444: Chapter 444 The Blue-Green Project Has No Safe Zones - Bonus Chapter Sponsored by <The New Type of Salted Fish>

When this name appeared on the light screen, several gazes in the classroom turned toward the window at the same time.

Dan Yi sat there, his gray-blue eyes calmly watching the screen.

His hands rested on the tabletop, fingers interlaced, his knuckles pressed white.

The calmer he appeared, the more it seemed like he was desperately suppressing something.

Elder Cui pressed the switch on the temple of his glasses.

A green cursor lit up from the first line, slowly cutting into that ice field of minus fifty-two degrees.

An extremely cold environment of minus fifty-two degrees, an isolated observation station on the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

The sole station worker had been on duty alone for four hundred and seventy-three days.

The cursor moved very slowly.

Slow, and steady.

A few students in the front row glanced at each other.

This speed meant that Elder Cui was reading seriously and was truly absorbed in it.

That kind of loneliness wasn't propped up by crying or shouting, but rather seeped out bit by bit from the white noise of those four hundred and seventy-three days.

There was only the white noise of cosmic microwave background radiation in the walkie-talkie.

The station worker began to talk to the station's digital life and began to name every crack on the ice field,

He began to write letters in the second person to a non-existent recipient in the log.

The green cursor slowed down significantly at the "second person" section, even briefly backtracking once.

Elder Cui was hooked.

Dan Yi's fingers tightened slightly.

The story continued.

The observation station received an anomalous signal from deep space.

The station worker began to decode it, finding that the signal contained a set of repeating number sequences, suspected to be a communication attempt from some intelligent life.

The cursor resumed its normal speed here.

No deceleration, and no acceleration.

It passed through steadily.

Dan Yi's shoulders slumped imperceptibly by an inch.

At the end of the story, the station worker finally confirmed the signal was just the regular radiation of a pulsar.

The universe did not respond to him.

He turned off the equipment, walked out of the observation station, stood on the ice field at minus fifty-two degrees, and looked up at the aurora.

The cursor finished the last line and stopped.

Elder Cui took off his glasses.

"The shaping of the sense of loneliness is one of the best in this batch of assignments."

Dan Yi stood by his seat without any change in expression, but his Adam's apple bobbed once.

"But."

Elder Cui held his glasses between his fingers and gave them a half-turn.

"Your perspective is too small."

Dan Yi didn't speak, just waiting.

"You wrote about a person's loneliness, and you wrote it very deeply and accurately.

But when the universe truly appeared before you, you shrunk back."

Elder Cui's voice wasn't heavy, but every word carried weight.

"That deep space signal was handled too quickly. From reception to denial, there were less than eight hundred words in between."

He looked at Dan Yi.

"You are afraid of writing big."

As these four words fell in the classroom, Dan Yi's eyelashes trembled.

"You can write a person's loneliness to the bone, but when the scope needs to expand from one person to an entire civilization, your pen retreats."

Elder Cui put his glasses back on.

"This isn't a question of ability; it's a question of courage."

Dan Yi looked down at his manuscript, his fingertips stopping at the "deep space signal" section.

A few seconds later, his peripheral vision crossed the edge of the table and landed on Lin Que's side.

He finally understood where Elder Cui's remark about being "afraid of writing big" had stung.

He had written a person to the end of the ice field, yet right before the universe truly spoke, he had personally closed that door.

But Lin Que dared to.

A drafty classroom with earthen walls, seven children in worn-out padded jackets, and a dying teacher.

Lin Que took these people placed on the margins of the world and put them on the scales of the galaxy, weighing them with the weight of seven billion people.

Dan Yi sat back in his chair, the scene replaying in his mind over and over:

The scanning waves of the Carbon-based Federation covered the globe, coordinates locked on the Loess Plateau.

The critique continued.

One after another, the green cursor completed its journey time and again.

Some lowered their heads the moment Elder Cui took off his glasses, crossing out entire opening paragraphs they were originally proud of.

Some stared at the unremarkable green trajectory on the brain-computer panel for a long time, then wrote two words next to the title: Rewrite.

Others flipped back to the data screenshots of the emotional overload in rural teacher, watched for a few seconds, and then silently closed them.

Every piece had its highlights, and Elder Cui deconstructed every piece with precision.

But every time the light screen went dark, the same kind of silence would appear in the classroom.

Someone subconsciously flipped back to the data screenshots of rural teacher, then quickly closed them.

Someone stared at their own title for a long time, and finally only wrote two words beside it: Rewrite.

Over the course of three hours, no one mentioned that manuscript again.

But that manuscript was always present.

Elder Cui closed the master control terminal.

The projected light screen went dark, and the lighting in the classroom became uniform again.

"That's all for today."

Elder Cui's voice returned to the raspiness and casualness from the start of the class, as if nothing had happened.

