For things like this, let alone malicious teasing and sarcasm—even well-intentioned concern and comfort, when heard too much, only make the gloom in one’s heart heavier.

At the moment, he appeared calm on the surface, but in truth, he was feeling quite stifled inside.

“This tuition, the nutrition, year after year… By the way, your family raises so many chickens, but you haven’t sold a single egg all these years, have you? If you add it all up… what a pity.” That person sighed again.

“A few eggs are just for the kids to eat and grow, why bring that up?!” George Clark was a bit displeased, took a drag of his cigarette, and said, “Besides, once you’ve learned something, it stays with you. It’ll always come in handy.”

“Isn’t that right? Look at our Qingwa, his height, his looks, he’s been raised well. And he’s educated—at least in the future, when it comes to finding a wife and the bride price, there’ll be no worries at all. Plenty of families would be willing.” An uncle nearby picked up the conversation, offered his support, then laughed twice, trying to steer the topic away.

But he didn’t get the chance.

A new topic popped up in the crowd. Someone sighed deeply and concluded, “Ah, speaking of which, our Fenglong’ao’s first college student still hasn’t appeared.”

“Isn’t that so? Our village must be at least two hundred years old by now, right? I heard that even back in the prosperous old days, not a single scholar ever came out of here. It’s strange when you think about it.” The person finished and turned to point at the rolling mountains not far away, saying with some reluctance, “Our village has such good feng shui.”

With that—

“Yes, yes.” For a moment, quite a few people nodded and voiced their agreement.

The saying that the village sits on good feng shui has been around since ancient times; otherwise, it wouldn’t have gotten the “dragon” character in its name.

In the corner, Henry Clark looked up along with everyone else. To be honest, the mountain range encircling the village did look, in the night, a bit like a coiled dragon lying in wait.

But then again, if you look for it, don’t most mountain ranges in the world resemble a dragon in some way?

“This matter, you young folks probably don’t know.” An elder in the village spoke up, puffing on his pipe as he reminisced, “Back in the day, when I was just a teenager, a wandering fortune-teller passed through and said… said that in this place, no great figures would ever come out.”

A string of surprised voices in the crowd asked, “Why?”

The old man raised his hand and pointed at the distant mountains. “Because our dragon is locked up. The fortune-teller said, when you see the mountain, ask its name. You’re Fenglong’ao—‘Sealed Dragon Valley.’ If you can seal a dragon, how could a few small people hoping to rise ever break free?”

“Huh?… That actually makes sense.”

Suddenly, it all seemed clear. Many people nodded in agreement, sighing and complaining. It even seemed to provide a reasonable explanation for why Henry Clark had failed the college entrance exam two years in a row.

More people started looking for him in the crowd, wanting to comfort him.

Again? Henry Clark felt so miserable he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He didn’t believe any of this, of course. Seeing the situation, he quietly slipped away from the corner and left the drying yard alone.

……

After he left, back at the drying yard—

“Dad, Dad, just now our TV suddenly went all static—just snow everywhere… Now we can’t even get Channel 1.”

A group of kids who had been watching TV ran out from the house, and one of them shouted at the adults in the yard.

TV signal problems were common and frequent in those days. The adults were deep in conversation and waved them off impatiently, saying, “Just tap it a couple of times yourself, adjust the antenna… I don’t have time to fix it for you.”

And so he sent the kids away.

Around the same time, someone looked up at the sky, staring at the moon, and called out in surprise, “Hey, what’s that? Look, right under the moon, that dark thing—what is it?”

Everyone looked up.

Beneath the half-moon of the summer night, there was indeed a dark shadow, seemingly moving, but it was hard to make out, and it quickly disappeared into the black night sky.

“Probably just a big bird flying by.”

“It can’t be a plane—planes have lights underneath, they blink.”

“It’s just an eagle or something, we’ve seen those before.”

People chatted.

Chapter 2: This Is Not a Transformer

Henry Clark didn’t see any of this—the TV suddenly losing signal and turning to static, or the shadow that appeared and disappeared beneath the moon.

Of course, even if he had seen it, he wouldn’t have thought there was anything special or mysterious about it.

He was walking along the road at that moment.

Because the village is surrounded by mountains and the terrain is rugged, the houses in Fenglong’ao are not very close together. The uncle’s house hosting the banquet was at the entrance of the village, while Henry Clark’s home was at the far end, near the mountains, actually a bit of a distance away.

He didn’t go through the village, but took the mountain path outside instead—it was closer that way, and more importantly, he’d run into fewer people. As for walking at night, there was a moon tonight, and he was long used to it.

The breeze at the edge of the forest carried a hint of chill and a faint whistling sound.

So, am I really not going to take the exam anymore? What should I do in the future, what should I become?