381: Chapter 381 From Bone Dismantling to Bone Forging

Professor Liu Zuoqing's gaze pierced straight into Lin Que's heart.

He indeed hadn't truly struggled amidst the dust of the gears; he was merely a fire-bringer traversing worlds.

Precisely because he knew the weight of that fire, he could not allow the innocence of a seventeen-year-old boy to tarnish that cruelty.

He had to build this wall seamlessly on behalf of that world's painstaking author.

Facing the scrutiny of a titan and the gazes of twenty-nine others.

Lin Que's expression remained unchanged as he stood up calmly.

“Professor Liu.”

He didn't rush to explain, instead posing a question first.

“If you were a steel machine responsible for flipping this city, would you feel sympathy for the ants caught in the gaps of the gears?”

No one in the classroom moved.

Everyone was chewing over the meaning of those words.

Xu Changge's finger stopped on the desk, leaving a half-drawn arc unfinished.

Zhang Yiyu held his breath, staring at Lin Que's profile in silence.

Professor Liu Zuoqing paused slightly.

This titan, who had seen through countless literary techniques, actually didn't respond immediately at that moment.

Lin Que gave no one a chance to catch their breath. His voice was cold, each word carrying immense piercing power:

“Any compassion projected into the work by the author from the outside is a form of condescending charity.

Old Knife fighting for his daughter isn't compassion; it's biological instinct.

And instinct doesn't need to be granted by an author; it grows on its own.

But if I were to write in the narration about what a pitiful father he is,

that... would be charity.”

He looked around, his gaze sweeping across the faces of those geniuses, not lingering on anyone for long.

“We are always accustomed to wrapping suffering in warmth, accustomed to forcibly injecting hope into desperate situations to comfort readers, and even ourselves.

But only when the author's brushstrokes are as indifferent as those in power,

can readers truly feel what it's like to have a human being completely alienated into an object.”

Lin Que raised his hand and pointed at the neatly typeset text on the screen:

“My observation carries no sense of being high and mighty.

Because in this folded world, compassion itself is the cheapest lie.

Think back to the scene where Old Knife was queuing for nutrient solution in the Third Space.

If I wrote that he shed tears of humiliation while looking at the superstructure, readers would surely be moved.

But those tears require a premise: he must know that he is being 'wronged'.

Old Knife doesn't know.

He has lived in the Third Space since birth; everything there isn't oppression to him, but the only daily life he's ever known.

You don't feel humiliated by breathing because you've never thought the air could be cleaner.

His numbness isn't endurance; it's simply where the boundaries of his cognition lie.”

On the far right of the first row, the tip of Yuan Ningning's pen stopped in mid-air.

The frameworks in her mind regarding character development in traditional literature fell silent before these words.

She stood up, without quoting any classics or authorities,

she simply nodded to Lin Que, sat back down, and closed her notebook filled with theories.

Lin Que withdrew his hand, looked at Professor Liu Zuoqing, and delivered the final blow:

“What I portray with my pen has never been any specific individual.

I am writing about a man-eating machine.”

He paused for a beat.

“And machines don't need warmth.”

As soon as these words landed, the classroom fell into a brief silence.

There was no confusion in that silence; it was the aftershock of being struck by his words slowly taking effect.

Dan Yi sat in the shadows of the corner, his eyes reddening.

He bit his lower lip hard, leaving a deep white mark.

He understood.

That sense of loneliness from being treated as an outsider and rejected by the entire environment found its ultimate resonance in Lin Que's cold analysis.

He looked at Lin Que's back, his gaze revealing a fanatical sense of identification.

He felt that Lin Que was definitely the only kindred spirit who could see through the cruel essence of the world.

Sitting in the first row, Xu Changge dejectedly loosened his grip on his fountain pen.

The pen rolled across the paper, leaving a long ink stain.

He shook his head with a smile, his back relaxing slightly.

Zhang Yiyu turned pale and slowly lowered his head.

The boy in metal-framed glasses next to him also silently opened his notebook filled with various profound terminologies.

Chen Jiahao was shaking with excitement, his hands gripping the edge of the desk tightly as he desperately suppressed the urge to jump up and cheer.

