531: Chapter 531 Guests from Jinling

Chu Pengshu's second long article appeared early the next morning.

This time, the blade fell on Xu Changge's "soul of the ancient wall".

The article still didn't contain a single swear word.

From narrative rhythm to character motivation, from structural tightness to the arrangement of details, he dismantled it point by point, with every criticism clinging to the original text.

He even added a final remark, claiming this was a common problem of "experience overdraft" among young authors.

By evening, the third piece came out.

It dismantled Dan Yi's "the ice surface of black river".

Shen Jiangping was very diligent in reposting it below.

Every time he reposted an article, he added a seemingly neutral sentiment, elevating Chu Pengshu's dismantling into "truly responsible criticism."

They were singing in harmony.

The forum's direction was forcefully twisted into a rhythm of technical scrutiny.

In the Program group, the atmosphere sank.

Dan Yi rarely sent a long message in the group.

"He dismantled the part where I wrote about the ice surface of black river, saying I turned loneliness into a posture for viewing."

"I read it three times, and to my surprise, I couldn't find a gap to refute it for a moment."

"He used all technical terms, and every slash landed on the seams."

Chen Jiahao exploded in the group.

"By what right does he judge like this? He sits behind a screen, says 'posture-oriented' in one sentence, and wipes away all the pain others have suffered?"

The anger in the group grew hotter and hotter.

Everyone knew their own works would soon be put on the fire to be roasted.

Some began to compare Chu Pengshu's accusations line by line, trying to find a gap to counterattack.

Lin Que looked at the screen full of messages and held down the voice recording button.

"Don't rush to confront him."

His voice traveled through the audio to everyone's phone.

"He is not picking faults. He is setting rules for you."

"He uses an academic framework to lock the word 'inspiration'."

"Once you follow his logic to prove yourself, it is equivalent to admitting that this ruler is qualified to measure you."

"If you are measured to the end, every word you write will have to pass through his knife first."

The group was quiet for a few seconds.

Lin Que continued.

"The more detailed he dismantles, the steadier you must be."

"Polishing the manuscript until it's hard is more effective than replying to him with ten thousand words."

"On the judging table of the Kunpeng Award, there is no seat for Chu Pengshu."

Chen Jiahao sent a long string of clenched fist emojis, followed by adding: "Muted."

Lin Que put down his phone.

Xu Changge sat in front of the desk opposite, his notebook full of annotations spread open. He finished listening to that voice message and turned his head.

"You see it very clearly."

"His approach, looking at each article individually, has no flaws."

Xu Changge tapped the screen with his fingertip.

"But looking at the three articles together, his purpose cannot be hidden."

"He wants to make everyone form an impression that the manuscripts of the Program are all fast-made products with insufficient experience and loose structure."

Lin Que picked up the plain boiled water on the table and took a sip.

"He is just the one handing the knife. The person actually setting up the chessboard behind the scenes is someone else."

Xu Changge's eyes moved.

"Chu Pengshu is a contestant in this session, he also has his own selfish motives."

"Shen Jiangping is directing the fire at me, and Chu Pengshu is pressing the ruler onto your manuscripts."

Lin Que said.

"One high, one low, just clamping the Program in the middle."

Xu Changge was silent for a while.

"They want to move the battlefield from the works to the rules."

"Yes."

Lin Que leaned back in his chair.

"If they can't suppress it on the internet, they will drill into the judging process. This is the truly troublesome part."

He spoke steadily, as if he had already laid out these moves in his mind.

Xu Changge looked at his expression, and the impatience in his chest slowly subsided.

He lowered his head again and wrote something in his notebook.

Let them hand over the knives as they please.

If the manuscript is hard enough, the knife will break.

At this moment, the dormitory door was knocked.

The door opened, and Chen Jiahao walked in.

"Master Que, when I just walked downstairs, Uncle Chen said there is a package that you need to sign for in person; no one else can sign for it."

Lin Que stood up.

Chen Jiahao also stood up, stuffing his phone into his pocket.

"At this critical moment, who is sending you something?"

He muttered while walking.

"Could it be another marketing account causing trouble?"

The two went downstairs.

In the security room, the dormitory manager uncle was holding a teacup.

Seeing Lin Que come over, he put down the cup and moved a box out from under the counter.

The box was not big, wrapped in a layer of dark, hard packaging, with exquisite dark patterns on the corners.

At a glance, it was not an ordinary package.

"This one, you must sign it yourself."

The uncle pushed the receipt over.

"It was sent from Jinling, wrapped so exquisitely, I didn't dare to just put it on the shelf."

Lin Que signed his name and took the box.

It was heavy in his hand, with solid weight.

Chen Jiahao leaned over to look at the shipping information.

The sender address column wrote a certain place in Jinling.

There was no name on the signature line, only a small hand-drawn symbol.

A few black and white piano keys, with light lines, as if there was still a smile when the pen fell.

Chen Jiahao squinted.

"Piano keys? Master Que, do you know anyone in music?"

Lin Que didn't answer, weighed the box, and turned to walk into the building.

Chen Jiahao's curiosity was piqued, and he followed closely behind.

"Jinling... Jinling? Master Que, your hometown is Jiangcheng, right? Who is sending you things from Jinling?"

Back in 303, Lin Que placed the box on the table.

Xu Changge raised his head from his notes, glanced at the packaging, didn't speak, but his eyes held a bit more interest.

Lin Que opened the outer packaging.

Inside was a dark customized wooden box, the lid polished very smoothly, fastened with a small brass buckle.

He opened the buckle and lifted the lid.

The wooden box was lined with a layer of dark green velvet.

