466: Chapter 466 Midnight

The fluorescent light in Dormitory 303 had been turned off ten minutes ago, leaving only the desk lamps and screens glowing on each of the four desks, carving the small room into four uneven patches of light and shadow.

The hallway suddenly fell silent. That silence came very abruptly.

Just thirty seconds ago, people in the neighboring dormitory were still loudly discussing which book they should read first tonight, and the sound of furious keyboard clacking and hushed arguments drifted from Room 305 across the hall.

But once the clock struck midnight, it was as if someone had pulled the volume switch for the entire building. All sound was sucked into the screens.

Chen Jiahao's fingers, as if cramping, frantically hammered the F5 key the very instant the clock ticked over to midnight.

The New Tide APP interface froze for half a second, then flashed violently. The table of contents for "ordinary world, part 2" poured out like a waterfall, with fifty chapters tagged with "New" neatly arranged.

He gasped sharply and rubbed his hands together vigorously.

"It's here, it's here, it's here!"

His voice was barely audible, but he had already sprung up from his chair, only to force himself back down, leaning his face toward the screen until his nose almost touched the panel.

Chapter One.

Three words.

Chen Jiahao stared at these three words, his finger hovering over the mouse, hesitating to click.

It wasn't hesitation; it was a sense of ritual bordering on reverence. The words of Jian Shen were worth him receiving in his best state of mind.

He unscrewed his energy drink, took a big gulp, shook his head vigorously, took two deep breaths, and clicked in.

The text on the screen unfurled line by line. His eyes began to move at a steady pace, his lips slightly parted, and his breathing gradually slowed. He was nailed to his chair.

Meanwhile, on the bed at the far end of the dormitory, Dan Yi leaned against the wall with his phone resting on his knees.

The Hong Guo Net interface slid under his fingertips, and the cover of "ghost blows out the light: Jingjue Ancient City" popped up.

A rusty Luoyang shovel was stuck diagonally into the yellow sand, next to an oil lamp with only half a wick left. At the bottom of the cover, six dark red characters read:

"When a person lights a candle, the ghost blows it out."

Dan Yi's thumb paused on the screen for a second. The dim light of the oil lamp was reflected in his gray-blue pupils; his eyelashes trembled slightly, and he clicked on the first chapter.

Wenyuange Forum.

If anyone had compared the data panel of this largest literary discussion platform in China around midnight, they would have seen an extremely strange curve.

From 11:00 PM to 11:59 PM, the number of online users on the forum soared from the usual 120,000 to 470,000. The post rate exceeded one thousand per minute.

The main board was densely packed with bold, red-colored challenge posts. Fans of Jian Shen and Dream Weaver each occupied half the landscape, arguing about everything from "Who is the number one web novelist of this generation?" to "What qualifications do you have to judge literature if you don't understand the suffering of Sun Shaoping?" The air was thick with gunpowder.

Then midnight arrived. Both works were unlocked simultaneously. The post rate curve showed a nearly vertical cliff at 12:01 AM. The post rate, which had been over a thousand per minute, plummeted to single digits within sixty seconds.

Those drafts of challenge posts polished all night, those long manifestos edited in advance just waiting for midnight to be pasted, those carefully screenshotted arguments prepared for bickering—all were abandoned in the input boxes.

The forum administrator "Mountain Patrolling Old Demon" stared at the data in the backend for a full two minutes, then typed a line in the management group:

"470,000 people shutting up at the same time—first time I've seen this in my life."

Shaanxi Province, Tongchuan City.

On the top floor of an old-style apartment building, the windows were covered with a layer of yellowing plastic sheeting, barely blocking the cold wind blowing in during the October night.

Twenty-five-year-old He Ming sat in front of a folding table. The laptop in front of him had been bought six years ago when he entered university, and the noise from its cooling vent was already as loud as a miniature tractor.

At this moment, on his screen, the reading interface of Hong Guo Net was stopped at the end of Chapter 3 of "ghost blows out the light: Jingjue Ancient City." He Ming's back had left the back of the chair.

His body had unconsciously leaned forward over the past fifteen minutes, leaning so far that his entire upper body was almost lying on the desk, his chin about to rest on the keyboard.

"This isn't right." He muttered to himself, his voice filled with an incredulous sense of confusion.

"Completely wrong."

Before clicking on this book, he had had a preconceived notion. He was too familiar with the Cthulhu style. He had read "the shadow over innsmouth" three times and "the colour out of space" twice; that indescribable cosmic horror, the insignificance and collapse of humanity before the unknown—he could recite Dream Weaver's narrative tropes with his eyes closed.

So, he had originally thought "ghost blows out the light" would be Cthulhu with a different shell. Swap tentacle monsters for other creatures, swap the deep-sea ancient city for a tomb, and the core would still be that same "human fear of the unknown." Then he opened the first chapter.

When the eight characters "Sixteen-Word Yin-Yang Feng Shui Secret Technique" hit him in the face, He Ming was stunned for a full five seconds. The number one strange book in the world. Faqiu, Mojin, Banshan, Xieling. The four major grave-robbing sects. Dragon-seeking formula, gold-dividing and acupoint-finding, Feng Shui and astrology. What did these things have to do with Cthulhu?

