107: Soul Ferry

Early morning in Jinling, the fog had not yet dispersed.

In the office of the Editor-in-Chief at Shiyue Magazine Agency, the floor lamp had been on all night.

Assistant Xiao Chen carried two bags of steaming soup dumplings and soy milk in his hand,

as he treaded lightly and pushed open the heavy wooden door to the Editor-in-Chief's office.

The blinds were tightly shut, and several slanted beams of light cut across the floor, illuminating the dust floating in the air.

The smell of smoke in the room was choking.

"Editor-in-Chief? Teacher Fang?"

Assistant Xiao Chen called out tentatively.

No one answered.

He looked over by the dim light,

only to see the large leather office chair with its back to the door, facing the massive floor-to-ceiling window.

A hand hung limply over the armrest,

and between the fingertips was half a cigarette that had long since burned to ash,

the ash falling onto the expensive carpet, accumulating in a small pile.

Assistant Xiao Chen's heart skipped a beat.

Editor-in-Chief Fang was usually very meticulous about his appearance and cleanliness; this kind of disarray was simply unprecedented.

"Teacher Fang, I bought breakfast. There's also a... this morning..."

As Assistant Xiao Chen spoke, he walked around the desk, preparing to wake him up.

However, as the office chair slowly turned around,

he was so startled he almost threw the soy milk in his hand.

Fang Zhenyun turned the chair around.

His eyes were bloodshot, his eye bags were swollen, and he looked like he had aged ten years overnight.

His chin was covered in stubble.

He just sat there with his eyes open, staring blankly at a certain point in the air,

his gaze lacking its usual sharpness, replaced instead by a hollow emptiness.

"Xiao Chen."

Fang Zhenyun spoke,

his voice rasping like two pieces of rough sandpaper rubbing together.

"Tell me, am I... really getting old?"

Assistant Xiao Chen froze in place, even forgetting to put down the breakfast.

He had worked under Fang Zhenyun for five years,

and had seen this man command the wine table with ease, and act with thunderous efficiency at manuscript review meetings.

He had even seen him smash glasses and curse in anger.

But he had never seen a Fang Zhenyun like this.

No anger, no irritability,

he was as calm as a pool of stagnant water, yet it sent a bone-chilling coldness through others.

"Tea... Teacher Fang, what are you saying?

You are in the prime of your life. Under your leadership, our magazine agency..."

Assistant Xiao Chen stammered, trying to say something polite.

"Enough."

Fang Zhenyun waved his hand, his movements slow and weary.

He slowly pushed himself up from the armrests to stand, but because he had been sitting all night,

his legs had long since gone numb, and his body swayed violently.

Assistant Xiao Chen rushed to support him, but was pushed away by Fang Zhenyun.

He staggered to the floor-to-ceiling window,

looking down at the ancient capital of six dynasties that was currently waking up.

"Last night, I thought all night."

Fang Zhenyun's palm pressed against the cold glass.

The words of that Jian Shen, that Dream Weaver, and that high school student,

buzzed in his mind, burning throughout the night.

"We are a wildfire; when the wind blows, we will burn through."

"From atop a high platform, it is hard to know the temperature of the water."

"A true path is forged by walking, not by begging for it."

"Heh!"

Fang Zhenyun looked at the endless stream of traffic outside the window and laughed self-deprecatingly.

"Xiao Chen, I used to always feel like I was a gatekeeper."

Fang Zhenyun curled his lips in self-mockery.

"I had to keep all the filth and chaos outside, only letting the gold in.

In the end, I discovered that what I have been guarding all this time,

might just be a castle in the air that nobody cares about."

Scenes from yesterday flashed back in his mind again.

After the forum ended in chaos, the Provincial Writers Association immediately held an internal closed-door meeting.

In the meeting room, the atmosphere was suffocatingly oppressive.

Fang Zhenyun had originally prepared a stomach full of words,

wanting to characterize this incident as 'the ignorance and arrogance of youth,'

and even wanting to use his connections to pressure Lin Que's school.

However, when Chairman Gu Changfeng walked into the meeting room, everything changed.

The old man was still holding the name tag that Lin Que had thrown away,

and there was no hint of anger on his face; instead, there was a sense of gratification he had never shown before.

"Zhenyun."

Gu Changfeng gently placed the name tag on the table, in front of Fang Zhenyun's seat.

"Do you think this kid was here to cause trouble?"

"Was he not? Elder Gu, this kind of lack of organization and discipline..."

"No."

Gu Changfeng interrupted him, his gaze like a torch.

"He was telling us that this pool of stagnant water needs to come alive."

Vice Chairman Liang Wenyou also sighed and took up the thread:

"Zhenyun, you and I both came from that era of burning passion.

Back then, literature was a bugle call, a javelin.

When did we start only daring to use it to decorate the storefront?"

Gu Changfeng picked up the name tag and gently stroked it:

"This child, he threw away the honor because he felt it was too hot to handle, a title without substance.

He wasn't insulting the Writers Association; he was reminding us,

not to forget where we, the people who write, have our roots."

"'From atop a high platform, it is hard to know the temperature of the water'... this sentence was written by Jian Shen, and it was also meant for us to hear."

Gu Changfeng's gaze swept over everyone present.

