584: Chapter 584 Three Rounds of Interrogation

Chen Jiahao's Adam's apple bobbed.

The pads of his fingers pressed against the edge of the screen, his gaze sweeping from the first line all the way to the last.

The next second, he stood up abruptly from his chair, his voice shattering the silence in Dormitory 303.

"We made it!"

The water glass in Dan Yi's hand wobbled, and Xu Changge also turned his head at the shout.

Chen Jiahao rushed to the center of the room, holding up his phone, his voice already tinged with tears.

"Master Que! Brother Xu! Little Tang!"

He shouted the three names in one breath.

"Three! Out of the thirty of us in the Qinglan Project, three have made it into the final ten!"

On the phone screen, ten names were listed in alphabetical order by pinyin.

L — — Lin Que.

T — — Tang He.

X — — Xu Changge.

The three names were scattered in different positions, separated by seven other unfamiliar names.

But Chen Jiahao could no longer see the other seven names; only those three remained on the screen.

Xu Changge stood by the window, his gaze falling on the phone screen.

He looked for three seconds, then calmly closed the open research notebook on the table.

"Hmm."

Just that one word.

Lin Que leaned against the ladder of the upper bunk, picked up the cup of lukewarm soy milk from the corner of the table, and took a slow, unhurried sip.

"Breakfast is getting cold."

Chen Jiahao watched their reactions, his expression shifting from ecstasy to disbelief.

"You guys... that's it? That's your reaction?"

"Out of over four thousand people, you made the top ten, and you two are just closing a notebook and drinking soy milk?"

Lin Que put the soy milk back on the table and wiped the corner of his mouth.

"Is being nervous useful?"

"Didn't you say the same thing just now?"

Chen Jiahao was choked for words.

Dan Yi finally set the water glass steadily back on the table, a hint of a smile appearing at the corners of his mouth.

"Congratulations."

His voice wasn't loud, but one could hear the sincerity.

Chen Jiahao couldn't be bothered with congratulations anymore.

He took a screenshot of the phone page, his fingers tapping quickly into the Qinglan Project group chat.

The moment the screenshot was sent, the group chat exploded.

The messages were scrolling so fast that it was impossible to read the content.

[Wei Yiming]: "Three! Three people made it to the top ten!"

[Yuan Ningning]: "Out of 4,217 manuscripts, we took three spots..."

[Zhong Hengyuan]: "No previous Program has ever achieved this."

Messages kept popping up one after another.

Some were expressing amazement, some were digging up past data for comparison, and some were spamming fist emojis.

The group chat, which had been silent all night, flooded with over a hundred messages in thirty seconds.

Chen Jiahao stared at the rapidly scrolling screen, his mouth grinning from ear to ear.

Dan Yi leaned over to take a look and suddenly pointed to the bottom of the list page.

"Wait a second."

His finger tapped on a line of small gray text at the bottom of the screen.

"The list only has names, no rankings."

Chen Jiahao paused, then looked back at the ten names.

Indeed.

The ten people were listed in alphabetical order from A to Z, with only their competition region noted after each name.

No scores.

No rankings.

No comments of any kind.

"Why aren't the rankings listed?"

Chen Jiahao frowned.

Before he could finish, the phone vibrated.

A new announcement popped up at the top of the official webpage, with white text on a red background, highlighted in bold.

[Supplementary Announcement]

[The rankings for the final ten of this year's Kunpeng Youth Literature Award will be comprehensively determined and announced collectively after the live defense session in three days.]

Chen Jiahao read the line twice.

"Live defense?"

He looked up at Xu Changge.

Xu Changge had sat back down at his desk, his gaze fixed on the phone.

There was a long list of additional instructions below the announcement, and he was reading them line by line.

"Open it and take a look."

Lin Que put down his soy milk and walked from the ladder to Xu Changge's side.

Xu Changge tilted the phone screen slightly toward him.

The two of them finished reading the detailed rules together.

The defense rules were written in great detail.

The authors who made the final ten must arrive at the China Writers Association building on time within three days to participate in the live defense.

Each person would be assigned an independent defense time slot, facing a questioning panel composed of five to seven final judges.

The entire process would be recorded.

The entire process would be under the supervision of accredited media.

