In the autumn of 1966, the north wind had just begun to rise.
A battered Jiefang-brand truck rattled and wheezed as it rolled over the final stretch of uneven dirt road, finally coming to a stop at the entrance of Xiangyang Brigade, Qing Mountain Commune.
The tailgate crashed down with a clang, kicking up a choking cloud of dust.
Seven or eight young people straggled down from the truck, each wearing an expression of exhaustion, their luggage light and simple.
Mu Yao was the last one.
She steadied herself on the side of the truck and stepped down onto the trembling footboard. Beneath her feet was loose yellow earth; on her body were coarse cotton clothes that had been washed until stiff—something her family had gone to great lengths to prepare for her before she left, just so she wouldn’t look too “eye-catching.”
Yet even so, when she stood upright and lifted her face slightly, the surrounding gray mud walls, the drooping locust trees, and the curious dark faces instantly blurred into a dull, indistinct backdrop.
The sunlight was a little harsh. She narrowed her eyes.
On her wrist, the red marks left from last night’s “education” still ached faintly beneath the rough cuff of her sleeve.
That pain was unusually clear—like a needle piercing through numbness, pinning her firmly to this moment—
October 17, 1966.
3:27 p.m.
The village entrance of Xiangyang Brigade.
She had really come back.
Her heart pounded violently in her chest—not fear, but a dizzy, scorching sense of having regained something once lost.
Those regrets, that coldness, that despair that had eventually tightened around her throat… all of it felt distant now, driven away by the rough warmth of the yellow earth, by the blindingly real autumn sun.
She took a deep breath, air thick with dust and the scent of dry straw flooding her lungs.
“Everyone here? Follow up—we’re heading to the brigade office first!”
A slightly hoarse yet forceful shout rang out. Mu Yao turned toward the sound.
The crowd parted slightly as a tall figure strode out from the village. He wore a half-worn dark blue jacket, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing solid forearms with smooth, powerful lines. His matching trousers were splattered with mud, the cuffs tucked into mud-caked liberation shoes.
He walked fast, his steps steady, carrying the crisp decisiveness that came from long years of labor and managing people. Thick dark brows were faintly furrowed as his gaze swept over the group of city-bred “educated youths,” heavy and measuring, like a weight passing over each bewildered or dissatisfied face.
Gu Jingci.
Mu Yao’s fingertips dug into her palm.
Twenty-two-year-old Gu Jingci.
Not yet the star-badged, commanding military district chief of the future, but the youngest production team leader of Xiangyang Brigade—and the militia platoon leader. His skin was a healthy wheat tone from years under the sun; his nose straight and sharp; his lips pressed into a stern line. Only his eyes—sharp now with impatience and official detachment—hid beneath them the focus and blazing intensity she had once discarded like trash, only to crave desperately later.
He stopped in front of her, bringing with him a clean, masculine scent mixed with sunlight and sweat, with the faintest hint of tobacco. His gaze paused on Mu Yao for a moment—perhaps because of her deathly pale face, or her silence that clashed with her surroundings, or simply because of the small leather suitcase in her hand, utterly out of place with her coarse clothes.
That suitcase was an old dowry item her mother had once brought with her; inside, besides a few changes of clothes, were only several old books carefully wrapped in oiled paper.
His eyes moved away quickly, devoid of warmth. He waved at the group.
“Don’t dawdle. There’s still three li to go.”
Then he turned to leave.
In her previous life, it had been here.
He had stretched out his hand too—but not to take her luggage. He had only pointed down the road and said something similar. And how had she reacted back then? Fear? Disgust? She had instinctively pulled her suitcase back, as if it were stained with the unwashable stench of a “capitalist,” terrified that this mud-legged team leader’s rough hands would dirty it.
She had followed the other educated youths closely, deliberately keeping her distance from him, even hurriedly lowering her head whenever he glanced back to check the group.
That had been the beginning—
A mistaken beginning that ran through the tragic trajectory of her previous life.
This time…
Gu Jingci had already taken a few steps when he noticed someone hadn’t moved. He turned back impatiently, his brows knitting tighter.
Mu Yao lifted her eyes to meet his gaze.
She didn’t dodge.
