Sick Guan Suo Raises a Great Uproar at Cuiping Mountain; Desperate Third Burns the Zhu Family Manor

There is a poem that says: The lessons left by the ancient sages warn again and again: do not indulge greed for wine, wealth, and beauty. Li Bai drowned in a river while drunk—an obvious warning; Lü Zhu caused her master’s death, and the principle is even clearer. Where now is the rich man of Shu who once owned a copper mountain? The heroes who contended for the realm have long since perished. Here I urge those who hold office to understand this well: do not labor all day and night for these few things. Now, at that time the neighbors seized Old Man Wang and went together to the Jizhou prefectural office to lodge a complaint. The prefect had just taken his seat in court. The group knelt and reported, “This old man was carrying a load of rice porridge and fell on the road, spilling the porridge everywhere. When we went up to look, two corpses were lying on the ground—one a monk, the other a temple mendicant. Neither had any clothes on. Beside the mendicant there was also a knife.” Old Man Wang wept and said, “I, an old man, make my living selling rice porridge. Every......