369: Chapter 369 is not about honor, it's about the target.

The silence inside the car was like a thin layer of invisible ice spread between the three of them.

Tang He chewed over the four words "couldn't ask for more" in her mind twice.

She had seen Xu Changge.

At the awards ceremony, the youth standing in the runner-up position,

the curve at the corner of his mouth when he received his trophy was exactly the same as the person holding the championship trophy.

The reply of these four words was neither humble nor overbearing, and even carried a trace of certainty, as if eager to be tested.

She couldn't help but tilt her head to glance at Lin Que.

The faint light from the phone screen reflected on his face; his thumb scrolled down through some content at a steady pace, and his breathing frequency hadn't changed from beginning to end.

Tang He released her hand from the seatbelt buckle, her palms drenched in sweat.

One said 'couldn't ask for more,' while the other started scrolling through his phone after asking about the process.

Their reactions were completely different, but the core essence in their bones was exactly the same.

The business van made a turn on the Third Ring Road, and the clusters of buildings outside the window switched from commercial districts to large educational campuses.

Walls, plane trees, old-fashioned buildings with gray bricks and red tiles, and new buildings with glass curtain walls appeared alternately.

The car slowed down at the west gate of Qingbei University,

the security guard verified the pass on the windshield and raised the gate to let them through.

A straight main road extended deep into the campus, with ginkgo trees planted on both sides.

In mid-September, autumn in the capital arrived half a month earlier than in the south.

The ginkgo leaves had already begun to change color; the topmost layer was toasted into a translucent golden yellow by the afternoon sun, while the ones underneath were still deep green.

The two colors overlapped in the wind, and spots of light leaked through the gaps in the leaves, hitting the car window glass and shattering into pieces.

Lin Que leaned against the back of the seat, his gaze falling on the outlines of those buildings through the car window.

He remembered this road.

Six months ago, during Fu Zhi Yao Competition finals, he had also entered Qingbei from this direction.

He still remembered the entire Centennial Auditorium holding its breath when Professor Liu Zuoqing stood on the podium and announced the "Double Stars of the North and South."

That was the first time the name "Lin Que" had been pushed directly under the spotlight.

The wheels rolled over a speed bump, and the slight jolt pulled his thoughts back.

Lin Que put away his phone, his gaze sliding across the gray side wall of the library without stopping.

The moment the car came to a steady stop, Song Yuan had already moved to the trunk.

Lin Que pushed open the car door, his soles landing on the gray granite ground as a wave of dry heat rose from beneath his feet.

The afternoon sun in the capital in September wasn't like that of Jiang City, which stuck to the skin,

it slammed down directly with a stubbornness unique to the north.

He adjusted the strap of his backpack on his shoulder and swept his gaze up the steps of the main building.

Seven or eight people were scattered at different heights on the steps.

Some were sitting on the edge of the steps flipping through their phones, some were leaning against stone pillars talking in low voices,

and some were standing in the shadows dragging suitcases, looking like they had just arrived and hadn't found their group yet.

They were all about the same age, between seventeen and eighteen.

But what Lin Que noticed was not their age, but their eyes.

Everyone's gaze turned over the moment he got out of the car.

That was the first look of a chess player when taking their seat—

not looking at the person, but looking at the hands.

None of these people, who could fight their way into the top thirty out of hundreds of thousands of candidates nationwide, were easy to deal with.

Lin Que stood by the driveway and met those gazes calmly for a second.

Then a tall, thin figure walked down from the steps.

The boy had dark skin, high cheekbones, and a large stride; he leaned forward as he walked, carrying a raw energy unique to people from the mountains.

He walked straight up to Lin Que and extended his right hand.

"Lin Que." The boy's voice had a clear southern accent, but his speaking speed was not slow.

"My name is Wei Yiming, from Guangxi Province."

His hand was extended in the air, palm up, fingers spread wide.

Lin Que reached out his hand.

He remembered this name.

He was the only one among the top ten who had come out of the deep mountains.

The moment their palms met, a layer of coarse calluses pressed against the base of his fingers, as thick as old tree bark.

That kind of thickness could not be ground out by a pen.

"At the Guang City launch event, Chen Jiahao relayed your micro-deconstruction theory.

That line 'only write about the dust crushed by the rings of time' helped me figure out the hurdle I couldn't get past when writing heavy mountains."

Wei Yiming's handshake was firm, his knuckles pressing against the back of Lin Que's hand.

There was no polite formality in his eyes, but rather the steadiness of finally meeting the person in question after crossing several mountains.

"I finally get to see you today."

Lin Que smiled.

"The things that come out of Chen Jiahao's mouth... you'd better take them with a thirty percent discount."

Wei Yiming was stunned for a second, then broke into a grin.

