386: Chapter 386 The Obsession with Bluestone Slabs

As noon approached, Lin Que took a ride-hailing car back to the Qingbei University School of Liberal Arts.

The September sunlight filtered through the ginkgo leaves on both sides of the road, casting mottled light and shadows on the asphalt surface.

He walked into the dormitory building of the Qinglan Training Camp with his bag on his back, his steps light and his expression composed.

The entire dormitory building was like a pressure cooker with the lid on; the steam of anxiety seeped out from every half-closed door crack.

Lin Que walked through it with his bag, his pace lazy and his breathing steady, looking like the only person who had forgotten to turn off the stove.

Thirty of the nation's top literary talents,

firmly suppressed by Professor Liu Zuoqing's words, "I want to see your bones in seven days," were all undergoing an extremely painful self-reconstruction.

As Lin Que walked down the third-floor corridor, various sounds constantly drifted from the half-closed doors on either side.

"It still won't work!"

Zhang Yiyu's irritable voice came from Room 305 on the left, accompanied by the dull thud of a book being slammed onto a desk.

"When I fit sociological models into my characters, the writing comes out dry, like an academic report.

The professor wants to see real pain, but none of us have ever done a day of hard labor in our lives. Where are we supposed to find that pain?"

The door to Room 306 on the right was open a crack. Chen Jiahao was clutching his hair in front of a computer screen, muttering to himself:

"Too fake. This bankrupt boss I'm writing is too fake.

Even if he's picking up trash, he sounds like some rich kid experiencing life.

If I hand this in, I'll definitely be scolded to death by Old Man Liu."

At the end of the corridor, two students from other provinces were holding instant noodle bowls, exchanging miserable looks.

"Everyone is just forcing it.

After cutting out the flowery language, I found I can't even tell a complete story clearly.

The skeleton has completely fallen apart."

Lin Que listened to these conversations without any change in expression.

He stopped in front of Dorm 303 and pushed the door open.

The scene inside the dormitory made Lin Que's eyes shift slightly.

Xu Changge was sitting upright at his desk. This scion of a Beijing noble family, who usually placed extreme importance on his appearance,

now had the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up messily above his elbows, with two buttons undone at his collar.

His desk, which was usually spotless with books arranged perfectly, had now become a disaster zone.

The surface was piled with crumpled discarded drafts, and ink had drawn chaotic lines across the paper.

Hearing the door open, Xu Changge stopped his fountain pen.

He turned his head and looked at the relaxed Lin Que, a very helpless, bitter smile appearing on his face.

He didn't hide his disheveled state, candidly admitting his current predicament.

"I... seem to have hit a dead end."

Xu Changge put down his pen and rubbed his aching brow.

"I spent the entire morning trying to shatter all the writing habits I'm used to.

I wanted to write a story about a person from the bottom of society pursuing dignity and trying to cross the threshold of social class.

I set the protagonist as a bricklayer who came to the city for work. I described how he sweated on the construction site and how he longed for the respect of city people."

Xu Changge pulled a slightly smoother piece of paper from the pile of waste, glanced at it, and threw it back onto the desk in disgust.

"No matter how dilapidated I describe the environment,

the bricklayer I write always feels like a noble son wearing dirty clothes deep down.

His pain is all forced upon him by me; I'm not even sure if that counts as pain."

Xu Changge stood up and walked over to Lin Que.

He set aside all his pride, asking for advice with a pure thirst for knowledge.

"Lin Que, when you were dissecting 'folding beijing' in class yesterday, you mentioned the cost of survival and Old Knife's numbness.

I want to know now, what shape should that raw coarseness that truly belongs to the bottom take?

What does the dignity they pursue actually look like?"

Hearing the words "dignity" and "threshold," Lin Que's gaze sharpened slightly.

A classic short story by a master of rural literature from his past life instantly flashed through his mind.

That story about an old farmer and his half-lifetime of obsession, carrying a heavy scent of loess soil, struck him across time and space.

There was no grand social criticism in that story, only the most microscopic and cruel gravity of reality.

