537: Chapter 537 You Have a Trump Card

Three days later.

Just past nine in the morning, the door to Dormitory 303 was knocked on.

Lin Que opened the door; Chen Jiahao still had one foot outside the doorframe, his phone held up high.

"Master Que! It's here! They've made their move!"

Xu Changge turned his head from his desk.

Dan Yi also walked over.

Chen Jiahao rushed to the desk in a few strides, his phone nearly pressing against Lin Que's hand.

"Look! The preliminary judging rules for the Kunpeng Award have been changed!"

Lin Que took the phone.

The official announcement was posted at the very top of the Wenyuan Pavilion homepage, with a title written in an exceptionally high-sounding manner.

[Supplementary Explanation Regarding the Addition of a "Mass Reading Feedback Index" to the Preliminary Judging Stage of this year's Kunpeng Youth Literature Award]

The first half of the announcement was written flawlessly, emphasizing throughout: "Expanding the social influence of youth literature," "responding to national reading," and "letting more ordinary readers participate in the literary scene."

According to the supplementary details, the submitted manuscripts for this year will be open for online reading and evaluation within a specified period.

Readers' valid clicks, favorites, votes, and comment feedback will be uniformly incorporated into the preliminary review reference system.

At the very end of the scoring details, a line of small text was forcefully embedded into the original text-based review system: [Market data and reader popularity weighting account for thirty percent of the total score.]

"Thirty percent."

Chen Jiahao's voice trembled slightly.

"How can a literary award let hundreds of thousands of botted clicks outweigh the month we spent grinding in the mud?"

Xu Changge had already opened his laptop, tapped a few keys, and brought up a popularity data chart for the contestants.

The chart pulled real-time data from the pre-promotion page for Wenyuan Pavilion candidate works.

Shen Jiangping's red line had started rising the moment the rule announcement was released, and now, it had already reached the top of the leaderboard.

Below it, the names of the Qinglan Student were densely packed, each one pressed to the bottom, without even a decent fluctuation.

"Look at this growth rate."

Xu Changge's fingertip pointed to the curve in the red line.

"Between 3:00 and 3:10 AM, there was a concentrated burst of new votes.

The three sets of repost copy only had their punctuation changed.

The account registration dates are all stuck in the same week."

Xu Changge's fingertip stopped at the point where several curves intersected.

"This method of growth is clearly not natural dissemination."

"Huanyu Group has its own reading platform, contracted authors, and fan operation teams."

Xu Changge's voice was steady, his analysis very calm.

"The commercial matrix they have on hand is usually used to push bestsellers. Now they've turned it around and started slamming it on us."

Dan Yi had been staring at the leaderboard.

He suddenly spoke, his voice muffled.

"It's very hard to catch up relying solely on the reader base from our previous Fu Zhi Yao Competition publication."

Chen Jiahao turned his head to look at him.

"There aren't necessarily fewer people who read literature."

Dan Yi stared at the leaderboard, his voice dropping low.

"They will read and remember, but the number of people willing to register, vote, and post comments is much smaller.

Capital can push up hundreds of thousands in popularity overnight; if we rely on natural readers to come slowly, the speed is simply not on the same level."

The dormitory was quiet for a moment.

Chen Jiahao clutched his phone, his knuckles turning white.

"This is unreasonable."

He cursed in a low voice.

"The things we spent a month grinding out in the Gobi, in urban villages, and in old factory areas—are they just going to wipe it all out with a string of numbers?"

Lin Que returned the phone to him and turned back to sit at his desk.

Chen Jiahao didn't stop. He reopened the forum, his brows furrowing tighter and tighter.

"There's something even more disgusting."

He turned the screen back around.

"A post Chu Pengshu just made."

Less than an hour after that post was made, it had already been reposted over a thousand times.

[Literature that lacks market testing is water without a source.

Talking about purity while detached from readers is, in itself, a form of arrogance.

Whether a work is good or not must ultimately be left to the market.

This rule adjustment is precisely returning the power of judgment to the real readers.]

"He's in such a hurry to endorse the new rules."

Chen Jiahao was so angry his hands were shaking.

"And he's using that same academic tone of his; it sounds so reasonable."

The replies below were flooding in fast.

"Well said! Always putting on airs all day, but they can't even produce any data."

"Letting the market speak now is the best way to test the quality of writing."

"Pure literature—if it's so pure that no one reads it, that's not called pure, that's called unwanted."

Chen Jiahao looked at those bandwagon comments, his chest heaving.

"These people think they are speaking for the market."

Chen Jiahao gritted his teeth.

"In reality, they don't even see who opened the entrance or who is controlling the vote pool."

The Qinglan Program's main group chat had already exploded.

Lin Que tapped it open; dozens of unread red dots were piled on the avatar.

Tang He had sent a long paragraph, her anger suppressed between the lines, her tone colder than usual.

"Thirty percent. A month of field research, lightly stuffed into a popularity algorithm by them."

"The piece I wrote about grassroots female workers was just dismantled by Chu Pengshu using terminology, and now it's being crushed by a mountain of data."

"They have money, platforms, and fans in their hands; we only have manuscripts."

"But the more this happens, the more I refuse to accept it. Why should botted popularity decide the score for reality?"

A boy who usually didn't speak much also popped up.

"Why should their popularity algorithm try to keep us out of the preliminary judging?"

The anger in the group chat burned hotter and harder.

Someone sent a message saying, 'We absolutely cannot tolerate this,' and immediately, a row of clenched fist and knife emojis followed below.

Lin Que watched these messages, his fingers tapping gently on the edge of the table twice.

He didn't rush to reply.

He reopened the official announcement and read it line by line.

Valid users, deduplication methods, platform access, statistical cycles—every item was written very thoroughly.

Until he saw the "Source of Popularity" column, his fingertip stopped.

That column was written vaguely.

It only marked one sentence: [Based on valid clicks and votes from real readers, with no specific platform limitations.]

Lin Que read it twice.

No specific platform limitations.

These four words were probably originally a door Huanyu opened for its own reading platform.

The corners of Lin Que's mouth finally moved.

The door Huanyu opened for itself was too wide.

Wide enough to allow another tide of real readers to pour in.

He picked up the water cup on the table and took a sip.

"Everyone, don't panic yet."

His voice wasn't loud, but it made Chen Jiahao, who was staring at his phone and cursing, stop.

"Master Que, do you have a plan?"

Lin Que put down the water cup.

"They changed this rule because they want to pull the battlefield from the works to the market."

He said.

"They think those of us who write pure literature don't have a reader base and will collapse the moment we touch data."

"Isn't that exactly the case?"

Chen Jiahao gripped his phone tightly, his voice dropping.

"All of us combined don't even have a fraction of the fans Shen Jiangping has."

"That's why they dared to change it this way."

Lin Que's tone was very flat.

"They calculated that we have no market appeal."

Xu Changge hadn't spoken the whole time.

At this moment, he put down his pen and looked at Lin Que.

There was no fluctuation on Lin Que's face, but having shared a room with him for so long, Xu Changge could see that something suppressed in the depths of his eyes.

Like a taut string; it hadn't sounded, but it was already pulled tight.

"You, have a trump card."