> "The ears of rice are stained with blood, and the scholar holds a knife"
> Chen Shugen, a top student struggling in the mud of Guangnan, has the toughness of his Vietnam War grandfather in his bones, but he is dragged into the abyss by fate because of the humiliation of a bowl of rice in the cafeteria. What the upper bunk brother Huang Bida handed over was not friendship, but a key to the underground kingdom. From being stained with blood on campus to fighting for his life in the world, knowledge has become his sharpest knife, and conscience has been his heaviest shackles. When the Hongmen dragon flag unfolded in front of him, he stepped on the stairs piled with corpses, and behind him were the rice fields from which he could never return.
