390: Let's all read Chapter 390 together.

The old man's movements were extremely light and slow.

The wrinkles on his knuckles squeezed together layer by layer with the tightening force, and the shape of the bones was vaguely visible under the withered skin.

He didn't turn the page.

Time passed second by second.

There was something wrong with Su Mubai's breathing rhythm.

It was as if an invisible hand was squeezing his windpipe, neither loose nor tight, just squeezing.

Professor Liu Zuoqing was the first to notice the abnormality.

He leaned forward slightly from his seat at the side of the podium, looking over Su Mubai's shoulder at the manuscript.

The handwriting on the first line was neatly arranged by the printer at the top of the A4 paper, no different from everyone else's manuscripts.

But the way Su Mubai looked at this line of text was different from any of the previous ones.

He was reading it repeatedly.

The same line of text, from left to right, then from left to right again.

Then Su Mubai turned to the second page.

The writing in the manuscript was extremely restrained.

There was no parallelism, no synesthesia, and not even a decent metaphor to be found.

In order to build those few high steps, the father spent most of his life squatting in the mud picking up old bricks.

Bluestone slabs were expensive, and he couldn't afford whole ones, so he went to the stonemason's shop to pick up the scraps left over by others.

He saved them piece by piece, brought them back in tattered burlap bags, and stacked them at the base of the courtyard wall.

Those stone fragments had been stacked at the base of the wall for over a decade.

Drenched by rain, parched by the sun.

The surface of the stone slabs slowly changed from bluish-gray to deep brown, and fine moss grew on the edges.

Every half month, the father would flip them over, turning the mossy side down, as careful as if he were turning grain out to dry.

Su Mubai turned to the next page, but just as his finger touched the edge of the paper, he stopped.

His gaze was nailed to a certain spot in the middle of the page.

It was a passage describing the scene of the father carrying water and mixing mud.

Building the steps required a large amount of yellow mud slurry, and the father got up at four every morning to carry water.

The shoulder pole pressed down on his shoulders, the two wooden buckets wobbled, and water splashed out from the rims, soaking his straw sandals.

Twenty trips back and forth.

On the fifteenth trip, the father's waist gave a 'crack' sound.

He crouched on the field ridge, hands propped on his knees, and didn't stand up for a long time. But he didn't call for anyone.

After the sharp pain passed, he bent his back, placed the shoulder pole back on his shoulder, and continued carrying.

That word, 'crack'.

Without any embellishment.

Just a single word, standing lonely in the middle of the sentence.

Su Mubai slowly raised his head, his gaze passing through the half-open window and landing somewhere far away.

The old man took off his reading glasses and gently rubbed the corners of his eyes with the knuckles of his right hand.

The movement was small, but Professor Liu Zuoqing, sitting next to him, saw it clearly.

On the back of Su Mubai's hand, the veins were slightly bulging.

He let out a long breath.

That breath squeezed out from the deepest part of his chest, as if it had been stifled for a long time.

The classroom was so quiet that the hum of the projector's cooling fan could be heard.

No one moved.

They didn't know what Su Mubai had seen in that manuscript,

but the action of taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes had already explained everything.

After all, throughout the previous twenty-nine manuscripts, this Elder Su hadn't touched his glasses once.

To the side of the main judges' table, Professor Liu Zuoqing and Dai Shengzong's gazes met for an instant.

Neither of them made a sound.

But the amount of information contained in that look was heavier than any words.

Dai Shengzong nodded slightly; the corner of Professor Liu Zuoqing's mouth twitched and then settled.

They had already seen this manuscript yesterday.

Yesterday afternoon.

Professor Liu Zuoqing sat in his office, with thirty printed copies of the electronic manuscripts exported from the Qinglan System's backend spread out before him.

He had just drawn a circle at the end of the twenty-seventh manuscript with a red pen and noted a brief comment.

The phone rang; it was Dai Shengzong.

"How are the kids doing?"

Professor Liu Zuoqing held the red pen and leaned back in his chair with a long sigh.

"Some of them are still rolling around in the mud; what they've written is a notch better than seven days ago, but that's about it.

You can see the effort, it's hard enough, but the bones are still not stiff enough."

He flipped through the stack of manuscripts on the table and pulled a few from the middle.

