434: Chapter 434 Dignity That Can't Float in Space

When the name left Elder Cui's mouth, all sound in the classroom vanished.

Xu Changge's back tensed for a moment.

That tension wasn't fear; it was his body preparing for battle before his brain could even react.

Half a second later, he regained his steady breathing and stood up from his seat, his posture upright.

"Elder Cui, my entry is 'heavenly questions'."

Elder Cui glanced at him.

"Look at the screen."

Three words. No pleasantries, no transition.

Elder Cui turned and tapped twice on the main control terminal on the podium.

A projection screen unfurled from above the blackboard, and lines of white text spread across a light gray background.

Simultaneously, the thin black panels on the first three rows of desks lit up in unison.

The screen was divided into two columns.

On the left was the full electronic manuscript submitted by Xu Changge.

The right side was empty, save for a green cursor hovering at the very top like a stationary probe.

That was Elder Cui's gaze.

Everyone held their breath.

Elder Cui put his black-rimmed glasses back on and pressed the left temple with his thumb.

The green cursor came to life and began to move slowly downward.

The first paragraph of text enlarged on the blackboard's projection screen.

Xu Changge wrote about a space station suspended in the stratosphere.

The writing was clean and sharp.

"Cantilever structure,"

"Deep-space signal capture array,"

"Suborbital maintenance module"—

These hard sci-fi terms were lined up one after another.

The green cursor swept over these words at a constant speed, steady and without pause.

Chen Jiahao leaned in and whispered under his breath,

"Brother Ge's opening is as solid as a thesis."

Yuan Ningning's elbow jabbed precisely into his ribs.

Chen Jiahao hissed and shrank back.

Xu Changge stood by his seat, hands flat against his thighs, fingertips gripping the seams of his trousers.

The cursor continued its progress.

The second paragraph: the daily operations and maintenance of the space station.

The writing remained precise, the word choice meticulous.

The green cursor maintained a uniform speed, neither accelerating nor slowing down.

Everyone present knew what this rhythm meant in the context of the brain-computer interface system.

Competent, but uninspired.

Elder Cui's eyes were scanning at a constant rate; it was readable, but nothing could make his gaze linger.

Lin Que leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the green trajectory line on the right.

He was waiting.

The third paragraph.

The protagonist of the story finally appeared.

Old Zheng, a level-three maintenance technician on the space station.

Xu Changge used a very small action to introduce this character.

Old Zheng was tightening a bolt in a zero-gravity environment.

Midway through, his thermos lid loosened, and three bits of tea leaves floated out from the opening, spinning and scattering in the weightless air like withered little leaves.

The green cursor suddenly slowed down.

It was slow enough for everyone to notice.

It stopped on the words "tea leaf bits."

One second, two seconds...

After nearly five seconds, instead of moving forward, the cursor traced back.

It retreated from "tea leaf bits" to "thermos lid loosened" and went over them again.

The breaths of several students in the front row suddenly tightened.

A backtrack.

This was the brain-computer system's visual representation of being "hooked."

When a reader's eyes linger, retreat, and reread, it means the text has struck a deeper chord in their brain.

Tea leaf bits.

Three words. No flowery rhetoric, no hard sci-fi terminology.

Just an old worker's thermos in space, with a few tea leaves floating out.

Elder Cui's gaze was snagged by those three words.

Xu Changge's fingers loosened slightly, then immediately tightened again.

Lin Que noted this detail in his mind.

The story continued.

Old Zheng intercepted an anomalous deep-space signal during a routine inspection.

Preliminary analysis showed that the signal's frequency waveform highly matched a certain melody.

A nursery rhyme his late daughter used to hum.

The green cursor suddenly accelerated over the words "late daughter," practically skimming past them.

Lin Que's gaze narrowed slightly.

These words were too light.

So light that as Elder Cui's eyes slid over them, they didn't even leave a pause.

Dan Yi sat by the window, his grayish-blue eyes staring intently at the accelerating green trajectory on the screen.

