Chapter 168 Fire in stone, body in dream

After writing this book, he re-examined it. Hundreds of years passed by while turning the pages with his fingers. A gust of breeze was not only full of the weight of a period of history, but also made him lament the insignificance of a person and the shortness of life, just like sparks bursting out of stones.

Some people spend their entire lives with earth-shaking thoughts in their hearts and shocking actions, which eventually fall on paper, but they are just like the sparks emitted by grinding a stone. The difference is that this person’s sparks are brighter, while those of others are darker, and more people are insignificant and lost in the smoke.

However, we can never say that life is meaningless. Countless sparks flicker and extinguish, and finally they become vast and flicker into the vast Milky Way.

He wrote the original poem from which the name originated on the first page of the work:

Man and ape say goodbye.

Only a few stones have been polished, when I was a child.

When there is a flame in the copper and iron furnace, how can you guess it? Only a few thousand cold and hot.

It’s rare in this world to smile, and we will bow to each other on the battlefield.

It flowed everywhere,

The blood of Jiaoyuan.

After reading this article, my head felt like snow,

But remember the spots and lines.

The sacred things of the Five Emperors and Three Sovereigns deceived countless passers-by. How many romantic figures are there?

After the bandit Zhizhuang became famous, King Chen stood up and waved the yellow ax.

The song is not yet finished,

Dongfang Bai.

…

Lu Qingxuan stood at the door of the examination room, with a straight face, reminding everyone to hand over their mobile phones. Wang Zixu threw everything on him to the front of the classroom and sat down in his seat.

In addition to Lu Qingxuan and Du Kezhu, there was also a slightly older male teacher standing in front, saying in a rich voice:

"Please check your exam number and seat carefully, and store books, materials and other items irrelevant to the exam in In front of the podium, do not whisper or move around. Now let’s read out the rules of the examination room. Article 1: Candidates should enter the examination room in advance and are not allowed to enter the examination room after ten minutes. ”

The general meaning of what he said is that you can do nothing but be in a daze. So Wang Zixu was in a daze.

He was sitting in a seat at the back of the lecture hall. Looking around, he saw bodies full of spirit and vitality. Sitting among this group of people, he could not help but feel age anxiety. The wind blowing in from the window made the curtains bulge.

Du Kezhu walked into the classroom, wearing a baseball cap with a few strands of green hair sticking out from under the hat. This was her greatest respect for the rules of the examination room.

Several students stared at her, rubbed their eyes vigorously, and then stared at her again, wondering if they had seen it wrong. Wang Zixu lowered his head, secretly thinking not to be as distracted as them.

The clock hanging in the middle of the wall kept ticking every minute, and Wang Zixu felt that time was getting harder and harder to bear. Because he found that his condition was so bad that he could not even concentrate on the next exam.

Since finalizing the manuscript in the early morning and sending it to the editor of "Get" at 8:30 in the morning, he has been checking his mobile phone. At 8:45, the message showed that the other party had received the document but had not responded.

Before handing over his phone just now, he checked it one last time, but there was still no reply. He comforted himself in his mind that his "Fire in the Stone" is a work of 600,000 words. Even if you read it roughly, it will take several days. The editor will definitely not reply so quickly.

Although this was the case, he still couldn't help but want to check the messages on his phone over and over again. After handing the phone over, he felt empty, as if he had lost something.

He knew that his behavior was called stereotyped behavior, just like a brown bear in the zoo spinning in circles over and over again, or a chimpanzee running and jumping back and forth. He is like an animal enslaved by literature. His continuous failures in writing have caused him to lose all self-confidence. He really wants the editor of "Acquisition" to make a final decision on whether his hard-earned work will work or not. If it works, he will have no regrets even if he dies. If it doesn't work, it can be regarded as giving him a happy life.

“Answer sheets will be distributed below. Please fill in your name and exam number in advance, and be careful not to make mistakes.”

Wang Zixu thought in his heart that if it didn’t work out in the end, he would submit his manuscript to Xihe Literature and Art and serialize it in Xihe Literature and Art. Since he won the first place in the Xihe Literary Association and was appointed as the vice chairman of the Xihe Literary Association, no one dared to drag his manuscript. Xihe Literary and Art will definitely publish the full text.

The circulation of Xihe Literature and Art is only one or two thousand copies, so no one will read it. Let the big guys in Xihe have fun and look at the vice chairman of the Literary and Art Association.

Lu Qingxuan’s bare hand flashed before his eyes and gently handed the answer sheet to him. Although she was already familiar with him, she didn't show that they knew each other at all. As expected of a college student, even his movements are so gentle. Wang Zixu opened his pen and began to fill in the answer sheet.

