433: Chapter 433 Mr. Cui

October 4th, Capital Airport Terminal 3.

Ye Xi pushed her suitcase to the security checkpoint and looked back at Lin Que, who was standing outside the cordon.

"Go back and do your homework properly."

"Go back and practice your piano properly."

Elder Ye stood two steps behind Ye Xi, holding a boarding pass.

He didn't rush his granddaughter, but simply watched quietly as the two young people completed a rather long farewell with their eyes.

Ye Xi turned and entered the security passage.

Elder Ye stepped forward and patted Lin Que on the shoulder.

The force was heavier than the last time.

The old man said nothing; he just looked at Lin Que, nodded, then turned and followed his granddaughter with a straight back.

Lin Que stood in place, watching the two figures disappear behind the gates.

The lingering warmth of the old man's palm remained on his shoulder.

That pat on the shoulder felt like a seal, pressed very deep.

October 5th.

Lin Que spent the entire day in his secret studio in the capital.

The revised manuscript of the last three chapters of "ordinary world · Part Two" was sent to Wang De'an.

The first twenty chapters of "Jingjue Ancient City," the first part of "ghost blows out the light," were also sent to Hong Hu.

Two emails, two recipients, two parallel lines.

Five days later, they would intersect on the same date—

The day the physical books of "ordinary world · Part Two" were distributed nationwide, the Dream Weaver's "ghost blows out the light" would simultaneously begin its update.

Lin Que turned off the screen and leaned back in his chair.

He closed his eyes, and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly.

This was probably the quietest left-hand-versus-right-hand battle in the world.

October 6th.

7:15 AM.

Below the training camp dormitory, the autumn wind carried a dry chill through the ginkgo trees.

A few leaves that had just begun to turn yellow fell on the steps, making a crisp sound when stepped on by passing feet.

Lin Que walked downstairs, and Xu Changge was already waiting under the ginkgo tree.

Wearing a dark blue short trench coat, he stood straight, but there were faint dark circles under his eyes.

"Morning."

"Morning."

Lin Que glanced at his eyes. "Stayed up late."

Xu Changge didn't deny it.

Just as Lin Que was about to speak, a mess of footsteps came from behind.

Chen Jiahao rushed out of the hallway, clutching his shoulder bag in his hand before he could even put it on.

His other hand gripped an unopened bottle of mineral water, and his hair stuck up like a bird's nest.

"Wait for me!"

He ran up to the two of them, bent over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath, then looked up at Xu Changge.

"Brother Ge, did you not sleep well last night either?"

Lin Que turned to look at Chen Jiahao, his gaze sweeping back and forth between him and Xu Changge.

Chen Jiahao rubbed the back of his head and chuckled.

"Master Que, while you weren't here these past few days, I had nothing to do, so I went around visiting the other dorms.

Brother Ge doesn't talk much, but we really hit it off when we chatted."

Xu Changge gave him a smile.

"And you? Did you finish?"

"Don't even mention it. I typed the last three hundred words with my eyes closed."

Chen Jiahao took a gulp of mineral water and then leaned in toward Xu Changge, lowering his voice.

"Brother Ge, how many drafts did you go through last night?"

Xu Changge paused for a beat.

"Four drafts."

Chen Jiahao almost sent his bottle cap flying.

Lin Que didn't speak, but he knew very well that four drafts meant the first three were completely scrapped.

Scrapping it once means being dissatisfied with the structure; scrapping it three times means being at odds with oneself.

The three of them walked side-by-side through the ginkgo path and entered the classroom.

As soon as the door opened, Chen Jiahao's chatter came to an abrupt halt.

Most of the people were already in the classroom.

Dan Yi sat by the window, Yuan Ningning and Tang He were separated by a seat, and several students from other provinces were scattered in the middle area.

But no one's eyes were on each other.

They were all focused on the desks.

On every desk in the first three rows sat a thin black plate.

It had a metallic texture, rounded edges, and was about the size of a common tablet.

But there was no brand logo on the surface; the screen was off, reflecting an extremely dark blue-gray luster.