He saw what Lin Que saw.

The middle of the story.

In a narrow corridor, Old Zheng repeatedly played the signal, comparing its frequency frame by frame with his daughter's nursery rhyme.

The technical details of this description were extremely solid: signal processing, spectral analysis, noise filtering...

Xu Changge had digested every research paper he'd ever read and woven them in.

But in this section, the green cursor showed distinct jagged fluctuations.

Moving forward, retreating.

Skipping a line, then coming back.

Moving forward again, then stopping.

It was as if Elder Cui's eyes were wrestling with the text.

Drawn in by some parts, but jarred by the clunky logic of others.

On the BCI panel, that jagged line was like a dull saw pulling back and forth through wood.

Xu Changge's fingers curled tight on his knees, loosened, and curled again.

By the time they loosened for the third time, the knuckles gripping his trouser seams had turned bloodless.

Lin Que's gaze moved from the BCI panel to Xu Changge's hand, then back.

The core climax of the story arrived.

To decode that signal, Old Zheng needed an analog decoder that had long been out of production.

There was one in the space station's spare parts repository, buried under three tons of equipment at the bottom of the zero-gravity cargo hold.

No robotic arm to assist, no extra hands.

Old Zheng, alone, used his own body to haul metal crates larger than himself in the weightless environment.

Xu Changge wrote this part in extreme detail.

How the corners of each crate struck the bulkhead, and how the rebounding force pushed Old Zheng toward the opposite wall.

His work gloves were torn by metal burrs, and droplets of blood floated in mid-air.

The green cursor changed here.

The jaggedness vanished. The fluctuations vanished.

That green line became an extremely slow, extremely uniform straight line.

It moved at a constant speed, skipping no words and retreating from no punctuation. Line by line, it progressed steadily.

To the right in the front row, Dan Yi's pupils dilated.

Yuan Ningning reached up and covered her mouth.

A uniform straight line.

In the Brain-Computer Interface System's evaluation framework, this was the mark of the highest-level assessment.

The jaggedness vanished. The fluctuations vanished.

That green line became an extremely slow, extremely uniform straight line.

It moved at a constant speed, skipping no words and retreating from no punctuation.

Line by line, it progressed steadily.

To the right in the front row, Dan Yi's pupils dilated.

Yuan Ningning reached up and covered her mouth.

Elder Cui was transfixed.

Not a single person in the classroom spoke. Even Chen Jiahao forgot to breathe, his water bottle emitting a soft "click" as he gripped it.

Then, the green cursor stopped after a comma.

It stopped very abruptly.

In the emotional fluctuation area at the top right of the BCI panel, a red peak slowly rose.

The corresponding text on the screen was a passage describing Old Zheng's internal thoughts.

Clutching the analog decoder he'd found, he floated in the center of the zero-gravity cargo hold, his hands covered in blood.

He suddenly wondered: if heaven was also weightless, was his daughter floating somewhere too?

Unable to reach the ground beneath her feet, unable to reach any hands that could catch her.

Six seconds.

Six seconds of staring pulled a glaring red peak line across the BCI panel.

That line shot from the bottom of the fluctuation graph all the way to the top, like a pillar of fire erupting from the ground.

Elder Cui took off his glasses.

He looked at Xu Changge.

The corner of his mouth twitched as if he wanted to say something, but he ultimately suppressed it.

Xu Changge's breath hitched for a full beat.

Chen Jiahao's mouth hung open, forgotten.

Elder Cui put his glasses back on and pressed the temple. The green cursor resumed its movement.

The story moved toward its conclusion.

Old Zheng finished decoding the signal, and the comparison results were in.

The frequency was indeed highly similar, but after complete data analysis, that deep-space signal was merely accidental noise generated by interstellar dust radiation.

It had nothing to do with his daughter's nursery rhyme.

The universe was not responding to him.

It never had.

Lin Que looked at the text on the screen and nodded silently to himself.

