Chapter 19 (Corrected)

There was a howling silence in the wilderness. The dark, heavy clouds did not rain; they staged a brief protest above the Helan Mountains before drifting away.

Liang Yuanxing was beaten down by the wind. He looked up at Duan Qingshen on the car roof, then turned his head to see roadside tourists driving by, likely drawn by the sight of someone climbing atop the vehicle to take photos. They followed suit, curious to explore.

Everyone seemed quite professional, Liang Yuanxing thought.

Various lenses, cameras mounted on tripods—about ten people in a row, some crouching, some standing. A middle-aged man even imitated Duan Qingshen by climbing onto a car roof, resembling an artillery unit.

In the distance, wild camels wandered leisurely. Farther along the horizon, thunder rumbled faintly, carried by the wind, but Liang only heard a faint buzzing.

It was like a dazzling cosmic explosion from a distant star, but by the time the light reached here, only a fleeting flicker remained.

“How is it?” Liang Yuanxing asked.

“Take a look,” Duan Qingshen said, handing him the camera after crouching down and packing up the tripod before jumping off the car.

The full-frame camera could capture the entire Helan Mountain range within the frame. The 360mm lens was long enough—Liang Yuanxing didn’t know how Duan had managed to capture it. It was indescribable. Looking at the tiny screen, he felt as if the pitch-black Helan Mountains and the dense clouds were locked in a cold stare.

Yet because the cloud mass was drifting away, a few blurred rays of light slipped through the gaps, softening the tension of the scene.

“Well?” Duan Qingshen asked again.

“Very powerful,” Liang Yuanxing said. “The mountain and clouds are so imposing; it feels like they’re about to clash.”

“Clash how? The clouds spitting water at the mountain?”

“?” Liang Yuanxing’s mood deflated completely. He looked at him with a puzzled glance. “What on earth did you say to create this kind of image?”

“You don’t need words to take a photo.”

That made sense. Nobody heard of biting the shutter with their mouth.

Seeing him scrolling forward, Duan Qingshen added, “There’s a lot of noise from the long exposure, you might not notice it on the camera screen. I took about ten shots and stacked them in post-processing.”

“Got it.” Liang Yuanxing zoomed in on the image after hearing about the noise, then asked, “What ISO did you set? How did—”

“The noise in these clouds looks like countless stars,” Liang Yuanxing exaggerated.

“Your words aren’t much better,” Duan Qingshen teased.

“Not as sharp as yours,” Liang Yuanxing admitted.

High ISO and long exposures on a cloudy day inevitably cause noise, but stacking and noise reduction in post could save the shot and turn it into a great piece.

The previous ten shots were identical, materials Duan Qingshen took for stacking. But scrolling further, there was a photo of a desert highway.

Liang Yuanxing glanced back at it—National Highway 307.

“You even took pictures of the highway,” he said.

“Yeah.” Duan Qingshen kicked a pebble near his foot. “The wind was blowing sand onto the road.”

A landscape photographer, after all—capturing wind, capturing light.

“So now we have two finished shots,” Liang Yuanxing said.

“Three,” Duan Qingshen corrected. “Including the eagle you took.”

The patches of sand on the road were swept aside by passing vehicles. As they continued westward, Liang Yuanxing stopped even following the GPS and trailed the Jeep ahead, mentally preparing for the evening’s photo editing and color grading.

The stretch between Alxa Left Banner and Right Banner was a desolate no-man’s land. Maps showed gas stations, but earlier the breakfast shop owner had warned that some might not be open. Still, it was reassuring that repair shops or body shops along the way might sell bottled fuel.

Of course, Liang Yuanxing and Duan Qingshen had prepared for the worst—if the motorcycle ran out of gas, they’d use a tow rope to pull it all the way to the Right Banner.

Fortunately, as the National Day holiday lingered, two gas stations remained open, and they even encountered locals who had set up temporary iron shacks selling instant noodles and the like.

Liang Yuanxing ate spicy beef noodles.

He was the kind who had a pleasant way of eating—not in big bites, but with serious attention, savoring each chew as if honoring the food’s sacrifice.

“Huh?” Liang Yuanxing blinked.

“Oh, nothing,” Duan Qingshen looked away.

“Hurry up and eat, the wind’s so strong your food will get cold any minute,” Liang Yuanxing said.

They bought instant noodles from the iron shack. The owner poured hot water, and then Duan Qingshen hoisted the tripod and went behind the shack to wait for the sunset.

Liang Yuanxing felt as if autumn sunsets slipped away too quickly—it was true that as the year waned, people grew less eager to work. So they stayed put, guarding against the sun’s swift escape.

After finishing, Duan Qingshen took the empty bowl back to the shack’s trash and told Liang Yuanxing to sit by the camera and keep watch. Liang was too lazy to move, sliding his chair quietly across the ground without lifting his butt.

