In ancient times, a man from Linjiang (modern Qingjiang County, Jiangxi Province) went hunting and caught a young elk. Delighted, he brought it home to raise.
This man loved keeping dogs and had several of various sizes. When they saw their master bring home a small elk, they all stretched out their tongues, drooling with desire. The master grew furious, shouting at the dogs and driving them far away. He thought: if he could make the elk friends with the household dogs, they would stop bullying it and certainly not eat it.
Every day, he carried the fawn to mingle with his dogs, letting them play together but forbidding the dogs from bullying it. Dogs understand human nature, and after a while, they realized their master's intent was to protect the fawn. Though their mouths watered, fearing their master's reprimand, they could only swallow their saliva.
After some time, the young fawn, seeing how friendly these dogs were with it, began to treat them as its own companions. It would sometimes playfully nudge a dog with its head, other times roll around beside them in fun. The bond between it and the master's dogs grew warmer and more casual by the day.
Three years passed, and the young elk grew up, its courage growing bolder by the day. One day, it ventured out alone to play, spotting several dogs tussling on the road. Mistaking them for the friendly dogs at home, it bounded over to join their game.
Seeing these dogs, they were both angry and delighted—angry that this foolish elk would dare to join their pack uninvited, and delighted that its plump body promised a hearty meal.
So the pack swarmed in, one biting the head, another tearing at the legs, and within moments, the road was a mess of scattered remains—nothing left of the elk but its bones.
The deer never understood, right up until its death, how it had actually died.
Later, the idiom "unrepentant to the death" is used to describe extreme stubbornness.
Source: *Liu Hedong Collection*, "Three Admonitions"
Meaning of the Idiom: Later, the Chinese idiom "至死不悟" came to describe extreme stubbornness.