A vinyl record lay quietly on the velvet.

The cover already had some years on it, the edges yellowed with age, and in the center was printed a line of foreign language identification and a faded silhouette of a conductor.

A card was pressed next to the record.

On the card was a line of elegant handwriting.

"Happy 18th birthday. I searched for a long time to find this one, I hope you like it."

The signature was still that small piano key symbol.

Lin Que looked at that line of text, and his movements paused for a moment.

Chen Jiahao's attention was entirely on that record.

He leaned in very close, stared at the logo on the cover for two seconds, and his whole body stiffened.

The next moment, his voice rose sharply.

"Wait! This is... This version..."

He reached out to touch it, then quickly retracted his hand, as if afraid of breaking something.

"Master Que, do you know what this is? I've seen this version of vinyl in the forums of the collector circle!"

"It's a globally limited pressed master, it's long been out of production, you can't buy it now even with money, it's purely priceless!"

Chen Jiahao swallowed his saliva and stared at Lin Que.

"This thing has to be fought for at auctions, who is so generous to send it to you as a birthday gift?"

"Your birthday?"

He caught the point belatedly, his eyes widening even more.

"Today is your birthday? Why didn't you say so earlier!"

Lin Que's fingertips were still resting on the card.

He didn't rush to answer.

Another image flashed through his mind.

In his previous life, on his eighteenth birthday, his parents were both working overtime at the factory.

On the way home from school, he bought a palm-sized cream cake at the small cake shop at the alley entrance, went home, sat alone at the table, and lit a candle.

The big light in the room wasn't on, just that little bit of candlelight.

He made a wish to the air and blew it out himself.

That year's birthday was so quiet that even the sound of the wind could be heard clearly.

He himself had forgotten what wish he made at that time.

"Master Que? Master Que!"

Chen Jiahao shouted a couple of times from the side, pulling him back.

Lin Que put away that bit of trance and gently placed the card back on the velvet.

"Yeah, today."

He replied, his tone flat.

Chen Jiahao slapped his thigh.

"That won't do! How can a birthday be brushed off like this!"

"Tonight I'll arrange it, the four of us in the dorm, plus Sister Tang, let's have a good meal!"

He got more excited as he spoke, and glued his eyes back to the record, clicking his tongue twice.

"No, Master Que, just how deep are your hidden connections?"

"This kind of thing, even old collectors like my dad can't ask for it."

"To be able to get this version of vinyl and specifically find it for you, this friend's family background must be very thick."

Xu Changge looked at the words on the card, his tone very light:

"To be able to search for so long for a record, the thoughts are very delicate."

There was another meaning in these words.

Lin Que didn't pick it up.

He picked up his phone and clicked on that familiar dialogue box.

The note was [Fugitive Beethoven].

Lin Que's fingers paused on the screen, then typed a line of words.

"Received. Like it very much. Thank you."

No extra embellishments, the words were clean and neat.

The moment it was sent, the other side replied almost instantly.

First was a jumping little person emoji, holding a wobbling cake.

Immediately after, the second message popped out.

"Why so polite, go look at the school gate."

Behind it followed another winking emoji.

Lin Que stared at these two lines of text, his eyebrows twitched first.

School gate.

Chen Jiahao was still gossiping endlessly beside him, leaning over wanting to see the screen.

"Who is it, who is it? This emoji is sent so flashily, it must be a girl, right?"

"Master Que, you hide deep enough."

"This kind of top-tier connection, and someone who knows how to pick vinyl, tsk—"

Lin Que put his phone in his pocket and stood up and walked out the door.

"Don't go! You haven't explained clearly yet!"

Chen Jiahao was anxious and chased after him in a few steps.

Xu Changge stood where he was, watching the backs of the two, then looked down at the record on the table again, his eyes holding a bit more playfulness.

He didn't follow, just sat back at the desk and added another sentence to that annotation.

The person who can make him put down the record and go to the school gate is not simple.

Lin Que's steps looked unhurried, but his stride frequency was half a beat faster than usual.

Chen Jiahao followed closely behind, his mouth never stopping.

"Master Que, say something. Is someone waiting for you at the school gate? Is it the one who sent the vinyl? Did they run all the way to the capital?"

"Your reaction is not right. Usually, no matter how big the matter is, you don't change your expression, why are you walking so fast now."

Lin Que didn't speak.

The light from the corridor slanted in from the window, falling on the ground.

He passed through the dormitory area and walked towards the school gate.

In these few days on the cusp of the storm, those sword lights and sword shadows on the forum, Shen Jiangping's praise-killing, and Chu Pengshu's dismantling article after article, were all temporarily put behind his mind at this moment.

He knew very clearly in his heart.

Those things couldn't be rushed, and they couldn't crush him.

The manuscript was already set, the rest was just waiting for them to finish playing their cards.

It was this sudden vinyl, and that line of elegant handwriting, that loosened the string he had been tightening for these past few days.

The eighteen-year-old who blew out candles alone in his previous life, and today's gift that someone searched the entire collector circle to find, crossed ten years of time and collided together.

On the tree-lined path at the school gate, late autumn sycamore leaves fell all over the ground.

A business car was parked next to the pick-up point, with only one person waiting.

Lin Que's gaze swept over.

Then, his footsteps stopped.

Under the shade of the tree not far away stood that figure.

That person was wearing a light-colored trench coat, the peaked cap pressed very low, but it couldn't suppress the face favored by the camera.

Seeing Lin Que, she suddenly became energetic,

She raised her hand and waved hard, a pair of curved eyes exposed under the brim of her hat.

The person who was always printed in major magazines and standing on the concert stage.

At this moment, just standing there.