Zhongzhou Province, Ning’an County.
At six in the morning, the sky was just barely beginning to lighten when Chen Yan was awakened by the PITTER-PATTER of rain outside his window.
Rolling over, he fumbled for his phone on the nightstand, its screen shattered with several cracks. He squinted at the weather app—orange alert for rainstorms.
"Raining again."
He muttered to himself and tossed the phone back next to his pillow. He closed his eyes and lay there for another half a minute, but eventually, he reluctantly threw off the covers and sat up. As he rose, the bedboards beneath him let out a teeth-grating CREAK, seemingly even more unwilling to get up than he was.
Chen Yan was twenty-five this year and stood at 1.78 meters. While his looks weren’t particularly outstanding, his features were clean and well-defined, with prominent brow bones and a straight nose. However, his eyes carried a somewhat lethargic, gloomy look. Paired with his current messy, bird’s-nest hair, his entire being exuded a decadent aura of "I’ve given up on trying."
Casually throwing on a hoodie, he shuffled out of the room in his slippers. As he passed through the hallway, a whole row of wooden windows on his left was BANGING loudly in the wind. He paused, reaching out to pull each window shut tightly. After latching them all, he made his way down the old wooden stairs at the end of the hallway to the ground floor.
The ground floor was his office. Though called an office, it was actually just a main room of about twenty square meters.
In the center of the room sat an Eight Immortals table. Piled on top were account books, maintenance forms, a half-empty pack of tissues, a chipped enamel mug, and a stack of dog-eared promotional brochures. Printed across the brochures was a line of bold, gold-stamped text: "Ning’an Ancient City: Eternal Elegance—A Journey Through Time."
The lettering was blurry and mottled, with only a few flecks of gold dust lingering on the paper, holding on for dear life.
Chen Yan walked up to the table and picked up the enamel mug for a sip of water. He shook it; it was empty. He let out a sigh, grabbed the thermos from the corner, and popped the lid. The water that poured out was lukewarm—much like his own half-dead state.
Downing the water in one gulp, Chen Yan prepared to go wash up.
Just then, the walkie-talkie on the table BUZZED with static, followed by Uncle Zhang’s booming voice. "Little Yan! The drainage ditch by the east gate’s city wall is clogged again! The water is about to flood the road! Come over and take a look, quick!"
Hearing this, Chen Yan SLAMMED the enamel mug down and snatched a blue raincoat off the wall by the door, hurriedly throwing it on. As he slipped into it, the text printed on the back revealed itself: Ning’an Ancient City. Beneath it was a smaller line of text displaying the scenic area’s service hotline—which was just his personal phone number.
The moment he pushed open the door and stepped outside, a violent storm of wind and rain battered his face, and the silhouette of Ning’an Ancient City unfolded before Chen Yan’s eyes.
Situated in the East Suburbs of Ning’an County Town, Ning’an Ancient City covered roughly five hundred acres. It was an "Ancient City" built in the style of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
The reason for the quotation marks was because Ning’an Ancient City wasn’t actually ancient. At most, it only had a history of about twenty years.
According to Father Chen, there was a specific reason why he and his grandfather had chosen this plot of land back in the day. Hundreds of years ago, a real city had stood here. However, exactly which dynasty it belonged to and how it fell to ruin remained unknown. The truth of these folktales was hard to verify, and even Father Chen himself had admitted as much. From the start of the scenic area’s construction until its completion, the construction crew hadn’t unearthed a single broken tile, let alone any historical ruins.
But that didn’t matter. For Father Chen and his grandfather, having those rumors was more than enough.
As it turned out, their foresight was indeed quite unique. Following the successful launch of the Ning’an Ancient City project, it attracted nearly 300,000 visitors in its very first year. Although visitor numbers didn’t grow rapidly in the following years, they remained steady.
Such foot traffic wouldn’t be worth mentioning in the eyes of top-tier tourist attractions. But for Ning’an County—a famously impoverished county in Zhongzhou Province—the economic benefits generated by the nearly 300,000 annual visitors brought by Ning’an Ancient City were enough to send the local government into fits of ecstasy!
Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last.
As several neighboring counties and cities successively built larger antique-style scenic areas and artificial ancient towns in recent years, Ning’an Ancient City, like a spent wave, was soon left washed up and stranded on the beach.
"Theirs are all newly built. Their parking lots are bigger than our entire scenic area. They have light shows, water performances, and glass skywalks. What do we have?" When Father Chen was alive, he would often sit on the city wall, sighing as he gazed out at the empty streets. "At the end of the day, people go out to have a lively time, to have fun, and to take pretty pictures to post on their Friends Circle. Old-fashioned antique scenic spots like ours have already fallen behind the times..."
In truth, the construction of Ning’an Ancient City wasn’t actually that bad. Due to the financial and technical limitations of the time, the details of the Ancient City weren’t perfectly executed, leaving the whole place looking a bit rough around the edges. However, it had everything and all the careful planning an Ancient City ought to have.
Three city gate towers had been constructed in the east, south, and west, and they still stood tall and majestic even after twenty years. Inside the city, there was one main street, two secondary streets, and a river that ran through the entire city.
Flanking the streets were Ming and Qing Dynasties-style buildings with blue bricks and gray roof tiles. With their carved wooden window frames, upturned eaves, and little bridges over flowing streams, it genuinely looked quite antique and charming at first glance.
In the center of the city stood a traditional County Yamen with a three-courtyard layout. Behind it sat a City God Temple, an Opera House, and dozens of faux-antique residences of various sizes.
Even though it was all fake—a modern replica—every brick, tile, blade of grass, and tree in the scenic area revealed the dedication of its operators. Sadly, it was just as Father Chen had said. In an era that increasingly pursued sensory stimulation and emotional value, even many authentic ancient cities had fallen into operational difficulties, much less fake ones like theirs.
Three years ago, Father Chen fell from some scaffolding while repairing one of the city gate towers. By the time he was rushed to the county hospital, it was already too late.