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When Yang Fan arrived in Sageplow Stead, he brought exactly three things with him: a wrapped bundle of books, a jar of pickled vegetables, and a blank notebook.\nHe'd picked up the notebook back when he was studying at the Inkbound Order. When a classmate asked what it was for, Yang Fan simply said he planned to keep a record of village affairs. "You're going to be a village officer, not an imperial historian," the classmate scoffed. "What could you possibly need to write down?" Yang Fan didn't answer. He just tucked the notebook into his satchel, keeping it close against his chest.\nHe truly wanted to do some good.\nBack at the Inkbound Order, a master had once given a lecture on the philosophy of Mencius. When the master spoke the words, "The people come first," Yang Fan felt it strike a chord deep in his chest. Later, when it came time to submit his civil service placement, he specifically asked for Sageplow Stead. His peers warned him that the region was a remote, grueling backwater. They couldn't understand what he hoped to gain by going out there. "Someone has to go," he replied.\nHe didn't take a single moment to rest on his first day. Instead, he walked from door to door until the sun went down. By nightfall, he had filled over a dozen pages with tiny, dense handwriting. He noted which elders had bad knees, whose roofs leaked in the rain, whose kids were old enough for school but weren't attending, and whose scallion crops were being eaten by pests.\nBefore long, the villagers noticed that the young official's notebook was filling up with hand-drawn circles. A circle meant a job to be done. Once he handled it, he would cross the circle out and scribble a quick note in the margins explaining how he'd fixed it.\nYang Fan had a terrible habit of muttering to himself as he walked. Once, entirely lost in thought, he walked face-first into an old tree, raising a nasty lump on his forehead. Old Man Sun, who was resting in the shade nearby, just chuckled. "Careful, Fan. That tree isn't going to jump out of your way." Rubbing his head, Yang Fan sheepishly admitted his mind was elsewhere.\n"You run yourself ragged from one end of this village to the other every single day," Old Man Sun said, taking a slow drag from his pipe. "What are you even after?"\nYang Fan thought about it for a moment. "I just want to do right by the folks here."\nOld Man Sun didn't press him. He just exhaled a puff of smoke. "Go put some cold water on that lump."\nAs Yang Fan nodded and walked away, the old man watched him go and muttered, "Silly boy."\nYang Fan didn't hear him. His mind was already racing ahead to tomorrow: he needed to fetch water for Granny Wang, check on Aunt Zhang's chickens one more time, and figure out how to pave the east road before the rains turned it to mud.\nThe notebook remained safely tucked inside his robes, resting right over his heart.\nPage by page, it was growing thicker.