Professor Liu Zuoqing was silent for five seconds.

He pinched a piece of chalk between his thumb and index finger, slowly twirling it once.

“Well said.”

Only three words.

But coming from Professor Liu Zuoqing's mouth, they carried more weight than any long-winded discourse.

He turned and wrote seven characters on the blackboard:

[Sacrifice from a God's-eye View]

Chalk dust drifted in the light.

After writing, Professor Liu Zuoqing dropped the chalk and leaned his hands on the lectern.

“I want to add something for you.” He looked at Lin Que with a sharp gaze.

“You say machines don't need warmth; this statement is self-consistent within the text.

But don't forget, the one who decided to build this machine was you.

Choosing to write about this machine instead of something else is, in itself, a form of warmth.

You hid it on the back of the design blueprints, thinking no one would see it.”

He paused for a beat.

“But I saw it.”

He addressed everyone:

“The structure and core of Lin Que's work form a perfect closed loop. Today, he is fully qualified to give everyone a lesson.”

Professor Liu Zuoqing leaned on the lectern and scanned the room.

“Today's class was originally planned for Bone Dismantling. To dismantle the bones of you two, so others could see what the ceiling looks like.”

He paused for a beat.

“But at this point in the lesson, I've discovered a problem.”

He pointed to the keywords written across the blackboard—Narrative Arrogance, Academic Blind Spots, Sacrifice from a God's-eye View.

The three phrases were lined up from left to right, the chalk strokes varying in depth, like a wound being gradually torn open.

“The premise of Bone Dismantling is that the bones have cracks. Student Xu's cracks have been shown to you, and he has admitted to them himself. But Lin Que—”

He stopped for a second, his gaze falling on Lin Que.

“His structure cannot be dismantled, his logic cannot be pried open, and he even countered the questions about character arcs.

Continuing to dismantle your final works one by one according to the original plan wouldn't be very meaningful.

What you need now isn't to be told where you are broken, but rather, to try and grow new bones yourself.”

After saying this, Professor Liu Zuoqing stepped down from the lectern and walked toward the last row.

The thirty students watched the titan walk through the central tiered aisle, the sound of his leather shoes tapping up the steps one by one.

He reached the back row, leaned down, and spoke in a low voice with Dai Shengzong.

No one in the classroom turned to look, but everyone pricked up their ears.

What came from the back was all low humming of suppressed breath; the specific content was inaudible, with only the occasional tail end of a word or two.

The white-haired old professor next to Dai Shengzong interjected with a sentence, and Professor Liu Zuoqing nodded.

This process lasted less than two minutes.

But for the thirty people in the classroom, those two minutes felt as long as the wait for a verdict.

Chen Jiahao's legs were shaking rapidly under the desk until Wei Yiming glared at him, making him stop.

Tang He pulled her pen cap off and put it back on, repeating this four or five times.

Su Xiaotang stared straight at the points filled in her notebook, not writing another word.

Professor Liu Zuoqing walked back to the lectern.

He didn't walk fast, but the sound of his footsteps was heavier than when he had left.

He came to a halt.

“After the discussion just now, we've decided to make a temporary adjustment.”

His voice regained the sharpness it had at the start of the class.

“The plan to dismantle everyone's final works one by one during the original first stage of 'Bone Dismantling' is canceled.”

A collective gasp erupted in the classroom.

Su Xiaotang's fingers gripped her pen tightly; she had spent the entire summer break preparing for the moment she would be dismantled, and now that blade suddenly wasn't going to fall.

“In its place...”

Professor Liu Zuoqing wrote two characters in the remaining blank space on the blackboard.

[Bone Forging]

“Starting from today, seven days.

Each of you will write a short story based on the content of this class.

The theme is up to you, with a length of about ten thousand words.”

He put down the chalk and clapped the dust off his hands.

“Not a reading response, not an argumentative essay, but prose or a story.

Pour all the realizations, all the pain, and all the defiance that were torn open in this classroom today into a single story.”

His gaze swept over the room one last time.

“In seven days, what I want to see isn't your technique, but just how hard your bones really are.”

...