Standoff

My name is Shen Yuan. Yuan, as in abyss. Before my mother died, she taught me only one word: survive. For that one word, I went from an orphan at the docks of Longkou Town to the king of Jiangzhou’s greatest business empire. I learned human nature inside out, mastered the rules, and fought my way through bloodshed. I thought that if I climbed high enough, no one would ever be able to bully me again. Then one day, standing atop the tallest tower I had built with my own hands, I realized I’d forgotten how to breathe. Then there was only one person left by my side: a simple-minded fool who never spoke. Until one day, that fool looked at me and said, “Brother, you’ve changed.” I spent twenty years climbing up, then two years falling back down. This isn’t a story about turning the tables. It’s a story about human nature. Greed, anger, delusion, love, hatred, resentment, good and evil: everything that can keep a person alive will eventually kill them. Before the gun went off, the last thing I thought of wasn’t whom I had killed or who had killed me. It was the sight of my mother waiting for me at the door, hoping I’d come home.