If you knew that you were destined to suffer eight hardships and nine deaths when you came to this world, you would definitely choose to have never been born. If I knew that your fragile life would carry so much unbearable suffering, humiliation, and torture, then I would rather take your life with my own hands when you were fifteen years old, and spend a lifetime in prison to save you from all kinds of wanderings and endless sufferings in the future.
——I would like to dedicate this novel to my twin sister Yang Rong.