This chapter's epigraph comes from a conversation between a young woman and a man. The young woman tells the man that she has lost her memory by touching her pulse, and the man is shocked at the woman's forgetfulness. The old man tells the woman that he has lost his memory, too, by touching his pulse. The man wonders who the old man is, and wonders why the woman cannot remember who he is. He wonders why she has forgotten about her husband, who has been searching for her for years, and has even given birth to a son, but she cannot even remember where they are. He asks the woman if she is his old friend, and she tells him that they were both jiuxiao-held, and they were close friends. He tells the young man that he cannot tell the man about the existence of his son, because he is planning to kill him. He says that if he remembers everything, he will make the man pay for his rudeness. He promises that if the young woman remembers everything and discovers that she is not his friend, she will be made to pay for her rudeness today.