495: Chapter 495 No one will pave the way for you

Inside the Qingbei campus.

The water of Weiming Lake was pitch black, and the wind blowing from the opposite bank carried the chill of late autumn.

Dan Yi sat alone on that rock by the lake.

The rock was hard and cold, and the chill crept up through his trousers.

In the past, at a time like this, he would have hunched his shoulders and hidden himself inside his coat.

The winters in Mo City were too long; he had endured that kind of cold—the kind that drills into your bones as soon as the wind blows—for over a decade, and he had long been accustomed to curling himself into a ball.

But tonight, he didn't shrink away.

Jian Shen's few lines of commentary played over and over in his mind.

"Do not treat loneliness as an exhibition hall for others to visit and shed tears over. Loneliness is your coordinate. It measures the distance between you and the world."

The streetlights by the lake cast the shadows of trees into the water, shattering them into a patch of shimmering light.

Dan Yi lifted his head and looked not far away.

A couple walked by side-by-side; the girl was laughing, her voice very soft.

Further away, a boy holding books walked with his head down, moving quickly as if rushing back to his dormitory.

Two elderly people sat in the lake pavilion; neither spoke, just watching the water.

In the past, when he looked at these people, only one thought would cycle through his mind.

"They belong together; I do not."

That layer of glass that separated him from the outside had never shattered from childhood to adulthood.

But at this moment, he suddenly changed his perspective.

He was no longer obsessed with whether he could cross that layer of glass.

He just watched.

He watched the curve of the girl's eyes when she laughed, the knuckles of the boy clutching his books, and the silence between the two elderly people that required no words.

He was measuring.

From the rock he sat on, to the couple, to the person in a rush, to the silence in the lake pavilion.

Every distance, he saw clearly.

It turned out that standing on the boundary actually allowed one to see the light and dark within the crowd more completely.

In those gray-green eyes, the confusion that had entangled him for many years receded bit by bit.

He fished his phone out of his pocket and created a new note.

His fingertips tapped on the screen a few times.

"The people by the lake, none are like isolated islands. Yet the sound of the water between them always separates them by a distance that no one speaks of."

After finishing, he stared at these lines for a long time, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly.

This was the first time he wrote not to hide a wound.

The small alley outside the south gate of Qingbei was a different scene.

Cooking fumes rolled, iron pans clashed with iron spatulas, and the sounds of hawking, chopping meat, and the roar of range hoods were all mixed together.

Chen Jiahao had changed into an old tracksuit.

He had dug that outfit out from the bottom of a chest while rummaging through his things; he had even forgotten he owned it.

He squeezed in front of a fried noodle stall, his eyes glued to the stall owner's hands.

The uncle swung the ladle, flames leaping half a foot high as the rice noodles flew in the pan.

The wrist holding the ladle shook rhythmically, the muscles in his forearm bulging and relaxing in time.

Chen Jiahao held his breath against the smell of cooking oil rushing into his nostrils, pulled out his phone, and typed quickly.

"Wrist force, toss three times, pause for half a second."

"Bottom left corner of the apron, a sauce stain that won't wash out; it must be quite old."

He wrote earnestly, his brows knitted together.

The uncle finished tossing a pan and glanced at him.

"Young man, you've been standing here for a long time."

The uncle scooped the noodles onto a plate, his voice gruff.

"What's up, trying to steal my techniques?"

In the past, Chen Jiahao would likely have waved his hands and hurried away.

But this time, he didn't.

He leaned forward half a step and lowered his tone.

"Uncle, I'm not stealing techniques," he grinned.

"I just want to ask, how exactly do you master the heat? The way you toss that ladle, it's like there's a spell on it."

The uncle was amused by his sincere demeanor and was about to speak when his gaze suddenly fell on the Qingbei campus card lanyard around his neck.

"Young man, from Qingbei?"

The uncle's voice rose immediately.

"Yeah." Chen Jiahao nodded.

"Good heavens, a kid from Qingbei coming to ask me how to fry noodles."

The uncle got excited and tapped his spatula against the rim of the pan.

"Alright, alright, you want to learn? Come, I'll teach you."

The uncle picked up a loofah pot brush and swept it neatly across the bottom of the pan.

He scooped half a ladle of oil into the pan.

"This fire, you have to listen to the sound."

"When the noodles hit the pan, the sizzle starts, and that's the first burst of 'wok hei'."

