This is my medical record, and it is also my ticket aboard.
The day I was diagnosed with a terminal illness, I became bound to the Human World: Mending the Heavens System. It said that countless worlds shaped by unresolved regrets were on the verge of collapse, and someone needed to restore the missing measures of life. For every stretch of life I completed, it would grant me a little more time.
And so I became a traveler between worlds. In the “Guangzi Block” of A Lifelong Journey, I am Zhou Bingkun, learning to shoulder a family through hard times. On the Gobi Desert of Minning Town, I am a poverty-alleviation official, witnessing how a single drop of water can draw a sea. At Peking University’s Red Building in The Age of Awakening, I am an auditing student, tracing the contours of faith amid impassioned speeches… I see the world through their eyes and weather its storms with their hands and feet, gently gathering up each regret surrounding love, ideals, survival, and sacrifice.
This is not a rescue. It is a long sojourn and a lesson in living. I have faithfully recorded all I experienced, felt, and learned here. If you open this journal, you will see that behind the grand narratives of history are individual people, each doing everything in their power to live, to love, and to believe.
And I, Shen Qingshan, a man borrowing time while facing death, have also found something more important than time in these journeys through ordinary life.