She didn’t flinch.
She even took a small step forward, lifting the little suitcase slightly toward him. Sunlight poured into her eyes, and in those beautiful almond-shaped eyes—once condemned as “seductive” by struggle-session mobs—a thin sheen of moisture gathered. It wasn’t an act, but the genuine collision of rebirth’s turbulence and fear of the unknown.
She looked at him. Her voice was soft, hoarse from travel, trembling faintly with deliberate vulnerability.
“Captain Gu…”
Gu Jingci halted.
“…I—I can’t keep up.” She lowered her lashes briefly, then raised them again, eyes shimmering as she looked straight into his. “The suitcase is a bit heavy… I’m scared.”
The air stilled for a moment.
A few educated youths glanced over, expressions varied. A girl with two shiny black braids flicked her eyes between Mu Yao and the suitcase and curled her lip.
Gu Jingci’s brows didn’t relax, but the official impatience in his eyes wavered slightly at that blunt, sudden “I’m scared.”
He stared at Mu Yao. Her face was pale, her lips nearly colorless, only her eyes shockingly bright—like dew-covered black grapes—filled with unmistakable pleading and reliance. Her slender fingers clenched the suitcase handle so tightly her knuckles had gone white.
He suddenly recalled the commune secretary’s vague remark: among this batch of educated youths was one with a “rather complicated background,” a capitalist’s daughter—someone to “keep an eye on.”
It was probably her.
A capitalist’s daughter…
A reflexive caution and distance, belonging to this era, flickered through Gu Jingci’s mind. Yet the face before him, those eyes, that soft-spoken fear, strangely diluted the barrier. She looked far too… fragile—like the white mushrooms he’d seen sprout in the mountains after spring rain, something that would break with the lightest touch.
He pressed his lips together. Without much expression, he stepped back, reached out, and took the small suitcase from her hand. The movement was rough, decisive, leaving no room for refusal.
“Follow up.”
His voice was still hard, even lower than before, as he turned and continued forward, his pace deliberately slowing just a little.
“Don’t fall behind.”
Mu Yao let out a soft “Mm” and followed half a step behind him. The suitcase hung casually at his side, looking even smaller. His shoulders were broad, his back straight—like a wall that could shield her from wind and rain.
The wind swept up yellow dust. She instinctively turned her head and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, all she saw was the dark patch of sweat spreading across the back of his jacket, rising and falling with his stride.
The road was indeed hard to walk—pitted and strewn with stones. This body of Mu Yao’s had been delicately raised for seventeen years; how could it endure such hardship? Before long, she was breathless, her legs weak. Several times she stumbled, and each time, the tall figure ahead of her would slow, just barely, at just the right moment.
By the time they reached the threshing ground in the middle of the village, where the brigade office stood, the sun was already slanting westward. Low mud-brick houses lined the area, faded slogans painted on their walls.
The other educated youths were led away by the deputy leader to temporary housing. Gu Jingci stopped Mu Yao alone.
“You—Mu Yao, right?” He checked the name list, glancing at her. “Your lodging… is a bit special. Come with me.”
Special?
Mu Yao’s heart sank slightly. In her previous life, she had arrived late and been stuffed into the dampest corner of the educated youth dorm, sharing a kang with Liu Caixia—the braided girl who would later oppose her at every turn. Could things change because of what she’d done earlier?
Gu Jingci led her through half the village, farther and farther out, until they stopped at a dilapidated courtyard at the foot of the mountain at the village’s edge. One corner of the mud wall had collapsed. Two low thatched rooms stood there, their window paper torn and flapping loudly in the wind. Beside them leaned an even smaller, crooked woodshed.
“There’s no space at the educated youth dorm for now.”
Gu Jingci pushed open the creaking wooden door. A wave of moldy, dusty air rushed out. The main room was bare—only a broken table and a few lame stools, with junk piled in the corners. Inside was a kitchen, with a cracked pot and an earthen stove. He pointed to the smaller room beside it.
“You’ll stay here for now.”
Mu Yao walked to the doorway and looked inside.
Her heart dropped.
