586: Chapter 586 Seven Profound Lessons

In the northern suburbs of Shizhuang City, on the top floor of an old six-story residential building.

Sun Qiming had converted the balcony into a semi-study.

A folding table, a swivel chair, and a laptop that had seen five years of use.

A sticky note was pasted on the top left corner of the screen with four words: "Revise it again."

The sticky note had already yellowed.

Next to it was another one, pasted a year ago.

It only had one line: "Don't scream pain for the characters."

He wrote that at 4:00 AM after finishing Jian Shen's The Miracles of the Namiya General Store.

Sun Qiming stared at the list just refreshed on the Writers Association's official website.

Ten names listed alphabetically; his name was sandwiched between the fourth and sixth positions.

He read it three times to be sure he hadn't misread it.

In the enamel mug at his side was overnight tea, the liquid already darkened.

Under the mug was a book with curled edges, The Miracles of the Namiya General Store published by Xinchao Publishing House.

On the back cover was a line of tiny text: "By Jian Shen."

Outside the window was the skyline of the Shizhuang suburbs, rows of low-rise buildings, and in the distance, the tower cranes of a construction site moving slowly.

This rental unit cost 1,200 a month. The kitchen and living room were connected, and the bedroom was so small that once a bed and a wardrobe were put in, there was no room to turn around.

Sun Qiming had lived here for three years.

Three years ago, he resigned from his stable job at a newspaper to write full-time.

The last Kunpeng Award had only earned him two interviews, three months of buzz, and a few commission emails that quickly went nowhere.

After the buzz faded, he returned to this rental unit just the same.

Now, he contributes to three literary magazines.

80 to 100 per thousand characters, depending on the subject and the publication.

After submitting twenty thousand characters a month, half of it goes to rent and utilities, and the remaining money has to be calculated by how many meals he eats a day.

If payment is delayed, he swaps dinner for hot water and steamed buns.

His parents transfer a thousand yuan to his card every month.

He hasn't touched a cent of it.

That money is like a retreat route; the more he can't hold on, the more he refuses to touch it.

The Pottery Kiln took ten months to write.

But the time he truly started writing dates back to a year ago.

That night, two unfinished short stories lay on his desktop.

The word count was sufficient, the sentences were neat, but reading them felt like a highly polished homework assignment.

He knew something was wrong.

He couldn't find the root cause.

At 11:00 PM, he clicked on The Miracles of the Namiya General Store just released by Xinchao Publishing House.

The review section was very noisy.

Some complained it was slow.

Some said it was too bland.

Others left only three words: "Read it and cried."

Sun Qiming wanted to know why a quiet book could make so many people break down.

He read from 11:00 PM to 3:40 AM.

When he closed the last page, he didn't cry.

But his chest felt as if a wet cloth had been pressed against it, and even his breathing had slowed down.

What truly struck him was that Grandpa Namiya's loneliness was always hidden behind the reply letter.

That old man, approaching the end of his life, sat in the back hall of the general store every night, opening strangers' worries one by one, then carefully writing reply letters.

He lit the way for many people.

Yet he never brought up his own regrets.

Jian Shen didn't speak for him either.

That loneliness was hidden in the creases of the paper, in the light glowing late at night, in the reply letters that could never be sent.

Sun Qiming sat on the broken swivel chair, staring at the ceiling for a long time.

He finally understood where he had lost before.

He was too eager to explain for his characters.

He was afraid readers wouldn't understand the pain, so he wrote the pain as crying.

He was afraid readers wouldn't feel the bitterness, so he wrote the bitterness as an accusation.

Before the characters could stand firm, he had already rushed out to speak for them.

That morning at 4:00 AM, he wrote that sticky note.

"Don't scream pain for the characters."

Since then, he started learning to write again.

Six months ago, the Xinchao Publishing House official website posted an announcement.

"Social Literature Workshop" first batch of students recruitment.

No contract needed.

No fees required.

