590: Chapter 590 The Timeline Doesn't Lie

Professor Zhang's gaze landed on Lin Que's face.

The defense hall was so quiet that one could hear the low hum of the air conditioning.

The terminals of the seven questioning judges were all simultaneously stopped on Chapter 4 of "qin opera".

After the system completed the association verification,

the screens of Xu Zhengqing, Su Mubai, and Elder Cui Wen lit up with red conflict-of-interest indicators in turn,

their scoring and questioning privileges were locked, leaving only the access point for observation comments.

A mentor's questioning privileges from a previous manuscript would be re-verified upon entering a related work.

As long as records of mentorship, kinship, or in-depth review were triggered, privileges were frozen on the spot.

The core questions for the first round were compiled by all judges in advance and confirmed collectively.

Subsequent follow-up questions would unfold in real-time based on the answers given on-site; any explanation could become the target for the next blade.

Professor Zhang's question, confirmed by the collective of judges, pointed precisely to the most controversial part of "qin opera".

Lin Que was very clear about this.

That counter-question just now was the boundary Lin Que had drawn for the question.

Professor Zhang did not take up his counter-question.

The old man closed the printed manuscript in his hands, his voice dropping slightly.

"Student Lin, the precise definition of literary truth can be discussed later.

For now, let's verify the material chain:

Did those twelve seconds come from on-site records, or were they rearranged during the drafting stage?"

His index finger tapped on the desktop.

"You recorded in your field research appendix that when Old Zhao patrols the line, his single-step interval is usually between 0.78 and 0.83 seconds, which converts to about 72 to 77 steps per minute."

"At the same time, there are four closing syllables in that piece of qin opera by Auntie Song that happen to coincide with his four heavy footsteps."

"You wrote these twelve seconds as the most important rhythmic node of the entire chapter."

"I want to know, did this brief coincidence come from on-site records, or was it amplified and rearranged by you?"

This question hit the mark perfectly.

A line of text refreshed on the delayed news feed in the hall outside.

[First follow-up question: Questioning the authentic source of the core rhythm.]

The comment section under the post paused for three seconds. Then it exploded.

[This question is too ruthless; it's asking directly if it's fabricated or real.]

[The hardest part of realistic writing is this line, that seam between fiction and documentary.]

[If he admits it's designed, the judges will continue to ask if the characters were used as tools. If he says it's real, he has to provide evidence.]

[Wait, as a student, how could he provide evidence of "personally observing the step frequency"? He didn't bring measuring equipment for his field research.]

In the defense hall, the timer screen began to tick.

One second. Two seconds.

Lin Que's fingertips pressed lightly on the annotated manuscript on the desk.

A scene appeared in his mind.

A night in Muchuan Town with torrential rain.

On the patrol line of the old factory area, Old Zhao was wearing those worn-out rubber shoes, stepping through the puddles on the road.

The rhythm of the splashing water mixed with the intermittent qin opera coming from Auntie Song's window in the distance.

He was standing under the eaves outside the east wall at that time.

The sound of the rain drowned out the distant noise, and under the tin shed, only two sounds remained clear:

Old Zhao's footsteps splashing through the water, and the intermittent qin opera from the window of Building No. 3.

That was what he had truly heard.

Three seconds.

Lin Que opened his eyes.

"Judge, let me answer your first question."

His voice was steady. His speaking pace was neither fast nor slow.

"The fourteen patrol audio recordings, numbered A-01 to A-14, all have corresponding field notes.

I used time codes to verify the intervals at which Old Zhao passed the fixed gate posts, and the step frequency was derived from that.

Recording B-17 from the rainy night on the fifteenth day was used to verify the four heavy water-splashing sounds and the positions of the four closing syllables."

"During on-site observation, I indeed did not follow Old Zhao with a stopwatch to time him."

Professor Zhang's eyebrows twitched.

Lin Que continued.

"I stayed in Muchuan for a month.

For the first fourteen days, I barely wrote a word.

I only did one thing: familiarize myself with it."

"The main text didn't start until the fifteenth day.

During those first fourteen days, in the early morning, I sat by the North Pond, noting down the times the old workers passed the embankment and how they addressed each other.

At noon, I walked repeatedly along the old cafeteria, the heat treatment workshop, and the east wall, figuring out every door and every echo.

In the evening, I waited outside Building No. 3 to listen to Auntie Song start singing, and at night, after obtaining Old Zhao's consent, I followed him on his patrol.

After fourteen days, I could recognize people by their footsteps and identify which building it was by the sound of closing doors.

Only then did I dare to write about Muchuan."

"It rained heavily on the night of the fifteenth day. I was standing under the tin shed outside the east wall to shelter from the rain. Old Zhao was patrolling as usual. Auntie Song was singing as usual."

"Both sounds had appeared in the same factory area before.

