408: Chapter 408 Whose Eyes See Deeper?

Thirty pens stopped on the paper simultaneously.

Someone's pen tip poked an ink blot; someone else's eraser was squeezed out of shape.

This question was like a massive boulder, accurately smashing into the hearts of the thirty geniuses.

Chen Jiahao's mouth hung open, and the bellyful of praise he had prepared got stuck in his throat.

The pencil held between Xu Changge's fingertips stopped mid-air, his brow furrowing instantly.

Tang He looked down at the table, a shallow crease forming between her eyebrows.

Yuan Ningning flipped open her notebook; her pen tip landed on the paper but didn't write, only poking a small black dot onto the surface.

They had read it.

They had been struck by it.

They could even write beautiful reflections on it.

But Xu Zhengqing's question bypassed the sentimentality and crashed directly into the writer's choices.

Why didn't they cry out in pain?

The crowd, which had been talking grandly just moments ago, now looked ashamed.

They realized they had only seen the surface-level poverty and suffering, but hadn't seen through the extremely cruel restraint the author maintained behind the words at all.

Xu Zhengqing didn't wait for them to answer.

He flipped open the book.

The sound of the pages turning was so clear it was almost piercing.

The book stopped at a page marked with a blue sticky note.

“Look at this passage.”

His voice was steady.

“When Sun Shaoping goes to get his food, the author doesn't write about how much pain he's in, how inferior he feels inside, nor does he have bystanders step out to humiliate him.”

Xu Zhengqing looked down and read a few lines.

“Wait until everyone has left, then he walks over with his head lowered, takes two black flour buns, and ladles a bowl of soup so clear you can barely see any oil slicks.”

He closed the half-page and looked up.

“There are only actions here.”

Quite a few people's faces suddenly felt hot.

Xu Zhengqing's finger traced across the page.

“When you write articles, you always like to jump out and act as God.

When a character encounters setbacks, you want to use long passages of psychological description to play up how miserable they are.

When a character is wronged, you can't wait to use their mouth to curse the world to high heaven.”

Xu Zhengqing raised his head, his gaze becoming sharp.

“If a young author were to write this, nine out of ten would write about psychological activities.

Writing about how he hates fate, how he's afraid his classmates will see him, writing about how he clenches his fists and vows to make something of himself in the future!”

As soon as these words came out, over a dozen geniuses below lowered their heads in unison.

Tang He tightly covered her manuscript paper, and Yuan Ningning wished she could bury her head in the desk cubby.

What they loved to write most usually was the 'God's perspective' that Elder Xu was dismissing as worthless.

Xu Zhengqing's tone remained gentle, yet every word landed heavily in their hearts.

“Jian Shen didn't write those things.”

He raised his hand and made a slight pulling back motion in the air.

“He withdrew the writer's hand.”

This withdrawal was very light.

Yet it made many people's backs stiffen.

“You have already seen him. So do not speak for him. The more you speak for him, the less dignity he has left.”

Zhong Hengyuan bit his lip hard.

He thought of the manuscript passages that Lin Que had rejected last night.

The steelyard weight, the plastic sheeting, the fish scales, the bloody water.

At the time, he thought that was called realism.

Now he finally understood what Lin Que meant by saying he was 'showing off his technique.'

The objects were stealing the scene.

The person, instead, was no longer visible.

Xu Zhengqing continued to flip pages.

“Now look at Sun Shaoan.”

“He runs a brick factory, he fails, he supports the family. There are many things about him that could be elevated. If written with a pen that loves to shout slogans, Sun Shaoan would have long ago become a saint of suffering.”

He tapped the page with his knuckle.

“Jian Shen didn't put him on a pedestal. He allowed him to have selfishness, hesitation, embarrassment, calculation, as well as responsibility.”

“When a person lives on the land, their body will naturally be stained with dirt.”

Xu Zhengqing paused.

“If you wash the dirt clean, all that's left is a statue.”

This sentence was like a blunt knife, slowly cutting across everyone's throat.

Xu Changge lowered his head and wrote a line in his notebook.

The writer steps back, the character steps forward.

Dan Yi sat in the back row, his hat brim pulled very low.

On the playground at minus thirty degrees in Mo City, those classmates who walked around him,

And the crowd in the book that bypassed Sun Shaoping's food bowl, blurred and collided together in this second.

He didn't pick up his pen.

He only pulled his hat brim down another inch, hiding his eyes in the shadows.

Xu Zhengqing's words hadn't fully dissipated yet.

Someone in the classroom was flipping through their manuscript, stopping when they reached a certain page,

Staring at the sentences they wrote crying out in pain for the character, fingers suspended in mid-air, unable to decide whether to delete or keep them.

Tang He's hand covered the cover of the manuscript on the desk.

Her fingertips had already pinched a deep crease into the manuscript cover.

She didn't dare let go, as if the moment she did, those three hundred words would jump off the paper and embarrass her in front of Xu Zhengqing.

Xu Zhengqing closed the book, resting his palm flat on the cover.

“You think he is great, not because he cried loudly for anyone.

It's because he came down from that chair of God, brought a stool, sat in their courtyard, and spent a few years with them.”

He paused for two seconds.

“The writer who creates people leaves as soon as they're done writing. The writer who has accompanied them looks back even after leaving.”

“That's why the suffering you write about is hollow! It has no form!”

Xu Zhengqing's gaze was like a blade, scraping inch by inch across the faces of everyone present.

“Because you haven't truly seen them!”

“But Jian Shen, he saw them.”

This sentence caused many people's shoulders to slump.

Xu Zhengqing closed the book.

“What I want you to learn is, to put it plainly, just one thing.”

He stopped for a moment.

“The weeds, brooms, band-aids, broken glass you mentioned this morning... those are all results of eyes looking downward.

It shows that you are at least willing to squat down.”

“But seeing is only the first step.”

“Whether you can resist crying out for them when you write,

Whether you can resist rushing to stand up and speak for others after squatting down, is the second step.”

Lin Que's fingers tightened slightly under the edge of the table.

When writing that chapter, he indeed had stood up.

Not because looking down from a height was comfortable, but because he had squatted for too long and his knees hurt.

Xu Zhengqing had seen through this layer.

The old man's eyes were even sharper than he had thought.

Only the rustling of pen tips across paper remained in the classroom.

Someone was transcribing Xu Zhengqing's words from just now, the handwriting twice as heavy as usual, as if afraid the weight would slip away if written too lightly.

No one noticed that Xu Zhengqing had stopped talking.

He put his hands behind his back, his gaze passing over the few people in the front row and landing accurately on Lin Que, who had remained calm throughout.

Some people in the classroom followed his line of sight.

Chen Jiahao reacted first, slapping both hands on his knees,

Leaning his whole body forward halfway, his eyes shining as if about to watch a final match.

Xu Changge's pencil was silently placed back on the table.

He was all too familiar with his grandfather's pause.

This wasn't the end; it was the drawing of the sword after sheathing it.

The grayish-blue eyes under Dan Yi's hat brim narrowed slightly, as if scenting a change in the air.

Xu Zhengqing's palm was still pressed on the cover of ordinary world.

There was an unmasked sense of inquiry in the old man's eyes.

He looked at Lin Que, his voice not loud, yet clearly audible to the entire classroom.

“Lin Que, your folding beijing wrote about the bottom layer of society.”

He paused.

“Jian Shen also wrote about the bottom layer.”

The air froze in an instant.

Xu Zhengqing threw out that extremely sharp hook.

“You give an evaluation.”

“Between you and him, whose eyes see deeper?”

...