406: Chapter 406 There's one thing that, once broken, can't be fixed.

"In the shadows below the dormitory building, a wild blade of grass squeezed out from a crack in the bricks, its tip hanging with half a drop of frost water that hadn't been blown off by the wind."

As Dan Yi's voice fell, the air in the classroom felt as if it had been gently pressed down by a palm.

No one spoke.

The boy sitting to Dan Yi's left subconsciously turned his head, his lips parting halfway before closing again.

He stared at Dan Yi's profile for two seconds, his expression completely unfamiliar.

It was as if he was confirming for the first time that the seat next to him actually had a person in it.

Xu Zhengqing's gaze fell on Dan Yi and stayed there for two seconds.

He didn't comment or ask further questions; he simply gave an extremely slight nod.

But with just that one nod, the fingers Dan Yi had clenched in his pocket loosened.

When he sat down, his back was half an inch straighter than it had been before he stood up.

Lin Que glanced sideways at Dan Yi.

The layer of something deep in the eyes of the youth under the ginkgo tree, who had asked him "Have you read Hell Dream Weaver's books?", was melting away bit by bit.

The speed was slow, but the direction was right.

The silence lasted for about ten seconds.

The slight sound of a chair scraping came from the left side of the second row.

Xu Changge opened his eyes and slowly stood up.

The gazes in the classroom turned toward him in unison.

Xu Changge's voice was steady, each word enunciated clearly.

"When the dorm supervisor leaned his broom against the wall, there was a ring of sweat-soaked, blackened transparent tape on the broom handle."

The moment those words were spoken, Zhang Yiyu's expression changed.

Two students from the Beijing circles nearby exchanged a look, their eyes full of bewilderment.

They knew Xu Changge too well.

The Xu Family's style emphasized the two words: "Elegant Rectitude."

From childhood to adulthood, the objects that appeared under Xu Changge's pen were Xuan paper, inkstones, and the worm-eaten marks on the spines of Song Dynasty editions.

When did it ever become the turn of broom handles and transparent tape?

The hand Xu Zhengqing used to hold his thermos paused for a beat.

The way he looked at Xu Changge was different from how he looked at everyone else.

It wasn't scrutiny, nor was it surprise.

It was more like someone who had flipped through old books for decades suddenly finding, in the most inconspicuous corner of his own bookshelf,

a glimpse of a manuscript he had never seen before.

The cover was old, but the handwriting inside was new.

It was another extremely slight nod.

But the thumb on the lid of the cup loosened imperceptibly.

When Xu Changge sat back down, his finger unconsciously brushed against the kraft paper cover of the fourth draft of "the tailor" on the corner of the desk.

As if confirming that something was still there.

Immediately after, the atmosphere in the classroom loosened.

Zhong Hengyuan was the third to stand up.

His voice was a notch louder than the previous two, but what he said was unexpectedly detailed.

"The lady serving food in the cafeteria, when she raised her ladle today,

had a Band-Aid wrapped around her wrist; the edge of the Band-Aid was already peeling, but she didn't have time to change it."

Next was Yuan Ningning. She hesitated for several seconds before speaking.

"On the lost and found board at the library entrance, there's a handwritten notice looking for a USB drive, and the paper has already turned yellow."

After that, five or six more people stood up one after another.

Some spoke with precision, others were vague.

One boy struggled for a long time only to squeeze out the phrase "a pothole next to the streetlight"; his face turned red as soon as he finished, but he stubbornly refused to sit down.

Although each answer wasn't long, they all carried an earthy scent.

Xu Zhengqing remained standing at the edge of the podium, holding that thermos with chipped paint.

He just listened, nodding occasionally.

The last person in the classroom who hadn't stood up was Lin Que.

As those previous voices came to a stop one by one, silence once again spread across the entire lecture hall.

Everyone's gaze naturally converged on that middle seat in the second row.

Chen Jiahao leaned forward two inches, his palms gripped the edge of the desk, his knuckles turning white.

The way he looked at Lin Que was even more nervous than how he looked at Xu Zhengqing, as if he was afraid his idol wouldn't be able to answer this one.

Xu Changge's pencil rested between his fingers; the barrel didn't spin, and his fingers didn't move. He just quietly turned his head, waiting.

Under Dan Yi's cap brim, those gray-blue eyes had moved away from his own manuscript and landed on the back of Lin Que's head.

Xu Zhengqing also looked over.

The old man stood at the edge of the podium, the thermos cradled in his hand,

his gaze falling on the youth who had remained leaning against the back of his chair with his hands in his pockets.

He didn't rush him.

Lin Que stood up.

Then he spoke.

"When leaving the apartment building, the security guard was shaving in front of a piece of broken glass; there was still half a faded 'Fu' character stuck to the edge of the glass."

His voice wasn't loud, his speed wasn't fast, and every word came out of his throat flatly.

The air in the classroom was frozen.

Broken glass.

Shaving.

A faded "Fu" character.

Three things crowded onto a palm-sized fragment.

The glass was old, the "Fu" character was old, and even the person who had pasted the "Fu" character was likely no longer around.

But the security guard shaved in front of this broken glass every morning,

tidying up his face before going to work for the day.

Past time and present life were sewn together by a piece of broken glass.

One sentence, one image—everything was inside.

Zhong Hengyuan's mouth hung open, not closing for a long time.

He looked down at his own manuscript, his palm slowly clenching, his nails digging into the paper.

Xu Changge stared at Lin Que's profile for three seconds.

The pencil spun half a turn between his fingers and came to a silent stop.

Lin Que's broken glass and his transparent tape were not the same thing.

That piece of broken glass grew from the gaps in Lin Que's bones; it was naturally there.

