I Stand Among Mortals, Looking Down on the Gods of Heaven

“Tell me: if a pack of wolves surrounds a house, and inside there are ten starving people and a pot of rice, should you divide the rice equally among them, leaving everyone hungry and waiting to be devoured by the wolves, or give it only to the strong so they can break through and survive?” Si Xixi returned and sat quietly beside Feng Fan. Her face was haggard, her eyes vacant. Set against the pale light on the horizon, she looked especially forlorn. “Alas.” In the end, Feng Fan’s heart softened. His gaze grew profound, his voice weathered. “Warden, we have no right to judge the past by the standards of the present.” “When all is said and done, those ten people simply weren’t strong enough!” Feng Fan seemed to be speaking to Si Xixi, or perhaps to himself. “If those ten people had been strong enough, if even one of them had been strong enough to sweep aside the pack of wolves, would there have been any question of being devoured?” “But...” A glimmer appeared in Si Xixi’s despairing, beautiful eyes. Her voice trembling, she asked, “What if it wasn’t ten people, but hundreds of millions...?”