455: Chapter 455 Champion, take a look, what advice do you have?

Xu Changge's gaze had already landed on the final character, "Fragrance," on the display board, lingering for three seconds.

He didn't turn his head, but Lin Que could see his shoulder line tighten slightly by an inch.

The two girls were still discussing in low voices, the girl with narrow-framed glasses gesturing back and forth over the printout.

Although their voices were low, at this distance, every word pricked Lin Que's ears like the tip of a needle.

"Look at the verbs in the third line of both poems again."

The girl with narrow-framed glasses pointed her fingertip at the paper.

"Jian Shen used 'Must,' while Dream Weaver used 'Hold.'"

"The positions and functions of these two characters in the sentences are exactly the same; both create a sudden shift in intensity in the third line."

"Just a coincidence, right?" The girl beside her hesitated.

"I'd accept one coincidence." The girl with narrow-framed glasses shook her head.

"But if you mark all the stress points of the verbs in both poems,"

"The first line is a steady introduction, the second builds slight momentum, the third is an explosive stress, and the fourth winds down to a calm."

"This rhythmic pattern overlaps perfectly."

She looked up, her gaze falling on the display board.

"A poet can deliberately change their wording, imagery, and subject matter,"

"but these subconscious habits of emphasis are like a person's walking pace—very hard to fake."

Lin Que's fingers clenched slightly inside his hoodie pocket.

His expression didn't change at all; his gaze remained fixed on the white pagoda on the lake, as if he were simply admiring the autumn scenery.

This girl's analysis was terrifyingly accurate.

When he wrote "in response to snow plum," he had deliberately adjusted his phrasing and wording style.

Jian Shen's brushwork was steady and restrained, while Dream Weaver's was sharp and expressive—two completely different temperaments.

But he had overlooked one thing.

The rhythmic pattern.

Just as someone might change their clothes and shoes, the weight and pace of their steps will still betray their old habits.

That was exactly the angle from which Ye Xi had detected the anomaly back then.

And now, someone else had touched another edge of the same flaw.

Xu Changge turned around.

He withdrew his gaze from the display board and let it rest on Lin Que's face for a brief moment.

That moment was so brief that no one around noticed, but Lin Que caught that look.

There was no suspicion in Xu Changge's eyes, only a high-speed train of thought.

He was digesting the analysis he'd just heard, mentally deconstructing the internal structures of the two poems.

Lin Que knew that Xu Changge was the person here most likely to connect the dots.

If he continued to follow this line of reasoning...

"Someone on the Wenyuange Forum already dug this up, didn't they?"

A voice interjected from the side.

From the crowd of onlookers, a boy in a plaid shirt squeezed in next to the two female graduate students.

He held up his phone, the screen displaying a post from the Wenyuange Forum.

The boy in the plaid shirt pushed up his glasses, his tone carrying the confidence of someone who "knew the answer."

The girl with narrow-framed glasses glanced at him.

"What's your take?"

The boy in the plaid shirt held out his phone; on the screen was a featured post from Wenyuan Pavilion.

"Dream Weaver's poem was originally a response to Jian Shen's."

"Think about the context at the time: Jian Shen first wrote 'snow plum,' and Dream Weaver immediately followed with a response."

He swiped twice on the screen.

"In poetic exchanges like this, it's all about responding to the challenge."

"Jian Shen set the rhythm first. For Dream Weaver to respond beautifully, he had to follow that same beat."

"If you change the steps completely, that's just starting something new; it wouldn't create a dialogue across space."

The girl with narrow-framed glasses frowned.

"But those are the formal constraints of the Ci-poem pattern itself..."

"You could look at it that way too."

The boy in the plaid shirt responded quickly, his tone very certain.

"What was the core purpose of Dream Weaver's poem?"

"It was to create the tension of a 'dialogue across space' with Jian Shen."

"Two people standing in the same arena, punch for punch—the rhythm has to match."

He pulled back his phone and spread his hands.

"If Dream Weaver had used a completely different rhythmic pattern to respond, it wouldn't have been a dialogue; it would have been talking to himself."

"The fact that he deliberately matched Jian Shen's steps shows that he had a profound understanding of Jian Shen's text,"

"his ability to mimic is so strong that he could precisely replicate the other's underlying rhythm while maintaining his own style."

After speaking, he looked around at the people nearby, an expression on his face that said, "This is common knowledge."

The pavilion corridor fell silent for two seconds.

Then, the girl with narrow-framed glasses slowly relaxed her brow.

"Put that way... it does make sense."

She looked down at the printout again, gesturing between the two poems.

"If the rhythmic pattern was deliberately mimicked to create a sense of dialogue, then the overlapping stress points aren't a coincidence—they're a technique."

"Exactly." The boy in the plaid shirt smiled.

"For Dream Weaver to replicate Jian Shen's rhythm while under the structural constraints of an Acrostic poem—how terrifying must his writing skill be?"

"If it were me, just the acrostic part would be enough to give me a hard time."

Several onlookers nearby nodded in agreement.

"Makes sense. That's the feeling of masters clashing."

"Dream Weaver really is impressive, being able to handle so many levels at once."

"No wonder Wenyuan Pavilion displayed these two poems side-by-side. You only get that sense of a duel across space when you see them together."

Xu Changge stood three paces away and heard the entire conversation.

He withdrew his gaze from the display board and nodded slightly.

"This explanation is reasonable."

His voice was soft, as if he were speaking to himself.

"Deliberately matching the other person's steps to respond is, in itself, a form of respectful confrontation."

Lin Que stood at the edge of the crowd, facing the lake with his back to everyone.

