292: Chapter 292 Plum Blossoms and Snow Do Not Compete for Spring

The post from Xinchao Publishing House's official Microblogging platform account was like a silent bomb dropped into a boiling pot of oil.

But it didn't explode.

It extinguished the fire.

In the first minute after the poem "snow plum" was posted, the comment section only had a few scattered "???" and "What's going on?"

By the second minute, comments began to flood in.

By the tenth minute, the number of shares surpassed ten thousand.

By the thirtieth minute, at the bottom of the Microblogging platform's trending list, a tag with the word "New" jumped up.

#JianshenPostsPoem#

...

Guangzhou, Mid-levels Villa.

Chen Jiahao was pouring his sixth can of Red Bull into his mouth, his left hand flipping through a copy of "Being and Nothingness" that was thick enough to kill someone. His eyebrows were knit so tightly they were almost in knots.

He had been fighting continuously for thirty-six hours.

His dark circles could compete with a giant panda's, and his hair was as messy as a bird's nest.

He was still muttering, "The disclosedness of Dasein is care, the temporal structure of care..."

He was just about to take this tongue-twister he'd just learned and use it on the forum to crush Dan Yi when his phone screen suddenly lit up.

The screen was filled with notifications.

They were all about the same thing.

#JianshenPostsPoem#

Chen Jiahao blankly opened the Microblogging platform and clicked on the New Tide official account in his following list.

Black text on a white background, in vertical Song typeface.

Plum and snow contend for spring, neither willing to yield; the poet puts down his brush, exhausted by the critique.

The plum must concede to the snow's three-tenths whiteness; yet the snow loses to the plum's unique fragrance.

He stared at those four lines of text.

Stared for ten seconds.

Thirty seconds.

One minute.

The Red Bull can in his hand made a crunching sound as it was crushed out of shape, and he didn't even notice.

"Concede to the snow... loses to the plum..." Chen Jiahao read it out word by word, his voice getting softer and softer.

It wasn't that he couldn't understand the poem.

On the contrary, he understood it all too well.

What was Teacher Jianshen saying?

He was saying that the Dream Weaver writes well.

He was saying that others have their strengths, and I have mine; no one needs to trample on anyone else.

He was saying, what are you all arguing about?

Chen Jiahao's head buzzed.

He slowly lowered his head, looking at the pile of philosophy books in front of him that were about to collapse the desk.

Sartre, Heidegger, Camus, Nietzsche... To argue with a netizen, he had practically turned half of Western philosophical history upside down.

He slapped his hand down on the stack of books.

The Red Bull can rolled off the table, clattered on the floor a few times, and the spilled liquid flowed everywhere.

"I'm really an idio—"

Chen Jiahao's voice was a bit raspy.

He rubbed his face hard.

Teacher Jianshen was standing at the top of the mountain, looking down at everything, smiling and saying that each has its own merits.

And him? He was like a dog that had broken its chain, baring its teeth at every passerby at the foot of the mountain.

He thought he was fighting a war for his idol.

But the man didn't need this war at all.

Chen Jiahao's eyes felt a bit stinging. He turned his face away, staring at the hazy Guangzhou skyline outside the window, blinking hard several times.

Then he opened the Wenyuan Pavilion forum.

The stickied post he had spent 39,900 on was still on the front page, its golden border shimmering on the screen.

The more than 19,000 replies below the post recorded the traces of his thirty-six hours of sleepless combat.

Chen Jiahao's fingers hovered over the keyboard for a full twenty seconds.

Then he started typing.

The reply wasn't long.

[1 Online Alias]: "Teacher Jianshen said, the plum must concede to the snow's three-tenths whiteness, yet the snow loses to the plum's unique fragrance.

I fought for a day and a half trying to prove that the plum is better than the snow, only for him to tell me in one sentence—the plum and the snow were never enemies.

I was the one caught up in appearances. @The Drowned on Land, you are a worthy opponent, but today, we cease fire."

Sent.

Chen Jiahao threw his phone on the desk and slumped back into his chair.

He only felt that the pent-up frustration he'd held for two days and nights completely dissipated with that sigh.

His whole body felt boneless as he lay in the chair, staring at the ceiling light, his vision quickly blurring.

In less than thirty seconds, he sank into a deep sleep, devoid of arguments and filled only with the scent of plum blossoms.

...

Meanwhile.

At the northernmost tip of the Huaxia map.

Mo City.

Snow particles had begun to drift outside the window at some point.

In this northernmost city at the end of August, autumn had already finished its course, and winter's vanguard was knocking on the door.

Dan Yi was wrapped in that faded old black coat, curled up in his chair.

His fingers were resting on the keyboard.

Ten seconds ago, he had just finished writing a rebuttal to Chen Jiahao's latest point.

The phrasing was precise, the logic rigorous, enough to once again puncture the other party's argument copied from Sartre.

But he didn't press enter.

Because just as he was about to send it, a notification popped up in the top right corner of the screen.

Xinchao Publishing House official account.

A poem.

Four lines of text.

Dan Yi's fingers froze in mid-air.

"The plum must concede to the snow's three-tenths whiteness."

His gaze was fixed firmly on the word "snow."

In his cognitive system, Jianshen was the person standing at the center of the mainstream world.

His fans used "backbone" and "dignity" as banners to trample everything that wasn't "positive energy" under their feet.

He thought Jianshen and his followers were one and the same.

He thought that high-and-mighty god of traditional literature would use the same methods as his fans,

To define the Dream Weaver and his readers as "spiritual drugs," "social tumors," and "outcasts."

He was prepared to be trampled.

He was used to being trampled.

In Mo City, at school, in the corner of the playground, on the way home from school,

In every moment someone pointed at his nose and called him a "half-breed." He had long since gotten used to it.

But.

"Concede to the snow's three-tenths whiteness."

The word used was "concede."

Admitting inferiority.

Jianshen was saying, in the pure whiteness of snow, I am inferior to you.

Dan Yi's Adam's apple bobbed.

It wasn't mockery, it wasn't charity, it wasn't condescending pity.

It was equality.

It was a person standing at the top of the mountain, seriously lowering his head to look at that patch of snow at the foot of the mountain that everyone else trampled on, and then saying: You are very white, whiter than me.

Dan Yi slowly deleted the rebuttal he had already typed.

Deleting it word by word.

The input box finally became a blank space.

He looked at the blank input box and curled his lips in self-deprecation.

Once upon a time, he also regarded Jianshen as a lighthouse alongside the Dream Weaver, longing to draw the courage to stand up from that yellow earth.

But when those fans, who called themselves righteous, brandished clubs named "backbone" to smash him, the outcast,

He had actually directed his anger toward that lamp, attempting to personally extinguish the light that had once illuminated him.

Thinking back now,

This madness blinded by prejudice, this blindness controlled by anger,

Had actually turned him into the kind of person he loathed most.

The light from the screen reflected on his mixed-race face, which differed from others.

In his deep eye sockets, a tiny crack seemed to appear in the thin mist that had lingered there for years.

Dan Yi's fingers fell on the keyboard.

This time, his typing speed was very slow.

He typed out his gratitude to that plum blossom, word by word.

[1 The Drowned on Land]: "The abyss was never worthy of such tenderness, but thank you for this plum blossom. @Online Alias"

After doing all this, Dan Yi wrapped his old coat tighter.

The snow particles outside hit the glass, making a fine, rustling sound.

He didn't turn off the light, nor did he open the forum again.

He just sat there, staring at the line of text he had just written on the screen, listening to the sound of snow falling on the windowsill.

A long time later, he reached out and touched his face.

His fingertips were wet.

...