467: Chapter 467 Ether

October 10th, 7:20 AM.

Lin Que opened his eyes.

A thin sliver of morning light squeezed through the gap in the curtains, cutting diagonally across the floor tiles.

The dormitory was unusually quiet.

He turned his head.

On the opposite bed, the quilt was wrapped into a cocoon,

revealing only half of Xu Changge's forearm and three fingers hanging off the edge of the bed.

The sound of breathing was heavy and steady—the kind of deep coma that only comes after total exhaustion.

Lin Que stared for two seconds.

Xu Changge had never woken up later than 6:30 AM since entering the camp.

Looking at this state today, he had clearly pulled an all-nighter.

The laptop screen on the desk had long since gone dark,

beside it sat a cup of cold tea, the tea leaves clumped into a small pile of dark brown dregs at the bottom.

Lin Que quietly rolled out of bed and walked into the bathroom.

Cold water splashed against his face, washing away the last remnants of sleepiness.

After finishing his morning routine, he changed into a clean grey long-sleeved shirt, his movements making no sound from beginning to end.

Picking up his keys and phone, he gently closed the dormitory door.

The hallway was empty.

As he passed the room next door, his pace naturally slowed by half a beat.

There was no light under the door crack.

Not a single sound came from inside.

Chen Jiahao had thumped his chest last night, saying he would stay up for the midnight update; given that kid's reading speed and his level of excitement for Jian Shen's new chapters, closing his eyes at three or four in the morning was a conservative estimate.

Dan Yi went without saying; the twenty chapters and 180,000 words of Jingjue Ancient City in "ghost blows out the light" were right there, and since he read extremely carefully, he wouldn't be able to put it down before dawn.

The entire dormitory building was soaked in an abnormal silence.

The emergency light at the end of the corridor emitted a faint green glow, and the only footsteps in the stairwell were his own.

Lin Que pushed open the side door of the dormitory building.

The October morning breeze of the capital poured in to meet him,

dry and crisp, scraping against his face with a knife-like chill.

Hardly a soul could be seen on campus; in the distance, by the playground, the silhouettes of one or two people on a morning run had footsteps as light as if they came from another world.

Last night's midnight "clash of the titans" had pinned every literature lover in Tsinghua and Peking University to their screens.

The only one who could crawl out of bed this morning was likely him, the instigator.

Lin Que bought two freshly fried dough sticks at a corner breakfast stall and took a taxi straight to the studio.

He pushed the door open and went in.

The desk lamp was off, the curtains half-drawn, the computer on standby, and the screen pitch black.

On the desk lay several pages of manuscript paper and a carbon pen that hadn't been cleared away yesterday.

Lin Que held the last half of a dough stick in his mouth, clicked on the desk lamp with one hand, and turned to boil some water.

While waiting for the kettle to rumble, he took out his phone and set it on the desk.

He opened his encrypted email.

The notification bar was packed full.

Wang De'an was at the very top.

The timestamps stretched all the way from 11:58 PM last night to 3:12 AM,

more than a dozen emails packed together, every single title bearing an exclamation mark.

Hong Hu's messages followed closely behind, one every twenty minutes, each attached with data screenshots.

The messages from the two of them combined occupied three full screens.

Lin Que scanned through them quickly.

Hong Guo Net—"ghost blows out the light" surpassed 800,000 views in its first hour, and the data was still climbing steadily.

The comment section had already exploded into ruins; the notion of the "First Year of the Tomb-Raiding Genre" was spreading at a viral speed.

New Tide—"ordinary world, part 2" unlocked at midnight, with subscriptions surpassing two million in the first two hours.

In an email at 2:17 AM, Wang De'an wrote only two words: "Terrifying."

Lin Que finished reading.

He didn't reply to a single one.

He flipped his phone over, screen down, and placed it on the table.

The kettle whistled.

He brewed a cup of strong tea, carried it back to the desk, and sat down in the swivel chair.

The two dough sticks were finished, and he carefully wiped the oil residue from his fingertips with a wet wipe.

With a light click of the mouse, the computer woke from its standby state.

Several folder icons were scattered across the desktop.

The encrypted connection plan for the "soul ferry" script reading session.

The final proofread manuscript of "ordinary world, part 2."

The finalized files for the first three chapters of "ghost blows out the light."

Lin Que's gaze slid over these icons one by one, finally landing on the folder labeled "Blue-Green Instruction."

That was a grand play he had custom-tailored for the titans.

He closed all windows and opened a text editor.

He created a new blank document.

The cursor blinked quietly in the top left corner.

On, off.

The white page filled the entire screen, so clean there wasn't a single word.

Lin Que picked up his teacup, took a sip, and leaned back against the chair.

Yesterday in the cafeteria, Dan Yi had talked about his own new work—

A person lost in the wind and snow, establishing a connection with a stranger through a faint lamp light.

Those words were like a pebble cast into a long-dormant patch of water deep in his mind.

The ripples had been spreading since last night until they had now formed a complete picture.

Lin Que set down his teacup.

His fingers rested on the keyboard, but he didn't type immediately.

He closed his eyes, letting that world emerge from the darkness.

A city.

The streets were clean, pedestrians wore smiles, and traffic was orderly.

The television was broadcasting a variety show where the hosts were heatedly debating "whether salt should be added to tomato and scrambled eggs."

All news was of this sort.

Everyone was discussing this sort of thing.

There were no reports of war, no sharp criticisms, no voices that could provoke thought.

A suffocating, gentle, harmless, and boring world.

The corner of Lin Que's mouth twitched slightly.

Then the scene advanced.

A dimly lit basement.

Several people sat in a circle, silent.

They didn't speak, they didn't write, and they didn't use any electronic devices.

They simply spread their palms open.

A finger reached out toward another person's palm.

Stroke by stroke.

Slowly, clumsily, and with the warmth of a body, they wrote a word on the skin.

This was the only safe way to communicate in this world.

Because the layer of stuff diffused in the air could deceive the eyes and the ears, but it alone could not penetrate the precise tactile sense of human fingertips.

Lin Que's eyes snapped open.

He looked at the blank screen, and the curve of his mouth lifted a bit more.

The horror of this story did not lie in violence or imprisonment.

It was terrifying because everyone lived in a perfect lie, living comfortably and safely.

While the few who woke up used every possible means to try and pass the truth along,

and the only tool they had left to rely on was a single finger and someone else's palm.

A silent resistance.

A resistance destined to be crushed.

And after being crushed, on a metal prison bed, a hand reaching out from the darkness, with something being written stroke by stroke in its palm.

The sparks had not been extinguished.

Lin Que took a deep breath.

The framework in his mind had already been organized completely last night.

From the numb middle-aged man at the beginning, to the revelation of the truth about the "finger-chatting gatherings," to the resistance and suppression,

and finally to the open-ended conclusion—every node locked together seamlessly.

He glanced at the time in the bottom right corner of the computer.

8:27 AM.

There was still a whole day.

It was enough.

Lin Que's fingers fell back onto the keyboard.

This time, there was no more hesitation.

He typed two words on the first line of the document—

"Ether."

...