Chapter Two: The First Hard Bone in History

The clang of shackles and the jailer’s shout roused Chen Kan from his wandering thoughts.

Before he could even react, a man emerged from the prison cell’s dark corner.

In each hand, he carried a wooden basin.

Chen Kan froze. “There’s someone else in this cell?”

Then it struck him. This was the very culprit who had dragged him into prison: Fang Xiaoru.

The cell was too dim.

And Chen Kan had been absorbed in merging with the original owner’s memories, so he had not noticed him.

Fang Xiaoru wore prison garb and iron fetters on his feet. Beneath his chin hung a streak of gray beard, untrimmed and somewhat untidy from his confinement. His lean face made him look about forty or fifty.

“So this is the hardest man in history?”

Chen Kan studied him with curiosity.

Leaving aside whether he himself would be implicated, this was a man singular in all the five thousand years of Chinese history: the only one ever executed along with ten lineages.

A true one-of-a-kind.

Strange as it was, he looked again.

Fang Xiaoru walked straight past Chen Kan and set the wooden basins down just beyond the door crack.

A wooden ladle then reached in from outside.

It scooped up a lump of some unidentified paste and tipped it precisely into the basin.

When both basins were filled with the gruel, Fang Xiaoru carried one over and sat down cross-legged before Chen Kan.

He placed a basin in front of him and said, “Yuan Sheng, eat.”

Chen Kan did not get up. He merely lifted his eyelids and muttered inwardly, “Yuan Sheng. What an awful name…”

Seeing Chen Kan collapsed on the floor pretending to be dead, Fang Xiaoru did not mind.

He took up the gruel with his hands and began eating it in small bites.

Chen Kan had to admit that perhaps scholars truly possessed something called elegance.

The Fang Xiaoru before him, though trapped in prison and not even furnished with chopsticks, still ate with refined composure.

The gentle expression on his face gave no hint that he was consuming something that looked barely better than pig slop.

His stomach gave an ungrateful rumble.

Chen Kan had no choice but to sit up.

Life and death could wait; hunger could not.

No matter whether the food tasted good or bad, it would at least fill the belly.

Copying Fang Xiaoru’s manner, Chen Kan seized a lump of gruel, held his breath, shut his eyes, and shoved it into his mouth.

The next instant—

He retched.

What the hell is this?

Chen Kan had never in either of his lives eaten anything so vile.

Calling it unpalatable was no longer enough.

It was dirt and sand mixed with some nameless grain that scraped the throat raw.

A cruel fate indeed.

“This is good millet porridge. Ordinary folk may not even get to eat it during the New Year, and you, Yuan Sheng… sigh!”

Seeing Chen Kan spit the food everywhere, Fang Xiaoru’s face filled with pain.

With a sigh, he actually set down his basin, swept the millet Chen Kan had spat onto the ground into a pile with his hand, and without caring that it was covered in mud and saliva, put it into his own mouth.

“Don’t—” Chen Kan started to stop him.

But in the next moment, Fang Xiaoru set his face sternly and chided him, “Yuan Sheng, I have often warned you: with every bowl of rice and every bowl of gruel, one must remember how hard-won it is.

“More than that, the food that enters our mouths today is all taken from the people’s sweat and blood.

“If you will not eat it, so be it. How can you waste it so wantonly?”

“This…”

Chen Kan had wanted to retort, This stuff wouldn’t even be eaten by a dog if you fed it to one…

Yet for some reason, when he met Fang Xiaoru’s eyes, full of genuine distress, the words lodged in his throat and would not come out.

After a long moment, Chen Kan deflated in defeat. “Yes. The teacher’s lesson is just. This student knows his mistake.”

Only then did Fang Xiaoru nod in satisfaction.

With an expression that said the pupil could still be taught, he said, “Yuan Sheng, I know you were born into privilege and used to fine clothes and rich food from childhood.

“Now you suffer because of me, so it is only natural that you cannot get used to this millet porridge.

“But you must remember at all times:

“We scholars study not only books, but also the sorrows and hardships of the world’s people…”

Chen Kan: “?”

Damn, I deserve to die.

Fang Xiaoru’s spirit left Chen Kan momentarily stunned.

But...

I’m the one being dragged toward death by you, and you’re lecturing me about the people’s suffering?

Those few short sentences gave Chen Kan a clear understanding of Fang Xiaoru’s character.

This was a man who truly kept the common people in his heart.

Chen Kan was not such a man, but he admired those who were.

Admiration aside, though, something like this was truly impossible to swallow.

So he pushed his basin toward Fang Xiaoru and said, “Teacher, I am not hungry. Please, you eat it.”

Fang Xiaoru did not answer. He simply stared at Chen Kan.

After a moment, he shook his head and said, “Food is precious to begin with. More so for us master and student, now trapped in prison. We have only this one bowl of millet porridge each day to keep us alive. Even if you are not hungry, you must save it for when you are. Otherwise…”

Before Fang Xiaoru could finish, the prison door was suddenly kicked open.

Then came a burst of footsteps.

A burly, dark-faced young man of about twenty strode in with a squad of fully armed soldiers, instantly filling the cell to the brim.

Chen Kan and Fang Xiaoru turned at the same time.

A memory surfaced in Chen Kan’s mind.

Zhu Gaoxu, the second son of Zhu Di—the famed roast-meat prince of history.

Chen Kan frowned. Judging by this display, the visitor meant no good.

Zhu Gaoxu slowly came to a stop beside them, leaning his long blade on the ground.

He narrowed his eyes and smiled. “Eating, are we?”

Fang Xiaoru set down his basin, rose to his feet, and bowed to Zhu Gaoxu with meticulous formality.

“This official pays respects to Your Highness, the Prince of Gaoyang.”

Seeing Fang Xiaoru stand, Chen Kan had no choice but to give Zhu Gaoxu a reluctant bow as well.

“This commoner, Chen Kan, pays respects to Your Highness, the Prince of Gaoyang.”

“Official?”

Zhu Gaoxu raised a brow, but did not take issue with Fang Xiaoru’s self-address.

Instead, he looked at Chen Kan and said with a smile that was not quite a smile, “Chen Kan, you’re in prison again. You really are cursed with bad luck.”

“Heh.”

Chen Kan gave a smile that was not a smile in return and lowered his hands.

Come to think of it, the original owner and Zhu Gaoxu had once shared a hidden bond.

In the first year of Jianwen, when Emperor Jianwen began reducing the power of the vassal princes, he had summoned the three sons of the Prince of Yan, Zhu Di, to the capital to study.

Studying, they said—but in truth, it was a hostage arrangement.

When the three Zhu brothers arrived in the capital of Ying Tian, they could neither eat nor sleep properly, anxious as stray dogs with no home to return to.

Then, at that very moment, the original owner appeared before them like a comet.

Everything looks worse by comparison. At first, the Zhu brothers thought their own plight was already miserable enough.

But after the even more unfortunate Chen Kan appeared, their hearts suddenly found balance.

All of them were stray dogs, all of them living under another’s roof. So, pity and kinship growing between them, the four gradually formed a certain bond.