Just submit a work under 5,000 words and a creative statement.

The course designer column had two words: Jian Shen.

When Sun Qiming saw the announcement, his finger hovered over the mouse for a full two minutes without clicking.

The application form had only one question.

"Why do you write?"

He stared at the line, thinking for the whole night.

The next morning at 5:00 AM, he opened a document and wrote his answer.

"There is an earth kiln in my hometown that collapsed over a decade ago."

"The person who guards the kiln still goes to push the door every morning to look at the thermometer inside."

"The kiln stopped firing long ago, and the mercury column won't rise again."

"I want to keep his hand pushing the door, the dust on his shoes, and the look in his eyes when he checks the thermometer."

"When that kiln is completely gone, at least someone will know he guarded it."

Three weeks later, he received the acceptance notice.

The Xinchao Social Literature Workshop had no classroom.

The course was delivered via online audio and text annotations.

Homework was submitted every two weeks, and the Xinchao editorial team returned feedback for each piece.

What truly made Sun Qiming change his pen was the seven core lessons recorded by Jian Shen.

The first lesson had a title with only four words: "Before Seeing."

The voice in the audio was processed, low and steady, with a perfectly slow pace.

Jian Shen said:

"If you want to write about a person, first confirm whether your gaze will make them uncomfortable."

"Once you use their suffering for display, you haven't stood by their side yet."

"True observation is letting yourself retreat into a corner, retreating into a chair, a faded doorplate."

"You don't exist."

"You are only responsible for remembering."

When Sun Qiming listened to this lesson, he was sitting next to that half-collapsed earth kiln in his hometown.

He had originally brought a voice recorder, an interview outline, and a dozen prepared questions.

After listening to that audio, he closed the outline.

For those two days, he didn't knock on any doors.

He just sat by the kiln.

Watching wild grass drill out of the cracks in the kiln wall.

Watching rainwater flow down the dome.

Watching a spider weave half a web at the kiln mouth, only to be blown away by the wind.

The next evening, Uncle Li from the neighboring yard passed by and stopped to look at him.

"You back to look at the kiln?"

"Yeah."

"The kiln has collapsed like this, what's there to look at."

Uncle Li waved his hand and left.

Sun Qiming didn't chase after him to ask.

He just remembered the expression on Uncle Li's face when he spoke.

It was a kind of ordinary indifference.

As if the kiln disappearing wasn't worth regretting.

At that moment, he found the root of The Pottery Kiln.

Some things are quietly disappearing.

So quietly that even the people who once lived by it are too lazy to mention it.

There was a sentence in Jian Shen's third lesson that he copied onto the flyleaf of his notebook.

"The truly heavy tragedy is when something has disappeared for many years, and the people around don't even bother to feel regret."

The third draft of The Pottery Kiln started from this sentence.

The kiln keeper didn't need to be tragic.

He didn't need to stand in front of the abandoned kiln and shout about how long he had guarded it.

He pushed open the kiln door every morning to look at the thermometer.

The kiln chamber was already cold.

The thermometer's mercury column would never move again.

He still looked.

By the third draft, Sun Qiming knew the character had stood up.

The workshop editor wrote in the annotation:

"The stillness of the kiln keeper is enough."

"What needs to be done next is to control your own hands."

Sun Qiming pasted this annotation next to his computer as well.

Writing to the seventh chapter, he got stuck for two weeks.

He didn't know how to end it.

At 2:00 AM, the computer screen was blindingly bright; he sat until his eyes were sore, suddenly remembering a sentence his grandfather said when he was a child.

"It's not scary if the kiln is cold; what's scary is if even the ashes are swept clean."

He wrote this sentence into the ending.

After finishing, he stared at the screen for a long time.

The ashes were still there.

The kiln keeper's life hadn't been completely wiped away.

In the final chapter, the kiln keeper didn't cry, nor did he say goodbye.

He just opened the kiln door.

The ashes were still inside.

The wind blew in, stirring up a bit of old dust.

