459: Chapter 459 Fate bestowed upon me wind, snow, and silence.

The lake wind blew through the willow branches overhead, revealing the pale silver undersides of the leaves as they turned.

Dan Yi's five fingers gripped the bamboo skewer so tightly that a pale blue-green tint showed beneath his fingernails.

After saying those words, he himself was stunned.

Chen Jiahao's mouth opened slightly, then closed again.

Xu Changge withdrew his gaze from the lake, letting it fall on Dan Yi's profile without making a sound.

Lin Que took a bite of the tanghulu in his hand.

The sugar coating on the outside of the hawthorn shattered between his teeth, and the sweet and sour juice flooded over the tip of his tongue.

He chewed twice and swallowed, his tone indifferent.

"If that crane decides to soar through the clouds, its eyes will only see the entire sky."

He gave the bamboo skewer a half-turn between his fingers.

"When the clouds are right before its eyes, how can it care about how the crane shadows behind it are lined up?"

Dan Yi's shoulders stiffened for a moment.

Lin Que didn't look at him, his gaze falling on the swaying reflection of the white pagoda on the lake.

"You feel cold because you are still looking back at that old snow."

His voice wasn't heavy, but every word was as steady as if it were nailed into the air.

"In your heart, you are still waiting. Waiting for a voice to tell you 'come back,' waiting for a place to be reserved for you. This waiting itself is the root of the cold."

Dan Yi's breath hitched for a beat.

"Stop betting your sense of belonging on the old flock, and the wind and snow will slowly turn into scenery along the way."

Lin Que held the tanghulu up to his eyes for a moment, then bit off another hawthorn.

"Fly when it's time to fly, and eat tanghulu when it's time to eat tanghulu."

Dan Yi stared at him.

Many things were surging within those grey-blue pupils.

Like the undercurrents beneath the ice of the Black River when spring begins, stirred from the bottom by some force, pushing upward layer by layer.

He wanted to argue.

He wanted to say, you don't understand.

You haven't sat in the corner of a classroom at forty degrees below zero, hearing the sound of the entire class in unison pushing your desk outward.

You haven't walked past a whole row of tables in the cafeteria with a meal tray, unable to find a single person willing to let you sit down.

But he opened his mouth, and not a single word came out.

Because Lin Que's words were too accurate.

The cold wasn't because there was no flock.

The cold was because he was still looking back for one.

A hand reached over from the side, leisurely smoothing out a faint crease on the cuff of a trench coat.

Xu Changge spoke.

"Dan Yi."

His voice was very level, carrying a composure bred into his very bones.

"The things you just mentioned—the cafeteria, the rooftop, the bread tucked in your coat to keep warm for half an hour."

Xu Changge's gaze rested on the lake, as if looking at the water, yet also as if looking at somewhere very far away.

"I haven't experienced those."

Dan Yi slightly turned his head.

"But I have experienced something else."

Xu Changge's finger tapped lightly on his knee with a very slow rhythm.

"Since I can remember, I have always been surrounded by people.

Elders, colleagues, seniors, peers—everyone looks at me with a smile, and everyone knows my surname is Xu."

He paused for two seconds.

"But I know that none of that excitement was for me."

Chen Jiahao turned his head, forgetting to spin the bamboo skewer in his hand.

"What they surrounded was the surname of the Xu Family, my grandfather's name, and the resources and connections behind that nameplate."

Xu Changge's speaking speed wasn't fast; every word seemed to be released only after being repeatedly weighed.

"I've been attending various literary gatherings and elegant assemblies since I was seven. The tables are full of smiling faces and chatter, and every pair of eyes that looks at me carries warmth."

"But once that kind of warmth becomes so dense that you can't breathe, it's actually the same thing as the cold you felt in Mo City."

Dan Yi's pupils trembled slightly.

Xu Changge turned his head and looked at him directly.

"You were pushed away, so you are cold."

"I was surrounded, yet I am also cold."

"Your cold comes from being pushed too far, while my cold comes from being surrounded too closely."

These words fell between the benches like a pebble thrown into a calm lake.

Chen Jiahao's Adam's apple bobbed.

He instinctively wanted to say something to lighten the atmosphere, but as he opened his mouth,

He found that his witty remarks were as light as a scrap of paper in the face of such weight.

Dan Yi remained quiet for a long time.

So long that a grey pigeon on the tip of the distant white pagoda took off and landed, then landed and took off again.