"Next week at the same time, bring a new manuscript. Choose your own topic, no word count limit."

"If I don't see any progress next week, don't waste your time here; go back and prepare for the College Entrance Examination properly."

As these words fell, the atmosphere in the classroom, which had just relaxed, instantly tightened.

Several students who were about to stretch stopped with their hands in mid-air.

Someone had already unzipped their backpack, but silently took their notebook out again.

Tang He looked down at the word "gravity" she had just written, her fingertip pressing a shallow crease into the edge of the page.

Dan Yi did not move; he just called up the document for "Icefield Observation Station" again, his gaze lingering on the deep space signal that Elder Cui had pointed out as a "retreat."

Chen Jiahao originally wanted to whisper a complaint like "This is scarier than the College Entrance Examination," but he closed his mouth halfway through.

Even Xu Changge lowered his eyes, reopened his manuscript paper, and drew a line at the end of heavenly questions.

A silent sense of crisis, like cold water, flooded from the back of the classroom, submerging every desk.

Only then did they truly realize that there is no safe zone in the Qinglan Project.

Lin Que had already raised the bar to that level.

Whoever couldn't keep up would be left behind.

Elder Cui took off his glasses and tucked them into his pocket.

The sound of chair legs scraping the floor rang out in the classroom as most people silently began to pack their things, their movements a half-beat slower than usual.

Some stretched, some rubbed their temples, and some whispered with the person next to them, exchanging notes from just now.

Lin Que turned off the brain-computer panel and was about to stand up.

"Lin Que."

Elder Cui's voice came from the direction of the podium; it wasn't loud, but it was exceptionally clear amidst the noise.

Everyone who was packing their things paused for a moment.

"You stay behind."

Elder Cui's tone was very casual, as if he had remembered some minor matter.

"There are two formatting issues with the manuscript you submitted that I need to check with you."

The reason was perfectly logical and understated.

But not a single person in the classroom actually believed this was for checking some formatting.

Chen Jiahao turned his head and glanced at Lin Que.

He clearly wanted to ask something, but was suppressed by Elder Cui's gaze and didn't dare speak, only silently mouthing four words.

Master Que, take care.

Xu Changge stood up and slowly pushed in his chair.

When he passed by Lin Que, his footsteps paused for a half-beat.

In that moment, he didn't ask more, nor did he show any unnecessary concern.

He just looked calmly at Lin Que's face and gave a slight nod.

Lin Que returned an extremely faint smile.

Twenty-nine people walked out of the classroom one after another.

Footsteps, whispers, and the sound of backpack zippers faded away bit by bit, finally swallowed by the corner at the end of the hallway.

The classroom door was closed by the last person to leave.

The air conditioner vent was still humming overhead.

Elder Cui stood by the podium, not sitting down.

His hands were shoved into his jacket pockets, his shoulders relaxed, looking very casual.

But his gaze was not casual.

Those eyes, no longer obscured by lenses, were staring unblinkingly at Lin Que, who sat in his seat.

Lin Que didn't move either.

He leaned against the back of his chair, his fingers naturally folded on the table, looking back at Elder Cui.

Between the two of them were three rows of empty desks and chairs, and a long silence.

Elder Cui spoke first.

He walked down from the podium, his old sneakers stepping on the floor, walking step by step to the front of Lin Que.

He casually pulled out a chair, sat on it backward, and rested both arms on the back of the chair.

This posture was very relaxed, but his eyes were not relaxed at all.

"Formatting issues are finished."

Elder Cui said.

The corner of Lin Que's mouth twitched slightly.

"That was fast."

Elder Cui looked at him, without the slightest embarrassment of being seen through.

"No one believed it anyway."

He stared at Lin Que for five seconds.

In those five seconds, his gaze moved from Lin Que's eyes to his forehead, then from his forehead back to his eyes, as if confirming something.

Then he spoke.

"Your rural teacher, from the setting to the structure to the intent, there's nothing to pick on. I asked everything I should have in class."

Lin Que gave a nod and didn't speak.

"But I have one more question."

Elder Cui's voice lowered.

"Unrelated to the work."

The sound of the air conditioner in the classroom suddenly became very loud.

Elder Cui's body leaned forward two inches, his arms pressed against the back of the chair, his gaze fixed on Lin Que's face like two nails.

"You are a high school student who grew up in Jiang City."

His speaking speed was very slow, each word carrying a weight that had been repeatedly chewed over.

"In fact, you haven't even been to other provinces many times."

Lin Que's expression did not change.

"How did you write that blood-streaked earthy smell of the Loess Plateau so accurately?"

Elder Cui stared at him, his voice kept very low.

"So accurate that even an old man like me, who spent ten years in the countryside in the Northwest, couldn't find a single flaw."

...