The kiln keeper stopped at the door.

And the story stopped there.

When the fourth draft was finished, there were nine days left until the Kunpeng submission deadline.

Sun Qiming read it through twice more.

He changed seventeen awkward words.

He deleted two paragraphs of scenery that he was reluctant to lose but were useless.

At 3:00 AM, he opened the workshop student homepage.

All seven homework annotations were still there.

The first two had yellow marks.

Keep digging deeper.

The third turned green.

Direction correct.

Under the last assignment, the editor left only one line.

"You can walk forward on your own now."

Sun Qiming looked at that sentence and sat in the rental unit until dawn.

Then, he closed the page and submitted The Pottery Kiln.

For the first three days after the public reading channel opened, The Pottery Kiln had almost no sound.

No publisher promotion.

No author following.

The synopsis was written with restraint.

A kiln that stopped firing, a person guarding the kiln.

There wasn't even a gimmick.

The turning point happened on the day he posted a long post for qin opera.

He wrote for two hours.

He wrote that post only because qin opera truly struck him.

Auntie Song's broken operatic singing.

Old Zhao's cigarette that was never lit.

The nine pairs of rubber shoes worn out by twenty years of patrol lines.

That work didn't write pain as crying.

The pain fell into the actions, into the silence, into the breath that readers couldn't release for a long time after finishing.

Sun Qiming saw the same training traces in qin opera.

Steadier than him.

And sharper.

He thought right then that Lin Que and Jian Shen must have some connection.

Even without a direct apprenticeship, Lin Que was already walking on the path that Jian Shen had carved out for this era.

At the end of the long post, he wrote a sentence:

"Literature doesn't need to cry for the characters; the readers can hear it themselves."

When he sent it out, Sun Qiming smiled.

A year ago, this sentence didn't belong to him.

That was what Jian Shen taught him.

Many readers clicked into The Pottery Kiln following his homepage.

At first, they were just curious.

They wanted to see how the person who dared to publicly support qin opera wrote himself.

After reading, the comment section slowly changed.

Someone wrote:

"This piece is also very quiet, but after reading it, there's always a kiln door in my heart that hasn't closed."

This comment was pinned to the top of the hot comments.

From the fourth day, the readership of The Pottery Kiln climbed up.

By the time the public reading channel closed, the completion rate was stable at 75.4%.

Among over four thousand works, this number was solid enough.

Sun Qiming withdrew his gaze from the list.

He didn't celebrate.

He didn't post on social media.

He closed the Writers Association website and opened the folder on his desktop named "Defense Preparation."

The first document was the full text of The Pottery Kiln with paragraph-by-paragraph annotations.

Behind every sentence, he wrote why he wrote it that way at the time.

The second document was a source material traceability table.

Hometown photos, kiln videos, dialect recordings, thermometer close-ups, the offhand remark by Uncle Li, all marked with time and location.

The third document was a self-interrogation checklist.

He treated himself as a judge, dismantling his own manuscript slash by slash.

In the last folder, there were screenshots of the seven workshop assignment annotations.

If the defense panel asked about his creative method, he would explain it completely.

He had listened to Jian Shen's lessons.

He had indeed been corrected by those seven lessons.

This was nothing to be ashamed of.

He had only dismantled one-third of it.

There were still three days.

Enough time.

The phone on the table suddenly vibrated.

Sun Qiming glanced at the screen.

A strange number.

Starting with 010.

A landline in the capital.

He stared at the number for two seconds and answered.

"Hello."

On the other end of the phone was a middle-aged man's voice.

The pace was steady, the wording polite.

"Teacher Sun Qiming, congratulations on entering the Kunpeng finals."

Sun Qiming didn't reply.

The other party paused for half a second and continued:

"I am the head of the Youth Content Center at Xinrong Culture, Jiang Chengxun."

"Sorry to disturb you."

"We would like to chat with you about a cooperation plan before you come to the capital for the defense."