443: Chapter 443 Three-Hour Review – Bonus Chapter Sponsored by <The New Type of Salted Fish>

Back in the classroom.

After Elder Cui put his glasses back on, it was as if he had deliberately erased the four words "rural teacher" from the class.

He didn't mention them again at all.

Yet, the more he didn't mention it, the more that piece felt like an iron weight pressing down on the podium, so heavy that no one could avoid it.

He suppressed all his outward emotions, stuffing them, along with that pack of squashed cigarettes, into the pocket of his washed-out jacket.

The next nearly three hours were a long, piece-by-piece critique.

The green cursor on the brain-computer interface awakened again and again, traversing the entire length time after time.

Tang He was the third person called.

Her work was titled "Quantum Garden," set in a botanical garden that could exist simultaneously in multiple parallel universes.

Every flower was a quantum state before collapse, and the observer's consciousness determined the color and shape of the flower.

Elder Cui's green cursor moved very quickly through the first three paragraphs.

The green cursor swept through the first three paragraphs very quickly.

Tang He's fingertips relaxed slightly.

At least on the conceptual and technical level, Elder Cui was not tripped up.

The skeleton of the hard sci-fi was built solidly; quantum entanglement, wave function collapse, observer effect—every concept was fitted together seamlessly.

But starting from the fourth paragraph, the cursor showed obvious skipping.

One line, skipped. Two lines, skipped.

Elder Cui took off his glasses and looked at Tang He.

"The setting is very hard."

Tang He stood beside her seat, her back straight, waiting for the second half of the sentence.

"But your garden is floating in mid-air."

Elder Cui tapped his finger lightly on the podium.

"No matter how beautiful the quantum state flowers are, if there isn't a pair of real hands to pick them, the reader cannot smell their scent."

He turned and wrote two words on the blackboard: Gravity.

"Your sci-fi is missing one thing."

"Gravity."

"The gravity of reality."

Tang He's lips moved, but in the end, she did not defend herself.

She looked down at the violently fluctuating green trajectories on the brain-computer interface and wrote down the two words "Gravity" in her notebook, one stroke at a time.

When she finished the last stroke, she suddenly felt that her quantum garden was so beautiful it was somewhat blinding.

Every flower had theoretical support, and every collapse had a formula to explain it, but there wasn't a pair of hands stained with mud inside, nor was there anyone who had to reach out to pick the flowers.

Her gaze drifted uncontrollably, landing in the direction of the middle-right of the classroom.

Lin Que was sitting there, his posture exactly the same as before.

That person didn't pile up many concepts, yet he made every concept press down on a person's fate.

Tang He lowered her eyes and traced over the two words "Gravity" again.

Elder Cui didn't give much time for pauses.

Next, Chen Jiahao.

When this name popped up, the atmosphere in the classroom relaxed subtly.

In most people's impressions, Chen Jiahao was a boisterous rich kid, not someone who could quietly finish a sci-fi short story.

Chen Jiahao himself was stunned for half a second, then immediately sat up straight.

His work was titled "Lunar Courier."

The setting was very simple.

In the near future, humanity had established the first batch of permanent bases on the lunar surface, and the protagonist was a young courier responsible for transporting repair parts, medicine, and private packages between various modules.

There were no grand wars, no civilization extinction, and no ultimate technology capable of rewriting the laws of physics.

The story began with a birthday gift that was thirty-seven days late.

The green cursor started.

In the first few paragraphs, the cursor moved unexpectedly smoothly.

Even when the protagonist was riding a simple lunar rover, delivering a box of compressed cake to an old engineer in the base along the edge of a crater, the cursor paused briefly.

Chen Jiahao's eyes lit up instantly, and his whole body almost sprang up from the chair, but he forcibly held himself down.

Lin Que turned his head and glanced at him.

Chen Jiahao said in a breathy voice: "Master Que, Elder Cui paused!"

Lin Que raised his hand and pressed his head back down.

"Watch the screen."

The story continued.

A micro-leak accident occurred at the lunar base; the leak point was not large, but it was stuck between the living module and the medical module.

In order to deliver a spare sealing valve to the outer module, the protagonist violated regulations and crossed the shadow zone that had not yet completed safety verification.

This route could save seven minutes, but it could also leave him forever in the cold shadows of the far side of the moon.

Vacuum, low temperature, weightlessness, communication delay.

These elements were written properly.

The green cursor didn't jump significantly, nor did it turn back obviously, maintaining a stable reading interval throughout.

Until the end, when the protagonist finally delivered the sealing valve, only to discover that the "package" he had risked his life to deliver was actually an old letter written by a mother on Earth to her son, an engineer on the moon.

There was only one sentence in the letter.

[Don't always look at the moon, remember to look at home too.]

The cursor paused on this sentence for two seconds.

Chen Jiahao's fist clenched tightly under the table.

Two seconds.

That was enough.

He felt that for the first time, by relying on a line of words he had written himself, he had made Elder Cui's gaze truly pause.

Elder Cui finished reading the full text, took off his glasses, and looked at Chen Jiahao.

Chen Jiahao immediately stood up, his face full of nervousness and anticipation.

"Not bad."

The first sentence Elder Cui spoke almost made Chen Jiahao laugh out loud on the spot.

Many people in the classroom also showed surprised expressions.

No one expected that the usually boisterous Chen Jiahao would actually have such a high degree of completion when he really started writing sci-fi.

"The setting isn't complicated, but the logic is smooth," Elder Cui said.

"The lunar environment, the base zoning, and the occupational angle of a courier are all quite grounded."

"What's most rare is that you didn't learn from others to put on airs and pretend to be profound.

Given your personality, being able to resist stuffing three explosions into it counts as progress."

Chen Jiahao's mouth corners were already almost impossible to suppress.

Elder Cui looked at him.

"But at the same time."

Chen Jiahao immediately pressed his mouth corners back down.

"The problem is also very obvious."

Elder Cui held his glasses between his fingers and tapped the podium.

"It's too smooth."

Chen Jiahao was stunned.

"So smooth that after the reader finishes it, they will think this piece is okay, but they will forget it in two days."

The classroom went quiet.

"Your characters are qualified, the setting is qualified, and the emotions are qualified."

"But it lacks a thorn."

Elder Cui held his glasses between his fingers and tapped the podium.

"Readers will nod after finishing it, will feel it's smooth, and will feel that you didn't write it poorly.

Then, the next morning while brushing their teeth, they will forget this person."

He paused for a beat.

"No memory point."

The excitement on Chen Jiahao's face slowly receded.

"You wrote about a lunar courier, but after I finished reading, what I remembered was the moon, what I remembered was the delivery, but I didn't remember the person."

Elder Cui looked at him.

"Next time before you write, ask yourself one question."

"If this character disappeared from the story, would the reader feel like something is missing in their heart?"

Chen Jiahao stood there, and after two seconds, he nodded seriously.

"Understood, Elder Cui."

After he finished speaking, he sat down, rarely not cracking jokes.

He just looked down and wrote three words in his notebook.

Memory point.

After writing it, he secretly glanced at Lin Que, his eyes carrying a bit of grievance.

Lin Que saw it, tapped his knuckles lightly on the desktop, and then lifted his chin toward the podium.

Chen Jiahao immediately sat up straight.

He understood that being dissected like this by Elder Cui already counted as being taken seriously.

Elder Cui's gaze lingered on his face for a second, without adding anything, and he cut directly to the next one.

Dan Yi.

"Icefield Observatory."

...