Cen Shang Changfeng

Fifty-three-year-old Lu Guancen is a senior construction technology manager in Chongqing. He spent half his life climbing up the stairs in a mountain city, working his way up step by step from a young boy at the bottom, overcoming the mountains of survival and respectability, until he reached middle age, but his career was gradually marginalized. He harbors career ideals and hopes to preserve the fireworks of the old city through a micro-renewal project in the old city. At the same time, he also wants to make up for the alienation in marriage, the gap between father and son, and untie the emotional knot left over from his boyhood. Under the tide of the times, reality lies across borders everywhere. The project he worked so hard for finally came to fruition with compromise, and the knots in his heart that had been sealed for many years were reunited and untied, but the fulfillment he imagined did not come. Standing on the ideal "Cen Mountain", he finally realized the sadness of "crossing the hill and realizing that no one is waiting for him". The novel takes the clear and foggy Chongqing of 2026 as the background, and uses the regional imagery of mountains, cities, rivers, stairs, and mountains to explore the plight and awakening of middle-aged people. Lu Guancen did not collapse into decadence, nor did he encounter a miraculous counterattack. He slowly distinguishes between yearning and obsession: he admits that many of his efforts in life have no preset destination, and that futility is not completely useless; reconciliation does not mean extinguishing ideals, but removing the shackles that must be fulfilled. Even though regrets still exist, he still takes the work at hand seriously and treats the loved ones around him kindly. Even though there are endless mountains and endless winds in my heart, I finally understand: You don't have to arrive when you want to, the journey is the rest of your life.