The wheels ground over endless yellow earth and Gobi sands, kicking up clouds of dust that blotted out the sun. The truck trudged along the bumpy, rugged “road” like an exhausted old ox, creaking and groaning with each step. At first, they could still see sparse shrubs and low grass stubbornly growing along the gullies. But the farther northwest they went, the less green there was, until finally, only an endless expanse of dull yellow-gray-brown stretched out. The sky was a washed-out, cold gray-blue, high and indifferent, and the sun hung there, glaring but offering no warmth. The wind was dry and biting, carrying grit that stung the face.
Inside the truck, seven or eight young people pressed together—men and women alike, all pale, with dazed or numb expressions. After a few dreary opening words, the only sounds were the engine’s roar, the wheels crunching over gravel, and the whistling wind rushing in through the gaps. Some got carsick and vomited, the sour, rancid smell mixing with dust and oil, making everyone nauseous.
Mu Yao curled up in a corner, wrapping herself tightly in her cotton jacket liner, burying her face in it to block out the pervasive wind and suffocating odors. She clutched her old burlap-wrapped bundle like it was a final piece of driftwood. She didn’t vomit or cry—she just kept her eyes open, staring at the desolate scenery hurtling past outside the truck.
This was the northwest. A world completely different from the watery Jiangnan she had known, or the land of the Xiangyang brigade—harsh yet brimming with life. A chill seeped into her bones, not just physical but psychological, slowly creeping through her limbs over the long journey.
She remembered Gu Jingci’s final three words: survive.
On this barren land, where even signs of life seemed stingy to appear, how much courage and strength did it take to survive?
The truck drove for four days and three nights, stopping at a few rudimentary military posts or road stations to hand out some cold, hard food and murky water. Everyone’s hair was messy, lips cracked, and the light in their eyes gradually extinguished.
On the evening of the fourth day, the truck finally stopped in an even more desolate area, with only a few rows of low mud-brick houses and scattered tents. The wind and sand were fiercer, nearly knocking people off their feet. A crooked wooden sign swayed in the dust, faintly marked with: “XXXX Farm, Third Subdivision.”
They had arrived.
Mu Yao carried her luggage, stumbling down with the others. Her feet sank into the soft sandy ground. A man dressed in a bulky cotton military coat, his face roughened and reddened by the wind, held a roster and called out names with a heavy accent, assigning each person to follow an older, similarly bulky, indistinct-looking employee to different mud-brick houses or shacks.
“Mu Yao!”
She took a deep breath and stepped forward.
The officer glanced her over, his eyes lingering briefly on her thin clothes and gaunt face, then read off her assignment expressionlessly: “Female comrade, go to Third Team logistics. Follow Old Ma.”
A hunched, wrinkled man of indeterminate age waved hoarsely: “This way.”
Mu Yao thanked him and followed Old Ma toward a row of even lower, more dilapidated mud-brick houses. The so-called “logistics team” was really just a single large room with bunks, already housing seven or eight women of varying ages, all gray-faced with vacant or wary eyes. The room reeked of sweat, dust, and mildew. Against the wall was a line of mud-brick platforms, covered with tattered mats and suspiciously colored blankets.
Old Ma pointed to an empty spot at the end: “There. Make it your own. Tomorrow morning, you’ll go to the vegetable cellar to work.” Then he hobbled away.
Mu Yao stood at the doorway, taking in her surroundings. Crowded, filthy, suffocating—worse than the firewood shed at the Xiangyang brigade. But the sharp fear and despair she had felt when first arriving there was gone, replaced by a cold, resigned calm.
She silently walked to the empty spot and set down her luggage. The other women barely glanced at her before returning to their own tasks or staring blankly. No one paid her any attention.
She began arranging her bunk. First, she spread out her military blanket over the cold mud platform. The army green still stood out in the drab environment, attracting a few curious glances. She ignored them, then placed her cotton jacket liner neatly on the pillow. Her old burlap bundle went by her feet. The cloth bundle, containing her “treasures,” remained clutched in her arms—it could not leave her side.
Dinner was rationed: a dark, coarse wheat bun and a bowl of clear soup with a few rotten vegetable leaves, almost no oil. Mu Yao nibbled at the bun with the soup. The bun was rough, scraping her throat; the soup was tasteless, but she forced herself to swallow. To survive, she needed food.
That night, the wind slammed against the worn paper windows, howling. Snoring, muttering, and coughing echoed across the communal bunk. The air was foul. Mu Yao lay on the cold platform, wrapped tightly in her blanket, staring at the dark ceiling, clutching her cloth bundle.
This was the place she would call home. Harsher, more desolate, and seemingly hopeless than she had imagined.
Gu Jingci… what was he doing now? The Xiangyang brigade should be starting the autumn harvest. Was he still busy in the fields? Would he… remember her?
Thinking of that name made her chest tighten painfully. She buried her face in the jacket liner that carried his scent and inhaled deeply. The faint, resilient smell of soap pods lingered in the stale air, like a thin lifeline connecting her to a distant past.
Survive. She told herself. For those three words, and for the faint light in her heart that refused to extinguish.
The next morning before dawn, the whistle shrilled sharply. The logistics work was exhausting and tedious: hauling frozen, hard potatoes and radishes from a distant, rudimentary vegetable cellar; stoking fires and washing heaps of bowls at the open-air stoves; scrubbing grimy work clothes soaked in sweat and oil; cleaning the yard and latrines… Each task was filthy and tiring, made even worse by the biting wind and low temperatures. Fingers quickly became red and swollen, cracked open, and stabbed with pain when touched by alkali water or cold wind.
