Summer, 2028.
The air was hot and thick, like a pot of boiling paste, stirring up an unbearable irritation.
This was an old residential complex built in the 1990s, with no elevators, located along Yancheng's North Second Ring Road.
On the fifth floor, in a one-bedroom apartment, the windows stood wide open.
Tang Song sat shirtless on the old sofa in the living room, facing an electric fan.
He lowered his head and refreshed his phone screen. The chat interface on the job-hunting app was utterly silent, with only system-pushed ads popping up.
"Phew—"
He let out a long sigh and unconsciously scratched at the thinning hair on top of his head.
Since returning to Yancheng from the Imperial Capital, he had changed jobs three times. Now, he worked in after-sales development support at a small tech company.
He handled scattered maintenance tasks and customers' technical issues.
The pay was not high, nowhere near respectable.
In truth, his savings from the past few years were more than enough to make a decent down payment.
But without a stable job with prospects to support him, he had never dared take on a mortgage that would last decades.
Now, the company's performance was getting worse and worse. Recently, rumors had spread that they planned to change from two days off each week to only one.
They might even cut salaries.
It was clearly a disguised attempt to force people out.
Quite a few coworkers were discussing changing jobs, and everyone was restless.
Swept up in that anxiety, he had put together a résumé and started sending it everywhere through job apps.
But résumés disappearing without a trace were the norm. The occasional replies either offered pitifully low salaries or had absurdly high requirements.
Thirty-one years old.
For an entry-level programmer with an