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Duling village (杜陵村) was a settlement which was home to a group of exquisite flower farms.[1] The livelihood of its villagers was based on the flower market, whose sheer scale at the peak of the Tang dynasty made it highly lucrative. The demand for the illustrious Duling flowers was further aggrandized by the Flower Banquet,[1] an annual contest for the most beautiful and magnificent flower procession.[2]

History[]

In preparation for the 754 flower festival, the chancellor Yang Guozhong hired a gang of thugs to form a competitive team on his behalf and coerce village into providing peonies for his signature wagon, "Shifting Spring Cage".[2] What followed was a flagrant robbery of the Duling gardens that culminated in the massacre of seventeen villagers.[3]

This atrocity provoked the fury of the Hidden Ones. One of their agents, the Great Desert Hidden One Li E, arrived in Chang'an on the day of the festival to avenge the slain farmers. He ambushed the last wagon of peonies that was on its way to rendezvous with the rest of its procession, killing all three henchmen in charge of transporting it.[2] The small cart's failure to arrive at the parade drew little suspicion from the team's boss since it was inconsequential for their presentation,[4] and he was then assassinated later that day by Li E at the Gazebo of Submerged Fragrance.[3]

News of Yang Guozhong's and his henchmens' deaths eventually reached Duling, but the villagers did not believe it until Li E himself visited them some time later, beginning a tradition of visiting every few years when he could. The villagers, thankful for what he had done, considered it their duty to aid others from his group. In the 820s, one of them showed up with a task, and Wei travelled to complete it.[5] After Wei's death, Roshan retrieved a small jade trinket carved in the shape of a peony from his body, saving it in the hopes of returning it to Duling and the people who cared about her companion.[6]

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