552: Chapter 552 The Work Speaks for Itself

"Stop!" Chen Jiahao suddenly pushed his chair back, his voice exploding in the computer lab.

"Those copy-paste negative reviews, stop!"

In the Qingbei School of Literature computer lab, thirty computers were lit up simultaneously.

From the system debugging in the morning to 4:30 PM, the cold light of the screens had been shining for over eight hours.

But what was truly suffocating was the four and a half hours since noon.

As soon as the public reading channel opened, negative reviews rushed in as if they had been queued up in advance.

"Tourist-style field research."

"Qingbei god-making."

"Genius persona."

"Consuming suffering."

One after another, the sentence structures were uniform, the tone sharp.

Tang He stared at her 《Market》, her finger pressing continuously on the mouse.

Professor Liu Zuoqing had said in the morning: do not look at the rankings, do not touch the comment section, believe in the words you wrote.

But at a time like this, who could truly resist?

She saw someone insulting her.

"A student from out of town squats at the morning market for a few days, and dares to write about the lifetime of a vendor."

She saw Dan Yi's 《Rainy Season in the South》 being berated as "selling misery."

Xu Changge's 《Rules on the Wilderness》 was berated as "a wealthy young master going to the Gobi to check in."

The harshest, however, was still Lin Que's qin opera.

Starting from 12:01, the comment section for qin opera had not been quiet for a moment.

Those accounts hadn't read the main text at all.

They couldn't say who Old Zhao was.

They couldn't say why that old lathe had to be pushed back into the factory building.

They couldn't say what exactly that hand, tapping its knee before the monument, was pressing down on.

They only knew how to repeatedly refresh the same set of phrases.

"Qingbei packaging."

"Short-term field research."

"Realism filter."

Chen Jiahao sat in the row behind Lin Que, having held it in for four whole hours.

His piece, 《Sounds of the City》, had also been insulted quite harshly.

"Rich kid experiencing life."

"Using the smoke and fire of life as seasoning."

"Hearing a few shouts and thinking you understand the human world."

Under normal circumstances, he would have rolled up his sleeves and started arguing.

Today, he forced himself to endure it.

Lin Que had said, don't argue on behalf of the readers.

Professor Liu Zuoqing had also said, after the work is open, let the readers read it themselves.

But the more Chen Jiahao watched, the more stifled he felt.

Especially regarding qin opera.

As soon as those genuine comments appeared, a dozen mocking ones would immediately follow beneath them.

Whoever said "worth reading to the end" was besieged.

Whoever mentioned Old Zhao was labeled.

Whoever said they also had old workers in their own family was insulted as "impersonal emotional projection."

Lin Que was sitting in the middle of the second row.

His screen was stopped at the backend of qin opera.

On the popularity ranking, qin opera was only slightly ahead of most other works in the same group.

The number of comments was skyrocketing.

The proportion of negative reviews was frighteningly high.

But the effective reading completion rate was climbing bit by bit.

From one to two o'clock, it rose from over thirty percent to fifty percent.

From two to three o'clock, it rose to sixty percent.

After 3:30, the rate of increase slowed down.

The internet trolls were suppressing it too hard.

Many readers who just clicked in would first be discouraged by the negative reviews in the front row.

Lin Que looked at those genuine comments that had been pushed to the back, his fingers never moving.

A blank document was open next to him.

Inside, there were only two lines of text.

[Genuine reading records.]

[Nodes of genuine reader comments.]

He was waiting.

The more it reached such a moment, the less an author could be in a hurry to speak for the work.

A reader truly finishing a page was more useful than an author explaining a million sentences.

4:28 PM.

Chen Jiahao's comment stream was still rolling.

Same words.

Same sentence structure.

Same sarcasm.

He was already becoming numb from watching.

But the next second, the screen suddenly went empty for a beat.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

Ten seconds.

That batch of uniformly refreshing negative short reviews did not continue to appear.

Chen Jiahao was stunned.

Thinking the computer had frozen, he immediately refreshed the page.

The page reloaded.

The comment section was still moving.

But the content rolling up had changed.

"Don't be fooled by the negative reviews in the front, you must finish reading this piece."

"The part where Old Zhao pushes the lathe, I took a long time to recover after reading it."

"The intensity of the author writing about guarding the old factory building is too piercing."

Chen Jiahao's breathing stopped for a moment.

He refreshed it again.

Those familiar tags had still not returned.

