Just because I wrote "Zhu Xian," the school beauty sent me razor blades.

My second uncle's house is at the very end of the village.

A small courtyard with brick and tile houses. Cured meat and sausages were drying in the courtyard. An old jujube tree stood bare, with chopped firewood piled up under it.

Uncle Lin Limin stood at the gate of the courtyard, wearing a faded military green cotton-padded jacket. His face was red from the cold wind. When he saw them get out of the car, he grinned.

"Big brother! Sister-in-law! Xiaoyuan! Come in quickly, come in quickly!"

My second aunt poked her head out of the kitchen, her apron covered in flour: "You're here? Dinner'll be ready soon!"

There was an eight-immortal table in the main room, with six cold dishes already on it, and the hot dishes still on the stove.

Second Uncle pulled Lin Liguo down to sit and poured him some baijiu (Chinese liquor).

"Big brother, come on, let's have one first."

"What's the rush? Let's drink after everyone's here."

"Who's waiting? It's just the two of us brothers. Your sister-in-law and Xiaoyuan's mom are busy in the kitchen, and Xiaoyuan is having tea—Xiaoyuan, don't you want some?"

"I won't drink."

"Then have some tea. Your second uncle will pour you some." Your second uncle quickly poured a cup of hot tea and pushed it over.

Lin Yuan sat down beside him, holding a teacup, and took a sip.

bitter.

But it's warm.

After several rounds of drinks and five courses of food,

My second uncle and father both blushed, and they started talking non-stop.

They started by talking about the harvest, the neighbors, how Old Li's son from the east end of the village passed the civil service exam, and how Old Zhang's daughter from the west end of the village married into the county town.

Then the topic took a turn.

"Brother, do you know how many teachers left our township school this year?" Uncle asked, his tone suddenly turning somber as he held up his wine glass.

"How many left?"

"Three. One passed the exam and got a job in the county, one went straight to the provincial capital, and the other—" Uncle took a sip of his drink, "disliked the low salary and quit to sell insurance."

Lin Liguo frowned.

How many students are left in the school?

"Including myself, there are six of us." My second uncle put down his wine glass. "Six teachers, in charge of the entire elementary school from grades one to six, more than one hundred and twenty students."

Lin Yuan's hand holding the teacup stiffened for a moment.

More than 120 students and six teachers.

"Young people don't want to come, and even if they do, they can't stay," my second uncle said. "The funding from above is enough, but the countryside can't compare to the city—there's no entertainment, no shopping malls, and even a decent hospital takes forty minutes to get there. Young people can't stay, can we blame them? No. They need to make a living too."

"The last ones holding on are us old folks," he said, pointing to himself. "I'm fifty-one this year. The youngest teacher in the school is forty-three."

Lin Liguo didn't reply, but picked up his wine glass and took a sip.

"What about those children?" Lin Yuan asked.

His second uncle glanced at him and smiled.

"Ask the children."

He put down his chopsticks and leaned back in his chair.

"There's a kid in my class named Chen Xiaohai, in fourth grade. His parents work in Guangzhou and only come home once a year. He usually lives with his grandparents. His family is poor; the cotton-padded coat he wears in winter is his older brother's hand-me-downs. The sleeves are too short, exposing a section of his wrist, which is red from the cold."

"This child studies diligently. He gets up at five o'clock every morning and walks forty minutes along a mountain path to school. He does this even on snowy days. Once, he fell and scraped his knee. By the time he got to school, the blood had dried, but he didn't even realize it and was still reading his lesson."

My second uncle's voice was very flat.

"I asked him, 'Xiao Hai, what do you want to be when you grow up?' He said, 'Teacher, I want to go to university and then come back to be a teacher.'"

I asked, 'Why do you want to be a teacher?'"

He said, 'Because there are too few teachers in the village. If I don't come back, who will teach the younger children?'

The main room fell silent.

My second uncle picked up his wine glass, took a sip, and put it down.

"I'm not telling you this to complain," he said, looking at Lin Yuan with a serious tone. "We're not some great people. We didn't go to any good schools, we didn't have much formal education, we earn a little over two thousand a month, and we've taught our whole lives. What for? Nothing. Just to stay with these children, to stay with this school."

