368: Chapter 368 The Twin Stars of the North and South, Public Execution

"What temporary adjustment?"

Tang He's voice landed heavily within the enclosed car.

Song Yuan did not answer immediately.

He adjusted his sitting position, turning from his side to face the back row directly,

his right arm resting on the center armrest. The air in the car seemed to sink for a beat.

"It's like this."

Song Yuan pushed up his glasses, the frames reflecting a white line of light from the sun shining through the window.

"Professor Liu's original plan for the 'Bone Dismantling' phase was for the thirty students to each submit a representative past work in the first week, which the mentor group would then deconstruct one by one in batches.

But yesterday evening, Professor Liu overturned the entire process."

He glanced at Lin Que, then at Tang He, speaking at a moderate pace.

"On the first day of registration, a public deconstruction class will be held in the lecture hall of the School of Liberal Arts' main building.

We won't be deconstructing the works of all thirty people first."

He held up two fingers.

"Only two pieces will be deconstructed."

The sound of the wheels rolling over the seams in the road suddenly became clear, rhythmically thumping like a heartbeat.

Tang He's lips moved slightly:

"Which two?"

"Xu Changge's 'ancient wall'."

Song Yuan lowered one finger.

"And Lin Que's 'folding beijing'."

The last finger was also retracted.

He placed his palm flat on the armrest, his posture returning to the thorough restraint he had shown when meeting them at the station.

"The entire process will be open to all thirty students."

Tang He didn't say a word.

The shadows of the plane trees outside the window danced across her knees in a flicker of light and dark,

her hands resting on her legs, fingers splaying then slowly curling into fists.

Song Yuan paused for two seconds before speaking his final sentence, his tone becoming exceptionally flat.

"Professor Liu's exact words were—

'I want everyone to see clearly on the first day exactly where the ceiling is among this group of people.'"

A dense silence fell over the car.

A breeze from the air conditioner vent brushed over their heads with a faint hum.

Tang He's right hand unconsciously felt the metal buckle of her seatbelt, her five fingers slowly closing around it, knuckles tightening one by one.

The first thought that popped into her head wasn't worry for Lin Que.

It was relief.

Relief that she wasn't the one being laid bare on the stage.

The speed at which this thought flashed by was faster than the speed at which she could suppress it.

Guilt immediately followed.

She turned her head, casting her gaze toward Lin Que in the seat beside her, trying to catch something on his face.

Nervousness, solemnity—even a slight blink of the eyelids would do.

There was nothing.

Lin Que leaned against the backrest, his left hand on the armrest and his right thumb resting on the edge of his phone's lock button.

He was silent for about two seconds.

His thumb pressed the lock button lightly and then released it; the screen didn't light up.

Then he spoke.

"Will the standards for deconstruction be set by Professor Liu alone, or by a joint panel of mentors?"

Song Yuan leaned his back against his seat.

Actually, he had prepared for this.

From the moment he received this task, he had rehearsed countless scenarios in his mind.

After all, he was facing a seventeen-year-old champion who had just solved a prompt in front of ten thousand people.

When news of this level was dropped, the other party's reaction would directly determine the rhythm of all subsequent coordination work.

Song Yuan had rehearsed many reactions after receiving the task,

shock, nervousness, forced composure...

The only thing he hadn't expected was for Lin Que to ask about the process.

He didn't ask "Why me?" or "What happens after the deconstruction?"

He was asking about the decision-making structure.

Who sets the standards, who participates, and who observes.

This was a question that only someone evaluating the rules themselves would ask.

Song Yuan blinked, recalibrating his assessment of the seventeen-year-old student before him with extreme speed.

"Professor Liu will be the lead speaker," he said, his voice returning to its normal tone.

"But as far as I know, leaders like Dean Dai Shengzong and Chairman Xue Hongchuan might be present to observe."

Lin Que nodded.

Then he picked up his phone, lit up the screen, and began looking at something.

That was it.

No follow-up questions, no confirmation, no emotional closure of any kind.

That "nod" was clean and crisp, like stamping a signature for a delivery and putting the pen down immediately after.

Song Yuan turned back to face forward.

He had been at the Qingbei School of Literature for six years.

He knew better than anyone what level Professor Liu's deconstruction classes were.

It wasn't ordinary textual analysis; it was finding every single load-bearing pillar in your work, word by word,

and then telling you which ones could withstand an earthquake and which ones would collapse at a breath of wind.

He still remembered when the first draft of his own undergraduate thesis was deconstructed once by Professor Liu.

From the first punctuation mark to the final period, the twenty-eight-thousand-word thesis was broken down into sixty-seven annotations.

The night he got the draft back, he sat alone at his dorm desk staring at the screen for three hours without drinking a single drop of water.

And that was just a one-on-one private critique.

The pressure of a public class was on another level.

With dozens of peers sitting below the stage, every person's gaze was a magnifying glass.

The most precise gears and the most hidden cracks in your work would be exposed to everyone simultaneously.

Among the senior female graduate students, he had seen more than one come out of the lecture hall with red eyes after being deconstructed.

Lin Que, sitting in the back seat, was currently facing his phone screen, his thumb sliding unhurriedly.

Song Yuan glanced through the rearview mirror.

The content on the phone screen was too far to see clearly, but the speed at which Lin Que scrolled was steady, and his breathing rhythm hadn't changed at all.

This calmness wasn't an act.

Before meeting him at the station, Song Yuan had two general profiles of the 'Fu Zhi Yao Competition National Champion' in his mind.

One was a young genius with extraordinary talent but an unstable foundation,

and the other was a precocious but exam-oriented contestant easily led by external evaluations.

Neither was correct.

The state of the person before him was more like—he had long known his work would be deconstructed, and had even looked forward to it.

Song Yuan suddenly thought of another possibility.

Was he simply not afraid of being deconstructed at all?

Not the blind self-confidence of a "newborn calf."

But something deeper.

His understanding of the underlying structure of his own work might be even more thorough than that of the deconstructor themselves.

Like a person who had built an engine with their own hands,

if you took it apart and spread the pieces on a table, not only would he not panic,

he could even tell you which screw had been tightened five degrees off-center.

Song Yuan turned this thought over in his mind but didn't dare think too deeply.

"Senior Song."

Tang He's lowered voice came from the back row.

Song Yuan snapped out of it and looked over.

Tang He's hands were folded over her knees; she bit her lip as if weighing her words.

"Does Xu Changge... know about this adjustment?"

Song Yuan nodded:

"Student Xu Changge received the notice last night."

Tang He leaned forward half an inch:

"What was his reaction?"

Song Yuan didn't answer immediately.

He was silent for two seconds, his gaze shifting from Tang He's face to the flickering speed digits on the dashboard.

"Student Xu Changge only replied with four words."

Song Yuan's tone was flat.

"Just what I wanted."

...