Yearning Heartbroken Red

A king among the immortal herbs, the Yearning Heartbroken Red is a Divine Treasure of Heaven and Earth. To look at it is an ordinary white flower the size of a palm, like a leafless tree peony, its stalk joined to a pitch black stone of astonishing weight, a few blood-scarlet flecks on the petals. A story explains the color. A quiet young gardener loved his flowers so completely that his feeling moved the Heavenly Flower Immortal, who came down to marry him, until the heavens ordered her back, immortals and mortals being no match. Left alone, he watered the white peony in his garden with his tears until his heart's blood marked the petals. The flower chooses its master on those terms: only a lovesick person of undivided devotion can pluck it, holding the one they love in mind and spitting blood onto the petals, after which it never withers at that person's side.