The judges had the right to ask questions about any details of the work, including but not limited to:

creative motivation, logic of character design, the basis for word choices in specific paragraphs, reasons for traces of revisions, and the authenticity of material sources.

There was no time limit for answers, but the judges could ask follow-up questions, interrupt, or demand evidence at any time.

The final ranking would be determined based on a combination of the final evaluation score (60% weight) and the live defense performance (40% weight).

Chen Jiahao stuck his head between the two of them, reading through these rules line by line.

Upon reaching the end, he gasped.

"This is way too brutal."

Xu Changge closed the page and put the phone back on the table.

"This is an anti-fraud mechanism added to the Kunpeng Award starting from the fourth edition."

His tone was flat, like he was stating facts in a classroom.

"There was a scandal in the third edition.

A publishing group paid a large sum to buy a manuscript from an veteran author as an entry for the Youth Award. It received an extremely high score during the anonymous final judging stage and almost made it into the final top three.

Later, an insider reported it, and after the Writers Association verified it, they disqualified the work, but the credibility of the judging had already been damaged."

"So, starting from the fourth edition, all authors who make the final ten must attend the live defense."

Xu Changge looked at Chen Jiahao.

"The judging panel will conduct extremely precise questioning regarding the details of the text.

Every choice of wording, the logic behind the arrangement of every scene, and the psychological deduction of characters behind every piece of dialogue."

"As long as there is one part of the manuscript with an unclear origin, it will definitely be exposed within three rounds of questioning.

Even if the entire piece was written by the author themselves, relying only on intuition while writing,

if they haven't thought through every choice, the defense panel will pry open the loopholes bit by bit."

Chen Jiahao swallowed hard.

"It has to be three rounds?"

"At least three rounds."

Xu Changge said.

"Every judge has the right to ask questions independently.

They will approach the same text from completely different angles.

The first person asks why you used this word, the second person asks if this word has an intertextual relationship with a certain description in Chapter 3, and the third person directly questions the source of your material."

"Every answer will become the starting point for the next question."

"The more precise the answer, the deeper the subsequent questioning.

The more vague the answer, the more they will drill into the loopholes."

The room was quiet for a few seconds.

Chen Jiahao clutched his phone, his knuckles turning white.

"This isn't just a matter of writing well anymore."

"Correct."

Xu Changge nodded.

"Psychological resilience and on-the-spot adaptability are also within the scope of the assessment.

Some authors write top-tier work, but they panic when faced with questioning, and once they panic, they easily contradict themselves.

If there is silence for more than thirty seconds on the defense stage, the question will be recorded as an invalid response and will be factored into the final defense performance."

"Damn..."

Chen Jiahao sat down on the edge of the bed; most of the ecstasy on his face had faded, replaced by a complex expression.

He looked at Lin Que and Xu Changge, then looked down at the phone in his hand.

The ten names were still on the screen.

His name was not among them.

No one in the room broke the silence about this.

The messages in the group chat were still scrolling.

Some were analyzing the competition regions of the other seven finalists, some were discussing the details of the defense rules, and some were celebrating.

But in Dormitory 303, the silence that had just settled remained, heavy and unbroken.

Xu Changge raised his eyes to look at Chen Jiahao and quickly caught the emptiness in his smile.

Chen Jiahao's smile was still hanging on his face, but it was no longer as full as it had been just a moment ago.

Xu Changge recalled the public reading stage.

Chen Jiahao and Tang He had gone to the Northeast together for research.

During those days, the two often discussed material and exchanged writing techniques together.

Chen Jiahao had praised Tang He's mastery of urban themes in the group chat more than once.

Now Tang He had made it into the top ten, while he had been left outside the door.

This disparity was more like looking into a mirror, seeing the position one hadn't reached yet.

You think you've walked far enough, only to turn around and find that the person walking with you has reached a place you haven't yet attained.

Xu Changge organized his wording in his mind a few times.

He wanted to say something, but he was afraid of being too blunt, which might make the other person feel pitied.

Chen Jiahao was a lively and carefree person who usually laughed everything off and didn't take things to heart.

But deep down, he had a competitive spirit.

He clearly had an easier path,

yet he insisted on throwing himself into this most brutal youth literature competition.

After deliberating for a long time, Xu Changge finally spoke softly.

...