This wasn’t a room at all—it was clearly a former storage shed for firewood. Narrow, dark, with wood chips and dust scattered across the floor. Against the wall lay a bare earthen kang, its mat torn open to reveal the yellow clay beneath. A tiny window with broken latticework had been clumsily tied together with straw rope. The late-autumn wind rushed in unobstructed, howling through the gaps.
This was where she was supposed to live?
It was even worse than the corner of the dorm in her previous life.
Gu Jingci stood behind her, watching her thin back stiffen as she froze there. He knew well how bad the place was. This had been an abandoned house left behind by a family with no descendants. Letting her stay here was partly due to a lack of options—and partly, he knew, due to “background” considerations. Farther away, more isolated, less trouble.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, then swallowed it back. All he said dryly was,
“The kang can be slept on. Clean it up a bit. If you’re short on anything… we’ll talk tomorrow.”
Mu Yao slowly turned around.
There was no breakdown. No crying. No protest.
She merely lifted a hand, gently smoothing her wind-tossed hair, then looked at him. The moisture in her eyes had faded, leaving a calm—almost resigned—softness.
“Alright,” she said softly, even forcing a small smile, pale and weak. “Thank you, Captain Gu. Having a place to stay is already very good.”
Something under the label of “capitalist’s daughter” in Gu Jingci’s heart felt quietly peeled back by that gaze, by that “very good.” Irritation surged up in him—for his own earlier cold detachment, for this broken house, for the biting night wind already approaching.
He said nothing more, turned, and left, pulling the creaking door shut behind him.
Mu Yao stood alone in the dusty shed, listening to his footsteps fade away. Only when they were completely gone did she slowly let out the breath she’d been holding, her shoulders sagging.
She didn’t start cleaning immediately. Instead, she walked to the kang and touched the cold clay bricks. Rough. Hard. Icy.
This was reality—
More vivid than memory, and crueler.
But she was no longer the Mu Yao of her previous life.
Was fear useful? Were tears useful? They would only make things worse, pushing Gu Jingci—already distant because of her “background”—even farther away.
She rolled up her sleeves and began to clean. With no tools, she brushed ash and wood chips off the kang with her hands. With no clean water, she went to the yard and dipped an old handkerchief into the little stagnant water left in a cracked jar, green with duckweed, wiping down the kang edge and broken table.
Dust filled the air. Soon she was coughing, her hands and face smeared black with grime.
As the sky darkened, the wind grew fiercer, slicing in through broken windows and door cracks like icy knives. Mu Yao piled on everything she had for warmth—a thicker old coat, a scarf—but still shivered, her teeth chattering. Her stomach growled loudly. The brigade office had said there would be no communal cooking tonight—she was to manage on her own.
How could she? All she had were a few rock-hard biscuits the family nanny had secretly stuffed into her suitcase.
She curled up in the corner of the kang, listening to the howling wind outside, faint dog barks in the distance, and the crying of some unknown child. Loneliness and cold surged over her like a tide. The blazing warmth brought by rebirth cooled rapidly in the face of reality.
Would she die here?
Like in her previous life—just in a different way?
No. She pinched the flesh between her thumb and forefinger hard. The pain cleared her head. She thought of the brief pause when Gu Jingci had taken her suitcase, of the way he had slowed his steps, of his slightly heavier, more silent back as he left.
That man’s heart wasn’t as hard as he pretended.
But what else could she do? Go beg him again? On what grounds? Wouldn’t that only annoy him?
Just as her thoughts spiraled, heavy, hurried footsteps sounded outside the courtyard. Then came pounding on the door—though with that broken plank, it was more like slapping it hard enough to shake the walls.
“Mu Yao! Open the door!”
Gu Jingci’s voice—impatient as always, yet in the howling wind, it felt like a current of warmth.
Mu Yao’s heart leapt. She scrambled off the kang and stumbled to the door.
When it opened, Gu Jingci’s tall figure filled the doorway, blocking out the last bit of twilight. In his arms was a thick, neatly folded quilt—army green, a little faded from washing but fluffy and warm. Under his arm was a rolled gray mattress. In his other hand, he carried a bamboo-shelled thermos and a coarse ceramic bowl, steam curling faintly from inside.
He looked like he’d rushed over, breathing slightly hard, a hint of sweat even on his temple.
