375: Chapter 375 Training Score Rules

Six-thirty in the morning, Dorm 303.

When Lin Que opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was not the ceiling.

It was Xu Changge sitting upright at the desk opposite him.

He wore a white shirt, with the button at the collar fastened to the very top.

Silver-rimmed glasses rested on the bridge of his nose, his gaze behind the lenses fixed on the spread-out documents, his fingers gently rubbing the edges of the pages.

Morning light filtered through the gap in the curtains, casting the shadow of a ginkgo leaf onto his shoulder; he did not even move his shoulder line.

Lin Que stared at this scene for two seconds, then rolled over on his pillow, his voice raspy from just waking up.

"Isn't reporting at eight-thirty? Why are you up so early?"

Xu Changge looked up and smiled warmly.

The curve of that smile was just as appropriate as when he had greeted him in the lobby yesterday, but there was an extra layer of relaxation in his eyes that only appeared when he was on his own turf.

"I'm used to it."

Lin Que nodded and said nothing more.

He threw off the quilt and sat up, stretching, his spine emitting a few faint cracks.

Then he dug a pair of grey boxers out of the suitcase by the bed, stood up, and pulled them on directly, then shuffled into a pair of blue-and-white slippers, grabbing his toiletry bag and tucking it under his arm.

The entire sequence of movements was fluid and natural, as if he were in his own bedroom.

Xu Changge's gaze shifted from the documents and landed on Lin Que's wrinkled boxers.

His eyebrows rose by half an inch.

His lips moved, as if something had already reached the tip of his tongue.

"Bang, bang, bang!"

The door panel was struck by three urgent knocks.

The force was so great that even the door frame was trembling.

Lin Que pulled the door open.

A gust of wind swept in.

"Master Que!"

Chen Jiahao stood at the doorway with two heavy dark circles under his eyes, his hair sticking up in three different directions.

His gaze was like a sailor who had drifted in a storm all night and finally saw the shore; he grabbed Lin Que's arm and rushed inside.

"A night apart feels like a day, Master Que!"

His voice echoed back and forth in the hallway, and someone in the opposite dormitory opened their door, poked half their head out, and then pulled it back in.

Chen Jiahao, who had rushed in, turned his head and his line of sight collided with Xu Changge sitting upright at the desk.

The image of that white shirt with the top button fastened, the morning light hitting his shoulders like an ancient painting, formed a cruel contrast with his own messy hair at this moment.

Chen Jiahao's footsteps froze in mid-air.

"Hehe, morning, Student Xu."

He grinned, his posture visibly constrained by thirty percent, and he loosened his hands from Lin Que's arm, putting them properly behind his back.

Xu Changge smiled and nodded, his tone gentle.

"Morning."

After responding, Xu Changge's gaze shifted imperceptibly away from Lin Que's boxers and landed back on the documents in front of him.

The page-turning action was a beat faster than before.

Lin Que leaned against the door frame, watching Chen Jiahao's survivor-like appearance.

"What's wrong? Didn't sleep all night?"

Chen Jiahao leaned over, lowering his voice to a level only the two of them could hear, but the exaggeration of his expression was enough to make the whole floor feel his breakdown.

"Master Que, you haven't stayed in that room."

His Adam's apple bobbed up and down twice.

"That handsome guy, from the moment we entered the room until the lights were turned off last night, said a total of three words."

"Which three words?"

"'Turn off the light.'"

Chen Jiahao's eyelid twitched.

"Just those three words. Then he lay there without moving, facing the wall, and I didn't know if he was asleep or not. I lay on the other side, not daring to sleep, staring at the ceiling all night."

He lowered his voice, speaking rapidly.

"That's nothing, do you know what the scariest part is? At three in the morning, he turned over once. Just once. A 'click' sound."

Chen Jiahao shuddered.

"Master Que, have you ever heard of someone who only turns over once a night? Normal people turn over several times in a row, right? He just went 'click,' like a hinge turning an angle. My hair stood on end at that moment."

Lin Que picked up the toothbrush and toothpaste from his toiletry bag and started squeezing toothpaste onto the brush head.

His movements were unhurried, as if he were dealing with a matter as routine as could be.

"That's called an autonomous turnover reflex during a deep sleep cycle; the lower the frequency, the higher the sleep quality."

He said while squeezing the toothpaste, his tone carrying a sense of diagnosis.

"A genius-type brain consumes several times more energy than a normal person's when awake, so their sleep must be extremely efficient. Turning over only once means he was in the deepest stage of repair all night."

Although this statement was pure nonsense.

Lin Que's expression was as steady as if he were reading a textbook, and even his tone had no fluctuations.

Chen Jiahao was stunned.

"Is… is this a meditation method unique to geniuses?"

Lin Que stuffed the toothbrush into his mouth, mumbled an "Mm," and headed toward the washroom.

His slippers made a pattering sound on the hallway floor, the rhythm relaxed.

Behind him, Xu Changge turned a page of the document at his desk without ever looking up.

But the hand that turned the page paused in mid-air for a full two seconds, fingertips slightly curled; that was an action only made when suppressing laughter.

Eight-twenty in the morning.

The lobby on the first floor of the main building was more than an order of magnitude livelier than yesterday.

