Hard to Live, Easy to Kill

Wang Qi vaguely remembered a line of poetry: “Behind vermilion gates, meat and wine go to waste; on the road, frozen bones lie dead.”

All Wang Qi wanted was to save up for a pair of dentures. His mother's teeth were in terrible shape.

Years of hard labor had left her unable to eat good fresh meat or fine grain. They could hardly afford tofu or eggs even a few times a year, and there was nothing to use to nourish her.

So his mother had barely any teeth left, and couldn't eat good fresh meat or fine grain anyway.

Wang Qi went to war to earn enough money to stay alive.

Once his mother had lost all her teeth, she'd die because she couldn't chew wild vegetables. They'd die if they couldn't pay the rent next year. They'd die if the drought lasted three months and they couldn't dig up food from the fields. They'd die when the old man came back, and they'd die if they couldn't beat the bandits.

So Wang Qi killed like a man who didn't care if he lived, all for the sake of living. With money, you could survive. You could earn money by suffering, and the people who suffered most in the world were those who fought in wars and risked their lives. So if you ate them, you got money.

Wang Qi had a poor memory, and his mind was always full of indistinct things, probably like a bowl of paste. Before he turned three, he was a child prodigy, able to do arithmetic, write poetry, and design ingenious mechanisms. It seemed there was nothing he couldn't do.

But just as other children suddenly became clever at three, he got hit on the head at three and started acting muddled and confused.

His father ran all over the place trying to protect his reputation, making himself hated by everyone and ruining his own good name.

His father begged everywhere to get help for him, pleading with anyone who would listen and asking the officials to point them toward a way to survive.

But on the fifteenth day of the twelfth lunar month, all Wang Qi could do was wrap his father in a straw mat and bury him.

Everyone called Wang Qi an idiot. He shouted in his sleep, muttered to himself all day, and cursed at one person after another. Then he'd get beaten for it, cursing all the while.