After breaking up with my boyfriend, I made a fortune and rose rapidly in my career.

Governor Liu removed his hand from his shoulder, turned around, picked up his briefcase, and left.

Only half a cup of cold tea and an unwatered pothos on the windowsill remained in the office. Chen Ping stood there, staring at the chair that Governor Liu had sat in for four years. Two shallow marks were etched into the leather, and a patch of paint was worn off the left armrest.

My phone vibrated. It was Han Zhiming's number.

"Secretary-General Chen, the first batch of joint laboratory equipment list for the Chip Spark Task Force has been released, and the Lu Zhong team is urging us to sign the confirmation letter."

"You sign it first, I'll go check it this afternoon."

"There's one more thing—the Organization Department spoke with me yesterday."

Han Zhiming paused for a moment. Chen Ping waited.

"Let me be the executive vice mayor of Lishui City."

Chen Ping picked up his herbal tea and took a sip. Lishui is the third largest industrial city in Jiangsu Province and a bridgehead for the semiconductor packaging and testing industry. He is the Executive Vice Mayor, a position with real power.

"Go. You've been involved in the entire expansion plan for the packaging and testing production line in Lishui. There's no one more suitable than you."

Han Zhiming chuckled on the other end of the phone—not a polite laugh, but the kind of laugh that comes from someone who has been holding it in for a long time and is finally letting out a sigh of relief.

"Okay. I'll go."

After hanging up the phone, Chen Ping tidied up the documents on his desk, locked the drawer, and left.

I ran into Li Chunsheng in the corridor. This former deputy director of the audit department, who had been relegated to a marginal position, now wore a name tag that read "Deputy Director of the Provincial Audit Office." His white shirt was neatly tucked in, his leather shoes were polished to a shine, and he walked with a confident stride.

"Secretary-General Chen," Li Chunsheng called out to him.

Chen Ping stopped walking.

Li Chunsheng took a stack of papers out of his briefcase and handed them over.

"I personally oversaw the first quarter audit report of the Chip Spark Special Fund. 4.2 billion yuan, every single transaction matched the ledger."

Chen Ping flipped through two pages. The data was clearly arranged, and the attachments even included scanned copies of the suppliers' bank statements.

"We will follow this standard every quarter from now on."

"clear."

Li Chunsheng put away the report, paused for a moment, and lowered his voice.

"Secretary-General Chen, there's something I've always wanted to say: if your father's report on that 10.9 billion yuan mess hadn't been suppressed, Su Jiang's industrial landscape might have been different ten years earlier."

Chen Ping handed the report back to him, ignoring the conversation.

"Focus on doing the things in front of you well. There's no point in looking back."

Go downstairs, cross the lobby, and push open the glass doors of the provincial government building.

The midday sun beat down relentlessly. The stone steps were bleached white by the sun, and the air was filled with the fresh scent of sycamore trees.

Chen Ping stood at the top of the steps, took out his phone and glanced at it. A WeChat message from Shen Yayun.

"I'm back in Sujiang. At that wonton shop on the old street. When are you free?"

He stared at the screen for three seconds.

Shen Yayun. A researcher at the Economic Research Institute of the Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, she was seconded to Beijing two years ago for preliminary research on the Chipfire project, participating in the semiconductor industry policy research group at the National Development Research Center. Before leaving, the two had a meal at a wonton shop in the old street, without explaining anything to each other.

Chen Ping typed four words: "Arriving at noon."

After sending the message, I put my phone back in my pocket, went down the steps, and got in my car.

The old street in the south of the city is still the same old street. The canopy of the plane trees shades the entire road, turning it into a green tunnel, with dappled sunlight falling on the bluestone pavement. The wonton shop is squeezed between two grocery stores, its storefront only one and a half doors wide, the words on its signboard stained ochre yellow by cooking fumes.

Shen Yayun sat by the window, with two bowls of wontons in front of her, still steaming.

She'd lost weight. Her collarbones were more defined than two years ago, and her chin was sharper. Her hair was shorter, ear-length, revealing a small tan line on the side of her neck. She wore a light blue linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

Chen Ping pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down.

"When did you arrive?"

"My high-speed train is this morning. My luggage is still in the station's locker."

"Eat first."

The two people were engrossed in eating wontons. There were only three tables in the shop; the other two were empty. The proprietress was chopping filling behind the stove, the cleaver clattering against the cutting board.

Shen Yayun pushed the bowl away and took out a document from her bag.

"The National Development Research Center's final report, on the industrial policy assessment of the Chip Spark Program, in which I participated in writing, concludes that the Suzhou-Jiangsu model has value for nationwide promotion."