The camping chair sagged more and more. With no phone signal, he didn’t fiddle with his phone and simply stared toward the camera’s lens.

He never thought he’d one day sit in the wilderness, vigilantly watching a single star.

The sun sank inch by inch. He wasn’t sure if they were on gravel or desert; shards of rock and sand covered the ground, but the wind occasionally revealed the hard, dry earth beneath.

Now the earth and the sunset shared the same hue. Duan Qingshen hadn’t returned yet, and Liang Yuanxing grew anxious, focusing even more intently on the sun.

He straightened up, alert. At this time of year, darkness could fall suddenly. He remembered last autumn, carrying his guitar through an underpass, crossing the street, and the night immediately enveloped him.

“Uh…” He glanced at the camera screen, reading the settings aloud, “White balance auto, ISO 100, aperture f/11…”

“I’ll shoot it myself,” he thought. Duan Qingshen had been gone too long—was he even going to send the work to Editor Jiang? Would the magazine accept it? The whole responsibility rested on this little assistant.

He set the interval for continuous shooting, letting the tripod-mounted camera take steady shots, then slipped his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker. During the Alxa sunset, Liang Yuanxing’s mind emptied completely; he was utterly relaxed.

No obstacles in sight, no phone signal, the world paused.

At this moment, what existed were: the setting sun, the camera, and himself.

In the past, Liang Yuanxing’s life had been marching toward one clear, inevitable endpoint. Like the orphan of a martial arts master in a wuxia novel, he was destined to one day return to his mother’s sect and take the seat she once held.

Such stories were always praised. The old school would not end with him. He would become a legend, or a symbol.

When he was young, his aunt took him and his sister to a mall. The grand piano there attracted children—a beautiful grand piano. Music shops recruited by showcasing exquisite instruments and giving demonstration performances, prompting kids to tug their parents, saying, “I want to learn this, I want to play as well as that big brother or sister.”

But his sister only liked bulk candy in the mall and expressed disdain for the imposing piano—they were both shorter than the instrument then. As for Liang Yuanxing, he was indifferent, feeling nothing special.

Then, on the Spring Festival of the year he turned six—the third year after his parents passed—the family slowly emerged from the shadows. Everyone knew that if Liang was to inherit his mother’s legacy, he had to start at six. He was sensible and obedient. After the new year, he and his sister were sent to the music shop.

From six onward, he practiced sheet after sheet. His world began with treble and bass clefs, the metronome never stopping. His biggest rebellion was switching to a waltz whenever nocturne number two frustrated him.

His sister’s greatest rebellion was nearly setting the piano on fire with a lighter on the day she reached Czerny’s 599-56, threatening to take everyone down with her.

In short, Liang Yuanxing had no other choice but this narrow, steep path. Everyone knew what awaited at the summit—limitless beauty and glory. Everyone understood that reaching the peak made it all worthwhile.

As for “No one ever asked if I wanted to climb this mountain”—for a child of a mountain-climbing family, was there even a question? You were born for this...

Sometimes, sitting on the piano bench staring at his reflection in the glossy surface, Liang Yuanxing wondered what he had truly been doing all these years. Was he learning piano, or repaying, proving, or maintaining something on behalf of someone else?

He felt he never had a life of his own—not entirely true, as such a statement is relative. But he had no other options, no one asked, “Do you prefer piano or painting? Piano or soccer? Or pottery?”

He didn’t even have other instrument options: no traditional Chinese orchestra, no percussion, no triangle. From the start, it was always the piano, alongside a teacher once very close to his mother, whose first words to him were: “The older you get, the more you resemble Zhijing.”

So he decided to sing in bars—that was his first step off the narrow path. Then he decided to visit the places in the photos—that was his second step. Next, he wanted to find what he truly liked, or rather, to see what other choices the world held.

“Ah.” Liang Yuanxing suddenly snapped back to reality as the sun had already sunk halfway. He hurriedly checked the camera’s playback. If the shots weren’t good, he could still take a few more.

Then, from not far behind, someone called his name: “Xingxing!”

He turned around.

Duan Qingshen held his phone and snapped a burst shot the moment Liang looked back.

The photo captured the sunset, the camera, and him.

The last sliver of sunlight retreated in the biting wind. In the brief moment of day and night exchange, sky and wilderness merged as one.

It seemed that before the stars appeared, no mischief would be discovered.

Liang Yuanxing was a bit stunned when he turned back, then saw Duan Qingshen taking pictures of him. He first smiled, then understood—Duan had probably been standing there for some time but hadn’t come over.

The camera kept shooting because Duan hadn’t lowered his phone. Liang Yuanxing brushed his wind-tousled hair back and rolled his eyes at him with a smile: “Childish.”