Douqi Elegy

In the 13th year of Jian'an, 13-year-old Cao Chong became famous in one fell swoop when he used a boat as an elephant in the court. His father, Cao Cao, praised him in public as "a very human being" and said to him in private: "Among all the disciples, you are the most like me." This compliment pushed him into the center of the light - and into the depths of the shadow of his brother Cao Pi. The novel reviews the last dozens of days of Cao Chong's life in the first person. After weighing the elephant, a "wind cold" trapped him on the bed. He drank two bowls of medicine every day, and there was a lingering bitterness on the back of his tongue. During his illness, he discovered that there was gray powder precipitating at the bottom of the bowl - it was not medicine dregs, it was there every day, a thin layer. He quietly scraped off the powder, which was smooth, odorless and insoluble. At the same time, he observed everyone around him: the waiter didn't cough, the imperial doctor didn't ask about his condition, the lights in the second brother's courtyard stayed on every night until dawn, and there was always a crease on his sleeves. A chain emerged: someone had put something in his medicine bowl. And he made a choice not to expose it. The Battle of Chibi is imminent, and there must be no fire in the backyard. One man's life was put on the same scale as the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. He put himself into the right tray, and the scale stopped. The novel uses an extremely restrained first-person narration, weaving a dense web of sensory details, memory flashbacks and silent observations on the hospital bed. Cao Chong was not "poisoned to death", but "decided to die". The bean sprouts in the stove were burned to ashes, not a single bean was cooked, but it was bright.