"If no one teaches them, the children in the mountains will truly never be able to leave the mountains."

After he finished speaking, he picked up his chopsticks and continued to eat, as if what he had just said was just casual conversation at the dinner table.

Lin Yuan sat beside him, his tea already cold.

He didn't interrupt.

He didn't say a single word from beginning to end.

But he remembered every single word his second uncle said.

Chen Xiaohai, a fourth-grader, walked for forty minutes along a mountain path. His sleeves were too short, and his wrists were red from the cold. "Teacher," he said, "I want to go to university and then come back to be a teacher."

The old jujube tree's bare branches creaked in the wind in the yard.

Inside the main room, my second uncle and father started talking about other things again—whether to plant some new vegetables in the spring, when the road at the entrance of the village would be repaired, and how many stories the neighbor's new house had reached.

But Lin Yuan's mind was no longer on that.

He was thinking about something.

Actually, the seed for this idea was already planted in the library.

During the two weeks of final exam review, Lin Yuan spent every day on the third floor of the library. Once, when he got tired of flipping through books, he rested his head on the table. Two students from the School of Literature at the next table were chatting quietly. Their voices weren't loud, but the library was so quiet that he could hear every word clearly.

Did you vote?

"I submitted it. It's for the Galaxy Award essay contest in Science Fiction World."

"I'm still revising it. The competition this year is fierce; more than twenty people from our department alone submitted applications, and I don't know how many across the country."

"The Galaxy Award is the most prestigious. Winning it is like taking a step into the core of the science fiction world."

Lin Yuan didn't take it seriously at the time, turned over and continued to lie face down.

The Galaxy Award. A science fiction writing competition. What does this have to do with him? He writes fantasy, suspense, and youth fantasy; he's never touched science fiction.

But that night, he had a dream.

There were no dragons, no detectives, and no Lu Mingfei in my dream.

There was only one middle-aged man wearing an old cotton-padded coat standing in a dilapidated classroom, covered in chalk dust, with crooked handwriting on the blackboard.

Outside the window were rolling mountains, but he didn't know what lay beyond them.

When I woke up the next day, I had forgotten half of the dream. But the image of that figure standing on the podium was still very clear to me.

Now, sitting in the main room of my second uncle's house, listening to him say those words—that silhouette overlaps with my second uncle's.

Lin Yuan held the now-cold teacup, something swirling in his mind.

It's not a complete story. It's just fragments.

A dilapidated classroom. Chalk dust. Frozen wrists. A forty-minute mountain path. A child says, "I want to go to university and then come back to be a teacher." Six teachers. One hundred and twenty students. A monthly salary of just over two thousand yuan. Without teachers, the children in the mountains will truly never escape poverty.

These fragments are real. They depict his second uncle's daily life, the daily life of Chen Xiaohai and others, and the events unfolding in countless villages across China.

But what if we put these fragments into another frame?

A larger framework.

It's not an educational story, it's not realism—it's science fiction.

Lin Yuan's pupils contracted slightly.

He suddenly remembered that dream.

A dilapidated classroom. A mountain. What lies beyond the mountain?

What if the area outside the mountain isn't a county town, or a provincial capital—but the universe?

What if the most basic knowledge that a dying village teacher teaches his children with his last strength—Newton's three laws of motion, pi, and basic physics—becomes the key to the survival of a civilization on a scale far beyond human comprehension?

A rural teacher. Interstellar civilization.

An absurd yet valid connection has been formed between the most humble and insignificant educators on Earth and the most advanced civilization in the universe.

What my second uncle said wasn't a complaint.

But if we look at this "no-complaint" perseverance on a cosmic scale—an insignificant individual is transmitting knowledge in the most primitive way, and this knowledge, at a certain moment, is captured by a force far beyond human cognition.

How would that power evaluate humanity?

I will not comment on technology. I will not comment on military affairs. I will not comment on the economy.

We'll see if anyone in this species is willing to pass on knowledge under extremely barren conditions.

Lin Yuan put down his teacup.

He knew what to write.

It's not a fantasy novel, not a suspense novel, and not a coming-of-age story.

It's science fiction.

Moreover, it's not the kind of science fiction that follows the formula of space exploration and interstellar adventure—it's science fiction rooted in the rural land of China.

