549: Chapter 549 The Hidden Gem

3:00 PM.

In an old residential building in Shizhuang City, sunlight slanted in from a half-open window, landing beside the computer screen.

The shouting of the scrap collector downstairs had already faded into the distance.

Sun Qiming sat in his chair, his right hand still resting on the mouse.

On the screen, the last line of "qin opera" remained there.

[When Old Zhao turned around, the rain outside the factory building had finally stopped.]

Sun Qiming stared at that line of text, motionless for a long time.

Ten years of writing.

Sun Qiming had seen too many authors write about suffering, poverty, and the little people caught in the tides of the era.

But "qin opera" was different.

It did not portray Old Zhao as someone waiting for sympathy.

Nor did it make him lament his fate at every critical juncture.

He was simply pushing that lathe, which should have been scrapped long ago, through the rain, walking step by step into the depths of the old factory building.

The lathe was too heavy, and its wheels got stuck in the mud.

Old Zhao's soles sank in, and when he pulled them out, muddy water flooded into his pant legs.

Someone nearby tried to persuade him.

"Old Zhao, let it go. The factory is gone anyway."

Old Zhao didn't turn back.

He only said one sentence.

"It is still here."

Three words.

When Sun Qiming read this part, his fingers paused for a long time.

That lathe had turned.

The people in the factory had also once lived in an era that kept turning.

Later, the machines stopped.

The factory sign was taken down.

The people scattered.

Yet, Old Zhao still remembered the sound of it turning.

Sun Qiming leaned back against his chair and pressed the corners of his eyes.

He didn't want to admit that he had lost his composure over something written by an eighteen-year-old boy.

But the soreness in his eyes was something he couldn't lie to himself about.

What really made Sun Qiming fall silent was the passage where Old Zhao sat before his wife's tombstone.

Lin Que didn't write about Old Zhao's pain.

He didn't write about how many old memories he recalled.

He only wrote about that finger resting on his knee.

One tap.

Then another.

Rain fell into the soil in front of the tombstone.

Old Zhao sat until the sky grew dark before pulling his hand back.

When Sun Qiming saw that, he understood.

The truly sharp edge of a piece of work lies in the author stepping back far enough.

He does not cry for the protagonist; he does not ache for the protagonist.

He simply places that rain, that tombstone, and that finger tapping on the knee before the reader.

Sun Qiming gripped the mouse again and refreshed the page.

The number in the comments section of "qin opera" had already jumped to 5,326.

He scrolled down.

The top comments looked like they had been copied from the same spreadsheet, with even the tone being uniformly cold.

"The vibe is too strong."

"Don't make the Qingbei filter too thick."

"You dare to write about an old factory area after just one month of field research? I suggest you learn to respect reality first."

"It just feels pretentious after reading it."

Sun Qiming read through them one by one, his expression growing darker.

These negative reviews were vicious, but they were incredibly hollow.

They hadn't even flipped through the main text.

No Old Zhao.

No lathe.

No enamel mug.

No warning sign in the old factory building soaked white by the rain.

No matter how harshly they criticized, not a single person could point out which specific part of the work was problematic.

Sun Qiming continued scrolling down.

After dozens of entries, he saw a comment buried at the bottom.

"My dad walked out halfway through the chapter where Old Zhao pushes the lathe. He used to work in a factory too, and he said that line 'It had turned' was written so accurately."

Below it, more than twenty replies quickly followed.

"This kind of family narrative is too easy to make up."

"Qingbei fans are starting their self-inserting emotional act again."

"Using the experiences of the older generation to endorse a work is suspicious in itself."

"Don't package personal emotions as literary judgment."

Sun Qiming's fingers pressed hard against the mouse.

He scrolled down further.

Another authentic comment popped up.

"I don't know anything about literature, but I just feel that the ten years of persistence were written very powerfully. That kind of stubbornness of the older generation—I saw it when I was a kid."

The reply section was immediately flooded.

"If you don't understand literature, don't force yourself to praise it, please."

"Did you kneel down just because you saw the words 'Qingbei'?"

"Aren't you embarrassed?"

Sun Qiming looked at these follow-up posts, a heavy weight pressing on his chest.

He knew this tactic all too well.

As soon as a real reader made a sound, dozens of mocking replies would immediately flood in.

They didn't need to convince everyone.

They only needed to make ordinary readers afraid to speak.

Whoever praised it would be swarmed.

Whoever read it seriously would be labeled.

Over time, authentic voices would sink on their own.

This was what the capital matrix was most skilled at.

Sun Qiming switched the page to the popularity ranking.

Shen Jiangping's "three or two things in jincheng" was still in first place.

The red line hung high.

The comments section was filled with uniform praise.

"Teacher Shen's realism is truly solid."

"This is what long-term accumulation is, not relying on short-term field research to sell misery."

"This year's championship is in the bag!"

Sun Qiming clicked in and read a few screens' worth.

The writing wasn't bad.

The structure was stable.

The characters were well-established.

But after finishing it, not a single detail remained in his mind that could pierce the heart.

That work was like a standard answer that had been revised repeatedly.

Neat, safe, knowing exactly where to exert effort, yet it lacked a single wound that could pin a person down.

But "qin opera" was different.

In "qin opera," there was the cold of muddy water flooding into pant legs, the astringency of rust rubbing against palms, and the fingers of a group of people who, after being flung to the turning point of the era, still refused to let go.

Sun Qiming exited the page and clicked on "qin opera" again.

In the author column, the two characters "Lin Que" hung there quietly.

Over the past few days, the internet had surrounded him tightly with these labels.

Some said he was being hyped up too high.

Some said he was cashing in on a "genius" persona.

Some said he dared to write about the lower class without ever having seen true suffering.

But Sun Qiming, having just finished "qin opera," knew how ridiculous these words were.

A person who hadn't put their feet into the mud couldn't write about the stubbornness of Old Zhao refusing to let go.

A person who only knew how to sit in a study and imagine reality couldn't write about that little spark of old fire kept for a dear friend.

Sun Qiming stared at the screen, feeling for the first time that he could not continue to stand by and watch.

He opened the comment box.

His fingers tapped out a few lines on the keyboard.

[Speaking as a contestant, "qin opera" deserves to be read carefully by everyone. Those who only know how to parrot "tourist-style writing"...]

He stopped there.

A few seconds later, he deleted this passage.

This comment was too light.

If thrown into the current comments section, it would only be torn apart by the matrix.

He needed an outlet that could push the traces of real reading in front of everyone.

Sun Qiming opened his own backend.

Under his work, the number of comments had reached twenty-seven.

Most were very ordinary.

"Not bad."

"It's written quite realistically, thumbs up."

"It's written very well, it's just that there are too few people reading it."

These comments were authentic to the point of being clumsy.

But precisely because they were clumsy, they sounded like things real people would say.

Sun Qiming looked at his own page, then back at the five thousand-plus comments on "qin opera."

The gap was too glaring.

A work that was truly seen by readers was being artificially covered up.

This public open day had not been clean from the very beginning.

Sun Qiming stood up and paced the room twice.

He knew he couldn't just post a single thread.

A thread was too light.

It would be buried.

He needed to find someone who could make these traces of real reading visible.

The phone on the table lit up.

The contact list was stopped on a number that hadn't been dialed for a long time.