The soldier fell to his knees. "Why? I am nothing to you."
Years later, when Gao Renshi died of a simple fever, no family came to mourn him. But at dawn, a line of silent people appeared at the cemetery gates. They were not rich. They were not powerful. They were the ones Gao had buried—their widows, their orphans, the soldiers he had fed, the abandoned women he had sheltered. tang dynasty good man
That night, the corrupt governor’s men arrived. They were hunting the deserter. They kicked down the door of Gao’s hut and found the soldier hiding beneath the altar where Gao kept his ancestor tablets. The soldier fell to his knees