The banquet ended.

Second Uncle drank quite a bit of wine, his face as red as Guan Yu's. He held Lin Liguo's hand and said, "Brother, come back often next year." Second Aunt helped him into the inner room to sleep.

Lin Yuan got into the car with his parents.

On the way back, he leaned back in the back seat with his eyes closed.

Jiang Wanqing thought he was asleep and didn't disturb him.

Lin Liguo glanced at him in the rearview mirror but didn't say anything.

Lin Yuan was actually awake.

He was building a framework in his mind.

The protagonist of the story is not a hero, but an ordinary village teacher. He is terminally ill and doesn't have much time left. His final wish is to teach the children in his class what he knows. There are no grand missions, no sentimental last words, just as his second uncle said—"To stay by these children's side, to stay by this school."

And after he finished teaching his last class and collapsed on the podium—

The universe responded to him.

back home.

For the remaining days of the Spring Festival holiday, Lin Yuan locked himself in his room.

Jiang Wanqing knocks on the door three times a day to deliver meals, fruit, and hot water.

Each time, Lin Yuan would say, "Just leave it," his voice muffled, as if it came from a very deep place.

Jiang Wanqing hesitated at the door for a moment, then didn't go in.

When Lin Liguo came home from get off work, he glanced at the closed door and then at Jiang Wanqing.

He's writing something.

How did you know?

"He was like this when he did his homework as a child. He'd close the door and ignore everyone."

Jiang Wanqing sighed and didn't ask any more questions.

in the room.

Lin Yuan sat in front of the computer, typing away rapidly on the keyboard.

He wrote very slowly.

It wasn't because I lacked inspiration; it was because every single word had to be carefully considered. This wasn't an online novel, nor a movie script—it was an essay to be submitted to the Galaxy Awards for Science Fiction World. The word choice, the rhythm, the tone—everything had to be revised.

The story draws some inspiration from his second uncle, but it's not a documentary. He disassembles, reassembles, and grafts those real fragments into a larger narrative.

A dilapidated village school. Five children. A dying teacher. Chalk. Blackboard. Newton's laws.

Then the camera zooms out.

Ascending from the mountain village classroom to the atmosphere, and from the atmosphere to the edge of the solar system, deep within the spiral arm of the Milky Way, an interstellar warship conducting a 'civilization screening' of Earth's civilization detected an extremely faint set of sound waves emanating from this classroom.

That was the sound of children reciting along as the teacher explained a physics problem on the blackboard.

The advanced intelligence on the warship analyzed the signals and came to a conclusion.

Lin Yuan paused when he reached this conclusion.

He stared at the line of text on the screen for a long time.

Then delete it and rewrite it.

Deleted and rewritten.

It was repeated seven times.

He was satisfied on the eighth take.

Continue writing.

end.

He didn't write a sentimental ending.

Just like how my second uncle picked up his chopsticks and continued eating—after saying those words, he went about his business.

Lin Yuan finished writing the last character and leaned back in his chair.

It was already dark outside the window. The sound of firecrackers downstairs was intermittent, and the neighbors next door were setting off fireworks, the orange-red light flashing on the curtains.

He glanced at the word count.

Twenty-three thousand words.

He read it through again. He changed a few words, adjusted the rhythm in two places, and made sure there were no typos.

Then open the submission page for the Galaxy Award essay contest in Science Fiction World.

He paused for a moment in the pen name section.

Old scoundrel of Mount Akina.

He stared at the five words for two seconds, then typed them in.

Why shouldn't he use it? He uses this name when writing fantasy novels, suspense novels, and coming-of-age stories. Now he's writing science fiction, and he's still using the same name.

Types are tools, not cages.

Title: The Rural Teacher

He checked the format requirements and confirmed that they were correct.

Click Submit.

Page redirection — Submission successful.

Lin Yuan turned off the computer.

Fireworks were still going off outside the window.

He drew the curtains and lay back down on the bed.

My phone vibrated. It was a notification from Red Eggplant's backend—another reader was cursing, "That old bastard has disappeared again."

He glanced at it, smiled, and didn't reply.

That old scoundrel hasn't disappeared.

The old scoundrel simply went to a place they hadn't yet discovered.