"The Dream Weaver's wildfire, Jian Shen's spring breeze, and Lin Que's thunderclaps.

These three may seem different, but they share the same source.

They are all using their own ways to touch living people, to touch those painful realities."

"Zhenyun, you weren't wrong to guard the gate.

But the times have changed, and the world outside the gate has changed too.

You can't just guard your tiny plot of land and treat all the fresh air trying to break through the door as a flood or a savage beast."

Gu Changfeng pushed the name tag back in front of Fang Zhenyun, his tone heavy.

"A gatekeeper sometimes needs to look back,

and see whether what he is guarding is a treasure house or a tomb."

...Fang Zhenyun withdrew his thoughts,

and looking at his haggard reflection in the glass, he shook his head bitterly.

"Xiao Chen."

"Yes, I'm here."

"Cancel the entire suppression plan targeting 'Dream Weaver' and 'Jian Shen'."

Assistant Xiao Chen was greatly shocked:

"Cancel it?

But Teacher Fang, we've been preparing for this for months, even the press releases are..."

Fang Zhenyun waved his hand to interrupt his assistant,

and slowly turned around, his back looking somewhat hunched in the morning light.

Then he shook his head with a bitter smile, a kind of helplessness that comes when the tide has turned.

"Just cancel it."

Fang Zhenyun's voice carried a weakness as if his strength had been drained.

"What Elder Gu and the others see is so-called hope and living water..."

He looked at the heavy traffic outside the window, his eyes dark and cold.

"But what I see is the collapse of rules, and the pain of the fire burning oneself!"

It wasn't that he didn't understand the warning in Gu Changfeng's words, but he understood even better,

that when a wildfire is given the name of hope,

it is no longer a spark that can be easily extinguished, but a prairie fire that has received official tacit approval.

"To keep blocking it would no longer be guarding the gate; it would be like a mantis trying to stop a chariot."

He added bitterly, as if speaking to Assistant Xiao Chen, yet also to himself.

"If I wait until the fire burns the Shiyue sign before retreating,

that would be... even more embarrassing!"

...Train G118.

Business class carriage.

The temperature inside was a constant 24 degrees, and the air was filled with a faint fragrance,

isolating the rapidly receding Southern Jiangsu outside the window into another world.

Shen Qingqiu leaned against the large leather seat, holding a cup of warm lemon water in her hand.

Even now, she had an unreal feeling, as if she were stepping on cotton.

Just last night, she had been worried to death about whether her student would be blacklisted across the entire province.

And now, that "troublemaker" was sitting diagonally across from her,

with the seat adjusted to full-recline mode and a magazine covering his face,

sleeping quite heartlessly.

In the seat next to Lin Que, the usually arrogant top student Zhao Zichen,

was currently holding a small notebook,

stealing glances at Lin Que while frantically scribbling something down.

This morning, when he heard the news that Lin Que had become an honorary member of the Provincial Writers Association,

he was so shocked that he couldn't eat breakfast all morning.

"Lin Que."

Shen Qingqiu finally couldn't help herself and put down her water cup,

her voice filled with complex emotions.

"Don't you have anything you want to say?"

A muffled voice came from beneath the magazine:

"Teacher, I am currently engaged in deep literary conceptualization. Do not disturb."

"Stop pretending to sleep."

Shen Qingqiu's voice became a bit more serious.

"You are now an honorary member of the Provincial Writers Association.

Do you realize that while this may seem like an 'amulet,' it is also a 'shackle'?"

Lin Que took the magazine off his face; his eyes showed no hint of sleepiness and were very clear.

He understood Shen Qingqiu's concern.

He also understood the so-called "shackle."

But having lived two lives, he understood one truth best:

So-called rules and constraints are only effective against the weak.

What Gu Changfeng and Liang Wenyou gave him was not a constraint, but a key that could leverage greater resources.

Lin Que put on a face that looked like he hadn't fully woken up and yawned:

"Teacher, you're overthinking it.

This thing is like a certificate from school; it looks good on the wall, but it really can't put food on the table.

If you really want to call it a shackle, it's a golden one.

If anyone tries to use the rules to find trouble with me in the future, they'll have to weigh the weight of this shackle first, right?

See, doesn't this save you the trouble of writing appeal materials for me in the future?"

Shen Qingqiu's mouth twitched.

This kid always had those twisted arguments that also had the ability to leave one unable to refute them.

Just then, the originally quiet atmosphere in the carriage was suddenly broken by a rapid notification sound.

It was the notification sound for Shen Qingqiu's special follows on her phone.

Not just Shen Qingqiu, but even several young passengers in the back rows who were playing with their phones almost simultaneously let out cries of surprise.

"Holy crap! It's updated!"

"It's finally here!!"

Shen Qingqiu's heart skipped a beat.

With this kind of commotion, who else could it be but that "madman" everyone both loved and hated?

She quickly opened the Red Fruit Reading app.

Sure enough, that black and red profile picture was still full of oppressive presence.

[Hell Dream Weaver] posted a new update.

There was no long-winded speech,

no response to the previous literary world storm, and not even a single extra word of nonsense.

There was only a pitch-black background image,

with eight large characters written on it in blood-red font,

in an extremely scrawled manner—

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soul ferry

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