496: Chapter 496 Four Different Directions

At 8:30 PM, the overhead light in Dorm 303 was glaringly bright.

The door was shoved open, and Chen Jiahao strode in.

His old tracksuit was saturated with the smell of cumin and heavy cooking fumes, instantly filling the room's previously clean air with the odor.

Chen Jiahao didn't find it unpleasant at all; instead, he sniffed deeply, a look of satisfaction on his face.

"This smell is incredible." Chen Jiahao took off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair.

"Let me tell you guys, that stir-fried rice noodle stall uncle's skills are no joke."

"I stood there for over two hours, watching him flip the wok hundreds of times."

"That heat control, the strength in his wrist—it's all earned through real, hard practice."

"Teacher Jian Shen is right. You can rack your brain sitting in a room, but you'll never write that kind of greasy authenticity. I'm truly convinced this time."

Lin Que leaned against the headboard, shifting his gaze away from his phone screen. Xu Changge and Dan Yi also turned their heads.

Chen Jiahao pulled out a chair and sat down, not even bothering to drink water before immediately opening the main Qinglan Project group chat.

Messages in the group were scrolling upward at a rapid speed.

The thirty students were discussing the upcoming field research with great enthusiasm, with various speculations emerging one after another.

Some were worried that they hadn't even packed their luggage, unsure whether to bring short sleeves or down jackets.

Others chimed in, hoping to go somewhere inspiring; Teacher Jian Shen's critiques had been so heavy that they still hadn't recovered, and they urgently needed a change of environment to catch their breath.

Teaching assistant Song Yuan's avatar popped up.

He sent an encrypted document titled "Candidate Locations for Immersive Field Research."

Chen Jiahao slapped his thigh and shouted aloud, "It's here, it's here!"

Song Yuan immediately posted a supplementary note in the group.

"All locations have been strictly vetted by local Writers Associations, posing absolutely no danger to life."

"Life conditions and local customs vary greatly; please carefully assess your own capacity and act according to your ability. Do not blindly follow the crowd."

Lin Que tapped his finger on the screen, entered the universal password, and the document unlocked.

The page clearly listed ten locations.

These locations were categorized into A, B, and C tiers based on their environment.

Each location was accompanied by detailed on-site photos and text descriptions.

The photos for Tier A were brightly colored.

There were blue-stone roads and black-awning boats of Jiangnan water towns, as well as tidy streets, harbors, and processing zones in coastal towns.

The descriptions noted that local transportation was convenient and food and accommodation conditions were relatively good.

But the notes below the photos were not lighthearted.

Jiangnan water towns had seen rapid tourism development in recent years, with problems like the relocation of old residents, homestay rentals, and the loss of traditional crafts coexisting.

Coastal towns appeared wealthy on the surface, but underneath were long strings of realistic threads like fishermen changing professions, factory labor, and the schooling of migrant children.

These places looked gentle, but once you truly dug in, they might not be soft at all.

Tier B was more complex.

There were ordinary townships on the outskirts of central county towns, farmers' markets next to old districts in the Northeast, and urban villages tucked into the cracks of southern cities.

In the photos, one could see vegetable stalls opening at dawn, vast fields just harvested, "handshake buildings" so narrow that only a sliver of sky remained between them, and old residential buildings with peeling paint.

These places didn't have the intense sense of desolation of Tier C, but they were closer to daily life.

Human voices, dampness, cooking fumes, haggling, and three meals a day were all crammed into the corners of the photos.

The style of the Tier C photos was completely different.

One was the yellow sand of the Northwest Gobi, with fierce winds whipping up dirt, and adobe houses in the distance crouching under a grey-yellow sky.

Another was an old factory area in the deep mountains of the Southwest, with rusted iron gates half-open, moss growing at the base of the walls, and several panes of glass in the abandoned factory building broken, light slanting in through the gaps, illuminating a sense of desolation forgotten by the era.

The description was very clear: both locations had local Writers Associations and grassroots units to coordinate, ensuring basic food, accommodation, safety, and medical contact.

The real difficulty lay in the harsh life, inconvenient transportation, and the psychological pressure of facing a silent environment for a long time.

