141: Snow is dead rain.

At 11:30 PM, the snow in Jiangcheng stopped.

In the teachers' apartment, Shen Qingqiu had just finished revising the last lesson plan and rubbed her aching temples.

The red date tea on the table had already gone cold.

Just as she was about to get up to pour it out, the phone screen next to her hand suddenly lit up.

[Mu Xia] (Lin Que): Teacher Shen, I’ve finished the first draft for the competition. Please take a look when you have a moment.

Shen Qingqiu was slightly taken aback and glanced at the wall clock.

At this hour?

She picked up the phone, her fingertip hovering over the screen for a moment.

This kid... he just got the topic today, and he’s already written it?

[Shen Qingqiu]: Why aren't you asleep yet?

She sent the message, and the reply from the other side was almost instantaneous.

[Mu Xia] (Lin Que): Inspiration just struck, and I was afraid it would dissipate if I went to sleep.

I’m actually feeling quite energetic now that I’ve finished. I’m going to sleep now. Goodnight, Teacher~

Shen Qingqiu looked at the reply and tapped lightly on the screen.

She opened the document titled "listening to snow."

Originally, she only intended to give it a brief glance and read it carefully tomorrow.

She mainly wanted to see if the central theme had strayed.

After all, the topic "Silent Thunder" was full of traps and could easily turn into pretentious, sentimental writing.

However, when her eyes met the first line of text,

Her body, which had been leaning against the back of the chair, involuntarily straightened up.

"The snow in Jiangnan is dead rain..."

Shen Qingqiu's pupils contracted slightly.

No flashy parallelism, no showing off with quotes from classics.

The writing was as cold and sharp as a knife, slicing directly through the gentle exterior of Jiangnan,

Revealing the layer of bones underneath, frozen hard by history and time.

She saw the snow through the young man's pen;

It wasn't about romance and scenery, but oppression, silence, and the breathless gasps under the wheels of history.

The room was eerily quiet, with only the slight sound of Shen Qingqiu's finger sliding across the screen.

When she reached the line "True thunder is often mute," Shen Qingqiu felt her scalp go numb.

Is this really something a high school student could write?

In fact, this wasn't even something an average writer could produce.

This required not only immense life experience and deep compassion,

But also a pair of eyes that could see through the ways of the world to hear, from an ordinary snowfall,

Such a deafening silence.

Shen Qingqiu put down her phone, walked to the window, and pushed it open.

The cold wind rushed in, ruffling her hair.

She looked at the snow outside, which cast a pale halo under the streetlights, unable to snap out of it for a long time.

She remembered the phone call from Chairman Gu Changfeng:

"There's a wild streak in this kid's writing..."

Now it seemed like it was more than just a wild streak... The next morning, Jiangcheng No. 1 High School.

Although it was the first week after school started,

And despite the suppression from the homeroom teacher on the first day, the entire Grade 11 building was still immersed in a sense of relaxation, like survivors of a disaster.

After all, there was still time.

Only in a few corners of grade 11, class 3,

The atmosphere was as taut as a string about to snap.

Those were the "warriors" who had signed up for the "Fu Zhi Yao Competition" essay competition.

Lin Que had just stuffed his bag into the desk drawer,

And before he could even stick a straw into the warm bag of soy milk, he was surrounded by several figures.

The leader was the study representative, Zhang Ya, followed by the arts representative, Liu Hui,

And Li Bowen, a top student who usually wore thick glasses and only knew how to bury his head in practice problems.

These were the literary backbones of the class, usually dominating the top five in essay scores.

But at this moment,

Each of them had dark circles under their eyes and a vacant look, as if they had just escaped from a refugee camp.

"Lin Que!"

Zhang Ya looked completely broken.

"You saw the preliminary topic too, right?

'Silent Thunder'—what kind of ghost topic is that!

I thought about it all night and pulled out a handful of hair, but I couldn't squeeze out a single word!"

"Yeah."

Liu Hui also had a bitter face.

"I originally wanted to write about a father's love being like a mountain, silent and wordless.

But after writing five hundred words, I couldn't even stand to look at it myself. It's too cliché!

I feel like the judges would throw it in the trash after reading the first sentence."

Li Bowen pushed his glasses up and looked at Lin Que seriously:

"Lin Que, you have the most ideas. Do you have any thoughts?

Give us a little brainstorm so we can catch some of your good luck."

Lin Que took a sip of soy milk, feeling the warm current slide down his esophagus, and squinted his eyes contentedly.

"Thoughts?"

Lin Que swallowed the soy milk and thought for a moment.

"Hmm... I don't really have any thoughts."

"Huh?"

Zhang Ya was in despair.

"Even you don't have any ideas? Does that mean we can just drop out of the competition?"

"No."

Lin Que slowly pulled a neatly folded square napkin from his pocket and wiped his mouth.