Dream Weaver had overturned all the reader perceptions accumulated previously. No deep sea, no tentacles, no indescribable ancient existence. In their place were the years of educated youth on the Loess Plateau, the eerie experiences in the Savage Valley during a snow-blocked mountain, and a complete, indigenous system of strange tales rooted in China's thousands of years of funeral culture and geomancy.

He Ming flipped back to the third chapter and read it again. The past events of Hu Bayi and Fatty in Ganggangyingzi, the ghostly wailing coming from deep in the mountain ravine on a snowy day, that ammunition box abandoned by the Japanese army half-buried in the snow. Every detail was written with such solidity that it went down to the bone, carrying a scent that He Ming had smelled since he was a child.

He flipped to the fourth chapter and saw the two characters "grave robbing" appear in the text. His heart skipped a beat. Grave robbing. Proper, earnest grave robbing. Not some literary metaphor, not some philosophical speculation, but a hardcore adventure of using a Luoyang shovel to turn soil layers and finding ancient tombs by observing mountains and water.

He Ming finished the first six chapters in one breath, his palms covered in slick, cold sweat. He took a deep breath, stared at the three characters "Dream Weaver" on the screen for several seconds, and finally became convinced that this madman had not only jumped out of his comfort zone but had also forcibly dug a brand-new track in the Chinese web novel world with a Luoyang shovel.

With trembling hands, he exited the reading interface and clicked on a green bubble chat group called "Dream Weaver General Administration." The group was already going crazy. The message list was rolling up like a waterfall; he couldn't even reach the top.

He Ming typed furiously on the keyboard, but the messages he sent were instantly submerged in the flood of information.

[Tongchuan Soil-Digging Youth]: Brothers, I'm stunned. I thought it was just a Cthulhu reskin.

[Tongchuan Soil-Digging Youth]: Indigenous grave robbing! Feng Shui and geomancy! Four major sects! Is Dream Weaver crazy?

The message had just been sent, and twenty more had already scrolled past above it.

[Cheese is Power]: I just finished Chapter 3. Is the character Hu Bayi too cool or what? There's a sense of righteousness within his rogueishness, and his chemistry with Fatty Wang is just perfect. Honestly, when I saw the part where they were emboldening each other in the snowy ravine, I laughed out loud at the screen by myself.

[Underworld Civil Servant Old Liu]: No joke, the setting of the Sixteen-Word Yin-Yang Feng Shui Secret Technique is enough to publish a separate encyclopedia. "Seeking the dragon and dividing gold, looking at the surrounding mountains; every layer of enclosure is a layer of barrier." I've already transcribed this formula. Although I don't understand it at all, just reciting it makes me feel like it's awesome.

[Cthulhu Henan-Anhui]: I used to think Dream Weaver could only write that kind of cosmic horror that keeps people awake after reading. Today, I realized that this person has no comfort zone at all. He got tired of playing with Cthulhu and just created an entire grave-robbing genre. Everyone, remember this day; this year is the first year of the grave-robbing and exploration category for Chinese web novels.

Watching the messages in the group, He Ming couldn't help but flip back to Hong Guo Net and click on Chapter 7. He could almost feel the sensation of the Luoyang shovel poking into the sandy soil inch by inch through the text.

1,400 kilometers away. Gansu Province, Qingyang City. In an old residential building with a brick-concrete structure, a 20-watt energy-saving lamp was lit in a north-facing room on the third floor.

Forty-three-year-old Ma Shoucheng was curled up on an iron-frame bed, covered by a faded military-green quilt. He was a substitute Chinese teacher at Qingyang No. 3 Middle School, with a monthly salary of 2,600 yuan; this was his second year of substitute teaching.

The light from the phone screen reflected on his face. On the New Tide APP, the text of Chapter 3 of "ordinary world, part 2" was unfolding line by line before his eyes.

Sun Shaoping's career as a community-run teacher had ended. The Shuangshui Village primary school was merged, and he couldn't even keep that teaching position with its monthly subsidy of only a few yuan. When Ma Shoucheng saw this, his fingers unconsciously clenched the corner of the quilt.

He understood this feeling too well. When you pour all your passion into something, treating the podium as the most worthy place to stand in the world, and then one day, someone tells you that this position no longer needs you. It's not that you didn't teach well. It's that the policy changed. It's that the quota is gone. It's that you were "temporary" to begin with.

The text on the screen continued to scroll down. Sun Shaoping did not stay in Shuangshui Village waiting. He packed a tattered bedding roll, tucked away a few yuan, and set off on the road to Huangyuan City. To work as a day laborer.

To go to the train stations, bus stations, and street corners where contractors gathered, waiting to be picked. To squeeze in with a group of strange men who were older, stronger, and thicker-skinned than him, waiting for someone to point at you and say, "You, come with me." Carrying stones, mixing mud, moving bricks, carrying cement bags. Doing all the dirty and tiring work.