The base was connected to a very thin cable that ran down the table leg and under the floor, like some sort of equipment found only in a laboratory.

Chen Jiahao's eyes instantly widened.

"What on earth is this?"

He walked quickly to his seat and reached out to touch the thin black plate.

Just as his fingertips touched the edge, Yuan Ningning next to him immediately stopped him.

"Don't touch it! This thing doesn't look like something ordinary."

Chen Jiahao's hand hung in mid-air, and he pulled it back sheepishly.

"I haven't even touched it yet..."

Lin Que sat down in his position.

He didn't reach out to touch the equipment on the desk, but followed the path of the cables with his gaze.

All the cables converged at a metal interface on the floor in the front left of the classroom, disappearing into the wall from there.

Dedicated power supply, independent data channel.

Xu Changge took his seat next to him, his brow slightly furrowed.

Chen Jiahao squeezed in on Lin Que's other side and was about to ask something when Lin Que stopped him with a shake of his head.

As the classroom filled up, someone turned their head to look at the back row.

"Why is the back row empty?"

Several students turned their heads at the same time.

The back three rows were empty; none of the auditing teachers or teaching assistants who usually sat there were present.

The observation room behind the one-way glass next door was pitch black, with not even a light on.

The sound of discussion suddenly grew louder.

Lin Que leaned against the back of his chair, his fingers lightly tapping twice under the table.

Exactly 7:40 AM.

The front door of the classroom was pushed open.

The sound was loud, as if the person pushing the door didn't care at all if anyone was talking in the classroom.

All the discussion evaporated within half a second.

A man strode onto the podium.

He was scruffy with a stubbly beard, and his hair was messily pulled back, the salt-and-pepper strands completely unkempt.

He wore a faded dark gray jacket, with the right pocket bulging from something stuffed inside.

His pants were baggy, and he wore a pair of old black sneakers with the laces tied loosely.

He looked as if he had been dragged out of some research institute that was still running at three in the morning.

But as he stood on the podium, the backs of the thirty genius students in the classroom straightened in unison.

The sense of pressure he exerted was completely at odds with his appearance.

It was on a different level from Professor Liu Zuoqing's scholarly dignity, different from Su Mubai's gentle sharpness, and didn't even share the old-fashioned gravity of Xu Zhengqing.

This was something more primal.

It was as if this man carried some extremely heavy weight, far exceeding the scale of this classroom, seeping out from his very bones.

Lin Que's gaze landed on the old man's face and stayed there.

He had seen this face before.

On the first day of the camp, in the corner of the last row of the auditorium.

This old man had been huddled there with his arms crossed, looking like an old fellow who had walked into the wrong classroom.

But when Dai Shengzong passed by him at the end, his pace faltered slightly, and his upper body leaned forward a few degrees.

Lin Que hadn't understood the meaning of those few degrees of inclination back then.

Now, he understood.

The old man's gaze swept across the classroom from left to right, moving slowly as if he were counting heads.

When his gaze reached the empty seats in the back row, the corner of his mouth curled up slightly.

"I have a habit."

He spoke, his voice rough but full of vigor.

"I hate being watched through glass; it makes me feel like a performing monkey."

The classroom remained deathly silent.

"So for today's class, it's just me and you."

He gestured casually behind him toward the adjacent room.

The old man turned around and picked up a piece of white chalk from the podium.

The chalk made a crisp, sharp sound as he wrote on the blackboard.

The character "Cui."

The strokes were few, but the force was heavy, causing chalk dust to fall.

"My surname is Cui."

He tossed the chalk back into the box, patted the powder off his hands, and turned to face everyone.

"You can call me Elder Cui, or Old Cui, or even just a retired old man. But don't call me 'Professor'; I'm not one."

His gaze swept over the black devices on the first three rows of desks.

"You see those things on your desks, right?"

Everyone's eyes dropped in unison.

Elder Cui fished a pair of black-rimmed glasses out of his jacket pocket.

The frames looked very ordinary, no different from a fifty-yuan pair from a street-side glasses shop.

