290: Chapter 290 Rules and Soul

The nanny van drove smoothly along the overpass in Jinling.

Ye Xi leaned against the back seat, the light from her phone screen reflecting on her face.

That line of text lay quietly in the chat box, like a pebble thrown into the center of a lake, sending out ripples.

Her thumb hovered over the screen, hesitating to press down.

The question seemed simple, but she knew in her heart that this wasn't just a multiple-choice question.

Coincidentally, the van passed through a downhill section, and the sunset over Zijin Mountain outside the window was slowly sinking.

The orange-red twilight passed through the car window and fell on Ye Xi's face.

Her brow was slightly furrowed, and her eyes never left her phone.

She had been shooting magazine covers all day; most of her makeup was removed, but a bit of eyeliner still remained at the base of her lashes.

Without that layer of exquisite refinement, her features instead revealed a clean, almost transparent youthful air.

But at this moment, there wasn't a hint of a young girl's idleness in those eyes.

She was thinking seriously.

In the passenger seat, her manager, Sister Yang, glanced back through the rearview mirror.

"Xiao Xi, what are you dazing off for?" Sister Yang unscrewed a bottle of mineral water and handed it over.

"Your little face is all wrinkled up like a steamed bun."

Ye Xi took the water and shook her head.

"It's nothing."

Sister Yang had worked with Ye Xi for three years and knew the girl's ways all too well.

On the surface, she was well-behaved and obedient, but in reality, she was more headstrong than anyone.

When she said "it's nothing," it usually meant her mind was in a state of upheaval.

Sister Yang didn't press further; she turned to answer a call to finalize a release date with a brand representative.

The car cabin fell silent, leaving only the muffled sound of passing vehicles outside the window.

Ye Xi placed the mineral water in the cup holder by her leg and picked up her phone again.

Her gaze swept over that line of text once more.

"If it were you, which side would you take?"

Two images involuntarily surfaced in her mind.

One was Sun Shaoping squatting in the corner of a construction site, swallowing hard, dry black bread with rainwater.

The youth's back was bent, but his bony hands gripped that piece of bread tightly, as if clutching the last reason to keep living.

The other was that farm in 'the colour out of space.'

The apple tree bore fruit that was massive yet poisonous, and hounds tore at their own flesh in the dead of night.

The farm owner withered into ash without even realizing it.

One gritted his teeth and stood up in the mud.

The other silently dissipated under the starlight.

Ye Xi bit her lip, and her finger finally landed on the screen.

She typed a few words.

Deleted them.

Typed again.

Deleted again.

This repeated three times.

As the van crossed the Xuanwu Lake Bridge, the sun completely sank below the ridgeline, and the last smear of orange in the sky was swallowed by twilight blue.

Ye Xi's finger stopped.

She stared at the blinking cursor on the screen and suddenly gave a small smile.

It wasn't a polite social smile, but a sense of relief after figuring something out.

Her finger pressed down, and a line of text appeared in the input box.

Sent.

...

Jiangcheng, SOHO Future City.

Lin Que was holding a Coke while browsing the forums; the latest round of confrontation between Dan Yi and Chen Jiahao had escalated again.

The debate between the two had spread from the field of literature to ethics, drawing a large crowd of philosophy students who were frantically taking notes below.

Just as he was about to refresh another page, his WeChat notification sounded.

Ding-dong.

Lin Que's gaze shifted to his phone screen.

【Fugitive Beethoven】: "I stand with Dream Weaver's rules, but I also love Jian Shen's soul."

Lin Que's finger stopped on the Coke can.

Before he could think about it carefully, a voice message popped in right after.

47 seconds.

Lin Que brought the phone to his ear and pressed the play button.

Ye Xi's voice flowed from the speaker, completely different in tone from when she had excitedly shared the post earlier.

Her speaking speed wasn't fast; it was even a bit slow. It was as if she were weighing the weight of every syllable.

"You asked me which side I take; I really thought about it for a long time just now."

"How should I put it... let's use music as an analogy. I can see that indescribable abyss in Dream Weaver's writing. That is the extreme of art breaking conventions."

"It's like... you take the tonal structure of a classical piece, tear it all apart, and throw it into a completely unknown harmonic system.

It doesn't conform to any known rules, but it just works.

It's a violent expansion of the boundaries of human cognition."

