Unheard Of

The sweet one is the knife wrapped in sugar; the rusty one is the uncontrollable murderous intention. Lu Xiaoxian's nose could smell poisons, lies, and the layers of people's hearts. This was fed by two lunatics on the mountain for eight years - one mixed sugar into his bowl, and the other pressed the red-hot iron on his back. When he came down the mountain, he only had a jade pendant left by his father, a golden turtle, and a sentence he made up to deceive the madman: live like a human being. But in the world of exiles, living on your knees is the rule; in the yamen, the son of an exile like him is born to be a chess piece. So he smelled from the Miasma Valley to the county government, and from the county government to the capital of God - poisonous rice, fake accounts, and a full chess game. He smelled it layer by layer. Everyone who plays chess is counting on him. He's counting too. But what he calculated was not how to win—how not to kneel.