The refresh time of the last batch of copied short reviews stopped at 4:28:41 PM.

After that, no new accounts continued the relay.

Chen Jiahao shoved his chair aside and stood up.

The chair legs scraped across the floor, the sound making everyone's heart jump.

"It stopped?!"

"They really stopped!"

This shout woke up the entire computer lab.

Tang He was the first to turn her head.

Xu Changge stood up from his seat.

Dan Yi took off his headphones.

A few students from the front row also gathered around.

Chen Jiahao pointed at the screen, his volume impossible to suppress.

"Look quickly! The trolls stopped!"

"Those copy-paste insults, they all stopped!"

A few people crowded behind him.

On the screen, the comment section of qin opera was re-sorting itself.

Those uniform negative reviews in the front were still hanging there.

But without new accounts continuing to pile them on, they began to be pushed aside bit by bit by genuine readers.

The number of likes was rising.

The number of replies was rising.

The collection notifications also began to pop up.

A long comment that had been pressed down to the seventh page was forcefully pushed through the negative reviews by likes, rushing into the hot comment section.

Chen Jiahao stared at that comment, his voice tight.

"Look at this one."

He cleared his throat and read it out.

"It brings the backbone of an era to life; the author understands the forbearance and persistence on that piece of land."

The computer lab went quiet all at once.

Everyone looked toward that hot comment.

[My family is in an old industrial zone; I saw many people like Old Zhao when I was a child.]

[They aren't good at expressing themselves, and they don't like to talk about their suffering.]

[The day the factory sign was taken down, some cried, some cursed, some got drunk, and some went home, folded their work clothes, and still went to stand by the gate for a while the next day.]

[The best part of qin opera lies in the author bringing that neglected backbone of an era to life.]

[The author understands the forbearance and persistence on that piece of land.]

The number of replies below was still jumping.

487.

521.

593.

Every time it refreshed, the number leaped upward.

New comments kept pouring out.

"My grandfather used to work at the mine, his personality was similar to Old Zhao's, he wouldn't say much, and even before he left, he was still thinking about the miner's lamp."

"Just finished reading, coming back to apologize for following the trend earlier."

"Did those people who were insulting earlier actually read the main text?"

"If this piece is called tourist-style field research, then I really want to know what realism looks like in their eyes."

Chen Jiahao couldn't keep reading.

He pushed the screen toward the crowd, his throat slightly hoarse.

"See that?"

"The real readers have come out."

Tang He covered her mouth, her shoulders trembling slightly.

She had been holding on strong just now.

During these few hours, she watched her own work being insulted, watched her companions being insulted, watched Lin Que's qin opera being besieged.

She couldn't do anything.

Now, those suppressed voices were finally emerging again.

It was like someone had moved a rock off her chest.

Xu Changge did not stay for too long.

He turned and returned to his seat, clicking open his own backend.

Refresh.

The effective reading completion rate of 《Rules on the Wilderness》 rose from thirty-two percent to forty-one percent.

The collection conversion rate jumped from 5.6 percent to 9.2 percent.

In the comment section, those short comments about "wealthy young master checking in on the Gobi" had also stopped.

New comments began to move up.

"What he wrote is a person raised by rules, admitting for the first time that they can lose control."

"This piece by Xu Changge is much fiercer than his Fu Zhi Yao Competition period."

"It's slow at first, but after reading a third of it, the intensity all comes up."

Xu Changge looked at those few comments, his fingers resting on the keyboard.

He didn't say anything.

But his shoulders slowly relaxed.

Since returning from Gansu Province, he rarely mentioned his experiences in the Gobi.

There was a lot of sand caught in that black folder.

During the few nights he came back to revise his draft, he almost never slept through the night.

Now, finally, someone had read that grain of sand.

Xu Changge looked up, looking at Lin Que in the middle of the second row.

Lin Que did not look back.

His gaze was still stopped at the backend of qin opera.

Yet Xu Changge knew very clearly.

If not for Lin Que letting them stay steady time and again, waiting for the readers to truly click into the main text, these thirty works of the Program would likely have been completely drowned out by that noise today.

Dan Yi also clicked open his own page.

《Rainy Season in the South》 had originally been filled with "selling misery" and "mixed-race label."

Now, a long comment had been pushed to the top hot comment.

The title was very short.

[He wrote about understanding the loneliness of being squeezed in a crowd.]

