"The Zhao guest's tassels trail, his barbarian cap-strings long; the Wuu Hook gleams bright as frost and snow."
"A silver saddle shines on a white horse, rushing forth like a shooting star."
Li Chen hummed a stanza of "Song of the Chivalrous One" as he walked along the road across the Desolate, yet he himself did not feel much of that so‑called Jianghu knight‑errant flavor.
Many times—or perhaps it was simply that he walked too fast—he never really had the time to savor that so‑called Jianghu feeling.
In truth, when he was young, Li Chen had also yearned for those wandering heroes in the wuxia novels he secretly pulled down from his grandfathers' bookshelves; but now, as for that "ten steps to kill a man, a thousand miles without stopping" in "Song of the Chivalrous One," Li Chen instead no longer felt much stirred by it.
What moved him more was not the knight‑errant's dashing ease, but the knight‑errant's loneliness.
