231: Chapter 231 Resonance from Desert City

Mo City, the northernmost tip of Huaxia.

Even though summer had arrived, the wind blowing in from Siberia still carried a killing, cold hardness,

sweeping across the broad surface of the Black River and making whistling sounds in the birch forests along the banks.

Danyi Lopivich sat in his old wooden attic;

outside the window was a gray sky, and inside was a monitor with an aging picture tube.

His gray eyes held a lonely coldness of reclusive isolation in the room.

The screen was displaying the newly unblocked "fan jin passes the imperial examination."

Dan Yi read it word by word, his fingertips lightly tapping on the rough wooden tabletop, producing a dull and monotonous sound.

“Perfect technique, sketching to the bone.”

He whispered a sentence in a flat tone.

As a mixed-race person with half-Slavic blood,

he could understand the seasoned writing power behind this article, but it was difficult for him to project himself into it.

That kind of thousand-year-old nightmare of imperial examinations, that kind of demonic craving for fame and official titles,

to him, was like watching an ancient pantomime through a glass cover—

brilliant as it was, it had nothing to do with him.

Closing the page, he clicked on Xu Changge's "wedding banquet in the hutong."

After reading only three paragraphs, Dan Yi leaned back against his chair.

“Truly beautiful...”

He had to admit that Xu Changge's writing was extremely magnificent;

the lines exuded the elegant poise of a family with a long heritage.

This accumulation of rhetoric and creation of artistic conception perfectly matched all the definitions of "top-tier Huaxia literature" he had accepted since childhood.

Dan Yi twitched the corner of his mouth in a self-deprecating smile.

Perhaps because the education he received since childhood wavered between the cultures of two countries,

he still lacked a fundamental feeling for the warmth of those deep alleys and hutongs, as well as the character of ancient literati.

Ultimately, he lacked that deep-rooted connection.

He closed the page, took a deep breath, and clicked on the only national premium selection in the Semifinals.

“the metamorphosis.”

Before clicking, his own article from the Semifinals flashed through his mind.

Unsurprisingly, he had fallen into the examiner's trap, becoming entangled between technology and nature.

Although he had managed an A+ by sheer volume of reading, that sense of powerlessness was still fresh in his memory.

Since it was written by that Lin Que, it shouldn't be bad, right?

Setting aside his thoughts, he began to read.

However, when he saw Gregor waking up in the morning to find himself transformed into a giant beetle,

Dan Yi's originally somewhat casual posture instantly froze.

Even the sound of the wind outside the window seemed to be shut out.

The plot unfolded bit by bit.

Watching Gregor crawl clumsily in that narrow, dark bedroom,

watching the family he once loved go from horror to disgust, and finally watching him rot and stink in loneliness like trash being cleared away... Dan Yi's gray pupils suddenly contracted, and his breathing became rapid and heavy.

That despair of being abandoned by the world, that sense of being an outsider that could not be dispelled even among one's closest kin,

was like a rusty knife, stabbing straight into the most secret crack in his heart without any technique at all.

He was all too familiar with this feeling.

In Mo City, he was the "Russki" in other people's mouths.

To his relatives, he was a "mutt" with impure blood.

He studied desperately, trying to fit in,

but no matter how hard he tried, those gray eyes were always a wall,

separating him from this world with crystal clarity.

“Lin Que...”

Dan Yi stared at the name at the bottom of the screen, his throat tightening.

For the first time, he felt that in this world that emphasized rationality and well-balanced writing,

someone could actually dissect this suffocating loneliness so thoroughly.

An almost fanatical emotion burned like a wildfire in his cold eyes.

“This isn't a story.”

Dan Yi spoke to the empty room, his voice trembling:

“This is writing about me.”

At this moment, the image of that high-and-mighty champion Lin Que changed in his heart.

He was no longer a rival, but in this vast world,

the only kindred spirit who could understand the inner voice of an "outsider" like him... Crossing thousands of kilometers, the scene returns to Jiangcheng No. 1 High School.

Inside the classroom of Class 2-3, the multimedia screen had already gone black.

Shen Qingqiu stood by the podium,

her glasses held in her hand, the temple of the glasses unconsciously tapping against the edge of the desk.

She looked at the students below, her lips moving, but she found she couldn't find the right words to summarize.

The dozens of students below seemed to have had their souls sucked out; no one spoke,

and even the boys who usually loved gossip the most had stopped what they were doing.

The yield of the nuclear bomb that was "the metamorphosis" was too great.

It wasn't the sharp satire of feudal society like "fan jin passes the imperial examination," but an ultimate interrogation of existential value that pointed straight to the heart.

When a person loses their social value, loses their ability to provide for their family,

and even their appearance becomes unrecognizable, how much of so-called "love" remains?

This reality, so heavy it was almost cruel,

made these greenhouse-raised high school students feel an unprecedented sense of powerlessness and loss.

Wu Di slumped on his desk, his original cockiness completely gone, muttering:

“Brother Que, what you wrote... it makes me want to cry but I can't. There's something in my heart, blocking it up, making it feel terrible.”

Lin Que sat in the back row, looking at the air outside the window distorted by the scorching sun on the playground, saying nothing.

He knew very well

that the impact of such a cross-era literary work on this current world was devastating.

He turned his head, gave a slight nod to Shen Qingqiu on the podium, and pointed his fingertip toward the back door.

She snapped out of it, gave him a complex look, and then waved her hand wearily.

Lin Que stood up quietly and walked out the back door under the awe-struck and unfamiliar gazes of the entire class.

The corridor was eerily quiet today.

It should have been lunch time, and the corridor that should have been filled with noise, running, and the clattering of lunch boxes was now so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Lin Que passed by Class 4 next door.

Through the window, he saw the Class 4 teacher also standing on the podium, and the screen also displayed the full text of "the metamorphosis."

The students in the classroom were silent in the exact same way;

some were lost in thought, some were wiping away tears, and others were staring blankly at the blackboard.

Class 5, Class 6, Class 7... the entire teaching building seemed to be under some kind of mass silence spell.

Lin Que walked alone in the empty corridor, his footsteps echoing monotonously, a sense of absurdity rising in his heart.

He just wanted to win a prize and add some seasoning to the barren literary world of this world.

He didn't expect that with a slip of the hand, he added too much seasoning,

directly making all the teachers and students in the school depressed.

Walking out of the teaching building, the afternoon sunlight poured down fiercely,

yet it didn't seem to warm this suddenly silenced campus.

The occasional students passing by all had their phones in their hands;

without exception, the screens showed the official website interface. They walked with their heads down, and several almost crashed into trees.

“This power is even greater than expected.”

Lin Que laughed self-deprecatingly. Just as he reached the school gate,

the phone in his pocket suddenly vibrated violently.

That was the exclusive rhythm that only sounded when a certain "Fugitive Beethoven" sent a message...