Zhang San woke up, and the first thing he did wasn't to wash up, but to "beep" his wrist-mounted QR code scanner. The screen lit up, displaying: "Today's Health Code: Green. Risk Assessment: Low. Allowed to go out."

"This jelly, the color is really beautiful." Old Wang picked up his phone and took a picture of the dazzling array of jellies on the counter, posting it on his WeChat moments.

He is a food safety supervisor, and has been in this line of work for almost twenty years. His daily job is to inspect various food stores, checking the production dates, ingredient labels, and whether there are any expired or deteriorated products. He is always very serious, meticulous, and even a bit nitpicky. His colleagues secretly call him "Serious Wang."

The old chessboard, worn like a weathered rock, sat in the center of the empty room. A single dim bulb weakly illuminated the black and white intersections on the board, like silent sighs.

Ke Jie sat before the board, he hadn't moved the pieces in a long time. He was no longer the Go prodigy admired by millions, now he was just an ordinary person, or rather, a Go player abandoned by the times. The past praises and applause had retreated like a tide, leaving him alone to face the emptiness.

Since Ke Jie – oh no, he should now be called Old Ke – announced "I'm not competing anymore," his life has undergone tremendous changes. From a Go genius under the spotlight to an ordinary old man haggling in the farmers market, it took Old Ke a long time to adjust to this gap.

"Life is about being down-to-earth," Old Ke said to himself in the mirror. He set a goal for himself: learn to bargain within a week.

"Ke Jie is not competing anymore."

The news was like a pebble thrown into the calm world of Go, stirring up layers of ripples. Li Bo sat in a corner of the Go club, sipped his bitter tea, and watched the young reporter on TV speaking passionately into the camera.

Li Ming wakes up at seven o'clock every morning, not by the alarm clock, but by the slogan "Good morning, strivers!" broadcasted punctually over the community loudspeaker. He lives in a place called "Dual-Track Community," where everything operates on two tracks.

For instance, there are two sets of garbage sorting systems in the community. One is for "strivers," and the other is for "pausers." The strivers' bins shimmer with golden light, while the pausers' bins are dull gray. Li Ming is a striver, and he feels proud of this, though he doesn't quite understand what he's striving for.

Professor Zhang has been so worried lately that his hair is about to fall out. As the backbone of the Folk Culture Research Center, he was entrusted with an important task—to write an English introduction for China's application for Spring Festival to become a World Heritage Site, with a word limit: 200 words.

Old Jin, known as "Dr. Jin," was a well-known "Spring Festival expert" in the Ministry of Culture. From the Little New Year on the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month to the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, he could tell you stories about anything related to the Spring Festival for three days and three nights. This time, the heavy responsibility of applying for UNESCO recognition for the Spring Festival fell on his shoulders.

But to his surprise, news came from UNESCO: to ensure fairness and impartiality, each application could only be introduced in 200 words.

Jean-Pierre, before his retirement, was a sonar operator on a submarine. Now, he runs a small café by the Seine. He enjoys observing the passersby, just like he used to listen to the various sounds from the deep sea while on the submarine. His daily routine, besides preparing coffee for his regular customers, is to open his old smartphone and check the daily records on his pedometer app.

This app, called "Healthy Life," was a gift from his son, who said it was to encourage him to exercise more and live longer. Jean-Pierre doesn't pay much attention to it. He walks the same route every day, from the café to the nearby park and back, monotonous like his submarine patrols before retirement. What really interests him are the colorful charts and data on the app's interface. They inexplicably make him feel at ease, as if he still possesses some quantifiable presence in the vast sea of humanity.

The sun lazily spilled onto the stone table in the park. Ke Jie—no, it should be "World Go Nine-Crown Champion"—sat upright, facing an old man in an undershirt, holding half a steamed bun in his hand. The chessboard was very old, with even a few suspicious stains on it, but the pieces were new, jet-black and shiny, out of place with everything around them, just like his current identity.

The day after he changed his Weibo note to "World Go Nine-Crown Champion," he decided to come here to play chess. Not to prove anything, but just to see what this title could bring him. He imagined that maybe someone would recognize him, and then rush to take photos with him, ask for his autograph, or at the very least, someone would exclaim, "Oh, isn't that...that...the Nine-Crown Champion?"