64: It was not a coincidence

As the final exam bell rang,

it severed the tense atmosphere within the examination hall.

Thousands of examination papers were swiftly collected by the invigilators.

Thousands of candidates rushed toward the exit like a flood unleashed from a sluice gate.

Some were cheering with joy, others were dejected,

but most were rubbing their aching wrists, wearing expressions of relief.

Lin Que mingled with the crowd, slowly strolling outside.

He had finished the essay early in the examination hall, but because Shen Qingqiu had specifically instructed him not to hand in the paper ahead of time before she left,

he had also taken the time to mentally outline the plot for the next three chapters of “the human world is like a prison,”

and his mind was currently in a period of fatigue following extreme activity.

Just as he walked out of the venue's main entrance, his shoulder was slapped hard.

“Lin Que! That’s divine! Truly divine!”

Zhao Zichen’s face, which was usually stern, was now flushed red with excitement,

and his glasses were fogged up with a layer of excited mist.

He tightly clutched his pencil case,

and if he hadn't been mindful of the surrounding crowd, he probably would have given Lin Que a bear hug.

“Calm down.”

Lin Que took a step sideways and dismissively patted his shoulder.

“It’s just an exam, is it necessary to be like this?

Anyone who didn’t know better would think you just escaped from a hideout in Northern Myanmar.”

“You don’t understand!”

Zhao Zichen couldn't suppress the smile on his face, and his speaking speed was like a machine gun.

“Yesterday on the balcony you told me that time waits for no one,

and told me not to always focus on elaborate carvings but to have some spirit.

It’s such a coincidence—today's topic was exactly 'Waiting'!”

He took a deep breath, as if still savoring the rapid writing during the exam:

“The moment I saw the topic, my mind went blank!

I didn't use my old routine of piling up flowery words; I directly used 'time waits for no one' as the introduction!”

Several students from Jiangcheng No. 1 High School also gathered around,

curiously listening to the top student's debrief.

Zhao Zichen became more animated as he spoke, gesturing with his fingers in the air:

“I wrote three levels.

The first level was about Wei Sheng Holding the Pillar—that was the waiting of trustworthiness, a small personal righteousness.

The second level was about 'The quiet girl is beautiful, waiting for me at the corner of the wall' from the Book of Songs,

that was the waiting of beauty, the reliance on emotion.

The third level, I shifted my focus and wrote directly about Su Wu Tending Sheep!

That was nineteen years of waiting, the great righteousness of nation and family,

it was the desolation and persistence of 'time waits for no one' yet having to wait!”

After he finished speaking, he looked at Lin Que expectantly.

“How is it? Isn't this structure much better than my previous pretentious drivel?”

Lin Que listened to this textbook-style “step-by-step progression” and couldn't help but smile internally.

It was indeed a good article.

Steady, accurate, and impactful.

It conformed to mainstream aesthetics, addressed the topic precisely, and had lofty intentions.

If nothing went wrong, this was indeed a standard first-prize model essay.

“Pretty good, very steady.”

Lin Que, hands in his pockets, gave a fair assessment.

“At least the overly pedantic air isn't so heavy anymore; it has a bit of human touch.”

“Just ‘pretty good’?”

Zhao Zichen was clearly not satisfied with this assessment, but he immediately let it go.

“Forget it, your standards are high.

But seriously, this time it was all thanks to your phrase ‘time waits for no one.’ It was practically prophetic!”

Lin Que smiled slightly,

his gaze passed through the noisy crowd toward the office building belonging to the Provincial Writers Association in the distance.

“It wasn't just right.”

He murmured softly.

“What?”

It was too noisy around them, so Zhao Zichen didn't hear clearly and leaned in to ask.

“What did you say was ‘just right’?”

“Nothing.”

Lin Que shrugged, hiding the knowing smile in his eyes.

“I said, luck is also part of strength.”

...Meanwhile,

In the suburbs of Jinling City, at the Zijin Villa Conference Hall.

