Hua Gang looked at his mortal enemy before him. The man had his arm around Hua Gang's daughter and was holding his grandson and granddaughter by the hand, grinning smugly at him.
That was more like it. That was real.
Though Hua Gang's heart brimmed with rage, he felt a sense of reality and exhilaration.
Reality was cruel.
Those wish-fulfillment stories—Long Aotian, Immortal Sovereigns, War Gods, Door-to-Door Son-in-Laws returning home to slap faces—were all too fake, too unreasonable.
In reality, even the most formidable people, those whose lives went most smoothly and whose achievements stood highest, still had to bow helplessly before old age and illness in the end.
Take Qi Huan Gong, one of the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn period. He commanded the realm, upheld the king, drove back the barbarians, and possessed boundless prestige.
Yet how many knew that when he grew old and fell ill, his favored ministers used a high wall to isolate him, leaving him to starve to death in his bed?
Or take those modern-day tycoons who had achieved fame and success. When old age and illness struck, their children fought among themselves. Countless of them were powerless as their families tore each other apart over the inheritance.
"Do you think you've won?" he asked his enemy.
"Did I lose, then? Your property is mine, your daughter is mine, everything you have is mine!" his enemy howled with laughter.
"Is that so? How much longer can you enjoy yourself? You drink and whore yourself senseless every day; your internal organs were ruined long ago. I'm forty-eight this year, and you're twenty-nine. I'm confident I'll outlive you." Hua Gang spoke calmly.
His enemy froze.
Even he, as the script's protagonist, found this plot suffocating. Yet the actor playing the part could actually