"What I mean is, I've already finished writing, so I don't need any more ideas."

The air suddenly went silent for three seconds.

"You... you're finished?!"

The three of them spoke in unison, their voices suddenly spiking,

Causing the surrounding students who were rushing their homework to look over.

Zhang Ya's eyes widened:

"We only got the topic yesterday; how many hours has it been?

You didn't need to conceptualize? You didn't need to make an outline?"

"I did."

Lin Que nodded as if it were a matter of course.

"I conceptualized for five minutes while taking a shower, and then it took forty minutes to write. It wasn't that fast, was it?"

Zhang Ya opened her mouth but couldn't speak, feeling like she had taken ten thousand points of critical damage.

Someone could conceptualize a competition essay in the time it took to take a shower,

While she had scratched her head all night and was still struggling with how to write the first sentence.

"Then... what did you write about?"

Li Bowen asked persistently, his eyes full of a desire for knowledge.

"Give us a hint of your line of thought? Let us worship a bit."

Lin Que blinked and made something up on the spot:

"Oh, nothing special. I just wrote about the weather forecast."

"Huh?"

The three of them looked at each other, their faces full of question marks.

Weather forecast?

The topic is "Silent Thunder," and you wrote about the weather forecast?

Is this some kind of postmodern performance art?

"It's that kind of... listening to snow."

Lin Que shrugged with an air of profound mystery.

"Well, the sound of snow falling—you can't hear it, but it's very cold. That's roughly what it means."

Zhang Ya's lip twitched:

"Tch, if you don't want to say it, you can just say so. There's no need to humiliate us like this."

Lin Que smiled and didn't explain.

Some things lose their flavor once they're explained.

When they see that essay "listening to snow," they will naturally understand what "weather forecast" means.

"Sigh, forget it, forget it."

Zhang Ya sighed and slumped onto the desk dejectedly.

"It looks like I can only go flip through those old collections of full-score essays,

To see if I can find some inspiration in those old, dusty clichés."

"Don't bother with the essay collections; the more you read them, the more rigid your thinking becomes."

Li Bowen suddenly suggested.

"I heard from an upperclassman that instead of reading those formulaic essays, it's better to look at newspapers and magazines.

Reality is always more magical than fiction. Maybe a single sentence in the news can hit the mark?"

"Hey! That makes sense!"

Liu Hui's eyes lit up.

"Doesn't our class's reading corner update the Su Province Daily and various magazines every day?

Let's go, let's go, let's take a look!"

Several people rushed toward the reading corner at the back of the classroom as if grabbing onto a lifeline.

Lin Que had nothing better to do, and since he was a bit full from the soy milk, he slowly followed them.

The reading corner was actually just a simple bookshelf,

With a few magazines and the day's newspaper scattered on it.

Zhang Ya was quick and grabbed the Su Province Daily, which still smelled of fresh ink, and spread it out on a desk.

"Come on, let's brainstorm and see if there's any usable material."

Their heads huddled together as if they were studying a treasure map.

"...Provincial leaders inspect such-and-such factory, emphasizing safe production... Tsk, too political, pass."

"...20th anniversary of the Jiangcheng Bridge opening... Can we write about this? The changes in history? Silent years?"

Li Bowen shook his head in rejection.

"International news, armed conflict in some place... This is too far away from us."

"Inter... international news, armed conflict in some place... This is too far away from us."

Several people flipped through the pages noisily, complaining incessantly.

Lin Que stood on the periphery, biting his straw,

His gaze falling on the colorful pages through the crowd, with a hint of inquiry.

Since crossing over, he had learned about the barrenness of the literary world and the advancement of technology,

But he hadn't yet carefully studied the social landscape of this world.

He wanted to see, without the influence of those familiar masterpieces,

Which direction human nature took in this world,

And how the daily joys and sorrows differed from his previous life.

"Why is this whole page full of praise?"

Zhang Ya flipped the page irritably, making a loud rustling sound.

"Isn't there anything profound? Even a social pain point would do."

Just then, Liu Hui, who hadn't spoken, suddenly paused her finger.

Her fingertip rested on the very bottom margin of the newspaper,

Where inconspicuous missing persons notices or lost-and-found announcements were usually published,

But today, a line of startling bold text was printed there.

"Hey, look at this..."

Liu Hui's voice was very low, carrying a faint, inexplicable chill.

"This title... is a bit creepy."

Everyone's heads instantly crowded around.

It was indeed an inconspicuous "tofu block" of text,

Sandwiched between news about "community warmth" and "stable vegetable prices," looking completely out of place.

Like a black spot suddenly appearing on a clean face.

The title was printed in bold black letters, exuding a bloody sense of reality.

"Jinling Female College Student Falls to Death Late at Night! Carried a Million-Yuan 'Beauty Loan' Before Death"

...