.
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