But on the inside of the temples, there was a very fine silver line extending along the curve to behind the ear.

He settled the glasses on the bridge of his nose and pressed a spot on the left temple with his thumb.

"The theme of your course is 'grounded science fiction'."

He tilted his chin up.

"Since it's a sci-fi class, we have to have some interesting stuff."

He jerked his chin toward the devices on the desks.

"This is the Third-Generation Brain-Computer Interface System. I just brought it out from the Institute last night."

Chen Jiahao's voice blurted out, unable to be suppressed.

"Third generation? Isn't this thing still stuck in the Institute's confidential review stage?"

Yuan Ningning, beside him, was startled by his sudden high volume.

Chen Jiahao's family was in tech investment; he had followed his father to visit the country's top laboratories more than once.

He had seen the physical first-generation BCI system, and he had only read the parameters for the second generation in internal briefings.

Third generation?

This was something that was only a rumor even in his father's investment circles.

Xu Changge's posture didn't change, but the fingers of his right hand resting on his knee tightened.

With the Xu Family's connections and resources, he was no stranger to high-end technology.

However, the words 'Third-Generation Brain-Computer Interface System' hitting him was something even he couldn't fully process for a moment.

Dan Yi sat by the window, his gray-blue eyes staring at the device on the desk, his pupils reflecting the cold, hard luster of the metal surface.

His Adam's apple bobbed once, but he didn't make a sound.

Lin Que sat in his seat, his face calm.

But his heart was far from calm.

A year ago, on his first day waking up in this world,

The news notification that popped up on Wu Di's phone said 'Breakthrough Progress in Brain-Computer Interface Technology'.

That was the first time he realized that the technology here had advanced much further than any of his memories.

Now, the technology from that news had iterated to the third generation and was sitting right in front of him.

Elder Cui adjusted the black-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose and looked at the room full of shocked faces with a flat expression.

"What's there to be so surprised about?"

"If it can be shown to you, it naturally isn't some top secret anymore."

He tapped his finger twice on the podium.

The buzzing that had finally started to emerge in the classroom was suppressed once more.

"These glasses have built-in miniature optical sensors and eye-tracking modules.

To put it simply, while I'm reading your homework, which line my eyes are on, which word I stop on and for how long, where I go back to re-read, and where I accelerate and skim through—"

All reading trajectories will be synchronized in real-time to the screens in front of you through this system."

He paused for a beat, his speaking speed slowing down, each word landing heavily.

"In other words, you will see for yourselves exactly how my eyes treat every single word you've written."

"Words can deceive the mouth, but they can't deceive the eyes.

Whether your setting can withstand scrutiny, whether your scenes can hold one's gaze, whether your characters are worth a second look—everything will be exposed in its true form on the screen."

The temperature in the classroom seemed to drop another two degrees.

Chen Jiahao slowly sat back in his chair, feeling a chill down his neck as he thought about his sci-fi assignment that he had forced himself to rush through.

Xu Changge's eyelashes trembled slightly.

The manuscript he had scrapped and rewritten four times suddenly felt a bit less certain in his heart.

Each of the students in the first three rows had their own form of tension.

Some clenched their fists, while others repeatedly measured the distance between the equipment and Elder Cui with their eyes.

The frequency with which Dan Yi, by the window, rubbed his thumb doubled.

Only Lin Que sat there quietly, watching Elder Cui's hand as it pressed the switch on the temple of the glasses.

The next second.

All the thin black plates in the first three rows lit up simultaneously.

An eerie blue light diffused from the screen surfaces, reflecting on every student's face.

The light wasn't blinding, but it had a very strong sense of presence, like a cold light emanating from deep within.

The thirty faces were illuminated by this layer of blue light, making their features sharp and their expressions varied. Some had their mouths open, some held their breath, and some clenched their fists.

Elder Cui stood on the podium, his eyes behind the lenses calmly sweeping over these young faces.

He reached out and tapped the master control terminal on the podium.

"Next, the first one."

"Xu Changge."

...