407: Chapter 407 reveals the ultimate secret of suffering.

Xu Zhengqing gently placed the copy of ordinary world with its worn edges in the center of the lectern.

The spine was faded white from use, and several bookmarks of varying shades peeked out from between the pages.

The old man extended two fingers and tapped lightly on the spine.

The movement was very light.

But those two taps were like nails, firmly pinning the attention of all thirty students in the class onto those five printed characters.

This book, which had recently caused a massive stir in both the traditional literary world and the online literature scene,

was now lying so openly in the top-tier Qinglan Project training classroom of the Qingbei School of Literature.

Chen Jiahao's gasp still hung in the air, and Zhang Yiyu's chair in the front row let out a "creak."

Xu Changge stared at the spine, his fingers tightening on the table for a moment before slowly relaxing.

Tang He, Yuan Ningning, Zhong Hengyuan, and Dan Yi, who was pressing down his hat brim in the back row, all looked up.

Lin Que still had both hands in his pockets.

His expression was no different from five minutes ago.

Except for the line at the corner of his mouth, which had shifted less than a millimeter to one side.

Xu Zhengqing looked up and scanned the class with a gentle gaze.

"Those who have read this book, raise your hand."

The lecture hall fell silent for a moment.

In the next instant, thirty hands were raised almost simultaneously.

The movement was so synchronized that even Xu Zhengqing paused for a beat.

Chen Jiahao raised his hand the highest.

His arm was stretched taut, his fingertips nearly touching the dust in the air, and his back was as straight as a javelin.

His face was flushed red, and he looked as if he had been lifted off his chair and then pressed back down.

That proud look of his made him look more like the author than the author himself.

Lin Que kept his head down, his peripheral vision catching the arm to his left that looked like it was trying to pierce the ceiling, and his Adam's apple bobbed once.

He almost couldn't hold it in.

Someone nearby whispered in a low voice.

"Everyone's read it?"

Another voice was even lower.

"It would be strange if they hadn't. Who in the School of Liberal Arts hasn't been forced to read this book recently?"

Xu Zhengqing heard these whispers but did not interrupt.

He looked at the field of raised hands, a hint of a smile appearing on his lips.

"It seems that the name Jian Shen has already made its way onto your desks."

After he finished speaking, his gaze fell on Chen Jiahao.

Chen Jiahao was still holding his hand up, with no intention of lowering it.

Xu Zhengqing looked at him for two seconds.

"This student, your hand is the highest."

"Tell me, when you first read this book, what was the first thing that struck you?"

Chen Jiahao stood up abruptly, moving so fast it was like he was propelled by a spring.

This was the moment he had been waiting for.

With both hands pressed on the table, his voice was several degrees brighter than usual when he spoke.

"Elder Xu, when I first read ordinary world, the part where Sun Shaoping finally goes to get the black flour buns in the cafeteria made me go completely numb."

As he spoke, he gestured with his fingers in the air.

"He clearly hadn't stolen anything and didn't owe anyone anything, yet he had to wait until everyone else had left before going over.

He was only taking the worst food, but it was as if he were facing judgment."

Many people in the classroom lowered their heads.

Almost everyone remembered this passage.

Chen Jiahao spoke more and more fluently, his voice growing gruffer.

"And then there's Sun Shaoan. He was pressed into the mud by life, yet he still had to lift his family up.

He doesn't have the aura of a great hero, but he's just... tough. That toughness isn't something shouted out; it's something he swallows down along with his broken teeth."

He paused and took a deep breath, as if afraid his next sentence would be too loud. But he couldn't help himself.

"I'll say something that might be a bit inappropriate.

"I feel like the people written by Teacher Jian Shen have truly lived in the soil. It's not something made up."

He looked up, earnest to the point of being a bit clumsy.

"I can't explain why, but after finishing it, I couldn't recover for several days."

When he finished, no one laughed.

