442: Chapter 442 Once the door is opened, everything has to change.

Elder Cui's voice got stuck there.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

He tapped his fingers on his knees twice, as if organizing his thoughts, or perhaps confirming that everything he had just experienced was not a hallucination.

Dai Shengzong sat behind the mahogany desk, watching Elder Cui in this state, and finally set down the fountain pen in his hand completely.

He had known Elder Cui for nearly thirty years.

This man had spent fifteen years at the National Institute of Astrophysics and another twenty years transitioning to writing science fiction; what kind of storms had he not seen?

Back when that piece, "Echoes of Deep Space", which won him the sci-fi award, was passed unanimously by the jury, he had only hummed a "not bad."

But now, this man was sitting on the sofa in his office, had lit a cigarette, started to speak, and then jammed.

Dai Shengzong picked up his teacup from the desk, walked around the desk, and sat down in the single chair opposite the sofa.

"What did Lin Que write?"

His tone had no preamble; he went straight to the point.

Elder Cui raised his head and glanced at Dai Shengzong.

In those eyes, currently without glasses, was something Dai Shengzong had never seen in him before.

It was a kind of bewilderment, as if he had been struck by something and hadn't yet had time to process it.

"He wrote a piece of science fiction."

Elder Cui's voice regained some of its rough texture, but his speaking speed was half a beat slower than usual.

"The title is 'rural teacher'."

Dai Shengzong held his teacup, not intimidated by the surface meaning of the title, and waited for Elder Cui to continue.

"The premise is like this."

Elder Cui leaned back into the sofa, his gaze resting on the ceiling.

"There is an extermination fleet from the Carbon-based Federation on the spiral arm of the Milky Way, scanning star systems one by one along their route, executing purges on planets that haven't developed a sufficient level of civilization."

...

Elder Cui paused for a beat.

"There is only one test criterion. Randomly select an individual creature from the planet and test whether it possesses basic scientific cognitive ability. If it does, keep it. If not, exterminate."

Dai Shengzong's hand holding the teacup froze in mid-air.

"Those children, using Mandarin with the accent of the Loess Plateau, recited the Newtons Laws that their teacher had taught them with his life just the day before."

Elder Cui's voice sank.

"The fleet turned away."

The office was quiet for a long time.

Dai Shengzong placed the teacup back on the coffee table; the sound of the porcelain hitting the glass was light and crisp.

"This premise…"

Dai Shengzong spoke, his voice a pitch lower than usual.

He didn't finish his sentence. But Elder Cui understood the second half of what he hadn't said.

This premise was not something a seventeen-year-old high school student should be able to write.

"It's not just the premise." Elder Cui sat up straight on the sofa, his hands resting on his knees.

"I asked him three questions in class."

Elder Cui repeated the questions from the class.

Dai Shengzong's brows furrowed.

Each of these three questions could tear a seemingly perfect piece of science fiction into pieces.

"How did he answer?"

The corners of Elder Cui's mouth twitched; the movement didn't look like a smile, but more like a kind of helplessness.

"He bypassed this loophole."

Elder Cui raised his hand to press his brow, his voice low and hoarse.

"He didn't argue about technical details with me; he directly placed the scale onto the Milky Way."

"The things humans think are top-notch are just ants moving sand in the eyes of higher civilizations."

"What is truly valuable is the ant realizing for the first time that there is a starry sky above its head."

Dai Shengzong's back slowly left the back of the chair.

"So, Newtons Laws, in his view, is no longer just a problem."

"It's a threshold." Elder Cui continued.

"The threshold from instinct to rationality, from living to understanding the universe."

Elder Cui's speaking speed picked up.

"The second question, I asked him why he had to choose the Loess Plateau."

Elder Cui paused.

"He placed the answer on the 'base.' It's not rare for the top of a tower to shine."

"What is rare is whether the light has been passed down layer by layer to the darkest, farthest, poorest places."

Dai Shengzong's fingers stopped on the wall of the teacup.

He understood.

This was no longer just a simple sci-fi premise.

This was using a village primary school to test the educational capillaries of a civilization.

If knowledge can only stay in laboratories and elite schools, then it is only the wealth of a few.

If knowledge can be passed to seven or eight children by a coughing, blood-spitting village teacher, that proves it has truly entered the blood of civilization.

"The third question, I asked him, why would an extermination fleet turn around just because a few children recited the laws."

When Elder Cui said this, his Adam's apple moved.

"He removed the motivation of that fleet from plunder."

Dai Shengzong's eyes narrowed.

Elder Cui continued:

"In his setting, after reaching the stellar level, resources are hard to be the ultimate answer."

"Such civilizations continue to cruise the galaxy, and what they are truly looking for is whether there is another cluster of thinking fire in the universe."