That laugh was short and crisp, like a stone hitting a pond,

the splashing water even loosened the shoulders of several students on the steps who had been maintaining tense expressions.

Someone even lowered their head and chuckled, tearing a hole in the tense atmosphere.

"A thirty percent discount? That's still enough." Wei Yiming withdrew his hand and took half a step back, his tone becoming a bit more sincere.

"I watched that public lecture you gave in your hometown; that deconstruction of the bird and the mountain is worth everyone learning from."

Lin Que responded with a smile.

He noticed that on the steps behind Wei Yiming, two or three more people had walked a few steps closer, as if hesitating whether to come forward and say hello.

The atmosphere was moving toward relaxation.

But not for everyone.

At the highest point of the steps, near the entrance of the main building, stood a girl wearing a deep blue shirt.

Her name was Su Xiaotang.

First place in the Zhejiang Province competition zone, and ranked eleventh overall.

She was only one position away from stepping into the top ten's guaranteed admission line.

On the day of the finals, after she finished writing the last word, she sat in the monitored room for a full three hours without moving.

She wasn't checking her manuscript; she was afraid to turn it in.

Turning it in meant the result would only depend on waiting.

All her relatives and friends were waiting for her to bring back that guaranteed admission notice—

getting into Qingbei was one thing, but being personally selected by Qingbei was another.

What separated the two was not a score, but dignity.

Two steps away from her, a boy wearing a baseball cap was leaning against a stone pillar, twisting the cap of a mineral water bottle.

Her teammate from the same province, ranked nineteenth in the country.

The cap stopped halfway through being twisted,

his gaze jumped quickly back and forth between Lin Que and Su Xiaotang, and he muttered in a low voice:

"Heh, the champion is here." It was hard to tell if his tone was one of amazement or resentment.

Su Xiaotang didn't respond.

Her gaze slid past the spot where Lin Que and Wei Yiming were shaking hands, stopping for a second at the edge of that torn, relaxed atmosphere.

From getting out of the car until now, two minutes, one handshake, one joke.

It had torn a hole in the frozen, tense atmosphere on these steps.

She didn't have this kind of ability.

Su Xiaotang was very clear about her position standing here—

eleventh place, just one step away from the threshold of the national top ten.

That distance of one step took her two years of intensive training, three rounds of elimination matches, and seventy-two hours in a closed examination hall to measure, and the final conclusion was: not enough.

The difference wasn't just a point or two.

The difference was that thing Lin Que and Xu Changge had that made judges forget the scoring criteria after reading.

She knew whose work would be dismantled in tomorrow's first "Bone Dismantling" class.

Out of thirty people, only two would be dismantled.

If it were hers being dismantled, at least she could prove on stage that she was worth being noticed.

But she didn't even have the qualification to be dismantled.

This realization weighed heavier than missing out on guaranteed admission.

Su Xiaotang was silent for a few seconds.

Her feet moved.

It wasn't hesitation, but a decision made.

She walked down from the highest point of the steps at a moderate pace, the hem of her deep blue shirt lifted slightly by the wind before falling back. Every step was steady, her heels clicking on the granite with a crisp sound, the rhythm as even as a metronome.

Walking to a spot three steps away from Lin Que, she stopped.

"Lin Que."

No hand extended, no conversational smile,

she just placed those two words cleanly between the two of them.

Lin Que looked at her.

The other's gaze was very direct.

It wasn't a provocative directness, but the kind where all redundant emotions had been shaved away, leaving only a bare self meeting your gaze.

"My name is Su Xiaotang. From Zhejiang Province."

Her way of introducing herself was extremely efficient, like reading a resume, with no upward inflection at the end.

Lin Que nodded, his tone calm:

"I've read your 'Water Curtain'; the structure is very clean."

Su Xiaotang's eyelashes fluttered slightly; that was her work from the finals, but she didn't dwell on this evaluation.

She tilted her head slightly, her gaze sweeping over the other students scattered on the steps before returning to Lin Que's face.

"Dismantling two people out of thirty tomorrow is not actually an honor, it's a target!"

Her tone was steady, but it was like laying a fact on the table that she herself didn't want to face.

"To be honest, I'm quite looking forward to it."

When these words came out of her mouth, her tone was surprisingly stable.

Her right hand unconsciously touched the button on her shirt cuff,

the edge of that button had already been rubbed shiny by her.

Professor Liu said he wants us to see clearly where the ceiling is on the first day."

She paused, the corners of her mouth tightening into a curve that couldn't quite be called a smile.

"Then I also want to see clearly what exactly lies between me and that ceiling."

She withdrew her hand from her cuff, her fingers curling into her palm.

"The person being dismantled hurts, but the ones not being dismantled..."

Her voice dropped half a pitch.

"Hurt even more."

...