Chapter 1

Chapter 1

At age five, you were crouching by the stream washing clothes.

The village madwoman suddenly sat down beside you and spoke venomous words.

She said:

“You think you’re any different from me? Beautiful or ugly, clever or stupid, young or old, as long as you’re a woman, you all end up the same.

“This is fate. You cannot resist it.”

Your mother drove her away, saying, “Don’t listen to her crazy talk.”

Actually, you thought her words made a lot of sense.

You were five, your mother twenty-five. Together you washed the entire family’s clothes by the stream, and after washing, you’d go home together to cook for your father and elder brother.

You really were the same.

The only difference was that you were smarter than your mother. At age five, you started scheming how to avoid repeating her fate.

You had heard many stories from the storyteller at the village entrance. Your favorites were Wu Zetian, who became emperor as a woman, and Sima Yi, who laid the groundwork for his descendants to usurp the throne.

You wanted to become someone like that.

However, whether becoming an official or emperor, one needed education. You felt you had to find a way to study.

Coincidentally, your elder brother was a good-for-nothing.

He found copying assignments troublesome. You opportunely appeared and copied it for him once, and from then on, he handed his homework to you.

Of course, you wouldn’t just do such mindless copying.

Every morning, you’d take a basket and tell your parents you were going to gather wild goods. After leaving home, you’d run to the teacher’s house and listen to lessons from outside the wall.

After the teacher finished class, you’d then shoulder your basket and head into the mountains, needing to bring something home anyway to avoid a beating.

This “stealing” of lessons lasted ten springs and autumns.

Over ten years, your brother went from being too lazy to copy poetry and books to too lazy to write essays. His assignments were basically ghostwritten by you.

After finishing chores each day, you’d have to find a place out of your parents’ sight to write essays, yet you didn’t feel tired.

Studying was good; it cleared your foggy mind.

You understood that unless the world fell into chaos, you’d have no chance at becoming an official or minister in this life.

But you had more mature calculations.

Over the years, when selling wild goods, you’d secretly keep one or two coins without handing them over. With twenty more coins, you’d have enough for two strings of cash-enough to buy an ordinary-looking little donkey as a mount and escape to another place.

Then, you’d have your own world.

But man proposes, heaven disposes. Today, just as you got home, before you could even put down your basket, you were called into the main room by your brother.

His eyes were fierce, like the village’s rabid dog.

He flung an essay you had ghostwritten into your face and cursed, “You’ve gotten bold, daring to tamper with my essays?”

Over the years, the essays you wrote for him were deeply liked by the teacher, receiving top marks more than once.

Because of that, the teacher wrote him a recommendation letter, giving him a chance to continue his studies under a great contemporary Confucian scholar.

But you couldn’t bear to see the teacher’s lifelong reputation ruined in an instant, so you wrote a few rambling, nonsensical essays to brush it off.

Naturally, the teacher called them out.

He kicked you down and beat you, cursing, “Who gave you the nerve to ruin my good fortune!”

He was only a year older but much taller and stronger than you.

You covered your head, curled up on the ground, trying to protect your vital areas, and pleaded, “Brother, spare my life! I can still write for you.”

But your brother had already gone mad with rage: “Arrogant wretch! I was just too lazy to write normally-do you really think I can’t write on my own?”

He grabbed a wooden club and struck your head with it. Instantly, blood flowed down.

You strained to open your eyes, but blood stuck them shut. No matter how you looked, you couldn’t see clearly.

And your brother’s anger hadn’t subsided; he kept punching and kicking you.

That was his future. As often written in stories, for their prospects, scholars could abandon parents, kill wives, let alone a sister.

Your consciousness grew dimmer. On the brink of death, your parents, who had been working in the fields, finally returned.

They opened the door to the main room and, seeing you drenched in blood, stood stunned.