"This kind of thing has too much attraction for me."

The voice message paused for a second, as if she were organizing the next part.

"But..."

She emphasized this word.

"Without the kind of resilience rooted in the soil that Jian Shen has, a person would have no way to stay sober before the abyss.

After seeing too much of the void, too much of the universe's indifference and human insignificance, one would eventually go mad.

It's that gritty determination to live on in Jian Shen's writing that gives you the right to turn back and look directly into the abyss."

Another one-second pause.

Then, Ye Xi's voice became very soft, as if she were telling a secret she had only just understood herself.

"So I feel... um... only when the two are combined is it most complete."

With a soft 'beep,' the voice message ended.

Only the faint hum of the air conditioner remained in the studio.

Lin Que put down his phone and leaned back in his chair, pausing for several minutes.

His attention had been completely occupied by that 47-second voice message.

"Stand with Dream Weaver's rules, love Jian Shen's soul."

"The combination of the two is completeness."

The corner of Lin Que's mouth twitched.

It was an instinctive reaction after being hit by something.

What she said wasn't a fan-like declaration, wasn't choosing a side, and certainly wasn't a wishy-washy 'both are good.'

She precisely dissected the relationship between the two works.

Dream Weaver's rules are about shattering, about crossing boundaries, and about the negation of the known world.

Jian Shen's soul is the support, the anchor, and the breath that remains standing after everything else has been negated.

The former is the tool; the latter is the foundation.

Without the former, literature just spins in circles within old frameworks.

Without the latter, literature is left with nothing but hollow self-indulgence.

This was exactly his core intention when he successively released 'The cthulhu mythos' and 'ordinary world' during the same period.

Using a shell of soil to combat the void of the starry sky.

Tens of millions of people across the internet were arguing, professors were taking notes, rich second-generation heirs were burning money to buy top spots, and a mixed-race youth was writing comments with blood and tears.

Not a single person saw through it.

And this piano girl, who had just finished a magazine shoot,

used a voice message of less than a minute to see through and expose the deepest layer of design he had hidden behind his two aliases.

Lin Que's gaze fell on the chat box, and his fingers moved to the keyboard.

His typing speed was half a beat slower than usual.

【Mu Xia】: "Incise. If you posted this online, it would probably stun both of those groups of fanatical fans."

After the message was sent, he leaned back in his chair,

the curve at the corner of his mouth finally becoming uncontrollable.

...

In Jinling, hundreds of kilometers away.

The van was still driving smoothly.

Ye Xi looked down and saw the reply, startled for a moment.

Then, she stared at the word 'incisive,'

the corners of her mouth curling up bit by bit.

Curling up more and more.

Finally, she couldn't hold it in anymore, breaking into a smile she couldn't suppress at all.

She quickly reached out to cover her mouth, turning her whole body toward the car window.

She was terrified that Sister Yang would see her in the rearview mirror.

The last bit of afterglow from outside swept over, turning her ears a translucent pink.

In the studio.

Lin Que looked at the 'the other party is typing' jumping above the chat box and also smiled silently.

Outside the window, the twilight in Jiangcheng was deepening layer by layer.

Hundreds of kilometers away in Jinling, under the same sky, the last golden light slowly sank westward along the curve of the Yangtze River.

Separated by more than half a province, the two people faced their respective screens,

and in the very same second, they both broke into identical smiles.

It was a kind of tacit understanding that needed no explanation and no translation.

Like two musicians suddenly hitting the same beat during a duet,

without any eye contact, their fingertips naturally landed on the same chord.

Ye Xi's reply popped into the chat box.

【Fugitive Beethoven】: "I'm not posting it online; I don't want to become public enemy number one [doge face][doge face]."

【Mu Xia】: "True. By then, Jian Shen fans would be chasing you and calling you a 'soil traitor,' and Dream Weaver fans would be blocking your door shouting that you 'profaned the abyss.' I guess I'm the only one who dares to be your sole listener then."

【Fugitive Beethoven】: "So that's why I can only say these things to you [smug]"

After Ye Xi sent this sentence, she glanced at the distant sunset.

The golden-red afterglow passed through the gaps in the overpass's steel bars, hitting her face in streaks.

The chat box was quiet for a few seconds.

Then a line of text floated up.

【Mu Xia】: "Honored."

...