The office fell quiet.

Elder Cui's voice was even lower.

"So that test, which looked as cold as a slaughterhouse line, had loneliness as its underlying logic. It was clearing out silence, but also searching for echoes."

After finishing, Elder Cui leaned back into the sofa, as if he had been drained of something.

Dai Shengzong was silent for nearly half a minute.

Then he stood up, walked to the desk, picked up the extension phone receiver, and dialed a three-digit number.

"Old Liu, what time does your class end?"

Professor Liu Zuoqing's vigorous voice came from the other end of the line: "Ten more minutes, what's up?"

"Come straight to my office after class. Elder Cui is here."

Dai Shengzong didn't explain further and hung up the phone.

Elder Cui glanced at him but didn't speak.

Twelve minutes later, the office door was pushed open.

Professor Liu Zuoqing walked in, briskly wearing his signature gray zhongshan suit.

He glanced at Elder Cui on the sofa, then at Dai Shengzong standing by the window, and immediately sensed that something was off in the air.

"What happened?"

"Sit."

Dai Shengzong pointed to the sofa.

Professor Liu Zuoqing sat down opposite Elder Cui, crossed his legs, and his gaze swept back and forth between the two.

"Who's going to speak first?"

Dai Shengzong looked at Elder Cui.

This time, Elder Cui spoke more briefly.

He deleted all emotions, leaving only the skeleton:

The Loess Plateau, a dying teacher, seven children, a galaxy fleet, civilization testing, and Lin Que's "ants moving sand" theory that twisted loopholes into fulcrums.

Professor Liu Zuoqing still had his legs crossed at first.

Halfway through, he put his legs down.

By the end, his fingers were resting on his knees.

After Elder Cui finished the last sentence, Professor Liu Zuoqing leaned back against the sofa backrest, stared at the ceiling, and let out a long breath.

"This child has smashed the barriers."

"Many realistic themes write about suffering, with the power pressed into the mundane life of the world."

"Many hard sci-fi works write about the universe, and the power easily drifts into technical spectacles."

He sat up straight again.

"These two paths each have their peaks and their shortcomings. This piece by Lin Que has forced the connection between the two most difficult parts."

"Once this gate is opened, the writing style of many people behind him will have to change."

Professor Liu Zuoqing sat up straight, his gaze falling on Elder Cui's face.

"And his narrative fulcrum is chosen extremely accurately."

Dai Shengzong walked back from the window and sat down in his chair.

"His narrative fulcrum is chosen on education."

"War can create spectacles, technology can create thresholds, but education can prove whether a civilization has passed on its spark."

Professor Liu Zuoqing picked up on this sentence and reached out to push the ashtray on the coffee table half an inch toward Elder Cui.

Elder Cui suddenly spoke:

"But what stung me the most was not the premise, nor that theory."

Dai Shengzong and Professor Liu Zuoqing looked at him simultaneously.

"It was the details."

Elder Cui's voice lowered.

"That Loess Plateau was written too realistically."

His fingers tapped on his knees.

Elder Cui raised his head, his gaze carrying something almost like bewilderment.

Professor Liu Zuoqing and Dai Shengzong exchanged a glance.

"Do you remember 'the steps'?" Professor Liu Zuoqing spoke.

Elder Cui frowned; he was there at the time.

"The mud and sand at the bottom of the foot-washing basin."

Dai Shengzong took over the conversation.

"When Elder Su mentioned this detail back then, he paused for a long time."

"He said that the weight of that mud and sand, with the granular texture of life repeatedly settling, couldn't be piled up with data, nor could it be assembled with cleverness."

He looked at Elder Cui.

"That is something that only lands on paper after the eyes have seen it grain by grain, and the fingers have touched it inch by inch."

"But he is indeed only seventeen."

Professor Liu Zuoqing's tone carried a rare sense of confusion.

"He grew up in Jiangcheng and has no experience of life in the Northwest."

A plane tree leaf brushed against the glass outside the window, and all three men's eyes fell on the unseen student file.

Elder Cui took that pack of cigarettes out of his pocket again, pulled one out, but didn't light it.

He just twirled it between his fingers twice.

"This kid is hiding something." Elder Cui's voice was very soft.

"It's not just talent. Talent can explain his structural ability, his narrative intuition, his grasp of sci-fi settings. But talent cannot explain life experience."

"Life experience cannot be faked."

Dai Shengzong leaned back in his chair, his fingers crossed in front of his abdomen.

"What do you plan to do?"

Elder Cui didn't speak, just stuffed the unlit cigarette back into the pack and stood up.

He glanced at the wall clock.

"We've been talking for an hour already."

He straightened his oversized jacket and adjusted the collar.

"I'll go back and finish grading the rest of the homework."

...