All thirty students had arrived, scattered throughout the lobby, the sounds of conversation and footsteps weaving into a buzzing low hum.

Lin Que and Xu Changge leaned against the check-in desk, with Chen Jiahao sticking half a step behind Lin Que.

On the other side, Dan Yi stood in the corner of the lobby, the brim of his hat pressed very low.

Grey-blue eyes swept across the room from under the brim, not lingering on anyone, finally landing on the tile seams in front of his own toes.

There was a small circle in the crowd that was particularly conspicuous.

Four or five boys were gathered next to a pillar on the right side of the lobby, standing loosely but with their centers of gravity inward, naturally forming a semi-enclosed communication field.

Leading them was a tall boy in a dark polo shirt,

with a square chin and high brow bones; when he spoke, his chin was slightly lifted,

and his voice was neither loud nor soft, just enough for people within three or four meters to hear clearly.

Zhang Yiyu.

Beijing No. 4 High School, 17th in Fu Zhi Yao Competition competition.

He was chatting with a few people around him about documents.

"I found the original text of Chen Zhongshi's interview on narrative elasticity during the summer vacation,

it was the unedited manuscript included in that issue of the 'Contemporary Literature Research' internal publication.

Have you all read it?"

A boy with metal-rimmed glasses next to him took over:

"Internal publication? That must require going through the department's reference room access channel; you can't check it outside at all."

"My uncle gave it to me."

Zhang Yiyu's tone was casual, but the emphasis on the three words 'my uncle' landed just right.

"He teaches at the Beijing Renmin University Literature Research Office, so he just adjusted it out for me to make a reading note."

Another local Beijing girl nodded in agreement:

"Yes, the 'bone narrative' concept mentioned by Chen Zhongshi in that interview was deleted in the core two paragraphs when scholars cited it later.

If you don't read the original text, you can't understand what he meant by 'bone' at all."

A few people spoke one after another, and the density of terminology became higher and higher.

From narrative elasticity to the elastic coefficient of structural tension, from bone narrative to the vessel writing theory proposed by Professor Liu at an internal seminar last year, every word stepped precisely on the threshold of the academic circle.

The terms themselves were not aggressive.

But the dialogue field they constituted was like a transparent wall of glass.

You could see what the people inside were saying, but found that you couldn't interject a single sentence.

Wei Yiming twisted the mineral water bottle in his hand twice but couldn't open it.

He lowered his eyes and pursed his lips.

Tang He's thumb paused on the phone screen, not sliding.

She heard Zhang Yiyu's few sentences of dialogue, her fingers unconsciously touching the corner of the card on the back of her phone case.

Several students from out of town were originally walking towards Zhang Yiyu's direction,

but after listening to a few sentences, their footsteps slowed, and they quietly turned, changing their route to the water dispenser.

Zhang Yiyu's gaze crossed the students who had dispersed, inadvertently sweeping over Lin Que by the check-in desk.

The two people's gazes touched in the air for less than a second.

Zhang Yiyu withdrew his first, continuing to talk to the people around him, but his speaking speed was a notch slower than before.

Lin Que leaned against the check-in desk, taking all these small actions into his eyes.

He did not comment, and did not even look twice.

Eight-twenty-nine.

The sound of leather shoes landing came from the end of the corridor.

Song Yuan walked out from the corner of the corridor, his pace half a beat faster than yesterday.

He held a black folder in his hand, walked to the front of the check-in desk, and stood still.

His gaze swept across all thirty people in the room, the white light of the fluorescent tube overhead reflecting on his lenses.

"Everyone."

The conversation in the lobby died out within two seconds.

Thirty pairs of eyes converged from different directions.

Song Yuan opened the folder, his voice not high, but his articulation was clear, and every syllable could cleanly bounce to every corner of the lobby.

"First of all, welcome.

The people who can stand here are the top thirty who stood out after being eliminated through three rounds: the Preliminary Round, the Semifinals, and the Finals, from hundreds of thousands of candidates nationwide."

He paused for a beat.

"Among you, there is an SSS-level national champion."

Everyone's gaze locked onto Lin Que in the same second.

Lin Que leaned against the check-in desk, his expression unchanged.

"There are capital families."

The gaze turned to Xu Changge. Xu Changge nodded slightly, his posture composed.

"There are mixed-race geniuses from Mo City, powerhouses who walked out of the deep mountains, technical experts from the top affiliated high schools in Magic City, and national studies prodigies who grew up next to the Confucius Temple."

Song Yuan's gaze swept over Dan Yi, Wei Yiming, Tang He, and Su Xiaotang in turn.

"However."

He closed the folder, a 'snap' sound, exceptionally crisp in the quiet lobby.

"No matter how brilliant your past achievements were, no matter where you come from, no matter your background."

Song Yuan's voice sank by half a degree.

"From this moment on…"

"Everything returns to zero!"

The four words landed on the marble floor, smashing out a silent shock.

Zhang Yiyu's arms dropped from his crossed posture in front of his chest.

Su Xiaotang's fingers gripping her cuffs loosened and then tightened.

Chen Jiahao swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

Song Yuan raised the folder in his hand and turned to the next page.

"Next, before the formal Bone Dismantling class,

I will first announce the training point rules for the Qinglan Project training camp."