Xiutu Meat - Chapter 1

I was only eleven that year.

I had never had enough to eat. Not once since I was born.

All the wealth in the city was in the home of the immortal’s wife, Lady Ruyi.

The streets were empty and desolate. Starving adults crept along the walls, and beggars held out their hands to every passerby.

Children stripped naked, with straw ropes tied around them, were hawked along the street.

We were so poor we couldn’t keep a single grain of rice at home.

Father secretly smeared dirt on my face and those of my little brothers and sisters, who were howling with hunger. He carried us out in baskets to the human market eighty li beyond the city to sell us.

“Just give them something to eat and they’re yours. No money. I don’t want money.”

Money wouldn’t stay with us anyway. People from Xiutu couldn’t keep money. Even a single copper coin would soon find its way into Lady Ruyi’s hands.

A brothel madam stopped. She looked at me, then at my little brother and sister. The price tempted her, but she wasn’t quite convinced.

“You’re from Xiutu, aren’t you?”

Father couldn’t lie. His face went red as he stammered, “W-well, we came from near the edge of the city over there.”

“Over there? So you are from Xiutu.”

Once you belonged to Xiutu, you belonged to it for life. And if you belonged to Xiutu, you were doomed to spend that life poor and sick.

Terrible bad luck.

No one would take us for free. Not even if we paid them.

Father was so hungry his voice shook. “Please, my lady. Have mercy.”

The madam giggled. “Mercy? From me? Do you know what I do for a living? You expect me to show those two tender little things mercy?”

“As long as they get to eat,” Father begged. “As long as they get a bite of meat, you can do whatever you like. At least their little lives won’t have been for nothing.”

After he had pleaded for ages, I tried to help. The two little ones didn’t count as people of Xiutu, I said. They hadn’t even been given names yet.

“Please, my lady. Have mercy.”

The words had barely left my mouth when an arrow shot through the madam’s neck. Hot blood from her throat drenched me.

The frightened crowd realized there were people from Xiutu among them and scattered. Someone stamped through the madam’s skull. Warm brains splashed over my foot.

Anyone who dared covet Lady Ruyi’s wealth had to die.

It had been that way since Father was little.

Xiutu had once been called Mercy City.

Twenty years ago, the Immortal Lord, who had descended to the mortal world, couldn’t bear to see his beloved wife heartbroken and suffering there alone.

So he gave her all the city’s good fortune in wealth.

That day, radiant clouds filled the sky. The people knelt in delighted worship.

This frontier city had always been prey to raiders and bandits.

Now that a real immortal had emerged from among them, surely peace was within reach. The shrine they had built for him in anticipation already stood in the center of the city.

Ruyi, young and beautiful, clutched the hem of his robe with tears in her eyes. “Husband, have you really forgotten your vows? You said you would look after me and love me all my life. Have you forgotten the love we shared?”

“I hold an office in heaven,” he said. “I must sever my worldly attachments. All that has passed is as dead as yesterday. But you were my wife, and you have rendered a service by attending an immortal. Naturally, I will not let you suffer.”

Then he looked at the people. “Since you worship me, I will grant your first wish as well.”

And sure enough, for twenty years, no bandit or raider came to Xiutu.

Hilarious. All the wealth in the city went straight to Ruyi.

Everyone else was so desperately poor there was nothing left for bandits to steal.

But poverty wouldn’t kill us. We could starve until we were nothing but skin and bones, our hips jutting out, and still not die. Our allotted years in the Book of Life and Death hadn’t run out.

Father had grown up in that poverty.

But he still remembered being little, when he had eaten white flour. Eaten meat.

He told us about it over and over.

“The Immortal Lord is merciful. He only did it to repay Lady Ruyi for feeding him back then. He said he’d return in twenty years. When he does, we’ll… we’ll be all right.”

Twenty years later, he really did return.

But this time, Lady Ruyi was ill.

She had spent so many years in pampered luxury that an early spring shower among the apricot blossoms had made her desperately sick.

She lay at the Immortal Lord’s feet, weeping prettily and clutching his robe.

“Husband, have you forgotten how I cared for you when you were ill? I never even stopped to change my clothes. Have you forgotten how hard I worked at home, how I never rested even when I was sick? Now you’ve gone, what am I supposed to do all alone?”

Right. Apparently the more than three hundred servants and maids in her household weren’t people.

The representative the citizens had chosen knelt before him. Before the man could say a word, the Immortal Lord swept his hand and gave Ruyi everyone’s health as well.

From then on, no matter how she abused her body, no matter how she gorged herself, she would never be the one who suffered.

She would never be the one who fell ill.

Whenever she felt unwell, she simply picked someone in the city.

As casually as pointing to a dog. Or a chicken waiting to be slaughtered.

And a dog or a chicken would bear it all for her.

Last time, it had been me.