In that rain, for the first time, I heard the four heavy water-splashing sounds continuously locking onto the four closing syllables, lasting for about twelve seconds."

Lin Que paused for a moment.

"They were not perfectly synchronized from beginning to end.

Auntie Song would drag out the high notes, and Old Zhao would slow down half a step when stepping through a puddle.

Most of the time, the two sounds were staggered."

"But for one segment, lasting about twelve seconds, they suddenly merged together."

"When Old Zhao walked through the shortest straight path between Building No. 3 and Building No. 4, those four heavy sounds of his shoe soles hitting the water happened to land exactly on the closing syllables of those two lines of Auntie Song's lyrics."

"Twelve seconds. Not the whole time."

Professor Zhang's pen stopped.

He lowered his head and opened Chapter 4 of the main text of "qin opera".

He remembered that description very clearly.

In the text, the synchronization between Old Zhao and Auntie Song indeed only lasted for a short segment, not throughout the entire piece.

Lin Que looked at him.

"Professor Zhang, I did not write the two of them as a pendulum synchronized from start to finish.

I only wrote about their brief coincidence within a specific space."

"The physical conditions for this coincidence are very simple."

Lin Que reached out and opened Chapter 3 of the annotated manuscript.

"The thirty-meter straight path corresponds to the complete duration of two lines of lyrics.

The twelve seconds actually written into the text only appear in the window where the four closing syllables concentrate in the second half.

Her breathing and the positions of the four closing syllables have remained stable for years; that is the temporal basis."

"Chance provided the moment of that rainy night, and twenty years of repetitive life provided the conditions for it to hold true."

His fingers moved away from the annotated manuscript.

"And then, on a deeper level.

Old Zhao had been listening to the opera outside the heat treatment workshop for twenty years.

When Liang Shoushan was alive, after finishing work every day, he would sit with Old Zhao on the stone stool outside the workshop to listen to Auntie Song sing."

"Twenty years. The same road. The same tune."

"Old Zhao's footsteps had been soaked in this melody for twenty years.

He wouldn't deliberately try to match the beat when walking, but his body had already memorized that rhythm."

"Just like after a person has walked the same road thousands of times, they know where the steps are and where the potholes are even with their eyes closed."

"The coincidence of the footsteps and the opera tune stems from the body memory accumulated over twenty years of repetitive life."

There was no sound in the defense hall.

Professor Zhang stared at the timeline calculation on the screen.

Thirty meters. Forty steps. Thirty-two seconds. The third to fourth lines of the free-tempo singing. Thirty seconds.

He cross-referenced these two sets of data three times.

He could not find any loopholes.

The time matched. The space matched. The logic of the characters' actions matched.

Professor Zhang looked at the timeline again.

Such a margin of error is hard to deduce just from study-room theorizing; only long-term on-site observation would leave such traces.

Professor Zhang's hand hovered above the scoring terminal.

He paused for two seconds.

He pressed a key.

A line of record popped up on the screen.

[Follow-up response: Logically consistent, material sourcing complete.]

In the hall outside, Chen Jiahao finally relaxed his fists, which he had been clenching for over ten minutes.

He leaned back into his chair and exhaled a long breath.

"Holy—crap—"

Beside him, Dan Yi held his water cup without moving, his gaze still pinned to the screen.

The comment section of the delayed news feed had been flooded.

[Did he really count steps on-site for fourteen days? This density of field research...]

[The key is that he was able to lock onto that thirty-meter straight path from fourteen days of observation; this positioning ability is terrifying.]

[The idea of twenty years of muscle memory is too ruthless. You can't even refute it. A person has walked in the same place for over seven thousand days; it's already carved into their body.]

[This is only the first round and the intensity is already this high; what follows...]

Inside the defense hall.

Professor Zhang put down his pen.

He did not ask any further questions.

This line had been blocked off by Lin Que.

From physical space to time calculations to psychological logic, the three layers of evidence were seamless.

Xue Hongchuan glanced at the judging panel.

His gaze stopped at the third position on the right.

Elder Jiang.

Sixty-seven years old. Tenured professor at the School of Liberal Arts of Beijing Normal University.

A judge for the final defense round of this year's Kunpeng Award.

One of the authorities in the field of domestic realistic literary criticism.

At the same time, he was also Shen Jiangping's mentor.

The phone call a few days ago that harshly criticized "three or two things in jincheng" was made from his office.

As soon as this identity appeared, the atmosphere both inside and outside the hall became noticeably heavier.

Elder Jiang valued lineage.

He valued the text even more.

He opened the annotated manuscript in front of him. His movements were very slow.

His gaze landed on a certain spot in Chapter 5 of "qin opera", his fingertips pressing on a line of text.

Subsequently, he raised his head.

His gaze passed through the gap between the two terminals on the table and landed steadily on Lin Que.

"For the second round, let me ask."

...