Imagine this.
Suppose you were a hard-luck mercenary.
You had grown up without parents, spent half your life killing and burning for money, and in the end met the utterly ordinary fate of all mercenaries: an ugly death.
Then, at precisely that moment, something suddenly went wrong with your head.
You suddenly felt that your life had no meaning or value.
You suddenly wanted to start doing good deeds.
And so began an endless torment...
Including, but not limited to, exploitative contracts, eighty-year installment loans, overtime, firefighting, persecution, taking the blame, office bullying from newcomers, being a tool, being a tool, and being the tool of tools.
It was foreseeable that if this continued, one day you would become the tool of the tool of the tool.
Just like an inherited curse of never being able to offend anyone, thus began the nesting dolls.
And by then, you would probably still be single...
Such was the life of a despised tool.
Whenever you jolted awake from a long night, you would open your phone, stare at the loan balance that had not gone down, light a cigarette mournfully, and begin to reflect:
—If this was the price of regaining your conscience, wasn't that conscience a little too expensive?
But hard times always came to an end.
You believed that firmly—as long as you kept going and never stopped, one day you would welcome a bright future.
Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river.
Once, you ignored me. Now, I was beyond your reach.
Leave the Huai family and you would have nowhere to stand... What? You were the Dragon King?!
One day, you would surely flash a carefree crooked smile, look down disdainfully at the Heavenly Gigolo trinket hanging from your thigh, and snort.
Clinging