Official title: Refused to stay at the university, started his career in a rural town.

The shuttle bus bumped along the mountain road for almost three hours.

Yang Fan leaned against the car window, his mind a jumble of thoughts.

Qi Tongwei—the Director Qi who was half a son of heaven in the original drama, whose eyes were full of resentment when he shot himself; he was also the outstanding senior brother who followed him around in college, who supported him, who was also from a small mountain village, and regarded him as a spiritual leader, and who looked up to him in everything.

The two shadows were fighting in my mind, and they couldn't get them to merge.

The car stopped at the entrance of the town. Yang Fan jumped out carrying his things, his feet kicking up a layer of dust as he stepped onto the gravel road.

What you see are mud-brick houses, dirt roads, and mud walls. The cracks in the walls run from the top to the bottom, almost exactly like those in Qingping back then.

The only difference is that a small river flows through the town, and the residents of the town have benefited greatly from it.

He asked an old woman who sold oranges for directions, and followed her directions eastward until he arrived at the judicial office in front of two mud-brick houses.

Yang Fan stood outside the courtyard, and before he even went inside, he heard the rattling sound of a bicycle chain coming from the other end of the dirt road.

A person rode a bicycle down the slope, his trouser legs covered in mud, and a stack of documents wrapped in plastic sheeting was tied to the back seat of the bicycle.

Qi Tongwei!

He had lost a lot of weight; his cheekbones were higher than when he was in school; there were dark circles under his eyes, and his eye bags were so heavy it looked like he hadn't stayed up for three nights. His Zhongshan suit was faded from washing, with frayed threads on the cuffs and a frayed edge around the collar.

But he stood ramrod straight, back upright, just like he did in school.

When Qi Tongwei saw Yang Fan, he almost dropped the document in his hand.

He stood there, staring straight at Yang Fan, as if he didn't recognize him or couldn't believe it. After several seconds, his eyes suddenly reddened.

"Senior brother?"

He tossed the documents onto the back seat, wiped his hands on his trousers, and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, opened it, and saw that there was only half a crumpled cigarette inside.

His face flushed red, down to the roots of his neck. He slammed his cigarette case shut and turned to run into the house.

"I'll go in and get it—"

Yang Fan grabbed his arm.

"Tongwei".

He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and stuffed it into Qi Tongwei's hand. Qi Tongwei looked down at the pack of cigarettes, rubbed his fingers on the plastic wrap a couple of times, and his Adam's apple bobbed several times.

"Senior brother, what brings you here?"

Yang Fan lit his cigarette. "I had a long holiday this year, and Secretary Wu covered my shifts. I had some free time, so I came to see you."

Qi Tongwei sniffed, put the cigarette in his mouth, took a deep drag, and exhaled smoke from his nose.

"Come on, walk with me for a bit," Yang Fan said. "Let's take a look at your little patch of land."

The two walked down the riverbank. The river breeze was light, but it felt a little cool on their faces.

Qi Tongwei talked as he walked, and once he started talking, he couldn't stop.

"Baishi Town has seven administrative villages. Two of them are on the top of a mountain, and there is no road access. It takes more than an hour to climb up. The largest one is called Lijia Gou, with about a hundred households. The remaining villages have only a few dozen people, all of them old men and women."

He pointed to a hillside on the opposite bank of the river. "That used to be terraced fields, but they were washed away by a flash flood two years ago, so we converted it into dry land to grow corn. The yield is poor; we only get about 400 to 500 jin per mu. After deducting the cost of seeds and fertilizer, we don't make much money."

He turned around and pointed to the south side of the town. "There's a primary school over there, with six teachers and about a hundred students. The school building was built in the 1970s, and the roof leaks. Last year, Director Liu and I went to help repair it. But it wasn't fixed, and it's leaking again this year."

Qi Tongwei said a lot, and his traces were left in these towns.

"You put your heart into it," Yang Fan said.

Qi Tongwei paused. He turned to look at Yang Fan, his lips moved, then he turned his face away again, squatted down, picked up a pebble, and threw it into the river. With a splash, water rose and then fell back into the river.

"Senior brother, the people here are really nice." He stared at the water. "Last year, there was an old woman who was involved in a dispute between two families over a walnut tree. I spent half a month negotiating with them."