The autumn wind blew in from the lake, carrying a hint of chill as it brushed past his cheek.

He quietly let out a breath.

The breath was very light, mingling with the wind, unnoticed by anyone.

Lin Que followed the others' gaze to the display board and nodded along,

his expression as calm as if he were agreeing with an obvious conclusion.

"Explaining it that way certainly clears things up."

He spoke up.

His tone was casual, as if he were commenting on someone else's business.

Chen Jiahao also nodded beside him,

and the attention of the onlookers was completely drawn back to the display board by this discussion.

A few members of the Literature Club huddled together and began to analyze the allusions and imagery of the two poems in low voices,

the atmosphere gradually shifting from the previous tension to a normal academic exchange.

By the stone table in the corner of the pavilion corridor, the Tall Male Student had been hunched over writing for nearly ten minutes.

His canvas bag had been pushed aside, the letter paper spread out on the rough stone surface, with several strike-throughs from his Gel pen.

Occasionally, he would look up at the reflection of the white pagoda on the lake,

and then look down to write a few words only to cross them out, his brow furrowed into a deep crease.

Gazes from around him swept over from time to time, those looks like fine needles pricking his back.

He knew everyone was waiting.

Waiting for him, the "professional" from the Renmin University Poetry Society, to write a poem worthy of the occasion.

The tip of the pen paused on the paper for three seconds, then moved again.

He wrote the characters for "rustling," stopped,

glanced at the wind-rippled lake in the distance, then looked down and added "autumn wind" after it.

Withered lotus, fallen leaves, a solitary pagoda, the setting sun—

one by one, he pulled them from the "sorrowful autumn" compartment of his mind and lined them up neatly on the paper.

Every word was retrieved from his mental "database of sorrowful autumn imagery,"

stacked on the paper one after another like cans taken off a shelf.

Another five minutes passed.

The Tall Male Student finally stopped writing and let out a long breath.

He picked up the letter paper and read it to himself from beginning to end, then read it again.

The meter was correct, the tones were in harmony, and every word could withstand scrutiny.

His shoulders relaxed, and his back straightened once more.

A hint of a smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.

He stood up and walked back to the center of the crowd with the letter paper.

"It's finished."

His voice wasn't loud, but it was enough to make everyone around turn their heads.

The onlookers' attention instantly shifted from the display board, dozens of eyes falling in unison on the paper in his hand.

The Tall Male Student cleared his throat, held the paper at chest height, scanned the crowd, and began to recite.

His voice rose and fell with a deliberately cultivated sense of world-weariness,

every word enunciated heavily, his tone purposefully suppressed to evoke a weathered feeling,

as if he wanted to squeeze every drop of desolation out of the lines.

"The rustling autumn wind sweeps the emerald sky; withered lotus and fallen leaves fill the east of the lake."

"A solitary pagoda and setting sun freeze the twilight; a few winter crows fly into the firmament."

After reciting the last word, he slowly lowered the paper and scanned the crowd, waiting for a reaction.

Two seconds of silence.

Then, his Literature Club companions behind him were the first to start clapping.

"The structure is very solid; all four lines stick to the autumn scenery, and the meter is intact."

A short-haired girl also clapped a few times, her tone clearly supportive.

"Closing with the winter crows—it truly captures the essence of the traditional literati's sorrow for autumn."

The Tall Male Student's chin rose by two inches.

That feeling of being recognized by his peers allowed him to regain his confidence.

He flipped the paper over in his hand, the ink from the Gel pen shimmering in the autumn sunlight.

Xu Changge stood in the crowd, his gaze sweeping over the paper.

His brow twitched slightly—so subtly that only someone standing right next to him could have caught it.

The meter was fine, the tones were correct, and the parallelism was neat.

But throughout the four lines, every single one was pushing in the same direction—

—sorrow, coldness, darkness, emptiness.

The imagery was packed tight, yet there wasn't a single turning point, not one word that jumped out from this gray expanse.

It was like squeezing all the colors of a sorrowful autumn onto the paper; the color was saturated, but the 'qi' didn't flow.

Xu Changge didn't speak.

He simply moved his gaze away from the paper and onto Lin Que.

Lin Que stood at the edge of the pavilion corridor, hands in his pockets, watching the reflection of the white pagoda on the lake scatter and reform in the wind.

His expression was very calm.

So calm that Xu Changge suddenly felt a surge of anticipation.

Holding the paper, the Tall Male Student walked through the crowd straight up to Lin Que.

He stopped, held the paper out half an inch further, chin slightly raised, his gaze shooting straight from behind his lenses.

"Student Lin."

He deliberately raised his voice a notch to ensure everyone around could hear.

"Forgive my meager effort."

He pushed the paper another inch toward Lin Que.

"Champion, take a look. Any advice?"

He paused for a beat, the corners of his mouth curling upward.

"Of course, if the Champion is willing, he could also grace us with a poem on the spot. Everyone is here, so we can appreciate it together."

Dozens of eyes in the pavilion corridor all bore down on him.

Lin Que withdrew his gaze from the lake and let it fall on the paper.

He didn't reach out to take it.

The autumn wind poured in from outside the corridor, causing the corners of the paper to flutter.

The neat handwriting on the paper was fully visible in the sunlight.

Chen Jiahao's fists were already clenched.

Beneath his cap, Dan Yi's gray-blue eyes were staring unblinkingly at the back of the Tall Male Student's head.

Meanwhile, Xu Changge just stood there quietly, his gaze fixed on the side of Lin Que's face.

Lin Que finally gave a faint smile.

The smile was very slight, yet it made Xu Changge's eyes instantly brighten by half an inch.

...