Once the document was out, several completely different opinions quickly appeared in the group.

"Tier C certainly looks valuable, but four weeks is not a short time; transportation, accommodation, and physical condition all have to be considered. If you spend the first half-month just adapting to the environment, you might not be able to settle down to write later."

"I actually think Tier A might not be easy either. Jiangnan water towns have heavy tourism development now; the relationships between original residents, outside operators, and old craftsmen might have a lot of things to write about."

"Aren't there fishing ports and processing plants in those coastal towns? They look like they have good conditions, but if you really go down into the industrial chain, it might not be any easier than the Gobi."

"Tier C is suitable for those who want to completely throw themselves into an unfamiliar environment. If you only look at the scenery in Tiers A and B, you'll definitely waste the trip; but if you're truly willing to dive into the crowd, you can dig up things just the same."

Once these words came out, the liveliness in the group quieted down a bit.

No one simply described any location as "hard" or "comfortable" anymore.

With Teacher Jian Shen's thirty critiques having just landed, everyone knew in their hearts that this test wasn't about who could endure more hardship, but about who could truly lower their gaze.

Chen Jiahao stared at the discussion in the group for a while, his brow furrowing and then quickly relaxing.

"Actually, what they said makes sense."

He scratched his head, his voice lower than usual.

"If the conditions are too poor and your body can't take it, it's really easy to turn the field research into just enduring it."

He paused, then couldn't help but add another sentence.

"But now I'm a bit afraid of being lazy."

Chen Jiahao lowered his head to smell the cooking fumes on his cuffs, his expression rarely so serious.

"Standing in front of the stir-fried rice noodle stall for over an hour tonight, I realized that a lot of things I wrote before were just imagined. They looked like the real thing, but when you touched them, they were completely empty."

"So this time, I dare not choose a place that is too comfortable. If I'm comfortable for too long, I'm afraid I'll start making things up again."

Xu Changge sat at the desk, his fingers slowly sliding on the trackpad.

The bright photos of Tier A swept across the screen. Blue-stone roads, black-awning boats, sea-view houses, tidy streets.

His gaze did not stop.

The page continued downward until the photo of the Northwest Gobi filled the screen.

The wind and sand blurred the adobe houses in the distance; on the edge of the photo, there was a hand resting on a doorframe, the back of the hand chapped, and the crevices of the fingers full of dust.

Xu Changge's finger stopped.

He looked at that hand for a long time.

"I choose C."

His voice was steady. This time, there was no hesitation.

Dan Yi sat by the window, his gaze resting on a photo in Tier B.

It was an urban village on the edge of a southern city.

The buildings were packed very close together, windows facing windows, clotheslines stretching from one building to another, and in the narrow alley, someone was pushing an electric scooter through, the handlebars almost scraping the walls.

There was no snow or wind in the photo.

But as Dan Yi looked at that damp, hot, crowded, boundary-less alley, his fingertips slowly tightened.

The cold of Mo City pushed people outside the crowd. The heat of this urban village, however, seemed to want to squeeze everyone together.

He wanted to know what shape loneliness would take in such clamor.

"I'm going to the southern urban village."

Dan Yi spoke, his voice very light, but without flinching.

Lin Que leaned against the back of his chair, his gaze moving back and forth between the few locations in Tier C.

In his past life as a screenwriter, he had run to many places. The snow line in the Northeast, the dampness of the islands, the moldy rental apartments in the southern rainy season—he had seen them all, and written about them all.

But the wind and sand of the Northwest and the old industrial ruins in the deep mountains of the Southwest were still a blank space for him.

What was even more fatal was that he knew why he had that blank space.

In the past, many times, his field research served project cycles and camera needs; he would arrive at a place, get enough material to support the story, and then leave in a hurry.

This time, he couldn't just take material. He had to stay there.

He personally wrote the four characters "watching a fire from across the river" into the notes. That was a knife written for everyone to see, and also a reminder left for himself.

Although the completion of "Ether" was high enough and beautiful, beauty was sometimes precisely dangerous.

It would make the author mistakenly believe that he had already reached the depths of life, while in reality, there was still a layer of clean glass separating him from it.