Ma Shoucheng's eyes began to ache. He scrolled down a bit. He saw Sun Shaoping spreading out his bedding roll under a bridge tunnel in the East Gate of Huangyuan City, curling up in the cold wind of November. Beneath him was the cold concrete floor, and above him was the rumbling sound of cars passing over the bridge. The day laborers lying next to him were already asleep, their snoring rising and falling.

Sun Shaoping couldn't sleep. He fished out a book with curled edges from the inner pocket of his tattered cotton-padded jacket, and by the faint light barely filtering in from the street lamp outside the bridge tunnel, he read it word by word. Ma Shoucheng stared at this passage for a long time.

Then he flipped to Chapter 5. The perspective shifted to Sun Shaoan. Shuangshui Village. The responsibility system. Sun Shaoan was the first in the whole village to stand up and divide the team's land. Ma Shoucheng knew exactly what this decision meant on the Loess Plateau in the late seventies. His grandfather had told him countless times when he was alive. That was something you'd get labeled for. That was something for which the whole village would stab you in the back and throw stones at your courtyard wall at night.

But Sun Shaoan did it. Not only did he do it, but he also made a life for himself. Burning brick kilns, selling bricks, making money, he became the first "well-off household" in Shuangshui Village. Ma Shoucheng continued to flip forward and saw the plot where Sun Shaoan had saved enough money and wanted to build a new cave dwelling next to his own courtyard. The foundation of the new kiln had just been laid when the family exploded. Old father Sun Yuhou rubbed his hands, standing in the courtyard, wanting to speak but stopping.

Dividing the family. These two words were not written directly. But Ma Shoucheng understood. The cave dwellings weren't enough to live in. Shaoan had married a wife, Shaoping was away, Lanxiang was still in school, and the whole family was squeezed into those two old kilns. Building a new kiln meant that the pots would have to be separated and the stoves burned separately. The thing the old father feared most in his life was not poverty, but the family falling apart. But he also knew that they had to divide.

Jian Shen did not write that Sun Yuhou cried. He only wrote that the old man squatted beside the stone mill in the corner of the courtyard, drawing back and forth on the ground with a branch for a long time. When he finally stood up, the ground was marked with lines of varying depths.

Ma Shoucheng placed the phone screen against his chest. The 20-watt bulb on the ceiling emitted a dim, yellow light, illuminating a little trace of moisture reflected on the tip of his nose. He closed his eyes for a moment. Then he turned over, held the phone up in front of him again, and continued reading.

Outside the window, the October night wind of Qingyang blew down from the plateau, carrying the unique dry scent of loess. In this city, there was no telling how many people like him, in this deep night, were hit hard in the heart by the fictional words in a book.

...

Beijing. Qingbei University, Dormitory 303. 12:44 AM.

On Xu Changge's desk, the desk lamp was turned to its dimmest setting. The bottom right corner of his laptop screen displayed "0:44".

The third refined version of the document had been saved and closed. He turned off the word processing software, opened the browser, and entered the web address of the New Tide APP in the address bar. The table of contents page for "ordinary world, part 2" loaded. He was not in a hurry to click in.

Instead, he turned his head first and glanced at the bed opposite. Lin Que was half-lying on the bed, his back against stacked pillows, his knees slightly bent, with a silver-gray laptop resting on his legs. The light from the screen shone on the lower half of his face; one could see that his expression was very calm, his eyelids slightly lowered, his attention completely focused on the screen in front of him.

His fingers were dancing on the keyboard. Not fast, but the rhythm was very steady. Every few seconds he would pause, as if pondering something, and then continue typing.

Xu Changge had originally thought that Lin Que would also be following this "clash of the two gods" tonight. After all, the entire internet was going crazy over these two works, and anyone with a pursuit of literature could not completely ignore an event of this magnitude.

"Are you reading Jian Shen or Dream Weaver?" Xu Changge asked casually, his tone ordinary.

Lin Que's fingers did not stop. His gaze did not even move away from the screen; on the screen, the setting about that absolute rational civilization deprived of emotions was taking shape line by line with his steady typing.

He didn't even raise his head, his tone as flat as if he were talking about the night scene:

"Doing homework."

Xu Changge's movements paused for a beat. Watching Lin Que's nonchalant demeanor, he suddenly realized that he wasn't even surprised. If it had been a month ago, he would definitely have found it absurd.

Two works capable of rewriting the literary landscape were released simultaneously, the entire Chinese literary readership was intoxicated in front of their screens, and you tell me you are doing homework. But since knowing Lin Que these days, Xu Changge found that he had established an independent cognitive framework for this person's logic of conduct.

It's not that he doesn't pay attention to the outside world. He is certain that the outside world cannot influence him. When everyone else is looking up at the fireworks, he is looking down, laying his own bricks. This sense of rhythm, bordering on paranoia, is what truly makes Xu Changge feel admiration.

He withdrew his gaze and didn't ask any more questions. He took out noise-canceling headphones from his desk drawer, unfolded them, put them on, and turned the dial to the maximum. All sounds from the outside world vanished from his ears, leaving only his own breathing and heartbeat. He clicked on Chapter 1 of "ordinary world, part 2."