"The test papers will be distributed below. Please check whether the sealed bags are complete."

He did not raise his head to check, and then thought that after the work was published on Xihe Literature and Art, he would stop writing and rent out the house in Donghai. Go, go travel around the world, ride a bicycle from the East China Sea all the way to Kashgar, cross the vast no-man's land to Tehran, pass through Damascus, and go west to Amsterdam. Then abandon the car and board a ship, cross the Cape of Good Hope, go east across the Indian Ocean, and finally stay in Sadmandu to build Nepal.

When he came to his senses, he suddenly discovered that he had already answered several questions on his test paper. He was shocked. He turned back to check and found that there were no problems with all the answers.

This year’s ideological and political examination questions are quite tricky, especially the material analysis at the end, which incorporates several newly proposed concepts and is closely integrated with current affairs, torturing this year’s candidates almost to the point of going crazy.

Sitting in the examination room, Diao Yiwen was one of the people scratching her head. She clearly remembered those contents, as if they were in the fog in her mind, as if she had seen them in Xiao Xiurong's place but could never catch the trace.

She wrote that her mentality collapsed and she began to regret: Why did she find a job in Xihe in the first place? If I didn't have this free year, but took the exam as a fresh graduate like many students around me, and didn't maintain my study attitude forever during the gap period, would I have a headache now?

Of course, Wang Zixu only found out about this later.

At that time, he pulled away from his thoughts, looked around the examination room, and found that the candidates were scratching their heads, then lowered their heads, the tip of the pen was shaking, and the answers were flowing out naturally.

Although the title is tricky, these concepts are nothing in the Xihe City Research Laboratory, and they were even written by Mei Rucheng. Politics itself is the same thing, and Mei Rucheng's materials were dismantled, crushed, and written clearly, so it is a new concept for others, but it is an old point of view for him.

Wang Zixu stayed in the unit for nine years. He helped draft and organize the party building and reporting materials every year. It was naturally very painful at the time, but it also sharpened his writing skills and gave him, a science student, a solid political foundation.

A few years ago, he would have thought that writing materials was a waste of time and that writing eight-part essays was a pure waste of time. He never imagined at the time that one day he would take the postgraduate entrance examination and put all these to use.

As long as you remember it, all the experiences in your life will come back to you in some form at some point, allowing you to live the life you want.

 …

In the afternoon, there were clearly a few candidates missing in the examination room, and Lu Qingxuan simply removed the scratch paper from his seat.

Deserter. snort. She thought so. Then fill in the missing exam on the signature form.

But this year’s exam questions were indeed biased, and she was a little worried about those two colleagues.

As an invigilator, she would walk around the examination room, sometimes going to the vicinity of Diao Yiwen and Wang Zixu to see how they were doing.

But she was afraid of affecting the mentality of the two people, so she deliberately stood one or two rows behind them - which caused great pressure on the buddies two rows behind them - judging from the two people's answer state, Wang Zixu wrote quickly, but it was not clear whether it was correct, and Diao Yiwen did the questions more carefully, but she didn't look very confident.

Two days passed by in a flash. Perhaps considering that Wang Zixu was taking exams and fearing that it would affect his mentality, everyone tacitly agreed not to contact him - I don’t know if it was because of this that even the editor of "Getting" did not contact him.

The manuscripts he submitted were like nothing, let alone feedback, he didn’t even get a “received” reply. This made his heart sink day by day.

After the last exam, the candidates were finally relieved, and Lu Qingxuan was also relieved. There was no need to pretend not to know each other. After collecting the test papers, he asked Diao Yiwen and Wang Zixu:

"How did you do in the exam?"

Diao Yiwen had a sullen face and was upset: "It's a complete mess. I feel like I'm doing okay in the two subjects today, but the two subjects I took yesterday were terrible. I almost didn't want to do it today. Come."

Lu Qingxuan asked: "Have you ever answered correctly?"

"No, I'm afraid it will affect your mentality."

“Forget it, let’s not talk about this anymore, relax after the exam,” Lu Qingxuan said, “Sister Xiaochun told me that I will treat you two to dinner tonight and give you a good reward.”

Diao Yiwen asked: "Who is there? Is it just our magazine?"

"Yes, I heard that she even calls Editor-in-Chief Chen."

“Okay, I’m going.”

“I won’t go,” Wang Zixu stared at the phone and picked up his schoolbag, “I have something to do.”

Lu Qingxuan begged: "Is there anything more important than eating?"

"It's a big deal." Wang Zixu stared at the phone screen, "Help me Tell Chen Qingluo and Ning Chunyan that my manuscript will be approved."

On the screen of the mobile phone, there was a message from the editor of "Get":

"The manuscript is good, are you interested in meeting?"

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