Nameless in the History Books

He had seen: Tortoise shells. Bronze inscriptions. Bamboo slips. Wooden tablets. Silk manuscripts. Paper. Woodblock printing. Movable type. Official gazettes. Newspapers. Telegraphs. Then came the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Oracle bone script was rediscovered. At first, he paid it no mind. Until one day, a scholar placed a rubbing before him. After more than two thousand years, he finally saw those familiar yet strange characters again. Then he read a divination inscription transcribed by an oracle bone scholar: Three hundred Qiang used for Ding. He froze. Three hundred. Suddenly, he remembered. The pit where he had first awakened in his first life. Those people. A man missing an ear. A boy who kept calling for his mother. An old man whose leg was festering, leaving him unable to walk. The person who had secretly helped him grind down the ropes, and was the first to be dragged away. For three thousand years, he had never forgotten them. But history preserved only six characters: Three hundred Qiang used for Ding.