"When the sound dies down and the edges of the noodles start to shine, you have to toss. A beat too slow and it burns; a beat too fast and it lacks fragrance."

Chen Jiahao listened intently, holding his phone to record, not even bothering to wipe the oil splashes on the back of his hand.

The uncle spoke more and more openly, from controlling the heat to sourcing ingredients, then about how this stall had been here for eleven years, closing at 2 AM and going to the wholesale market at 6 AM, managing to put his daughter through a medical school in another city.

"Working from dawn till dusk, what for?"

The uncle wiped the sweat from his face and smiled.

"Hoping that when she gets off the night shift in the future, she'll be holding a medical record, not stuck with this pan like me for a lifetime."

Chen Jiahao's hand stopped.

He reached out and touched the edge of the stove.

Greasy, rough, and hot. That stickiness crept up his fingertips, and being steamed by the heat radiating from the pan made him shiver.

He suddenly understood.

What the phrase "presumptuous rawness" in Jian Shen's commentary really meant.

He wrote about the old man frying beef noodles, the creaking of prosthetic limbs, and the bitterness of beer mixed with swill—all things he had imagined while sitting in his room.

Beautiful, but separated by a layer.

A real stove will burn your hands, grease will stick into your fingerprints, and sweat will drip down, drilling into your nostrils mixed with the smell of soy sauce and burnt aroma.

These things, you couldn't think of them even if you racked your brain sitting in a dormitory.

That predecessor, who hadn't even shown their face, had seen right through his shallowness from behind a screen.

The admiration in Chen Jiahao's heart deepened even further.

"Uncle, give me a plate."

He took out his phone to scan the QR code.

"Less... oh no, just a tiny, tiny bit of spice."

Inside the dormitory building, it was so quiet it felt as if it were being pressed down by those thirty pieces of commentary.

Usually at this hour, there would be people visiting, chatting, and discussing whose sentences were written beautifully in the hallway.

These days, the young geniuses selected from across the country were all secretly competing with one another.

But tonight, no one was comparing themselves, and no one was complaining that Jian Shen's critique was too harsh.

Behind the doors were people with their heads down, reviewing their work.

Some spread their drafts and the commentary side-by-side, comparing them line by line.

The arrogance nurtured by applause in their respective schools had been shaved away by this blade.

What remained was something very pure.

In Room 303, Xu Changge sat at his desk.

He had a notebook spread out in front of him, but he didn't write; he just stared motionless.

Lin Que leaned against the head of the bed, taking in all the movements inside and outside the room.

The thirty pieces of commentary were things he had shut himself in his studio to press into the documents, sentence by sentence.

He had measured exactly where each cut should land on the skin before he wrote a single word.

Now, the force of this blade was spreading bit by bit through this building.

He picked up the water beside him and took a sip.

The silence of the entire building was the clearest echo.

Just as he was thinking this, the phone on his knees chimed.

Immediately after, there was the vibration from next door, the vibration from across the way.

Like a tide, the notification sounds of the entire floor rang out one after another within a few seconds.

Xu Changge looked up: "There's a notification in the group."

Lin Que opened the Program group chat.

At the very top was a message for everyone sent by the teaching assistant Song Yuan, followed by a long list of @-mentioned names.

[Dear Program students: Mr. Jian Shen's comments have pointed out everyone's respective problems. By the decision of Dean Dai, the immersive field practice following the third round of review begins immediately.]

There was another paragraph below.

[The list of candidate field practice locations will be issued shortly. Please combine this with the problems Mr. Jian Shen pointed out for you and submit your intended destination within two days. You will depart formally in seven days. Where to go, how to stay, what to write—it is all up to you. This time, no one will pave the road for you.]

As soon as the message was sent, the group chat exploded.

Some sent exclamation marks, some sent ellipses, and more were spamming the phrase "No one will pave the road for you."

Chen Jiahao's voice message squeezed in almost immediately, the background filled with the clamor of the food stall.

"It's fine if the list isn't out yet! I already know what kind of place I need to dive into!"

Lin Que looked at the notification, his fingertips pausing on the screen.

The list of candidate locations hadn't been sent yet.

But he was already thinking about the place he wanted to go.

It needed a network stable enough to support an encrypted connection and a natural enough excuse to let "Jian Shen" and "Dream Weaver" set off quietly along with "Lin Que."

This road was much harder to walk than those thirty pieces of commentary.