This place had been temporarily requisitioned,

and converted into the grading center for the “Jieyou Cup” finals.

The hall was brightly lit,

hundreds of desks were arranged in neat square formations,

and behind every desk sat a grading teacher with a solemn expression.

They were core Chinese language teachers selected from across the province,

including many Super-Grade Teachers and subject leaders.

The air was filled with a mixture of tea, medicated oil, and old paper.

Although computer grading is now widespread,

in order to emphasize the sense of ceremony and seriousness of this competition,

the organizers specifically maintained the tradition of grading physical papers.

Three thousand five hundred examination papers were neatly divided into hundreds of sealed bags.

At this moment, the grading work had just begun less than an hour ago.

“Sigh...”

A middle-aged female teacher sitting in the third row took off her glasses,

rubbed her throbbing temples, and let out her thirtieth sigh of the day.

The male teacher next to her joked with a smile:

“What’s wrong, Teacher Liu? Tired already, and we just started?”

“Ai, it’s not tiredness, it’s boredom.”

Teacher Liu laid the papers in her hand flat on the desk.

“'Waiting' as a topic—I truly didn't expect the essays to be so identical.

I've looked at twenty papers in this stack,

eight are about waiting for flowers to bloom, six are about waiting for the rain to stop,

and five are about waiting for distant parents to come home.”

“Be content.”

The male teacher gave a wry smile.

“It’s worse over here. They’re all about waiting being the pain of a chrysalis breaking into a butterfly, waiting being the fire of the phoenix’s nirvana.

These kids today use terrifyingly ornate language,

but if you read closely, it's all empty rhetoric.

They are all just teenagers, yet what they write is more world-weary than me, an old man about to retire.”

“No choice, it’s exam-oriented education; they aim for stability.”

Teacher Liu put her glasses back on.

“As long as the structure is complete and the theme isn't flawed, they get a passing grade.

Trying to find something that truly stands out is nearly impossible.”

This was a true depiction of the grading environment.

For these experienced teachers,

grading was less appreciation and more a tedious assembly line operation.

Having worked for many years, they had long developed a pair of “Fiery Golden Eyes,”

usually needing only to glance at the opening and the conclusion,

and at most, peek at the paragraph structure in the middle,

and the quality of an article was essentially determined.

An average essay took less than two minutes.

Even the better ones were definitely finished within five minutes.

In the hall,

there was only the rustling sound of papers being turned and the friction sound of red pens marking the page.

This mechanical rhythm,

was like a massive precision instrument,

coldly filtering the dreams of these three thousand five hundred youths.

Until—

an old teacher sitting in the corner by the window suddenly stopped moving.

His name was Yan Zheng, the deputy leader of the Chinese Language Teaching and Research Group at Provincial Experimental Middle School,

and a notoriously strict judge.

He was famous for his strict grading, tolerating no flaws,

those pretentious and affected essays,

usually didn't survive ten seconds under his scrutiny.

At this moment, Yan Zheng was holding an examination paper.

His eyebrows were tightly furrowed, forming a deep 'chuan' character ( river).

The red marker pen was suspended in the air,

the tip only a few centimeters from the paper, yet it did not fall.

One minute passed.

Five minutes passed.

Ten minutes passed.

In the grading hall where every second counted, this pause was particularly abrupt.

The sound of turning pages rose and fell around him,

but only at his spot was there a deathly silence.

“Old Yan, what’s wrong?”

A teacher sitting next to him leaned over.

“Did you encounter some bizarre paper? Is the handwriting too messy to read?”

Yan Zheng paid no attention.

It was as if he hadn't heard his colleague's question at all; he was completely immersed in the thin examination paper.

His eyeballs moved rapidly within their sockets,

his breathing became somewhat hurried,

and the fingers clutching the paper turned pale from the excessive force.

The title of this examination paper,

consisted of only four characters:

“the person waiting to die”...