If it were the old Xu Changge, the story would have ended here.

The protagonist, Old Zheng, would have stoically accepted reality, filed the signal data according to protocol, and returned to his station to continue tightening bolts.

But the writing didn't stop there.

In the next line, Xu Changge wrote about Old Zheng drinking the last sip of cold tea in his cup.

The tea leaf bits were stuck to the bottom of the cup, no longer having the strength to float.

Old Zheng set down the cup.

He walked to the main antenna control console and entered his personal authorization code.

The safety lock popped open.

The red warning light flashed three times. He reached out and pressed the override key.

That meaningless cosmic noise was forcibly broadcast over the space station's internal intercom system.

Three seconds.

In every corner, every corridor, and every compartment of the entire space station, that sound rang out.

Old Zheng closed his eyes and listened until it finished.

The green cursor came to a violent halt on the words "forcibly broadcast."

On the BCI panel, the end of the green trajectory exploded into a mass of intense red.

Elder Cui took off his glasses and set them on the podium.

He picked up a piece of chalk, turned, and wrote two words on the blackboard.

"Breaking the Mold."

Chalk dust drifted down. Elder Cui tossed the chalk back into the box, clapped his hands, and stared at Xu Changge.

"I've read your previous articles. Every one of them was stiff and proper, as if you were terrified of stepping outside the lines."

Xu Changge didn't move.

"This time, you had Old Zheng smash the safety lock himself. A low-level maintenance worker risking his entire career for three seconds of self-delusion."

Elder Cui's voice suddenly rose.

"This is your greatest improvement. You've finally brought yourself to let your characters be undignified."

Xu Changge's shoulders, which had been tense for the entire class, finally relaxed half an inch.

"However."

Elder Cui's chalk stub tapped heavily on the blackboard, sending dust flying from the words "Breaking the Mold."

"This three-second romance of yours is too expensive."

The temperature in the classroom dropped another two degrees.

"What are the consequences of Old Zheng's unauthorized operation of the main antenna?

Losing his job? Facing security charges?

He might never be able to go into space again for the rest of his life.

You wrote about the thrill of him smashing the rules, but you didn't write about how he, as a low-level technician, will support his family tomorrow."

Elder Cui's finger tapped the podium, each strike heavier than the last.

"Your compassion has descended, but your feet are still dangling in mid-air."

These words fell into the classroom like a stone dropped into a deep well.

Xu Changge stood there without offering an excuse.

Three seconds later, he lowered his head slightly.

"You're right."

His voice was steady, but half a tone lower than usual.

"I only wrote about his despair as a father; I didn't truly consider his gravity of survival as a member of the lower class.

In the part about moving three tons of equipment, I researched many physical parameters of weightless environments and put a lot of effort into the writing.

But when it came to him smashing the safety lock, I subconsciously avoided the cost."

Xu Changge looked up, his gaze open.

"Because I don't know what that cost looks like."

Elder Cui huffed and tossed the chalk into its box.

"It's obvious this has been polished several times.

I can also see that you're struggling, already trying to reach down."

Elder Cui paused for a beat.

"Mhm."

His gaze swept over Xu Changge's shoulder and landed on a spot toward the right in the middle of the classroom.

There sat a young man in a dark blue hoodie.

The thin black panel on his desk showed a standby screen; the gaze trajectory area was empty and clean.

He hadn't been read yet.

Lin Que sat motionless under that gaze.

Elder Cui leaned his weight forward three inches, hands bracing the edge of the podium.

"In the first class, you said a friend taught you how to look down."

The eyes in the classroom swept toward Lin Que in unison.

Elder Cui's mouth twitched into a smile that didn't quite look like praise.

"Well then, that's perfect. For the next one, let's see."

He raised his hand and tapped the main control terminal.

The text on the projection screen refreshed.

A new filename floated up line by line from the bottom, the white font settling quietly against the light gray background.

[Lin Que, 'rural teacher']

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