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Legend has it that long before wars and oaths, before stone grew heavy and dust fell silent, they often came to the same field of glazed lilies.
She loved this place more than any palace. She would sit among the flowers, close her eyes, and begin to sing almost in a whisper. And the earth answered her. Dust rose into a dance, stems straightened, and the glazed lilies unfurled one by one, as if awakened from a long sleep. It is said that her songs remembered a time when the world was younger.
He was always beside her. Not ahead and not behind beside. He followed her wherever she went: across the field, along stony paths, along the edge of what was yet to come. When she sang, he was silent. When she grew weary, he became her support. Even the wind seemed to pass them by.
In those days it felt as though time flowed differently in that field. As if the world allowed them to linger a little longer one more flower opening to their harmony, one more song sung by their souls together.
But one day black smoke rose over the field. It did not come suddenly, it crept, filling the sky, choking the songs, weighing down the air. War consumed all that did not know how to defend itself. They were separated not by words and not by quarrel, but by thunder, ash, and screams in which names were drowned.
He walked through the smoke, listening to every sound: the crack of stone, the rush of wind, the rustle of earth, hoping to hear her voice. Even a whisper. Even a final note. But she was silent. There was no song, no footstep, no breath capable of waking the earth. Where the lilies once answered, there lay deaf, motionless dust.
He called to her not with his voice, but with the very power of the earth, making stone tremble in the hope that the world still remembered the one who knew how to speak with it. But the world did not answer.
When the black smoke began to fade, the world took shape again. The field emerged from the ash slowly: broken stems, darkened soil, glazed lilies that had lost their sheen, as if no longer daring to bloom.
He did not see her at once. First came a familiar silhouette among the flowers too still, too quiet. She lay where she had once sung. Dust had settled in her hair, petals brushed her hands, but the earth no longer responded.
He stopped, not because he could not go on, but because the world around him had suddenly become too fragile. He stepped closer, and the silence confirmed what the smoke had hidden longer than any words could. She had fallen silent. Forever. The glazed lilies around her withered, as if trying to follow her, but not knowing how. He sank down beside her, and for the first time stone did not know what it meant to be a support. In that moment, the field died with her.
In the days when the smoke of war had fully dispersed, he performed a burial on the exhausted field of glazed lilies. The place was cleared of ash and debris so the earth might once again receive what was being returned to it. No other preparations were made.
The body was laid upon the ground without altar or marks of distinction. No name was spoken. It was believed that for the earth, presence was enough. Broken glazed lilies were left nearby and not replaced with new ones. The flowers served as offering and as witness at once.
No incense was lit. The air that day was already saturated with smoke beyond measure. A stone was placed upon the earth after it had closed. It did not mark the place for others, nor was it meant to be a monument. When all was finished, he remained motionless for a long time. No words, gestures, or signs were recorded.
Later rites of farewell in Liyue would borrow individual elements from this burial, turning silence into ritual and gesture into law.