They locked eyes in the dim light for a moment.
Gu Jingci looked away first, frowning, his tone brusque—half explanation, half scolding himself.
“Tsk. This damn place… you’ll freeze to death at night. Use this quilt and mattress for now.”
Without waiting, he pushed inside and set the bedding onto the bare kang. Then he placed the thermos and bowl on the broken table.
“Sweet potato porridge. Make do.”
Mu Yao stared as he spread out the quilt. That army green instantly added a vivid, living color to the gray, icy shed. The quilt was thick, clean, carrying the scent of sun-dried fabric—and faintly, the clean soap-and-sun smell that belonged to him.
“Captain Gu…”
Her throat tightened.
Gu Jingci straightened and glanced back at her. She stood there in the dimness, her face streaked with dust, only her eyes impossibly bright—red-rimmed, shimmering, on the verge of spilling over. More pitiful now than she’d been at the village entrance that afternoon.
That indescribable irritation surged in his chest again, along with a faint, unrecognized ache. He turned his face away stiffly.
“What are you staring at? Hurry up and eat. Eat, then sleep early. Tomorrow morning, you start work with the team.”
After a pause, he added, his voice lower, “Bolt the door. I’ll be patrolling nearby.”
Then he left almost as if fleeing, striding out and pulling the door shut firmly behind him.
Mu Yao stood there, listening to his heavy footsteps fade—this time not vanishing immediately, lingering briefly outside the yard before slowly moving away.
She walked to the kang and touched the quilt. Soft. Warm. Real warmth that made her want to cry. She picked up the bowl—it was still warm. Inside was thick sweet potato porridge, mostly sweet potato with very little rice, fragrant and faintly sweet.
She drank it in small sips. The warmth slid down her chilled throat, spread through her stomach, and flowed into her limbs. Tears finally fell, big drops splashing into the bowl, mixing with the sweet porridge.
That night, the north wind roared outside the shed, battering the broken window lattice. Mu Yao curled up on the earthen kang, wrapped in that oversized military quilt carrying the scent of soap and sunshine.
Still cold. Still hard. Still filled with the shrill whistle of wind through every crack.
But her heart—
Was warm.
As Gu Jingci hurried home through the village at dusk, empty-handed, several old men squatting by the wall smoking dry tobacco saw him and laughed.
“Jingci! Why the rush, hauling a quilt around? Off to send warmth to some educated youth?”
Gu Jingci didn’t slow, tossing back a single line:
“Cut the crap! It’s public property—loaned out temporarily!”
The old men burst into laughter, clearly unconvinced. Everyone knew the Gu family’s boy—young, hard-tempered, principled, strictly separating public from private, cold-faced toward village girls and young wives alike. Public property? Since when did the brigade have such a thick, nearly new military quilt?
Gu Jingci’s ears burned as he walked faster.
Yet, for some reason, he didn’t regret this bout of “meddling.”
He just… couldn’t stand the thought of someone freezing to death in the production team he was responsible for.
That was all.
That’s what he told himself as he pushed open his courtyard gate. His mother was busy in the kitchen and looked up in surprise.
“Where’s that thick quilt you set aside for winter? You just aired it this afternoon.”
Gu Jingci answered vaguely, “Mm. Lent it out.” Then he went straight into his room and shut the door.
Gu’s mother wiped her hands at the kitchen door, looking at the closed room, shaking her head—yet a thoughtful smile appeared on her face.
At the village edge, in the dilapidated courtyard—
Mu Yao finished the last mouthful of sweet potato porridge and carefully set the bowl aside. The thermos was heavy; she was reluctant to use the hot water inside.
She lay down, burying herself deep in the warm quilt that belonged to Gu Jingci. The scent of soap and sunshine lingered at her nose.
The wind outside still sounded terrifying—
But somehow, it didn’t feel quite so scary anymore.
She closed her eyes. Scenes from her previous life shattered and overlapped, finally freezing on the image of dusk—him standing at the door of her broken shed, brows furrowed, impatient, yet undeniably there, holding that quilt.
Gu Jingci.
This time, I will never run away.
She whispered it in her heart—and on the first night after rebirth, where cold and warmth intertwined, she fell into a deep sleep.