They climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and sometimes slept side by side with coffins-even spending the night in a supposedly haunted house. They woke up at dawn and slept late, sometimes seeing off the threat of bandits in between. They sang, danced and played cards. One student, Liu Zhaoji, collected more than 2,000 folk songs along the way, and another, named Zha Liangzheng, would tear the page out of an English dictionary after he had memorized its content.

They finally reached Kunming, lean and tanned, looking very much like the soldiers returning home after defeating the Japanese army in Taierzhuang, Shandong province.

In the book, as Yang's trek continues, his anxieties are gradually disclosed, that is, "the seemingly everlasting adolescence" of a generation born between 1978 and 1985.

Growing up at a time when the country's economy has soared, Yang says his generation tends to believe that everything will last, so that they wasted a lot of time trying different things without knowing what they really wanted to do.

"But if we really want to 'create' something and want to have our own 'lifelong cause', it needs strong minds, endurance and a joint mental and physical effort," he writes.

Traveling the 1,600 km, followed by the sorting of voluminous materials related to Xinan Lianda and then a period of writing that lasted from September 2018 to March 2021, the three-year project finally provides an answer to Yang's biggest question: What am I going to do?

"Now I can call myself a real writer."