Lin Que didn't use any dry literary theory to answer Xu Changge.

He knew theory couldn't solve Xu Changge's dilemma.

He walked to the window, watching the leaves swaying in the wind, and calmly presented an image.

"You're thinking of the concepts of dignity and crossing thresholds too grandly."

Lin Que's voice spread steadily through the quiet dormitory.

"Imagine a man.

An ordinary farmer who has spent most of his life digging for food in the yellow earth.

He has never left that closed-off village. He doesn't understand what social class mobility is, and he's barely even literate."

Xu Changge listened intently, his brain working rapidly to capture the core of Lin Que's words.

"In this man's world, dignity doesn't need to be measured by the respect of city people."

Lin Que turned around, his gaze calmly meeting Xu Changge's.

"His greatest obsession in life is simply wanting the front of his own house to have a few more steps of high platform made of Bluestone Slabs than the other houses in the village.

He feels that as long as the steps are built higher than others,

when he sits on that threshold to smoke, he'll be a head taller than everyone else. That is his status; that is his dignity."

Xu Changge was stunned.

He had never imagined such a tiny, concrete demand.

After two seconds of silence, his fingers subconsciously tapped twice on the desk.

"Wait."

Xu Changge's voice lowered, his brow furrowing slightly.

"This farmer you're talking about—he doesn't want the steps themselves.

What he wants is... the angle of being looked up to by others while sitting on those steps."

He paused for a beat, as if verifying his own deduction.

"So the dignity he pursues isn't for himself from start to finish. It's for others to see."

Lin Que glanced at him, the curve of his lips shifting slightly.

Xu Changge stood rooted to the spot, his finger suspended in mid-air; the rhythm of his subconscious tapping on the desk broke.

Those grand theoretical frameworks about sociology and class struggle in his mind

felt as light as a piece of scrap paper in the face of a few Bluestone Slabs.

He finally understood why his previous discarded drafts felt like they were floating in mid-air.

It was because he had never bent down to see clearly what an obsession truly grown from the soil looked like.

However, Xu Changge had only grasped the first layer.

The most cruel part of the story was still to come.

Lin Que's dissection was not over.

He looked at Xu Changge and threw out the most cruel, heart-piercing core of this story.

"When this man has exhausted his life and finally built that new house with the high steps.

When he finally gets his wish and sits on those Bluestone Slabs, ready to enjoy the upward gazes of the whole village..."

Lin Que paused for a second, letting the tension in the air reach its peak.

"He doesn't feel the respect and dignity he expected."

Xu Changge subconsciously clenched his fists, waiting for the final conclusion.

"Sitting on those high steps, he only finds that he has thrown out his back.

He finds he's grown old, and even carrying a yoke of water has become extremely difficult.

He finds his back has completely curved, and he can no longer stand up straight.

The steps he traded a lifetime of health and time for ended up becoming a massive irony.

Sitting up there, he has nothing but exhaustion and old age."

Xu Changge's Adam's apple bobbed.

He suddenly understood that the common flaw in all his previous drafts wasn't a lack of technique, but that he was standing too high.

He had been looking down, but he had never actually crouched down.

Xu Changge stood there, unable to speak for a long time.

Then he turned and walked back to his desk, flipping the stack of discarded drafts over to reveal the clean, blank side.

He knew how to start writing now.

Seeing the change in Xu Changge's eyes, Lin Que said no more and turned back to sit at his own desk.

He opened a drawer and took out a stack of fresh, pure white manuscript paper, spreading it out on the desk.

The dormitory was very quiet.

Xu Changge opened to a blank page at the opposite desk, the soft sound of the pen nib touching paper carrying across the three meters.

Lin Que sat at his own table and uncapped his pen.

That father with calloused hands, crouching on the threshold smoking a pipe, had been standing in his mind for a long time.

The pen nib landed steadily on the pure white paper, ink flowing out through the metal slit.

Lin Que did not hesitate at all,

directly writing the opening sentence about those mud-covered feet and the Bluestone Slabs.

[Father always feels that our family's steps are too low.]

...