Mu Yao worked silently, like an untiring machine. She observed everything, learning the local rules: speak little, work hard, don’t fight, but protect the basics. She quickly realized that the people here were even more indifferent, and the competition for survival more barefaced. Food was scarce, warmth materials scarce—any small advantage could spark quarrels or even fights.
She carefully safeguarded the rations and brown sugar Gu Jingci had given her, only sneaking a small piece of cornbread with a bit of sugar when she was starving or exhausted. That little sweetness and energy was her secret lifeline. She reserved the cotton jacket liner for the coldest nights.
Days crawled by, harsh and monotonous. Half a month passed. Mu Yao’s cheeks were rough and cracked from the wind and sand. Frostbite on her hands healed and then reopened, forming thick, ugly scabs. She became quieter, her gaze harder, like stones worn smooth by the Gobi winds.
She had not gone to find the “Accountant Zhao” Gu Jingci mentioned. She was new, unfamiliar with the environment, cautious; and her stubborn pride and desire not to trouble him held her back. She wanted first to stand on her own.
Opportunity came unexpectedly on a windy afternoon. The logistics team was sent to the warehouse to help tally a shipment of poor-quality coal mixed with sand. The young accountant responsible for recording it was flustered, the ledger scattered by the wind, numbers not adding up, sweat streaming down his face.
Mu Yao was weighing and recording coal with other women. Seeing the young accountant’s predicament, she hesitated, then approached and whispered, “Comrade, do you want me to rewrite this for you? It’s easy to make mistakes in this wind.”
The young accountant, overwhelmed, looked up and saw that although her clothes were tattered and her face weathered, her gaze was clear and her voice steady. He seized the chance like a lifeline: “You can read and calculate?”
“A little,” Mu Yao nodded.
He quickly handed her the disordered ledger and pencil. Mu Yao, squatting in the dim light at the warehouse door, didn’t mind the dirt. She organized the scattered records, transcribed them neatly into the ledger, and even did some mental arithmetic to check the totals, pointing out two obvious mistakes.
The young accountant was astonished and delighted: “Thank you so much! Your handwriting is beautiful and your calculations are fast! Which team are you from? Have you done accounting before?”
“Third Team logistics. Never done accounting… just learned a bit before,” Mu Yao replied softly, saying no more.
The small feat quickly spread through the station. A logistics worker who could write and calculate had helped the accounting office. Not a major event, but in a farm subdivision with very few literate people, it was small news.
A few days later, Mu Yao was summoned to the station office. Two men were inside: Director Yang, lean and stern; and a man around fifty, wearing old spectacles, with a clean but worn face, dressed in a faded gray Zhongshan suit, examining a ledger.
“You must be Mu Yao?” Director Yang looked her over neutrally. “I hear you can read and calculate?”
“Yes, Director,” she replied, head bowed.
“This is Accountant Zhao from the station office,” Yang introduced the man with glasses.
Accountant Zhao? Mu Yao’s heart leapt. She looked up at the man. Zhao lifted his eyes from the ledger, peering through his glasses at her. His gaze was calm, professional, but in the brief moment their eyes met, it flickered almost imperceptibly, then returned to neutrality.
“Xiao Liu (the young accountant) told me you helped sort the coal stock?” Zhao spoke gently, with a scholarly air, his accent not local—somehow southern.
“Yes, Accountant Zhao,” Mu Yao said, suppressing the storm in her heart, trying to sound calm.
Zhao nodded and pushed the ledger toward her: “Here’s an old account of grain losses over the years. The data’s messy and never sorted. Could you try to organize it? No rush—when you have time.”
Director Yang added: “Keep doing your logistics work as usual. Handle this when you can. If you do well, it counts as part of your work.”
It was clearly a test and an opportunity. A relatively quiet job involving the ledger, even if just sorting old accounts, was exactly what Mu Yao wanted.
“I’ll try,” she said, taking the thick, worn ledger.
Back in the logistics bunk, her heart raced. Accountant Zhao… was he really the one Gu Jingci had mentioned? That look he gave her—had he recognized something? Or merely heard she could calculate?
She couldn’t be sure. But somehow, a door seemed to have been cracked open by chance.
That night, after everyone slept, Mu Yao carefully opened the ledger under the faint moonlight seeping through the window. The paper was rough and yellowed, the handwriting messy—clearly old accounts—but she examined it meticulously, as if the numbers could reveal the hard survival of this desolate farm.
On the last blank page, she spotted a faint pencil line, almost illegible, as if casually jotted down:
“Qingshan Commune, Xiangyang Brigade, Gu…”
The rest was smudged, unreadable.
Her heart froze, then pounded violently. She stared at the small line, her fingers cold.
Qingshan Commune, Xiangyang Brigade, Gu…
It was him! The very Accountant Zhao Gu Jingci had mentioned!
He knew Gu Jingci! He might even know who she was!
The shock made her grip the ledger tightly. She slammed it shut, clutching it like a world-shattering secret—and like a faint but real lifeline.
Outside, the wind still howled against the mud walls.
But Mu Yao, sitting on the cold platform with the ledger in her arms, for the first time felt that this despairing land… wasn’t completely dark.
A faint, real line stretched across mountains and rivers, across the swirling wind and sand, quietly connecting the distant Xiangyang Brigade to her here and now.
Accountant Zhao.
Gu Jingci.
Survive.
These three words circled in her heart repeatedly, intertwining into a heavy force, painful yet sprouting new life.
She gently stroked the faint pencil line in the ledger, her gaze gradually firming and brightening in the darkness.
No matter how strong the wind, no matter how hard the road ahead, she seemed… no longer alone.