Dan Yi stared at that line of text, his fingertips slowly tightening.

In the body of the long comment, the reader wrote:

[I have lived in an urban village.]

[There is no quiet there. Neighbors arguing, cooking downstairs, electric scooter horns in the alley, the sound of water falling on the awning, it never stops from morning till night.]

[Many people think that liveliness can cure loneliness.]

[The most accurate part of this piece is that liveliness can also separate people.]

[When Daniel said he lived in 305 on the third floor, I felt very uncomfortable reading that part.]

[He didn't answer what nationality he was.]

[He only answered the house number.]

[Because he wanted a specific location.]

[But what others kept asking was his lineage.]

Dan Yi read this far and lowered his head.

He didn't speak.

Chen Jiahao leaned over to take a look, originally wanting to shout a few words, but forced himself to suppress it.

He patted Dan Yi on the shoulder.

"Buddy, this piece of yours has also taken off."

Dan Yi looked up, his voice very low.

"Someone understood."

Chen Jiahao nodded vigorously.

"Understood."

The atmosphere in the computer lab began to change.

The dullness that had been pressing on their chests for a long time was lifted by the genuine comments one by one.

A voice also came from Yuan Ningning's side.

"My comment section has also changed."

She stared at the screen, her eyes slightly red.

"Someone is discussing the cost of silence in traditional ethics."

"They remembered the name of that minor character in my third chapter."

Tang He also refreshed her own backend.

The effective reading count of 《Market》 was rising.

A new comment stopped in the front row.

"Tang He wrote about the bitter life covered up by shouts in the early morning market. The people who insulted her for squatting to check in earlier should at least read to the sixth section first."

Tang He looked at it for a long time, then suddenly laughed softly.

"The sixth section."

Her voice was very light.

"Someone really read to the sixth section."

The Program group chat also came back to life.

[My negative reviews have stopped.]

[Same here.]

[Effective reading is rising.]

[Collections are also rising.]

[I just saw a reader remember the name of the minor character from the third chapter of my text.]

[They are really reading.]

[Lin Que is right, we should wait for the readers.]

One message after another popped up.

The emotions these young people had suppressed for over four hours finally had a landing point.

Someone rubbed their eyes.

Someone lowered their head and smiled.

Someone leaned against the back of their chair, pressing their fist against their forehead.

Chen Jiahao was the most exaggerated.

He walked around the computer lab, high-fiving everyone.

"It's up!"

"It's all up!"

"I told you, that month we spent didn't go to waste!"

He turned to look at Lin Que.

"Master Que, did you see?"

"The hot comment under qin opera already has two thousand likes!"

Lin Que finally looked up.

Chen Jiahao turned the computer screen over.

The like count of the first hot comment on qin opera was still rising.

The replies below had already covered those negative reviews from earlier.

"Dream Weaver reader passing by, after finishing qin opera, I just want to say one thing: read it yourself, judge it yourself—this sentence is really not wrong."

Chen Jiahao saw this, and his eyes immediately lit up.

"A Dream Weaver reader has also come!"

Someone immediately replied.

"It's starting to flow back."

"Someone started a thread on Hong Guo Net titled 'Stop arguing, read qin opera first.'"

"The literature forum is also reposting Sun Qiming's long thread."

Tang He was startled.

"Sun Qiming?"

Xu Changge had already clicked open another page.

"Second place in the previous Kunpeng Award."

He projected the page onto the big screen in the computer lab.

On the homepage of the literature forum, a new post was being crazily pushed to the top.

Poster: Sun Qiming.

Title: 《Please finish reading the main text before judging these young people》

The content of the post was very long.

Sun Qiming first admitted that he was also a participant in this year's competition.

Subsequently, he analyzed 《Rainy Season in the South》, 《Rules on the Wilderness》, and qin opera section by section.

When writing about qin opera, his wording was particularly heavy.

[Lin Que's greatest strength lies in his courage to step back.]

[Many authors writing about an era will push characters to the forefront to cry and shout.]

[qin opera leaves the lens to the rain, the old factory building, the lathe, and that hand of Old Zhao's tapping on his knee.]

[Old Zhao's silence bears the heaviest part of the entire work.]

[That is the last hard piece left after the character has been repeatedly worn down by the era.]

[I don't know Lin Que, and I have no reason to stand up for him.]

[I will only say one thing.]

[As a participant, qin opera is worth being read seriously to the end.]