576: Chapter 576 Rules of the Gobi Desert – Titled <The Pure-Hearted Man Loves Reading>

The anonymous final review system did not display the title; the screen was left blank, waiting to load.

Xu Zhengqing straightened his glasses.

Above Seat No. 3, the yellow light indicating a conflict of interest due to a mentorship relationship remained lit.

He did not touch the recusal menu.

A subject tag alone was not enough to judge anything.

A few seconds later, the text finished loading.

The first line of text jumped into view.

"There's a rule on the Gobi Desert: if you see someone raising their hand by the side of the road, you must stop, no matter how urgent your business is."

Xu Zhengqing's hand froze.

He had heard this sentence before.

A month ago, Xu Changge returned from Gansu Province.

When he walked through the door, the young man, who was always neatly dressed, was only carrying a small suitcase covered in dust.

His face was tanned, the corners of his lips were cracked, and there was a patch of sunburned skin that had just peeled off behind his ear.

His shoes were coated in yellow dust, and the backs of his hands had several scabbed wounds.

Xu's mother's eyes turned red at the sight.

"Did you go to gather material or to suffer?"

Xu Changge placed the suitcase in the entryway, his tone still calm.

"The wind on the Gobi is a bit strong; it'll be fine in a few days."

Xu's mother pressed him, asking if he had encountered any danger.

He was silent for a moment, then said only one sentence.

"There's a rule over there: if you see someone raising their hand by the side of the road, you must stop, no matter how urgent your business is."

It was almost word-for-word the same as the first line on the screen.

Xu Zhengqing slowly straightened his back.

He already knew who A-067 was.

Without hesitation, he clicked the recusal menu in the bottom right corner of the terminal.

[Confirm identification of the author's identity?]

Confirm.

The yellow light above Seat No. 3 immediately turned red.

[Identity recognition recusal in effect.]

[Permissions for scoring, recommendation, and ranking have been locked.]

[Written comments are archived only as training material.]

The entire process was silent.

Xue Hongchuan, sitting in the main seat, glanced at the control panel.

One seat triggered identity recusal.

Following the rules, he did not ask, nor did he look toward Xu Zhengqing; he simply added a note to the final review record.

The other judges continued reading.

The second sentence had already appeared.

"Even if the fuel gauge has only one bar left, even if the sandstorm has already swallowed half the headlights."

Gu Changfeng stopped spinning his pen.

Elder Cui Wen lowered his hand that was resting on the metal box.

There was no long, drawn-out scenery setting, nor were there long paragraphs describing the vastness of the Gobi.

The opening only provided one rule.

And this rule might require one's life to uphold.

The text continued downward.

Road maintenance worker Old Ma was bringing a new line inspector back to the station.

The sandstorm blocked most of the road; they only had enough fuel to drive back to the maintenance station, and the vehicle's communication system was intermittent.

Just as they were about to pass a truck, Old Ma saw a hand reach out from the driver's cab.

The palm was facing outward.

The five fingers were covered in blood blisters.

The young line inspector saw it too.

He immediately stared at the fuel gauge.

"Master Ma, if we stop, we won't be able to get back."

Old Ma stepped on the brakes.

The inspection vehicle slid forward seven or eight meters in the wind before finally coming to a stop.

He did not explain, but leaned over and dragged an old rope from under the seat.

The rope was worn white, and there were seven knots tied on it.

The young man was stunned for a moment.

"What are these knots for?"

"One knot, one vehicle."

Old Ma pushed the door open and got out.

The sandstorm instantly swirled into the cab.

The truck was stuck in the soft sand on the shoulder; the driver had been digging alone for over two hours, and his hands were already raw.

The engine had no faults.

But the fuel tank had bottomed out.

Old Ma first hooked the tow rope onto the truck, then had the young man hold down the rear wheels of the inspection vehicle.

The two vehicles inched forward bit by bit.

When the rope tightened, a dull friction sound came from the sandy ground.

The fuel level of the inspection vehicle continued to drop.

After towing for over twenty minutes, the truck finally broke free from the sand pit.

Old Ma opened the spare fuel canister and poured diesel into the truck.

The young man's expression changed.

"You gave it all to him; what are we going to do?"

Old Ma tightened the fuel tank cap and turned on the vehicle's line inspector.

In the top right corner of the screen, a faint positioning signal flickered.

"Wait."

"Wait for whom?"

Old Ma looked toward the road, which was obscured by the sandstorm.

"Wait for the next person who follows the rule."

Xu Zhengqing's fingertips pressed against the edge of the screen.

Not until this moment did he understand the other thing Xu Changge said the night he returned to the capital.

During dinner, Xu's mother asked him what he had learned in that month.

Xu Changge had only answered with two words at the time.

"Waiting for someone."

The family thought he was tired and didn't press him further.