But his transparent tape was something he had only discovered by deliberately squatting down and looking today.

One was instinct, the other was a choice.

Xu Changge's finger rubbed the kraft paper cover on the corner of the desk.

Choice is slower than instinct.

But the choice was his own.

The path was not wrong.

After Xu Zhengqing finished listening, a smile finally appeared at the corners of his mouth.

The magnitude of that smile was a notch larger than the nods he had given anyone else.

He placed the thermos back on the lecture desk, the bottom of the cup making a light clinking sound against the surface.

Then he took two steps, moving from the edge of the podium back to the center, facing the thirty students.

"Are you all waiting in your hearts for me to say who spoke well and who spoke poorly?"

No one answered, but the answer was written on everyone's face.

Xu Zhengqing slowly screwed on the lid of the thermos.

The threads had long since worn smooth, making a dry, grating clicking sound as he tightened it.

"Professor Liu talked to you the day before yesterday about structure, restraint, and precision—those are all crafts.

Crafts can be practiced; in three to five years, or eight to ten years, you can always hone them."

His voice wasn't high, but even the breathing in the classroom became lighter.

"But before craft, there is one thing that cannot be repaired once broken."

Xu Zhengqing reached out his right hand and tapped next to his temple with his index and middle fingers.

"The eyes."

When this word fell from his mouth, not a single person in the classroom moved.

"This exercise is not an exam.

Therefore, there are no scores, no rankings, and no one is stronger or weaker than another."

Xu Zhengqing's gaze swept from the front row to the back; it wasn't fast, but he looked into every pair of eyes.

"I wanted to check for you whether your eyes are still bright, and whether you can still squat down to see the things on the ground."

The classroom was so quiet that one could hear the sound of plane tree leaves falling outside the window.

"You are seeds screened from across the country.

In terms of technique and talent, not one of you sitting here is weak.

But I have seen too many people with extreme talent whose eyes become blurred as they write.

It's not presbyopia; it's that they've become too high."

Xu Zhengqing picked up the thermos and put it down again.

"Standing too high, they can't see the earthworms in the mud anymore.

They only stare at the clouds in the sky to write; the words are good-looking, the sentences are beautiful, but the bottom is empty.

When the wind blows, it all scatters."

He paused for two seconds.

"In the business of literature, it all comes down to one thing."

Xu Zhengqing looked up, his gaze sweeping the entire room before finally landing on that thermos.

The thermos cast a small, crooked shadow on the lecture desk.

"Can you squat down and take a look on behalf of those who cannot?"

When this sentence fell, there was no applause in the classroom.

But silence itself was the heaviest applause.

Zhong Hengyuan looked down at the desk, his fingers gripping his pencil, his knuckles turning white.

Yuan Ningning's eyes turned red, and she secretly wiped them with her sleeve.

Chen Jiahao's mouth opened and closed, and he finally swallowed all the words in his heart back into his stomach, leaving only his Adam's apple to roll hard once.

Dan Yi's cap brim was pressed even lower.

But his sitting posture had changed.

His back left the chair, his spine straightening segment by segment, as if something was re-rooting itself in his body.

Lin Que pulled his hand out of his pocket, rested it on the edge of the desk, and lightly tapped the tabletop with his index finger.

The rhythm was very slow, as if he was checking something off in his heart.

This old man stood on the podium,

wearing a button-down cloth shirt washed to a faded white, holding a thermos with chipped paint,

talking not about structure or technique,

nor any craft that could be quantified with a score.

He was talking about "eyes."

A pillar of the literary world in his sixties, facing thirty talented seeds screened from across the country,

wasn't in a hurry to share a lifetime of insights or bring out some framework of master theories.

The first thing he did was check if the eyes of these seeds were covered in dust.

The corner of Lin Que's mouth twitched slightly.

Interesting.

Most people standing at the tip of the pyramid would wish they could pour their entire life's work down in one go, for fear that their successors weren't "high" enough.

But Old Master Xu did the opposite.

He was afraid these children were too high—so high they couldn't see the mud beneath their feet.

This clarity was more valuable than any technique.

Xu Zhengqing screwed the thermos lid back on, tucked the closed old book from the desk under his arm, and took two steps toward the side of the podium.

He stood still at the entrance to the aisle, turned his head,

and as his gaze swept over these young faces again, there was a hint of gratification in his tone:

"Since everyone still temporarily maintains the ability to observe, then we can continue moving forward."

As he spoke, he turned around,

and picked up the old book that had been pressed next to the thermos all along.

The rough cover flipped over in the morning light,

revealing the title without any concealment before the eyes of the thirty top geniuses.

In the front row, Zhang Yiyu's eyes suddenly widened, and Chen Jiahao couldn't even help but let out a short cry of surprise.

Xu Changge's fingers tightened on the desk for a moment, then slowly relaxed.

He stared at the spine that had been flipped until it was frayed, his Adam's apple rolling once, but he didn't make a sound.

The classroom was silent for two seconds.

Then Zhang Yiyu's chair in the front row made a "creak."

He leaned back quite a bit, as if he had been pushed head-on by those five words.

Chen Jiahao didn't have time to cover the cry in his mouth with his hand; it pierced the silence sharply, and immediately following,

the sound of whispers surged from all directions, densely crashing against the walls of the lecture hall.

Lin Que leaned against the back of his chair, his hands always in his pants pockets.

His expression was no different from five minutes ago.

Except for the line of his mouth, which tilted to one side by an arc of less than a millimeter.

That book, which the titan of the literary world had flipped until its edges were frayed and used as a textbook for the country's top literary prospects,

was strikingly printed with five large characters:

"ordinary world."

...