"When I was at Desolate City Middle School."

His voice was very soft, as if it were being dug out bit by bit from deep within the frozen earth.

"There was one winter, thirty-seven degrees below zero."

His thumb rubbed back and forth on the bamboo skewer.

"School let out particularly early that day, and there was no one on the road.

I was walking alone on the street. The snow was up to my knees, and with every step, I had to pull my leg out of the snow."

"When I passed a grocery store, the owner was shoveling snow at the entrance. He gave me a look."

Dan Yi paused for a moment.

"The way he looked at me was different from everyone else at school.

It wasn't avoidance, it wasn't curiosity; it was a kind of..."

He searched for a long time before finding a word.

"Wariness."

"He stood his shovel upright at the entrance and turned his body to block the shop door."

"I was the only person on that street.

At that moment, I realized that in his eyes, I was already like a piece of trouble that would barge into his shop."

Dan Yi lowered his head, his grey-blue pupils reflecting the bright red hawthorn on the bamboo skewer.

"That night, I lay in bed and thought for a long time. I thought about exactly what was wrong with me.

I thought about myself from head to toe. My nose, my eyes, my accent—I even thought about the way I walked."

"Later, I realized that nothing could be changed."

"My face is grown onto my bones."

As these words fell, the bamboo skewer in Chen Jiahao's hand was silently snapped by his grip.

The broken bamboo fibers pricked into his palm, but he was completely unaware.

Xu Changge's finger stopped on his knee and didn't move again.

Lin Que leaned back against the bench, his gaze passing through the gaps in the willow branches,

Falling on the reflection of the white pagoda on the lake, which was constantly being deformed and regrouped by the wind.

He was listening very seriously.

Silence spread among the four of them, like a water stain soaking into old paper, slowly saturating every single fiber.

Then Lin Que spoke.

"Fate gifts me with wind, snow, and silence."

His speaking speed was very slow, so slow that every word seemed to be coated in a pale gold shell by the autumn sunlight.

"I then write poems and brew wine with the absurd."

Dan Yi looked up.

These words crashed into his ears—not as consolation, not as sympathy,

And certainly not as the kind of understanding tossed from a safe distance.

It was a pronouncement.

A pronouncement written on behalf of everyone who had ever been covered by wind and snow.

What fate gives you is ice, cold, and the shovel the grocery store owner stood at his door.

So what.

Write the wind and snow into poems, and brew the silence into wine.

Everything that tries to freeze you to death will eventually become the strong wine in your cup and the ink beneath your pen.

In Dan Yi's grey-blue pupils, the layer of frost that had covered them for many years seemed to have a hole burned through it from the bottom by something.

Light leaked in through that hole.

Not much, just a little.

But it was enough for him to see clearly that he still held a bamboo skewer in his hand, and on that skewer still hung a bright red hawthorn.

That hawthorn reflected amber points of light under the sun;

The sugar coating was intact—no one had touched it, and no one had taken it away.

It had been in his hand all along.

"Hey!"

A vigorous shout shattered the silence by the lake.

Chen Jiahao bounced up from the bench.

His eyes were a bit red, but his expression had already switched back to that playful grin that could be used to pitch a tent even if the sky fell.

"Everyone!"

He cleared his throat, his left hand on his hip,

While his right hand held up that already bare bamboo skewer, his posture as solemn as if he were hosting a state banquet toast.

"I, Chen Jiahao, am a vulgar person who doesn't understand grand principles, and I can't say anything about wind, snow, poems, or wine."

As he spoke, he strode over to Dan Yi.

"But there is one thing I do understand."

He forcefully clinked his empty bamboo skewer against the tanghulu in Dan Yi's hand.

The bamboo skewers hit each other, making a crisp "crack."

"Cheers!"

Chen Jiahao's voice rose high in the lake wind, startling several nearby water birds into flapping their wings.

Dan Yi froze on the spot.

He looked down at the slightly swaying tanghulu in his hand that had been bumped, then looked up at Chen Jiahao's face, which was grinning from ear to ear.

Turning back, Xu Changge was straightening the collar of his trench coat that had been blown askew by the lake wind,

And when his gaze swept over, there was a very faint smile at the corners of his mouth.

Lin Que sat nearby, leaning against the back of the bench with his eyes half-squinted, only two hawthorns left on his skewer.

