A grassroots underdog’s rise amid the tides of change, a test of human nature involving survival, betrayal, and redemption.
One summer day in 1997, a cry in the countryside of the Central Plains marked the beginning of Li Wei’s life of hardship.
He is the stubborn apprentice who says nothing even after burning his hand at the stove, the silent soldier who holds onto a lifeline with his teeth on the flood-control front lines, and the desperate gambler who keeps clutching a lottery ticket stub despite owing 400,000 yuan. From fleeing through the streets on a stormy night to a life-and-death gamble at a university-town courier station, every one of Li Wei’s scars tells the same story: an ordinary person’s so-called rise is nothing more than a last-ditch fight back after fate has beaten them down again and again. A lottery ticket changes his life? It is only the start of another round of slaughter.
When that rusty kitchen knife from the stormy night is drawn once more, Li Wei finally understands: the rules of this world have never been written by those who rise from the bottom. Open this book and you will see a father’s dignity pawned at a shop, a brother’s knife scar hidden beneath a tattoo, and the countless versions of ourselves clutching lottery tickets in the dead of night. Open this book and witness how an ordinary person turns a losing hand into a royal flush, wearing scars as medals, staking everything on despair, and carving a path through a sea of thorns.
