528: Chapter 528 Question Mark in the Circle

The dormitory was quiet for a few seconds.

The phone screen was still lit.

Shen Jiangping's long article was firmly pinned to the homepage, like a torch specifically held aloft by someone.

The excitement on Chen Jiahao's face faded away bit by bit.

Xu Changge lowered his brows, his gaze falling back onto Lin Que.

"Chu Pengshu handed over a knife, but the blade only struck the text. Shen Jiangping raised a flag; once that flag was hoisted, you were pushed in front of all your peers and seniors."

Chen Jiahao opened his mouth but didn't say anything.

The faces of old professors like Dai Shengzong and Professor Liu Zuoqing appeared in his mind.

"And..."

Lin Que walked to the door and gripped the doorknob.

"He emphasized calling for young writers to take sides, which is essentially pushing all the contestants of the Kunpeng Award onto the ring, while conveniently tying me to the highest target."

Xu Changge nodded.

"He has successfully provoked the conflict between Chu Pengshu and you, and expanded this conflict to the entire young creative community and the critical circle. Now that you are standing at the center of the storm, even if you only reply with a single punctuation mark, it will be deconstructed into ten different stances."

Lin Que turned the doorknob and opened the door.

"So, don't be anxious yet. We can watch the spectacle, but the accounts must be settled one by one."

He pulled the door open and walked out without looking back.

Chen Jiahao stood where he was, watching Lin Que's back disappear around the corner of the hallway.

He scratched his head, looked at Xu Changge again, then lowered his head to stare at the rapidly soaring number of replies on the forum, his back suddenly feeling a bit cold.

When Lin Que went downstairs, his phone vibrated.

It was the main group chat for the Qinglan Program.

Messages were scrolling by rapidly, with dozens of unread red dots.

He tapped it open; the group messages were already out of control.

One after another, all suppressing their anger.

Tang He: "What does this article by Shen Jiangping mean? By what right does he represent 'all young writers'?"

Chen Jiahao also popped up in the group:

"Sister Tang, this piece of his doesn't taste right."

Other classmates followed up with messages.

"We are in big trouble now. Several old authors have already publicly reposted it, and their words are full of gunpowder!"

"I just saw several people reposting it, and some are even old authors in our circle who usually don't speak much; their tone is very aggressive!"

"It's not just the old authors. I was just privately messaged by a senior who writes poetry, asking if I also think his work 'makes the older generation ashamed.' I never said anything like that!"

Dan Yi's avatar flashed, and he sent a short sentence:

"The number of people jumping on the bandwagon has increased."

Lin Que swiped his finger, watching the rapidly heating discourse.

The spread of Shen Jiangping's article was much faster than Chu Pengshu's text analysis.

It did not stop at the discussion of the work but directly dragged old writers, young authors, the critical circle, and the Qinglan Program into it.

An old author reposted Shen Jiangping's original post, leaving only one sentence:

"It's a good thing for a youth to have talent, but first learn to be in awe, then talk about innovation."

Another senior judge wrote even more directly:

"If literature relies on a few slogans to change the dynasty, then there's no need to judge the awards."

These words didn't name anyone, but the comment section quickly filled in the name.

Lin Que.

On the side of the young authors, the anger was even more intense.

Many people were originally just bystanders.

Some acknowledged Chu Pengshu's technical analysis, and some admitted that "folding beijing" indeed had an edge.

But Shen Jiangping's phrase "the new direction of youth literature" directly pushed them into the position of being mere foils.

The feeling of being represented was more stinging than questioning the work itself.

"By what right does one novel by Lin Que become the banner of new literature?"

"So, if we don't praise him, we are conservatives?"

"Have we, the participating authors, all become foils?"

The attacks began to spread.

It was no longer limited to "folding beijing" itself, but spread to the "Qinglan Program" collective, and to every student who had submitted their initial draft from the field trip.

Someone dug up Chen Jiahao's finals work, "the madhouse within the high walls," and mocked it as a "rich second generation experiencing life."

Someone excerpted a passage about loneliness from Dan Yi's "the ice surface of black river" and ridiculed him for writing identity dilemmas as cheap sentimentality.

More malicious comments began to make low-level attacks based on his appearance and background.

Even Tang He's manuscript about grassroots women was taken out of context and called "condescending pity."

Lin Que stopped in his tracks and typed three lines in the group.

"Everyone, please stay calm."

