476: Chapter 476 Jian Shen personally reviewed

After the phrase "Looking forward to meeting again" faded from the speakers, the equipment at the front of the classroom emitted a soft chime.

Cui Wen looked down at the panel.

The connection status light flickered from green to gray.

On the screen, the virtual silhouette outlined in deep blue lines began to fade.

First, the halo at the edges narrowed.

Then, the shoulder lines, sitting posture, and head outline dissolved bit by bit into the white projection light.

Finally, the entire screen was left blank.

The lecture hall was silent for five seconds.

In those five seconds, no one moved.

Thirty students sat in their respective seats, their pens still hovering over their paper.

Some had pages filled with dense lecture notes.

Others had only written two sentences.

Chen Jiahao's hands were still pressed onto the desk, his palms pinning down that notebook he had scribbled all over.

He stared at the blank screen, his throat bobbing, unable to speak for a long time.

Xu Changge capped his pen with a gentle motion.

He sat very straight, but his gaze remained fixed on the center of the screen.

Dan Yi lowered his head, looking at the slip of paper that Lin Que had pressed into the pile of questions.

The line of text on the paper had already been creased by his kneading.

The next second, applause erupted from the first row.

First one person.

Then a second, a third.

The applause quickly filled the entire classroom.

Chen Jiahao was the first to stand up, clapping until his palms were red, refusing to stop.

"Jian Shen is amazing!"

With this shout, several boys in the back row, who had been holding back their emotions, also stood up.

"Jian Shen is amazing!"

"This class was so worth it!"

"I will never forget today for the rest of my life!"

Xu Changge also stood up.

He didn't shout, just clapped forcefully.

There was a heavy sense of respect in his proper demeanor.

Tang He stood in the second row, her notebook closed.

Her applause was steady.

But her fingers were constantly tensing.

In those forty minutes, her dismantling ability, which she had originally been so proud of, was pushed to a lower position by Jian Shen's words: "Go see, go listen, go smell, go touch."

She suddenly realized that when she wrote urban fables in the past, she was always accustomed to standing outside the glass to evaluate the city.

She saw the reflections.

But she rarely touched how cold the palms of the people behind that glass were.

Dan Yi was the last to stand.

He pushed his hat brim up onto his forehead.

His gray-blue eyes reflected the blank screen, holding a layer of clean light.

Lin Que also stood up with the others, clapping.

His rhythm was neither fast nor slow.

He took in everyone's reactions.

And the silence of the seniors in the back row.

This class had an impact even heavier than he had anticipated.

"Alright."

On the podium, Professor Liu Zuoqing stood up and raised a hand to gesture for quiet.

The applause lasted for about ten seconds before slowly dying down.

A few students, still feeling the lingering excitement, clapped twice more, but were nudged by the people next to them and quickly stopped.

Professor Liu Zuoqing walked to the center of the podium.

He didn't rush to speak.

He first glanced at the blank screen, then looked at the young people below who had just had their arrogance pierced by a single class.

"Jian Shen's class is over."

No one answered.

Chen Jiahao just opened his mouth, but Xu Changge reached out and pressed his arm.

Chen Jiahao immediately shut up.

Professor Liu Zuoqing's gaze swept across the room.

"Do you remember before class started, someone asked me what to do about the manuscripts you submitted this time?"

As soon as these words came out, many students' backs stiffened.

The tall, thin boy by the door lowered his head, pressing his fingers down on his three printed pages.

Tang He hugged her notebook, her thumb pressing against the edge of the cover.

Chen Jiahao's shoulders also slumped half an inch.

He had written until two in the morning last night, originally feeling that he had touched the threshold of "gravity."

Now, after listening to Jian Shen's class, he suddenly wanted to delete half of those four thousand words.

Professor Liu Zuoqing looked at them, his tone flat.

"Now, do you still want to look at those manuscripts?"

No one in the classroom spoke.

This sentence was not a scolding.

But it was more uncomfortable than a scolding.

A boy by the window muttered in a low voice:

"We've already submitted them, the night couldn't have been pulled for nothing..."

His voice was very small, but the lecture hall was so quiet that the surrounding rows heard it.

Someone next to him nudged him gently.

The boy immediately shut his mouth, his ears turning red.

Professor Liu Zuoqing looked at him.

"Pulled for nothing?"

The boy looked up, about to explain.

Professor Liu Zuoqing waved his hand, not letting him speak.

"In literature, the thing to fear most is treating staying up late as a contribution."

Many people below bowed their heads even lower.

"If you stay up until three in the morning, and the things you write are still pretentious, readers won't give you a second look just because you slept a few hours less."

