Ma Boyong, I’m learning from you. I’ll try to become a bestselling author.
“In the twenty-second year of Jian’an, pestilence swept through Runan, and refugees clung to the roads like ants. Twelve-year-old Deng Ai lay across an ox’s back, dipping his fingertips in grass juice to draw on its hide. He had drawn the route from the Runan pastures to Yingchuan thirty-seven times already. The ox’s hooves trampled a body covered by a straw mat. Beneath it, half of a carved stone tablet was exposed. That was the first time he saw the characters ‘Chen Shi,’ and the first key fate placed in his hands.”
