"Into children?" asks Liu Mingyan. "You knew him before I did, then, in this phantom way. We met on Cang Qiong mountain when we were each fourteen." She shakes her head, remembering Luo Binghe then—back straight, shoulders narrow, each day bearing some new mark of the badly-kept secret of Shen Qingqiu's hatred. Constantly shadowed by a worried but powerless Ning Yingying. "By then he had already suffered loss and hardship, more than some bear in a lifetime. I have difficulty imagining him without it."