In this reflective excerpt, Cheng Xin frames her life as a continuous ascent up “stairs” made of responsibility. Cheng Xin begins with ordinary childhood duties: studying hard, obeying parents, and later becoming useful to society rather than a burden.

Cheng Xin then traces how those responsibilities expanded with each stage of her life. As a doctoral student and rocket engineer, Cheng Xin worked to improve chemical rockets for Earth orbit; after joining the PIA, Cheng Xin’s task expanded enormously to sending a probe to meet the invading Trisolaran Fleet a light-year away.

Cheng Xin recalls receiving a star and, in the new era, becoming Swordholder, responsible for maintaining dark forest deterrence and influencing the development of both humanity and Trisolaris. Later, Cheng Xin’s duties became contradictory: Cheng Xin wanted to give humanity lightspeed capability but also had to obstruct that goal to avoid war.

Cheng Xin admits that the extent of personal responsibility for the catastrophes and the Solar System’s destruction can never be definitively known, but Cheng Xin accepts that the events were connected to her choices and duties. Now, alongside Guan Yifan, Cheng Xin sees the decision about the mini-universe as a share in responsibility for the fate of the entire universe.

The excerpt ends by rejecting both religious and historical exceptionalism. Cheng Xin insists on being ordinary, while recognizing that Cheng Xin’s path has become the path of civilization itself: awakening, leaving its cradle, flying farther, and finally merging its fate with the universe.