230: Chapter 230 This story actually happens every day.

11:55 AM.

The campus of Jiangcheng No. 1 High School should have been descending into the usual pre-dismissal restlessness.

The last period was English class, and to the teacher's surprise, no one was packing their things as the end of school approached.

Below the podium, dozens of pairs of eyes were fixed intently on the large multimedia screen hanging at the front.

The faint blue light from the screen hit the glasses of the students in the first row, reflecting a cold, hard halo.

The classroom was so quiet that the only sound was the labored hum of the ceiling fan spinning overhead.

Even the "Sleeping God," who usually wouldn't wake up unless the dismissal bell rang,

was now wide-eyed, staring at the system time in the bottom right corner of the screen.

"Five more minutes."

Wu Di glanced down at his phone, his voice kept very low.

"The official website is already starting to lag. I just refreshed it, and the loading circle spun for over ten seconds."

In the back row.

Lin Que watched the scene, his eyelid twitching slightly.

He understood better than anyone how much of a shock those words would cause to this barren literary world once they were released.

The Preliminary Round piece, "fan jin passes the imperial examination," had torn away the fig leaf covering the distortion of human nature under the feudal imperial examination system.

The Semifinals piece, "the metamorphosis," was the pinnacle of absurdist realism, directly putting family ties, social values, and the logic of survival under intense scrutiny.

In a world that worshipped absolute rationality but had an extremely barren entertainment industry, these two articles were nothing short of nuclear-level.

Lin Que quietly zipped up his pencil case and cleared his desk completely.

"Brother Que, you're not staying for Old Shen's analysis session?"

Wu Di asked, seeing Lin Que preparing to make a run for it.

"No, I'm hungry from class."

He planned to dash straight home as soon as school let out at 12:00.

11:59:26

11:59:27

However, just as the dismissal bell was about to ring and Lin Que had already moved to the doorway,

*Creak—*

the door was pushed open from the outside.

Shen Qingqiu held her lesson plans in one arm and lightly adjusted her glasses, nodding to the English teacher on the podium.

Turning her head, she cast a faint glance through her lenses,

which precisely pinned Lin Que, who was about to slip away, in his tracks.

"Teacher Shen... what a coincidence."

Lin Que didn't even blink as he lightly patted his stomach.

"I'm too hungry. My mom called me to come home for soup."

Just as he was about to leave, Shen Qingqiu spoke.

"No rush for the soup."

Shen Qingqiu's fingertips tapped the books in her arms, a playful glint hidden behind her glasses.

"I already called your home and told them the whole class would be studying your competition entry this afternoon.

Ms. Wang specifically asked me to keep you at school so you could share your creative insights with your classmates.

Just make do with a meal at the cafeteria for lunch."

"Huh? My mom?"

Lin Que's heart sank. Ms. Wang Xiulian's "assist" had really caught him off guard.

"As compensation, lunch is on me. You can pick any window in the cafeteria!"

Shen Qingqiu stepped aside and made a "please" gesture.

"Go back to your seat first, Student Lin."

"As an author, avoiding reader feedback isn't a good habit.

Besides, I'm also very interested to hear how you came up with those... stories."

"Ooh—!!!"

A burst of jeering erupted in the classroom.

Wu Di took the lead in clapping, grinning from ear to ear.

"Brother Que, you can run but you can't hide! Come back, the brothers are waiting to admire your masterpiece!"

Lin Que sighed helplessly.

Under the teasing gazes of the whole class, he was dejectedly escorted back to his seat by Shen Qingqiu.

*Ring, ring, ring—*

The dismissal bell rang, and the English teacher exchanged a look with Shen Qingqiu before leaving with her lesson plans.

"It's open! It's open!"

Someone screamed.

The loading circle on the large screen began to spin frantically.

The image looked like a shattered puzzle, with large areas of misalignment and blank spaces.

Clearly, even the national official website's servers couldn't handle this wave of curiosity from across the country.

The page finally loaded, and two lines of bright red titles stretched across the top of the webpage in a near-dominant stance.

[Preliminary Round premium selection: Lin Que — "fan jin passes the imperial examination"; Xu Changge — "wedding banquet in the hutong"]

[Semifinals premium selection: Lin Que — "the metamorphosis"]

Lin Que's name appeared twice!

"Xu Changge tied in the Preliminary Round? In the Semifinals, Lin Que took the top spot all by himself!"

Exclamations of surprise rose one after another in the classroom.

Shen Qingqiu didn't waste any words. She went to the podium and used the mouse to click on the first piece, "fan jin passes the imperial examination."

The whole class held their breath.

As the text appeared line by line, the smiles on the faces of the students, who had originally expected a "power fantasy," gradually vanished.

They saw Fan Jin, who had spent his whole life taking exams and was so destitute he had to sell a chicken to buy rice,

They saw Butcher Hu, who one moment was cursing Fan Jin as a "good-for-nothing, useless person,"

and the next moment, after Fan Jin passed the exam, was carrying a fat pig and shamelessly calling him "Honorable Son-in-law."

"This... this is written so ruthlessly, isn't it?"

Wu Di muttered to himself, his palms breaking into a cold sweat.

At first, a few scattered chuckles broke out in the class, as they found the scene comical.

But when they saw the normally ferocious Butcher Hu now beaming with smiles while straightening his son-in-law's lapels,

even calling the "waste" he had insulted for half a lifetime "Honorable Son-in-law,"

those few laughs seemed to be choked off in their throats, stopping abruptly.

Although the students hadn't experienced the imperial examinations,

the fickleness of the world where "the poor are ignored in the market, while the rich have distant relatives in the mountains," and those sycophantic faces,

were depicted so vividly by Lin Que's pen that they felt a chill running down their spines.

This wasn't just writing a story; this was dissecting society.

Meanwhile, at the Xu family residence in the capital.

Xu Changge sat in his study, having reached the end of "fan jin passes the imperial examination" on his tablet.

Looking at his own piece, "wedding banquet in the hutong," which described the warmth and daily life of the hutongs, he suddenly found it a bit jarring.

He had written of "harmony" and "beauty," the lingering glow of a prosperous age in the eyes of a scion of a noble family.

But what Lin Que wrote of was "sickness" and "pain," a bloody sneer emerging from the struggles of the bottom tier.

"Is this... flesh and blood?"

Xu Changge clenched his fists.

He realized that in the face of Lin Que's almost cold social observation, his own words were as pale as paper.

Inside the classroom of Jiangcheng No. 1 High School.

Shen Qingqiu finished reading the last word and slowly turned around.

She didn't offer any evaluation, only quietly watching the youth in the back row who was boredly spinning a pen.

The entire class turned their heads in unison.

It was an extremely complex look.

Adoration was mixed with a hint of fear, and familiarity was tinged with a profound sense of strangeness.

They suddenly felt as if the Lin Que sitting in the back row had an old soul inside him, one that had experienced many hardships and seen through the world.

"Lin Que," Shen Qingqiu spoke, her voice somewhat raspy.

"Tell us, what were you thinking when you wrote this article?"

Lin Que stopped spinning his pen, looked at the dazzling sunlight outside the window, and replied casually:

"I didn't think too much about it.

Just felt that if you took off that long gown and replaced it with a modern suit,

this story... actually happens every day."

...