Heart-rending pain tore through Chen Youzai, and there was nowhere to dodge or hide. He wanted to run, but he could barely stand. Everything was gone. His last hope had collapsed. He would not survive ten days of this; if starvation did not kill him, the beatings would. Chen Youzai wanted to cry but had no tears left. A sweet, metallic taste rose in his throat, and he saw two pools of blood beneath him. As he fell, one thought filled him with bitter resentment: his eighteen-year-old life was going to end here, on this barren land.
“You want to die? It won’t be that easy!”
At some point, an unfamiliar voice sounded near Chen Youzai’s ear. He wanted to open his eyes and tell the speaker that he had never wanted to die, that he was terrified of death. But no matter how hard he tried, he could only make two weak sounds. He could not even lift his eyelids.
“When I decide it’s time for you to die, you won’t be able to keep living even if you want to…”
Has the Grim Reaper come? Or the King of Hell? Terror swallowed Chen Youzai. Blinding white light surrounded him, and his body seemed to grow lighter and lighter, as though he were about to float away. Is this it? Am I leaving? His heart sank into despair.
Someone pried his mouth open again, and warm liquid flowed over his tongue and down his throat. It must be Meng Po’s soup. Chen Youzai thought dazedly. Meng Po may be ruthless, but her soup actually tastes pretty good. Maybe this counts as being set free. With that, he gave in completely to despair.
Elio’s Notes: In Chinese folklore, Meng Po serves the dead a soup before reincarnation. Drinking it erases memories of one’s previous life. Chen Youzai mistakes the liquid being fed to him for Meng Po’s soup because he believes he has died and is already entering the afterlife.
When he woke again, Chen Youzai had somehow recovered some strength, though nothing about his surroundings had improved. Simply being alive thrilled him now. He clasped his hands and thanked Heaven for taking pity on him. Staying alive had become enough, because as long as he lived, there was still some chance of finding the silver coin.
Over the next few days, Chen Youzai finally learned what it meant to live in misery worse than death, and this was only the beginning. He had assumed this body somehow did not need food because he had not realized that someone had been feeding him broth. Faced with a foul-smelling lump of wild vegetables, he looked ready to cry.
Eventually, the pain in his stomach became unbearable. Chen Youzai pinched his nose and forced down a bite, only to double over and vomit a moment later. The sight of bile streaked with blood made him cry again. He did not think of himself as a coward, yet he seemed to have spent these past days doing nothing but crying. He simply had nowhere else to put the fear and pain.
There was hardly anything to eat and no water to drink. He hardly dared open his mouth, because in this dry place his tongue immediately stuck to the roof of it. The brutal labor was bad enough, but there were also sudden beatings. Chen Youzai had even begun to hate the body he occupied. No matter how badly it was beaten, it refused to stay damaged. If only it would break down, perhaps he could finally go numb; instead, after a few days the skin became smooth again, only for fresh wounds to be laid over it. The cycle felt like purgatory.
He was allowed only a few hours of sleep each day, yet the pain from wounds large and small kept him groaning through most of the night. During daylight, he did not even dare make a sound. By the time he finally began to doze in the deepest hours of the night, a stick or whip would wake him and the next day’s torment would begin again.