"They got annoyed after a while and said, 'Fine, fine, whatever Xiao Qi says goes.' Later, the old lady insisted on giving me eggs, but I refused. She just squatted at the entrance of the office and wouldn't leave. I took two, and I ate those two eggs for three days, only managing to eat half an egg a day."

He stubbed out his cigarette and stuck it in the mud.

"That's how people are here. If you help them a little, they'll remember you for a lifetime."

Yang Fan squatted down next to him. "Qingping too. Back then, I went to Wang Dashan with the apple bags, and he was squatting at the edge of the field smoking his pipe, calling me a liar. Later, when the apples ripened, he shouted 'It's done! It's done!' all over the village until his voice was hoarse. Now, when he sees me, he pulls out a cigarette from afar."

"Senior brother, you've succeeded." His voice was very soft, almost drowned out by the river breeze.

"Back then in Qingping, you started with three pilot trees and transformed a poor village in a year. I always thought that I, Qi Tongwei, could also find my three trees in Yantaishan. I traveled to seven villages and studied the soil, crops, and transportation here—but I found that I couldn't do anything."

He stood up, put his hands in his pockets, and looked at the mountains in the distance.

"Senior brother, I've been here for almost two years now. I've mediated over a hundred cases—homestead issues, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law disputes, lost chickens and dogs, brothers dividing their property. I can even clearly explain to you who should own a frog."

He turned around and looked at Yang Fan, his eyes filled with both fire and smoke.

"But senior brother, who can see what I've done?"

Yang Fan remained silent.

"The deputy section chief position still hasn't been secured." Qi Tongwei's voice rose an octave. "Director Liu has gone to the county bureau to inquire at least ten times, and every time they say 'it's going through the procedures.' It's been a year and a half of procedures! I've been working like crazy, thinking that if I produce results, the organization will finally see it, right? But damn it—"

He swallowed the rest of his sentence, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

"Tongwei," Yang Fan looked at him, "about the deputy section chief thing, listen to me."

Qi Tongwei looked at him.

"Although your deputy section chief position hasn't been officially confirmed on paper, you graduated with a master's degree, so your years of service as a deputy section chief have been calculated since the day you started working. Do you understand what I mean? The people who are suppressing you can only suppress you for a while, not forever."

Qi Tongwei fell silent for a long while, then suddenly laughed. "Actually, I've come to terms with it."

He laughed so hard that the corners of his mouth were a little stiff.

"What about deputy section chief? What about section chief? Our Director Liu was the youngest section chief in the whole county when he was promoted. But look at him now? Decades later, he's still stuck here. No connections, no backing, who's going to promote you?"

He pulled his hand out of his pocket, clenched it into a fist, then relaxed it. "Senior brother, I don't want to waste my whole life here. Look at this place, how is it any different from the remote mountain village we came from back then?"

He took out a small notebook from his inner pocket and opened it.

The paper was covered with names and numbers: Aunt Zhang, thirty eggs; Uncle Li, fifteen yuan and sixty cents; Granny Wang, sold a laying hen for twenty yuan; Uncle Liu, sold half a bag of wheat for eight yuan and fifty cents.

The names were crooked and distorted, some were crossed out and rewritten, and some had red handprints on them.

His hands began to tremble.

"Senior, look at this. This is the account book from our village that paid for my university education. I've kept a detailed record of every penny! Over the years, I've saved up my wages, paying back the money bit by bit, and I'll pay it all back sooner or later. But what about all this money—the money from selling lambs, laying hens, and winter food—that we scraped together? Will I ever be able to pay it all back?"

He looked up. His eyes were bloodshot.

"Those uncles and aunties, they sold their laying hens and shared their winter grain to raise enough money for my first year's tuition. They stood at the village entrance to see me off. My father was paralyzed, and my mother sewed shoe soles every day to earn money for food. I grew up eating food from many families and wearing clothes from many families!"

His voice began to tremble, and his eyes were so red they looked like they were about to bleed.

"When I left the village, I vowed to repay them."

"When I left, an old man, over seventy years old, with difficulty walking, walked two miles with a cane to see me off. He held my hand and said, 'Tongwei, our village has never produced a college student before, you are the first! Don't think too much, we'll make up for anything you need!'"

Yang Fan looked at him without saying a word.

Qi Tongwei's voice suddenly rose, trembling with emotion. "But what am I doing now? I'm in a judicial office in a remote mountain village, mediating trivial matters every day. I haven't been home for Chinese New Year for two years—Brother, two years!"