of Yi-ya, and from the son of Yi-ya to Hsu Hsi-lin[1] and from Hsu Hsi-lin to the man they caught in the Wolf Village. Only last year when a prisoner was executed in the city, a man with tuberculosis dipped a roll in the victim's blood and ate it.[2]
"Now they want to eat me. I can well understand that you cannot stop them all by yourself. But why must you join their conspiracy? What will men who eat men be incapable of! If they can eat me, they can eat you and eat one another. All that is needed to bring about peace and goodwill to all is a desire to better oneself, to take one step in the right direction. The world may have always been what it is, but that does not mean that we should not try to make it better than it has been. You say it is impossible? Brother, I believe that you are capable of saying that. You said it was impossible the other day when the tenant asked for a reduction of rent!"
At first he only smiled coldly, but his eyes gradually became fierce and cruel, and when I laid bare his secret his whole face became blue. The crowd that had been standing outside the gate—including Chao Kuei-weng and his dog—had gradually edged their way in. The features of some of them could not be made out; they were as if covered with gauze; others were still blue-faced and tusked, smiling gloatingly. I recognized them to be of the same gang, all of them men who ate other men, though their opinions about it differed: some felt that it had always been so and
