(This is the second half of Volume 5 of another novel: Belief. The first half is Soul Adrift, and the middle volume is The Human Heart. The subtitle is: Silent Words, Hidden in the Mortal World. Updates are irregular, and the finished work will be about 200,000 words. I'm a beginner, and the theme is hunger and good versus evil, told in first person. Please forgive me if the character writing isn't great.
Also, I have no idea why The Starving Wretches: A Shared Fate has anything to do with my book. One takes place after the shared-fate ending, while mine starts at the beginning. They're completely unrelated. I even went and read a few chapters and couldn't find any similarities. The story of the protagonist, Yi, is my original work. I spent two whole months developing it, and I don't think my story plagiarizes anyone, because I hate plagiarists more than anything. And yet you say mine is too similar? What a ridiculous review process!)
In the year 331 of the Yanxia calendar, there was a popular song called The Ballad of the Starving Wretches, widely recited by all:
The Ballad of the Starving Wretches
The nation's lifeblood dwindles, the dragon's aura spent; Heaven shows no mercy, and year upon year brings calamity.
Yellow dust rises, cities lie empty; grass and trees wither, crumbling at a touch.
Locusts devour every scrap of grain; people starve to death, while officials enter squalid homes and ten thousand households mourn.
Wolves and tigers devour people, yet never grow thin; soldiers and bandits rob them, yet never grow poor.
The old and sick are buried in plain white clothes; parents, hearts torn apart, sell their children.
The splendor of the past fades like smoke; now the world is a living hell.
The honored officials give no thought to the people's plight; starving corpses cover the earth, and a hundred ghosts roam.
Withered grass has no roots, trees no bark; in desperation, women and children may trade their bodies for food.
How can the walking dead and starving ghosts be willing to die? A hundred evils offer no salvation; no one can survive.
The common people, numb, wait for life or death; beauties still sing and dance before the palace.
No one asks after the land of wine and meat; outside the city, rotting corpses turn to bones.
The old emperor understands nothing of the people's suffering; the karmic burden of his evil deeds weighs ten thousand jun.
Looking back across hundreds of years of human history, the lowly people ask only for half a full belly.
Have you not seen the good man take up blade and sword, weeping as he sets out on his fated path without regret?
I feel that Sui in the book is still a bit miserable, but is what Liang Shisan said true? Sui didn't eat his brother and mother?