In any other setting, Chen Jiahao's die-hard fan enthusiasm would probably have drawn a few teases.

But with ordinary world lying on the lectern, no one could laugh.

Lin Que kept his head down, his gaze falling on the grain of his desk.

"Lived in the soil."

Chen Jiahao would probably never know how accurately that sentence hit the mark.

Xu Zhengqing nodded.

"Sit."

Chen Jiahao hadn't quite calmed down when he sat, rubbing his palms on his knees as if he had just finished a major speech.

On the left side of the lecture hall, Tang He nudged Yuan Ningning gently with her elbow and whispered in a very low voice.

"I rewrote the beginning three times last night, and the more I wrote, the more I felt like my urban narrative style was all just empty flash."

Yuan Ningning didn't respond, only nodding silently.

Xu Zhengqing looked at Xu Changge again.

"Changge, you speak."

Xu Changge stood up.

"The first thing I noticed was the language.

The sentences in this book are coarse, almost as if they haven't been polished.

But this coarseness actually constitutes its power."

Xu Zhengqing's gaze deepened, but he didn't interrupt.

Xu Changge continued:

"Many authors writing about the bottom of society turn poverty and hunger into beautiful imagery.

Jian Shen didn't. He let mud be mud and black flour buns be black flour buns.

The reader must see the characters' dignity for themselves; the author doesn't explain a single word for them."

He paused for half a second, his voice clear.

"This style of writing is very dangerous.

A fraction too little and it's dry; a fraction too much and it's fake.

Jian Shen maintains the scale extremely steadily. The rules and techniques we've practiced since childhood seem flimsy in the face of this book."

After speaking, he sat down.

Zhang Yiyu couldn't help but whisper something, and someone nearby responded softly, but no one dared to speak loudly.

Zhang Yiyu couldn't help but whisper: "This evaluation is more accurate than my thesis."

Someone nearby whispered back: "Is the Xu Family always this terrifying when they praise people?"

Xu Changge heard them but ignored them.

Lin Que leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping lightly on the edge of the desk.

Chen Jiahao approached it through emotion; Xu Changge broke it down through technique.

Both levels hit the mark.

But neither of them touched the innermost layer.

On the afternoon he wrote about Sun Shaoping waiting for everyone to leave before taking the black flour buns, he had written three drafts in his rented room.

Not because he couldn't write it, but because he wrote it too quickly.

Too fast meant that the image was too close to him.

He needed to deliberately step back half a pace to turn that closeness into distance.

Moving a story from memory to paper isn't just about transcribing.

As every word was written, he had to re-enter that scene.

He had to stand at the cafeteria entrance, smell the sour heat when the steamer was opened,

and see the boy's back as he walked toward the last row with his head down.

He had to feel the pain again on behalf of that person he had never met.

Only after experiencing the pain is the restraint in one's writing not a technique, but an instinct.

This was likely the price of passing the flame.

If you borrow someone else's story, you have to pay back with your own blood.

In the back row of the classroom, Dan Yi lowered the brim of his hat.

Although he held the Hell Dream Weaver as his ultimate standard, hearing these people's extreme praise for Jian Shen didn't make him retort in his mind as he usually would.

He had read ordinary world.

The depiction of suffering within it indeed struck a secret chord of resonance in him, an outlier who grew up in the ice and snow of Mo City.

He simply shrank his body further into the shadows and listened silently.

Xu Zhengqing moved his thermos half an inch to the side, pressing his palm onto the cover of the book.

"You've all spoken well, and you've hit the mark."

The atmosphere in the classroom relaxed slightly.

But when Xu Zhengqing's next sentence fell, everyone sat up straight again.

"Since you all think it's great and have seen the suffering and truth within it."

Xu Zhengqing's gaze swept across the front row.

"Then can any of you tell me,"

"Why, when Jian Shen writes about these hardships, does he never cry out in pain on behalf of his characters?"

...