The sunlight fell through the gaps in the willow leaves, sprinkling a layer of shredded gold over the four of them.

Dan Yi slowly raised his hand.

He lifted the skewer of tanghulu he had been holding for a long time to his mouth.

The movement was very slow, as if he were completing a ritual.

The sound of his teeth biting through the sugar coating was extremely crisp, exceptionally distinct in the silence by the lake.

The sweet and sour taste exploded in his mouth.

The sharp edges of the shattered sugar coating grazed the tip of his tongue, causing a slight sting.

But that bit of sweetness and sourness seemed alive, warming its way from the tip of his tongue all the way to his chest.

Dan Yi chewed twice and swallowed it.

He didn't speak.

But the shoulder line that had been held deathly tight ever since he entered the crowd finally relaxed at this moment.

Chen Jiahao saw it.

He turned around, with his back to the other three,

Quickly wiped the corner of his eye with his sleeve, and then immediately resumed his carefree appearance.

"Master Que, you have two left, spare one for me?"

"In your dreams."

"Stingy!"

The laughter of the four drifted out with the lake wind, blending with the sound of pigeon whistles above the distant white pagoda.

Meanwhile, a storm was taking shape on the internet.

The video from the pavilion corridor at Beihai started with the girl who first clicked the "publish" button,

Like a pebble thrown into a lake, the ripples spread outward at a speed visible to the naked eye.

A dozen or so marketing accounts finished reposting it within almost the same hour.

"Encountering the champion of Fu Zhi Yao Competition at Beihai; Lin Que writes 'autumn poem' on the spot"

"Wenyuan Pavilion hot post: Beyond the traditional sorrow of autumn, Lin Que has given autumn a backbone"

"Renda Literature Club is flooded: 'A crane soars through the clouds into the clear sky'—just what level is this?"

The headlines were more explosive than the last, but not a single clickbait title could summarize the impact of those twenty-eight characters in the video.

Every time the comment section was refreshed, the top hot comments would change.

Some people copied the poem, some posted photos of the sky at Beihai,

And some typed 'I say the autumn days surpass the spring mornings' in a whole row, as if propping up a backbone for themselves on the screen.

"I've read this poem seven times. With every reading, another bone is added to my body."

"From now on, whoever tells me that novelists don't understand poetry, I'll shove this video in their face."

"'A crane soars through the clouds into the clear sky.' These seven words alone are worth carving onto the walls of every school."

"Wait, this guy is only seventeen???"

On the hot search rankings, the four characters 'Lin Que autumn poem' climbed at a speed of tens of thousands per minute.

After the official Fu Zhi Yao Competition account reposted it, several major poetry accounts on Wenyuan Pavilion that had been dormant for years also joined in.

In university Literature Club groups, the video link was reposted over and over again. On the hot search rankings,

The four characters 'Lin Que autumn poem' climbed at a speed of tens of thousands per minute.

When it reached the top of the list, the entry was followed by a fiery red 'Explosive' tag.

In the video, the youth in the navy blue hoodie,

Standing beneath the pavilion corridor at Beihai, pointing his hand toward the sky,

The scene where he said "A crane soars through the clouds into the clear sky" was captured in countless GIFs, circulating wildly on every social platform.

Some people wrote those four lines of poetry with a brush and took photos, some set them as their phone wallpaper,

And some wrote them from memory over and over in the comment section, as if completing a pious act of copying scriptures.

Meanwhile, on the bench at Beihai, the center of the storm was eating the last hawthorn.

Lin Que casually stuck the bare bamboo skewer into a nearby trash can and brushed the sugar residue off his hands.

His phone vibrated twice in his hoodie pocket.

He didn't pull it out to look.

In the School of Liberal Arts at Qingbei University,

In the office at the end of the third floor, the afternoon sunlight shone slantwise on a row of old bookshelves.

Dai Shengzong sat behind the desk, marking annotations on the edge of the manuscript paper with a red pen.

A cup of tea that had already gone cold sat at the corner of the desk.

The room was very quiet, with only the faint rustle of the pen tip moving across the paper.

The screen of his phone on the right side of the desk suddenly lit up.

A series of rapid message notification sounds rang out particularly piercingly in the quiet office.

Dai Shengzong's pen tip paused on the paper, leaving an ink blot.

He looked up, his gaze falling on the constantly flashing screen.

The message was from Professor Liu Zuoqing.

There were only four words.

"Check the hot searches."