"If you delete eight thousand words out of ten thousand, and what you delete is the self-indulgence floating on the surface, then it's worth deleting."

"You are all top students selected from across the country, used to hearing praise."

"Some praise your beautiful prose, some praise your inspiration, some praise your high concepts."

Professor Liu Zuoqing tapped the podium.

"Today, Jian Shen made things very clear."

"Beautiful prose cannot save an article that stands too high."

"No matter how much inspiration you have, if your feet don't touch the ground, you can only float on the paper."

"No matter how grand the theme, if you can't see the people, only an empty shell remains."

Chen Jiahao nodded continuously as he listened, and solemnly wrote a sentence in the corner of his notebook.

—Staying up late cannot be counted as a contribution.

After writing it, he felt it wasn't enough, so he added a line below.

[Delete self-indulgence.]

After Tang He sat back in her seat, she opened her manuscript.

This time she was writing about a lonely elderly person living in a high-rise apartment.

She had originally designed many beautiful images: elevators, glass, password doors, city lights.

Looking at them now, she suddenly felt that those sentences were blindingly bright, yet cold and devoid of any human touch.

That old person had no body temperature.

No age spots on their hands, no pauses to lean against the wall when getting up at night, no patience to haggle with the vendor over a few cents when going downstairs to buy vegetables.

Her pen tip fell.

The first line of notes had only four words.

"Start over as a human."

Chen Jiahao stole a glance.

"Sister Tang, that harsh?"

Tang He didn't look up.

"Being harsh on yourself is better than being publicly executed in front of the whole class."

Hearing the words "public execution," Chen Jiahao shrank his neck.

Before he could reply, Professor Liu Zuoqing had already thrown out the next sentence.

"Therefore, today's scheduled review is canceled."

Professor Liu Zuoqing paused.

"The versions you uploaded today are all returned."

A few people in the classroom breathed a sigh of relief.

Others looked bitter.

Canceling the review meant dodging a bullet.

It also meant that what they had submitted over the past few days had lost the necessity of being carefully read by the masters.

Professor Liu Zuoqing saw their reactions clearly.

He waited three seconds.

"I'll give you two days."

Everyone looked up.

Professor Liu Zuoqing held up two fingers.

"Within two days, whether you overturn your current manuscript, rewrite it, or keep the framework, process everything again."

"Upload to the Qinglan Project background before 10 a.m. the day after tomorrow."

"Overdue counts as giving up."

Someone in the front row immediately asked:

"Professor Liu, will the rewritten manuscripts still be reviewed by you?"

Professor Liu Zuoqing looked at him.

"We will look at them."

The boy just wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but immediately realized there was more to these words.

Professor Liu Zuoqing paused and continued:

"But this time, the main reviewer is not us."

The classroom went quiet.

Chen Jiahao reacted first, almost jumping out of his seat.

"No way..."

Professor Liu Zuoqing looked at him.

Chen Jiahao stood up, his voice a bit shaky.

"Professor Liu, the main reviewer you just mentioned, could it be..."

Professor Liu Zuoqing nodded.

"That's right, we will invite Jian Shen to review your works one by one through the Qinglan Project background."

As these words fell, the entire classroom exploded again.

"Are we really letting Jian Shen look at our manuscripts?"

"Everyone's?"

"Is it public?"

"If I get criticized too harshly, can I still write when I go back?"

"What are you afraid of? Being criticized by Jian Shen, even if it's a scolding, is worth it!"

Chen Jiahao slammed his hand on the table.

"Worth it! So worth it!"

He slapped it too hard, and his water cup almost tipped over.

Xu Changge reached out and steadied the cup.

Chen Jiahao sat down for less than a second, then couldn't help but lean forward, bracing himself on the edge of the table.

"Brother Xu, one-on-one review! Public! Jian Shen is personally looking at my manuscript!"

Xu Changge pushed the cup back in front of him.

"So you should think about what you're going to show the teacher this time."

Chen Jiahao opened his mouth, his expression frozen.

This sentence was very effective.

He sat back.

Professor Liu Zuoqing heard the commotion in the front row, a hint of a smile appearing at the corners of his lips.

"Yes, Jian Shen will review them, and the results will be made public to everyone within the Qinglan Project."

"Whose problems, whose strengths, who is pretentious, who is overdoing it, who is truly looking at people, who is faking compassion, it will all be laid out."

A boy in the back row couldn't help but whisper:

"This is too harsh..."

Professor Liu Zuoqing's gaze fell on him.

The boy immediately lowered his head.

Professor Liu Zuoqing didn't let this comment slide.