So he had truly witnessed such waiting on the Gobi Desert.

No one could guarantee whether a third vehicle would appear.

Yet Old Ma still stepped on the brakes.

Because seventeen years ago, someone had also stopped for him once.

The first knot on that rope belonged to a maintenance vehicle trapped in the wind.

Back then, Old Ma was only twenty-six.

The person who saved him didn't leave a name, but before leaving, told him: "In the future, if you see someone raising their hand, remember to stop."

Since then, seven more knots were added to the old rope.

Inside the review hall, only the soft sound of terminals occasionally turning pages remained.

Elder Cui Wen's reading speed had noticeably slowed down.

Su Mubai went back to the previous page and read the origin of the tow rope again.

Gu Changfeng wrote "Inheritance" on the review form.

After looking at it for two seconds, he crossed the two words out.

He rewrote:

"Strangers maintain the order of the wilderness by sharing risks together."

When Tao Zhiyan read about the young line inspector taking the empty fuel canister, his body leaned slightly forward.

At the beginning of the story, the young man had been calculating the fuel level.

How many kilometers were left, how strong the wind speed was, and how long it would take to return to the station.

Every piece of data was telling him that stopping was very dangerous.

But when a faint beam of headlights finally appeared in the distance, he was also the first one to walk into the wind.

He picked up the reflector and stood by the side of the road.

The wind was so strong he couldn't open his eyes.

He still raised his right hand high.

The headlights were getting closer and closer.

The young man waved the reflector vigorously.

At first, that vehicle did not change direction.

A few seconds later, the lights flickered.

The vehicle began to slow down.

It left the main road and slowly drove toward that raised hand.

Inside the review hall, no one made a sound.

The progress bars on the twelve terminals moved forward almost simultaneously.

Beside the control console, He Yuanda could not see the text.

He could only see the reading status of each seat.

When reviewing A-031, three judges had accessed the ending in advance, and two judges had used fast page turning.

When it came to A-067, the twelve progress lines remained very close to each other.

No one skipped sections.

Nor did anyone check the final chapter in advance.

He Yuanda looked toward Seat No. 3.

The red light was on.

This meant that someone had recognized the author and had voluntarily given up their scoring rights.

He wrote a line in the duty log:

"A-067, one seat triggered identity recusal. The reading progress of the twelve seats is highly synchronized; currently, no one has skipped reading."

The story on the terminal entered the final chapter.

The third vehicle that arrived took Old Ma and the young man back to the maintenance station.

Before getting out of the car, the young man looked back at the tow rope.

The seven knots swayed with the vehicle body, gently bumping into each other.

"Master Ma, does the truck we saved today count as the eighth knot?"

Old Ma shook his head.

"Not yet."

"Why?"

"Wait until you stop for someone else in the future, then tie it."

The young man stood by the car, not speaking.

He looked back toward the road.

The sandstorm was still moving; the vehicle that had just saved them was no longer visible.

Xu Zhengqing's reading progress stopped on the last page.

He recalled the essays Xu Changge had written when he was a child.

Clever, neat, with almost no obvious errors to be found.

Every essay knew what kind of opening the judges liked, what kind of plot twist, and what kind of sentence to use for the conclusion.

In those essays, there were always traces of the Xu Family.

The more Xu Changge wanted to shake off his grandfather's reputation, the easier it was for him to be trapped by that shadow when he put pen to paper.

In elementary school, teachers would send his essays to the Xu Family, asking Xu Zhengqing to revise them personally.

In middle school competitions, when judges saw his name, they would always flip through it twice more.

After he won awards, some praised his talent, while others said the Xu Family had already paved the way for him.

Xu Changge never argued.

He refused the recommendation spots provided by the family, overturned old drafts over and over again, and participated in every open competition.

He wanted to prove that his writing could still stand on its own without the Xu Family name.

After returning from Gansu Province, he locked himself in his room and wrote for three days.

On the third night, Xu Changge passed through the living room carrying a stack of printed manuscripts.

The first page was pressed under his palm; Xu Zhengqing did not see the title.

The grandfather and grandson's gazes met for a moment across a few meters.

Xu Changge did not hand over the manuscript.

Xu Zhengqing did not ask for it either.

After the public reading channel opened, he did not search for his grandson's essay.

When Chu Pengshu's review hit the hot list, he didn't click on it either.

He waited until the work had its name stripped away, data sealed, and entered the final review carrying only a string of numbers.

Today, he finally read it.

This time, Xu Zhengqing did not see his own shadow in the text.

He only saw a Xu Changge who had walked into the wilderness against the sandstorm and returned with a story.

The old man raised his hand and turned to the last page.

The ending had only one sentence.

"The wilderness never asks for the name of the person who stops, but it will pass that beam of slowing headlights on into the next wind."