"There are a few who have truly broken through and have figured out the knack for details.

Xu Changge's piece about the tailor is also worth mentioning separately; this kid was really willing to take the knife to himself this time."

"What about Lin Que?"

Professor Liu Zuoqing's red pen tapped the table twice.

"Dean, this kid is indeed bold.

The person who used his guaranteed admission to Tsinghua and Peking University as a chip to trade for off-campus living permission submitted the shortest manuscript of the group."

There was a beat of silence on the other end of the phone.

"How short?"

"Less than eight thousand words. While everyone else is desperately piling up around ten thousand, he hasn't even reached eight thousand."

Professor Liu Zuoqing stood up and walked to the window.

"But the weight of this piece outweighs the sum of everyone else's."

Dai Shengzong paused.

"Did he write another grand scene, or did he distort people like he did in the Semifinals?"

Professor Liu Zuoqing switched the phone to his other hand, his tone changing from a sigh to a highly restrained excitement.

"There is no grand narrative.

He wrote about a farmer who spent most of his life scraping a living from the yellow earth, wanting to build a few bluestone steps in front of his house.

That's it."

"Just that?"

"Just that."

Professor Liu Zuoqing picked up the thinnest manuscript on the table and looked at the opening line again.

"Dean, the electronic version is on the Qinglan Platform; you should see it for yourself."

After the email was sent, Professor Liu Zuoqing waited, watching the clock.

Three minutes, no response.

Five minutes, no response.

At eight minutes, Professor Liu Zuoqing stubbed out his cigarette and looked at the call interface on his phone again to confirm the line hadn't been cut.

At the tenth minute, Dai Shengzong's voice came through the receiver.

His voice was completely different from before.

"Zuoqing."

Dai Shengzong's speaking speed was much slower, with gaps left between every word, as if he were controlling something.

"This child's temperament is too sophisticated.

This kind of understanding of grassroots dignity, and the extreme restraint in the characters..."

Professor Liu Zuoqing didn't answer.

He knew the weight of this question better than anyone.

But he also knew that the boy who had crushed Zhang Yiyu in class with the words 'cost of survival' indeed hid things far beyond his age.

As for where those things came from, he couldn't ask, and he didn't intend to.

"Keep it under wraps for now."

Dai Shengzong made a decision.

"Let Elder Su see it for himself tomorrow, and we'll listen to Elder Su's verdict together."

...

Professor Liu Zuoqing's gaze pulled back from his memory and landed on Su Mubai in front of him.

The oppressive silence had lasted for nearly two minutes.

The old man still maintained that posture, the manuscript resting above his knees; for two minutes, he hadn't said a single word.

Professor Liu Zuoqing leaned forward slightly from his seat and lowered his voice.

"Elder Su?"

No response.

"Elder Su."

Su Mubai's eyes moved.

He slowly turned his head and gave Professor Liu Zuoqing a look.

That look didn't have the sharpness he'd shown when reviewing the other manuscripts, nor did it have the usual gentleness of an elder.

All that remained was something extremely deep and heavy, like the sealing clay of an ancient cellar being peeled away, the scent from beneath rushing out.

Su Mubai put his reading glasses back on.

He used his withered palm to smooth the manuscript from beginning to end.

The force wasn't great, but every stroke was pressed firmly.

Then he raised his head, his gaze passing over the upper rim of his lenses, scanning the entire classroom.

The thirty people below seemed to be tied by the same string around their necks, straightening up in unison.

Chen Jiahao bit his lip, his hands gripping his knees tightly.

Dan Yi shrank into the shadows of the corner, his grayish-blue eyes under the brim of his hat staring unblinkingly at the manuscript in Su Mubai's hand.

Xu Changge sat in the first row, her back straight as a javelin, her gaze quickly darting from Su Mubai's face to Lin Que beside her, then swiftly retracting.

Lin Que sat there, his posture unchanged.

His back was relaxed against the chair, his hands naturally resting on the desk.

He looked at Su Mubai with a calm expression and steady breathing, forming a glaring contrast with every other face in the hall that was distorted by tension.

Su Mubai's gaze lingered on Lin Que for three seconds.

The old man's lips parted slightly, his voice raspy, as if it had just been fished out from a very deep place.

"This article."

He tapped his cane once on the floor.

"Let's all watch it together."

...