Silence Above the Ashes

As long as I can remember, I have been like Chen Ergou in the mud. My father was paralyzed on the kang, and my family was surrounded by walls. I was bullied, robbed of medicine money, had my head pressed into the snow, and was forced to kneel down. This was a daily routine. They said that I was a toothless dog who only deserved to be stepped on. I endured it till my bones. I didn't dare to resist, didn't dare to get close to the light, for fear of harming my only relative, and fear that I wouldn't even be able to keep a broken house. But after my brother's fingers were cut off and his dignity was crushed into mud, he realized that tolerance could not buy him a way out. There is no system, there is no boss coming from the sky, there is no overnight counterattack. The teeth have to be bitten out bit by bit by oneself; the road has to be stepped out step by step with blood. From moving scrap metal in shantytowns, to staying vigil at coal mines and witnessing bloodshed, to lying dormant as a casino accountant, surrounded by dead brothers, there are invisible people hiding in the dark. I don't want to dominate, I don't want to do evil, I just want to protect the people I want to protect, and live as a person who is not easy to mess with. In this world, when you climb up from the bottom, every step is like walking on the tip of a knife, and I will eventually grow my own fangs from the ashes.