In the year of severe famine, Mother took me to Prince Zhong’s Mansion, a place so distantly related it could hardly be called kin, to seek charity.
We came back with eighty taels of silver and a cart of grain, which we shared with the villagers.
In exchange, the whole village was abuzz with rumors.
The villagers gossiped that she had traded her chastity for grain. After my father divorced her, she hanged herself with a hemp rope, swaying there with her eyes open.
Later, after Prince Zhong’s Mansion fell, the Little Commandery Princess from the mansion, who had once given me a Golden Phoenix, was kidnapped and sold into the brothels.
I pretended to redeem her, then robbed her of her last few pieces of silver.
People-aren’t they all like that?