199: The article is fake, but the days are real.

Beijing, Qianmen Street.

The plaque of the main branch of Quanjude was glistening under the sun.

The main hall was bustling with noise, the shouts of the waiters rising and falling in waves.

The air was filled with the smoky scent of burning fruitwood and the charred aroma of roasted duck fat crackling.

This was the most respectable and lively part of Beijing.

It was a completely different world from the grim, prison-like examination hall a few kilometers away.

Lin Que picked up a lotus leaf pancake as thin as a cicada's wing.

With his chopsticks, he lifted two pieces of jujube-red duck skin, three shreds of scallion, and two sections of cucumber.

Dipped them in sweet bean sauce, and rolled them up.

"Crunch."

He took a bite.

The crispy duck skin burst between his teeth, the rich fat instantly flooding his mouth.

The savory-sweetness of the sweet bean sauce perfectly balanced the greasiness that was about to overwhelm him.

The physical exhaustion from the twenty-eight-hour seclusion vanished under this assault of carbs and fat.

"You really have to come to Beijing for authentic roast duck, though the sauce is a bit too heavy."

Lin Que swallowed the food and commented with a satisfied expression.

As he spoke, he picked up another lotus leaf pancake.

Though he was eating heartily, his mind kept wandering back to the conversation in the car earlier.

From Ye Xi, he learned that the award ceremony was shockingly high-profile, with some big leader attending and some cultural plan being launched.

Putting aside his thoughts, he casually took a photo of the messy leftovers on the table and sent it.

"I don't know about any big leader, but the roast duck is really good."

Shen Qingqiu, sitting across from him, couldn't eat a bite.

This top-tier teacher, usually unflappable even if Mount Tai collapsed before her, was now gripping her teacup tightly.

Her bowl and plate were clean, but her gaze seemed to pierce through Lin Que's skull.

"Lin Que..."

Shen Qingqiu finally couldn't hold back, her voice a bit dry:

"Did you really... finish writing?"

Because she knew this student was good in every way, except for his stubborn streak.

After all, it was his first time doing a seventy-two-hour creative session; it was possible he rushed to finish and submit it out of stubbornness.

"Teacher, you've asked this three times now."

Lin Que helplessly put down his chopsticks, took a tissue, and wiped his mouth slowly.

"I really finished."

Shen Qingqiu leaned forward anxiously, lowering her voice.

"This kind of topic is easiest to write empty. Did you write about psychological barriers? Or national defense?

To support a thirty-thousand-word structure, you need multiple frameworks..."

In Shen Qingqiu's view, these were the only two possible approaches she could think of.

Lin Que picked up the bowl of milky-white duck bone soup and blew on the floating oil.

"Neither."

"I wrote about a wall in the physical sense."

Shen Qingqiu was stunned:

"Physical sense? The Great Wall?"

"No, it's a city that can transform."

Lin Que took a sip of the soup, his eyes narrowing slightly.

"Teacher, imagine this. If Beijing were a giant Transformer.

The ground could flip over, and skyscrapers could telescope and fold like a telescope."

"To save space and energy, the city is divided into three spaces."

Shen Qingqiu's fingers tightened around her teacup.

The noise in the main hall receded at that moment, leaving only the boy's calm narration in her ears.

"The First Space houses five million elites. When the six a.m. sunlight shines, the ground is stable, and they enjoy a full twenty-four hours, with the scent of grass and trees in the air, and hot milk and bread."

"But when the twenty-four hours end, an alarm sounds. The ground flips over, and the skyscrapers of the First Space fold into the ground."

"What flips up is the Second Space."

"The Second Space is for twenty-five million middle-class people, who have sixteen hours.

And the remaining fifty million low-level laborers are crammed into the crowded, dirty Third Space.

They can only work from ten p.m. to six a.m., like cockroaches, handling all the city's garbage."

"Clatter."

The chopsticks Shen Qingqiu had just picked up fell onto the bone plate, making a crisp sound.

Two men drinking at the next table glanced over curiously before turning back.

But Shen Qingqiu seemed completely unaware.

"Inflation has turned time into currency."

Lin Que didn't stop, his voice still gentle.

"For people in the Third Space, time isn't life; it's the cost of survival.

To save consumption, they must enter capsule pods to hibernate during non-working hours."