Lin Que needed to find a place to crush this layer of glass.

The old factory area in the deep mountains of the Southwest, or the Gobi Desert in the Northwest, were both very good choices.

Lin Que's mind spun rapidly. He not only had to consider the effect of the field research, but also more realistic issues.

Field research could cut off a student's comfort zone, but it could not cut off the two lines behind Lin Que.

The second script reading from Director Guo Changhe's side, the funds Chen Chengrui had just pressed into the rules, and the aftershocks of the thirty critiques just left by "Jian Shen" might all come knocking at any time during these four weeks.

What was more troublesome was that "Dream Weaver" could rely on the draft of "ghost blows out the light" to temporarily stabilize readers, but he couldn't disappear when the crew really needed to make decisions.

Lin Que's gaze fell on the communication instructions after each location. Scenery, suffering, unfamiliarity—all had to be ranked behind one thing. The network had to be stable. This was the bottom line.

If he went to the Northwest Gobi and encountered a sandstorm that cut off the network, or if the signal tower didn't cover it, he would lose contact directly. Losing contact for a few days would risk exposing his alias.

The old factory area in the deep mountains of the Southwest, although dilapidated, was at least a former industrial base, so basic communication facilities should still be running.

Lin Que clicked on the detailed description of the old factory area in the Southwest. The location was deep in the Qinba Mountains of southern Shaanxi Province.

There used to be a large military factory there, but later the main body relocated, leaving behind stretches of abandoned factory buildings, a few old-style staff residential buildings, and some old workers who were unwilling to leave.

The mountain roads were winding, there was much rain, and the town seemed to have been left behind by the era at a turn.

The description clearly noted: daily supplies were not abundant, but the base station was still there, and the basic network was available. That was enough.

Lin Que circled this location in his heart. He would take that retired military brain-computer equipment to that deep mountain in the Southwest. The old factory area in southern Shaanxi Province.

Enough unfamiliarity, enough harshness, and basic network. Then there was only one question left, simple yet troublesome. He needed to think of a more reliable mobile solution to silently bring "Jian Shen" and "Dream Weaver" into the mountains.

Chen Jiahao leaned over to look at Lin Que's screen. "Master Que, which one did you pick?" Chen Jiahao asked.

"Shaanxi Province, the old factory area." Lin Que answered very crisply.

Chen Jiahao's eyes widened. "That's the most stifling-looking place in Tier C."

He leaned closer to the screen and took another look at the photo of the rusted iron gate. "Master Que, are you planning to throw yourself into an abandoned factory building and go into closed-door cultivation?"

Lin Que glanced at him. "Didn't you just say you were afraid of starting to make things up again?"

Chen Jiahao was choked up for a moment, then sheepishly scratched his head. "My fear is one thing, but when it comes to actually choosing, I still have to pick a place that allows me to dive in."

As he spoke, he flipped the page up and clicked on that photo. "I want to go to that Northeast farmers' market in Tier B."

In the photo, under a semi-open shed were all vegetable stalls, with water and rotten vegetable leaves on the ground, and half a side of pork hanging in the distance; the white mist and the hawking of the vendors seemed to want to emerge from the screen.

"The uncle at the stir-fried rice noodle stall said, you have to listen to the sound for heat control." Chen Jiahao stared at the photo, his eyes shining brightly.

"I want to go listen to other sounds. The sound of chopping bones, the sound of vegetable hawking, the sound of delivery trucks reversing at dawn."

"That's exactly what my piece 'Food Stall' is missing."

Four people, four different directions.

Lin Que was just about to exit the document when he suddenly noticed a line of small grey text in Tier C.

That was a supplementary note attached after each candidate location, the font very small, almost invisible if you didn't click to view details.

[Special note for the old factory area in southern Shaanxi: Some old factory buildings in this area still belong to the scope of confidential sites; field research personnel must not enter the red-line area without authorization. Local contacts will connect with you individually before departure.]

Lin Que's fingertips stopped. He looked at those few lines of text, the looseness in his eyes gradually retracting.

This trip for field research would likely be even more troublesome than he had anticipated.

...