Late in the Hongshun reign came a famine year. A peck of rice sold for three thousand five hundred cash, people ate people, the common folk rose up, and no end of heroes bent their backs to it. By the first year of Yong’an, a pack of country farmers with the mud barely washed off — sabers at their hips, wives in tow, brats underfoot — stamped their feet into court boots and became the new nobility.
Come back to life a second time, Qi Qian’er looked at that rotten-headed man and thought: Chen Dasheng, this time I don’t hate you. I won’t lean on you, and I won’t pine for you either. Go live your life alone.
Chen Dasheng — all guts and honor — had a legend of a climb through the ranks. The world called him the finest gate-general under heaven. He kept the city gates, then the gate of a prince’s mansion, and at the last the gate of the imperial palace itself. The emperor prized him, and said that at the side of his own bed only Dasheng was allowed to sit his horse with saber drawn. He was the most upright, honest man alive; everyone envied him and every official at court went sour over it. But Chen Dasheng wasn’t happy in the least — because his wife had ranked the household like this: Granny, then the son, then the wife, then the old donkey, the yellow dog, the chicks, the ducklings, the old courtyard, the crook-necked jujube tree… and nowhere in it was him.
(Credit : PuffinFolio)
[Ebook][Eng Translation][MTL Eng Translation]