"That wall,"

"it's a physical rule, a time allocation, the spatial folding after class solidification reaches its extreme."

Shen Qingqiu opened her mouth but couldn't make a sound for a long time.

She looked at this seventeen-year-old boy before her.

Beneath that young, clean, even somewhat scholarly face,

how could there be such a sharp, cold, and precise knife?

At that moment, Shen Qingqiu even felt a trace of fear.

Not toward Lin Que, but toward the world described in that story.

Meanwhile.

Wenjin Pavilion Hotel, Room 0817.

Chen Jiahao was propping up his chin, his eyes bloodshot as he stared at the mere three thousand words on the screen.

"Wall... what wall? How do you write thirty thousand words about an emotional wall? Do I have to write about getting dumped a hundred times?"

He looked out the window in despair, imagining his "Brother Que" on the same floor.

"Even that guy would scratch his head with a topic like this."

"Hang in there, we're all in the same boat..."

Chen Jiahao comforted himself.

He never dreamed that the "fellow sufferer" he was thinking of

was sitting in an air-conditioned room at that moment, shattering his homeroom teacher's worldview with a story.

Back at the roast duck restaurant.

"Then... what's the ending?"

Shen Qingqiu asked, her voice trembling. She was almost afraid to hear the ending, fearing the world might be too dark.

"The ending."

Lin Que smiled, but his eyes were a bit cold.

"The protagonist, Old Knife, to pay the school selection fee for his adopted daughter to attend kindergarten in the First Space, risked his life navigating the gaps of the city's folding, almost getting crushed into pulp by a hydraulic press."

"He succeeded. He got the money and returned to the Third Space."

"And then? Did he overthrow that world?"

Shen Qingqiu pressed urgently.

"No."

Lin Que shook his head.

"He just smoothed out the bills one by one in his coffin-like capsule room, watching the countdown on the wall."

"He said: Time to go to work."

Boom—

An indescribable sense of suffocation crawled up her spine.

No resistance, no passion, just a despairing inertia of life.

Risking his life was only so his daughter could catch a glimpse of the First Space, where the sun never sets.

While he himself would still rot in the garbage heap.

Shen Qingqiu looked at the plate of premium roast duck still mostly uneaten on the table.

That was the food of the First Space.

And she, like the people in Lin Que's story, was enjoying it all as a matter of course.

A strange, immense sense of absurdity and guilt made her lose her appetite completely.

"Teacher, don't space out. This duck bone soup gets fishy when it cools."

Lin Que's voice pulled her back to reality.

The boy was ladling himself a bowl of soup, looking relaxed,

as if that oppressive, deathly story was just an offhand joke.

"The essay is fake, life is real."

Lin Que blinked and stuffed a piece of duck meat into his mouth.

"Eat up, so you have the energy to wait for the results!"

Shen Qingqiu looked at his carefree expression and finally let out a bitter laugh.

Her tense nerves relaxed slightly... After paying the bill, Shen Qingqiu insisted on returning to the hotel first to report Lin Que's safety to the organizing committee,

and to find a quiet place to digest the mental shock she'd just received.

Lin Que, on the other hand, wanted to wander around Beijing alone.

The two parted ways at the entrance of Quanjude.

Lin Que stood on the bustling street, watching the busy traffic of Beijing.

The skyscrapers shimmered with the cold light of glass curtain walls under the sun, as if they might fold at any second.

He casually hailed a yellow Elantra taxi.

"Hey, young man, from your accent, you're from the south?"

The driver was a typical Beijing "chatterbox," turning around familiarly as soon as Lin Que got in.

"Here for tourism? Tsinghua and Peking University are holding competitions these days, so the roads are closed. You didn't come at a good time."

"Where else do you want to go? The Forbidden City or the Great Wall?"

Lin Que leaned back in his seat, looking at the scenery outside the window.

"Driver, not to any tourist spots."

Lin Que's voice was lazy, yet it carried an air of being in control.

"Please take me to the biggest bookstore in Beijing."

The competition was over; now it was time to check out the territory "Jian Shen" had conquered.

"Wow, a cultured one!"

The driver gave a thumbs-up.

"The biggest bookstore has to be in Xidan!

Buckle up, hold on tight!"