Ma Zhaodong was detained in the holding center.
To Ma Zhaodong, everything here was unfamiliar.
He was locked in a room with eleven others. Though he was a murderer, he did not rank for much here at all. Madmen awaiting sentencing, legal hustlers loudly protesting their innocence, addicts in the throes of withdrawal, gang members taking the fall for others, ethnic minorities forming cliques, and babbling lunatics—every single one of them made him feel they were not to be provoked.
The most unprovokable of all were the guards.
These white guards were fat-headed and potbellied, sleek with grease, their eyes glowing green with deep mockery and greed. Every last one had a huge belly, like evil ghosts stuffed full of meat-filled buns.
On the second day of his detention, a white guard swung his baton and hammered the iron bars.
Clang! Clang! Clang! The sound was loud and piercing.
"Get to work, you dumbfucks!"
The prisoners filed out one after another, following the cell boss toward their workstations.
Kneading rubber clay, winding coils, or peeling garlic—simple but highly repetitive work that ordinary people did not want to do. At the sight of those stations, many faces showed a complicated mixture of bone-deep fear, resistance, and helpless obedience.
Ma Zhaodong did not quite understand. How tiring could peeling garlic be?
But he quickly discovered where the difficulty lay.
Thud!
A rubber roller smashed viciously into his backside. Agonizing pain and humiliation spread through his body like a reflex. His face immediately reddened, and he could not stop himself from crying out.
"Work faster! Quit dragging your feet!"
The guard's voice was like a demon's roar. Ma Zhaodong endured it without talking back or resisting, obediently quickening his garlic-peeling. Beside him, an old man in his sixties was also peeling garlic in