Chen Ping took the book and flipped through a few pages, his gaze lingering on a set of data.

"What is your estimated cost reduction rate over three years?"

"Twenty-four points. That's two points more than the twenty-two points you initially told Governor Liu. After the photoresist supply chain was established, the wafer yield improvement rate in eastern Zhejiang exceeded the model's expectations."

Chen Ping closed the report and placed it on the table.

The wonton shop's windows had no glass; they were just two old wooden planks propped up. The wind blew in from the street, carrying the scent of sycamore leaves and the faint rumble of a construction site in the distance.

"You're back this time, not leaving again?"

Shen Yayun picked up her chopsticks and poked at the last wonton at the bottom of the bowl.

"The Provincial Academy of Social Sciences issued me a formal transfer order, appointing me as the deputy director of the Institute of Economics."

She looked up.

"I'm not leaving."

The three words landed on the table, hotter than the wonton soup in the bowl.

Chen Ping didn't say anything, picked up the bowl and finished the last sip of soup. As he put the bowl down, his fingers touched the edge of the table, his fingernails scraping against the wood with a soft sound.

"Come on, I'll take you to get your luggage."

Emerging from the wonton shop, the two walked side by side on the cobblestone path of the old street. The shadows of the sycamore trees were cut into segments, which they stepped over and over again.

Chen Ping's phone vibrated again. Cheng Yuan.

"The procuratorate formally filed a public prosecution against Zhou Dingbang today. He is suspected of abuse of power and loss of state-owned assets, and will be punished for multiple crimes. He Yongnian was transferred in the same case."

"understood."

"Furthermore, Lin Zhenghai, Deng Guohua, and Ma Wenchang have all pleaded guilty and accepted punishment. Lin Zhenghai provided a new lead, which implicated Yang Shoucheng, the former deputy director of the Provincial Department of Transportation. This lead is still under investigation."

Chen Ping put his phone back in his pocket.

Shen Yayun walked half a step to his right without asking about the content of the phone call.

She didn't ask, and he didn't speak. Some things don't need words. The two walked in perfect sync, left foot, right foot, their shadows overlapping for a moment on the ground before separating again.

The car pulled up to the high-speed rail station, and after retrieving her suitcase, she drove back towards the provincial government. Shen Yayun got out of the car at the entrance of the Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, stood on the steps with her suitcase, and turned around.

"Secretary-General Chen, I'll treat you to dinner another day. We won't have wontons, we'll have something nice."

"Okay. You decide."

As the car drove away from the gate of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chen Pingfang saw Shen Yayun's figure getting smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, until it was finally blocked by the guard post of the gatehouse.

At 2:40 p.m., he returned to the provincial party committee building. His new office was on the fifth floor, east side, twice the size of the policy research office, with south-facing windows offering a view of the entire sycamore-lined avenue.

There were stacks of documents on the table. The top one was the second batch of personnel appointments for the "Core Fire Special Task Force," sent by the Provincial Party Committee's Organization Department. Chen Ping read through them line by line.

Han Zhiming is the Executive Vice Mayor of Lishui City and the Head of the Lishui Coordination Group of the Core Spark Task Force.

Li Chunsheng is the Deputy Director of the Provincial Audit Office and concurrently the Director of the Supervision Committee for the Chip Spark Special Fund.

Cheng Yuan is the Secretary of the Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and concurrently the Deputy Head of the Provincial Leading Group for Anti-Corruption Work.

Behind every name stands a person who has shouldered responsibility.

Chen Ping finished approving the list, signed the date, and put it back in the folder. Then he opened the drawer and pulled out a black hardcover notebook from the bottom.

New. The cover hasn't been folded yet, and the spine is stiff.

He unscrewed the Hero 616 fountain pen, turned to the first page, and began to write on the line.

The sensation of ink seeping into the paper fibers travels up from the tip of the pen, each stroke exactly the same as the way my father used to write materials in his study.

He wrote a sentence: "The officialdom is not a jungle, but a vast ocean of stars after you have guarded the bottom line."

He put down the pen; the ink was still wet.

He stood up and looked out the window.

The afternoon sun was shining brightly, and in the distance you could see the provincial government building, as well as the cityscape of Suzhou, with office buildings and industrial parks. The Xinhuo Technology Building was almost finished, and the tower cranes were still in operation.

Chen Ping closed his laptop and then pushed open the office door.

At the end of the corridor are floor-to-ceiling windows, letting in sunlight that makes the corridor bright and golden.

(End of the book)