"For content that has been taken out of context, please take screenshots of the original text, links, and timestamps, and send them to Senior Brother Song Yuan and me."

"The things we brought back from the mud over this past month do not need to be proven to a few accounts. The Kunpeng Award looks at manuscripts; no matter how strong the wind blows, it cannot write a single word for anyone."

The group was briefly quiet.

A few seconds later, Tang He replied with one word: "Okay."

Dan Yi: "I'll organize the screenshots."

Chen Jiahao: "Got it. Shut up, rewrite."

Lin Que added one more sentence.

"Whoever gets attacked, I'm keeping track. When it's time to respond, I will."

Lin Que closed the group chat interface and tapped into the Wenyuange Forum.

The homepage of Wenyuan Pavilion had changed colors.

Hot posts, reposts, and long reviews were all revolving around "folding beijing" and the Qinglan Program.

The posts by Shen Jiangping and Chu Pengshu were still at the top, but the threads following below had long since gone off-track to the point where they were invisible.

Supporters, opponents, agitators, and those pretending to be rational while taking sides were all squeezed onto the same page, with terminology and insults mixed together.

He saw a comment that had been highly upvoted:

"Shen Jiangping is right! 'folding beijing' is awesome! Those old fogies who have been writing for decades and are still spinning in place are just jealous that a high school student can write something they could never think of in their entire lives!"

There was an immediate reply below:

"Bullshit! Shen Jiangping is setting him up for a fall! Putting this kid on a pedestal to roast him so he can reap the benefits himself! Can't you bunch of bandwagon-jumping idiots see that?"

Further below.

"Whether it's a setup or genuine praise, 'folding beijing' is just good! What's the point of Chu Pengshu's nitpicking analysis? If literature only cares about logic, then what do we need writers for? Just write code!"

"Literature doesn't care about logic? Then what does it care about? Watching you babble when your emotions run high?"

"Running high on emotion is still better than using logic as a fig leaf; at least the readers can still see a bit of vitality."

Lin Que didn't linger, scrolling directly past these emotional arguments.

His gaze landed on a few slightly more rational long reviews.

An anonymous ID analyzed it from the perspective of literary history, arguing that Shen Jiangping's excessive praise was actually replicating historical cases of setting up geniuses for a fall, which would only accelerate the genius's downfall in the end.

There was also a long review that was briefly upvoted to the top.

"Works can be deconstructed, and authors can be questioned. But once the discussion turns into taking sides, literature is reduced to nothing but chanting slogans."

This comment had just emerged, but it was quickly buried by a new war of words.

Lin Que put his phone back in his pocket.

Twenty minutes later, Lin Que took a taxi to the studio.

Lin Que pushed open the security door of the studio.

In the room, there was a workbench, two monitors, an encrypted server, and equipment for voice changing and track processing nearby.

He put down his backpack, sat at the desk, and turned on the power.

Both monitors lit up simultaneously, the deep blue light reflecting on his calm face.

He quickly opened several encrypted emails and the backend management system, his fingers tapping on the keyboard.

The draft folder for "ghost blows out the light" was checked again, confirming that the scheduled publishing settings for the subsequent chapters were correct.

Director Guo Changhe also sent the minutes from the second script reading of "soul ferry."

This script reading was much smoother than the last one.

The actors only raised questions about a few lines of dialogue; the issues had already been organized into a document, waiting for his decision.

On the New Tide side, the screening work for the "Jian Shen" essay contest was piling up like a mountain.

He quickly browsed the preliminary classification report attached by Wang De'an.

The light from the screen flowed across his pupils.

Outside the window, the sky over Beijing was still deep blue.

But in the online world, that sky was already covered in dark clouds, with lightning and thunder.

Lin Que reopened the forum and categorized the highly upvoted abusive posts, key repost nodes, abnormal accounts, and several sets of repetitive rhetoric into the same table.

Only occasionally would his gaze sweep over the forum notifications and group message red dots constantly popping up in the corner of the screen.

The unread reminders in the corner of the screen were still increasing.

Lin Que didn't click on them, only dragging the new links into the table and rearranging them in chronological order.

He picked up a whiteboard marker and wrote two names on the whiteboard.

Chu Pengshu.

Shen Jiangping.

Subsequently, outside of those two names, he drew a third empty circle.

The whiteboard marker paused for two seconds.

Then he left a big question mark inside the circle.