"In the future, you will have thousands of people reading your works. Do you think readers will be gentler than Jian Shen?"

"Or will the market give you face?"

"They won't write notes for you, won't tell you what you did wrong, and won't patiently accompany you as you grow."

"Today, someone is willing to point out your problems one by one, which means you still have a chance to be corrected. If you think even this opportunity is too harsh, then you'd better not take this path."

These words made many people's ears burn.

Tang He gripped the pen in her hand more firmly.

Xu Changge opened a blank page and wrote a few words in the header.

"Day after tomorrow, public review."

His handwriting was still neat, but the strokes were heavier than usual.

Chen Jiahao took a look and whispered: "Brother Xu, are you nervous too?"

Xu Changge didn't deny it.

Chen Jiahao was stunned.

Xu Changge looked at the podium, his tone calm.

"To be examined word by word by such a person, it's only normal to be nervous."

Chen Jiahao looked down at his manuscript, his overall excitement suppressed by something stronger.

That was pressure.

And also desire.

Dan Yi sat on the side, lowering his head to fold his slip of paper and tuck it into the innermost part of his notebook.

He didn't speak.

But Lin Que could see that his hand had reached for the manuscript again.

That ending of his, he probably had to change it.

Lin Que lowered his eyes, his fingertips tapping lightly on the desk.

Public review meant that Jian Shen's literary judgment would be fully exposed to this group of people for the first time.

Xu Changge was too sharp, and Tang He was good at dismantling; if the tone of the comments was too similar to how he usually spoke, sooner or later, someone would catch a glimpse of his shadow.

Jian Shen's notes needed to be older, colder, and slower.

On the podium, Professor Liu Zuoqing took half a step back and handed the microphone to Dean Dai.

After Dean Dai took the microphone, he didn't immediately announce the next arrangement.

He first looked at Lin Que.

Lin Que sat in the middle of the first row, his expression calm.

Just now, Jian Shen had designated him to summarize the questions and asked him to answer the relationship between "the individual and the era."

This back-and-forth had already pushed him to the most conspicuous position in this year's Qinglan Project.

But this young man still sat steadily.

Not drifting.

Nor did he pretend to be flattered.

Dean Dai watched for two seconds before looking away.

"There is a sentence Jian Shen just said that I hope everyone remembers."

After he spoke, the classroom was quiet again.

"Go see, go listen, go smell, go touch."

"This sentence sounds simple, but when it comes to writing, it's the hardest."

Dean Dai's speaking speed was steadier than Professor Liu Zuoqing's.

"Many students here have good family conditions, good learning environments, and have been exposed to good books from a young age."

When he said this, his gaze swept across the room without resting on anyone.

Chen Jiahao shrank his neck.

Xu Changge's sitting posture didn't change, he just put down his pen and listened intently.

"This is certainly an advantage."

Dean Dai said.

"But if an advantage is used in the wrong direction, it becomes a barrier."

He paused, his gaze sweeping from the first row to the last.

"You have seen a lot of suffering in books, but the suffering seen through paper and the suffering smelled on the scene are completely different things."

"So for the next four weeks, you must tear this barrier open with your own hands."

Chen Jiahao sighed in a low voice.

Xu Changge turned his head to look at him.

"Dean Dai is telling the truth."

Chen Jiahao clutched his chest.

"Brother Xu, don't twist the knife if we're on the same side. This barrier of mine is already starting to hurt."

Someone in the back row couldn't help but laugh.

The tense atmosphere relaxed slightly.

Dean Dai didn't mind them.

"The Qinglan Project originally had field trip arrangements."

"It's just that the specific format hadn't been announced before."

As soon as this came out, there was movement in the classroom.

Many people had heard rumors long ago.

The Qinglan Project was not just about sitting in Qingbei classrooms listening to lectures and writing manuscripts.

What it really wanted to do was to pull this group of geniuses away from their beautiful desks and let them see the world outside of books.

But hearing rumors and having it officially announced brought completely different pressures.

Dean Dai turned his head to look at the back row.

Cui Wen had already closed the equipment box and was sitting on a chair, flipping through a crumpled booklet.

Sensing Dean Dai's gaze, he lifted his chin.

Su Mubai nodded gently.

Xu Zhengqing rested his hands on his cane, also giving a slight response.

Professor Liu Zuoqing stood to the side, arms crossed over his chest, with an expression of "finally going to throw these kids out to be toughened up."

Dean Dai faced the room again.

"After consultation with several mentors, once this manuscript review is over, the Qinglan Project will launch a four-week immersive field trip activity."