Honkai Impact 3rd: Join Anti-Entropy at the start and dominate the entertainment industry.

[Could Qu Yin and Qian Jian be old buddies or old girlfriends?]

This couple is so sweet, they keep doing this all the time, it's so satisfying!

I'm getting more and more curious about Ms. Qu Yin's identity! It's a pity she doesn't like to show her face; I really wish she could step into the limelight.

[It's normal for composers to avoid the limelight, but I'm quite curious about Senken-sensei's identity. Unfortunately, both of them are very mysterious; we don't even know if they're male or female.]

Time flew by and it was the last day of the month. As soon as midnight struck, the short story competition would officially begin.

As an annual grand event for short stories, this event is eagerly anticipated by countless short story enthusiasts. In their minds, the Short Story Awards is the world's premier platform for short story competition.

The authors of any work that shines in this event will receive widespread attention, and many famous short story authors have become famous overnight through this event.

Although there are fewer readers of short stories than readers of novels, readers of short stories are generally more literate than readers of novels.

Many people read long novels to pass the time, and often have to lose their minds to finish reading them; but when reading short novels, you have to be fully engaged, and sometimes it can be extremely mentally taxing.

After all, the most important thing about short stories is that they are "short." They must be all solid work and cannot be padded out. Once padded out, the short story is basically ruined.

Reading a lot of short stories can indeed be very helpful in improving one's literary literacy.

Therefore, although short stories have fewer readers, they are concise and excellent. Many literary masters are loyal fans of short stories, so the importance of short story awards is still very high. Whether you like reading or not, every reader of novels knows about them.

The short story award is not judged by a panel of judges, but by readers' votes. However, not everyone has the opportunity to vote; only those who have registered a secondary account on the official short story website can vote, and each account has three votes.

To reach level two, one would need to read more than one hundred short stories on the website.

This move aims to raise the bar for evaluating short stories. After all, some short stories have deeply hidden meanings that are not immediately apparent. Impatient readers might not finish reading them, which could result in the loss of many excellent works, something the organizers do not want to see.

Su Qingshan is a college student who loves reading literature, especially short stories. He has read countless short stories since childhood. Because of his love for reading, he has always been the top student in his class in Chinese. He chose to major in humanities in college and received a lot of scholarships every semester. He used these scholarships to buy more short stories, filling his bookshelves to the brim.

He likes short stories but dislikes novels, and he always looks down on popular novels.

He had tried reading some long novels, but the plots of those novels were all very clichéd, basically all starting with a story of transmigrating to another world and then collecting a harem along the way.

The male leads are basically all scumbags. They seem very affectionate, but they fall in love with every woman they meet and call it "universal love." Isn't that just being a womanizer? They're fickle and try to make it sound so noble.

The female characters are the same; it's as if they've never seen a man before. Some even fall in love at first sight simply because the male lead is handsome. It's as absurd as a trip to Antarctica—absurd to the extreme.

Some people deliberately write risqué content to attract readers.

Su Qingshan was speechless. How could this be compared to a short story?

However, he had also heard that the recent wildly popular novel "The King's Avatar" did not seem to be like those clichéd novels. In fact, there was no female lead in the book, and the subject matter was a very niche one.

Chapter 181 The Mysterious Veil

His classmates had recommended the novel to him and even lent him a physical copy, but he wasn't very interested, so the book remained unread on the bookshelf.

However, when he picked up the book, he glanced at the cover and vaguely remembered that the author of that novel was named Qian Jian.

Su Qingshan shook his head, putting those thoughts out of his mind. The most important thing now was to wait for the short story competition to begin. He had been waiting for this moment for a whole year.

He still frequently rereads his winning piece from last year, "Fish."

The novel's portrayal of ordinary, petty people is so vivid and detailed that it's incredibly satisfying to read.

Su Qingshan hopes that such a work will appear again in this year's event.

As soon as midnight struck, Su Qingshan opened the website for the Short Story Awards and scanned the list of entries. He quickly spotted works by several familiar authors.

These are all veteran short story authors whose works have stood the test of time and are loved by readers. As a result, many people clicked on their works to read them as soon as possible.

Su Qingshan also started reading with great eagerness.

In about an hour, he finished reading more than a dozen new works by established authors. As a seasoned bookworm, Su Qingshan clicked his tongue in satisfaction, saying that it was simply not enough.

He then began scanning the table of contents, selecting books that interested him to read.

He was very satisfied with the works in this year's competition, many of which were of good quality and very enjoyable to watch.

Since these are for competitions, the authors have all submitted their best works, so the entries in the catalog are unlikely to be bad.

Before he knew it, Su Qingshan had been watching for a full three hours. He felt a wave of drowsiness wash over him, and his eyelids began to droop.

He stretched and said, "It's about time to go to sleep."

Just as he was about to get up, he caught a glimpse of the author's name out of the corner of his eye.

"A Thousand Swords? 'Wolf'?"

"Could it be Qian Jian, the author of 'The King's Avatar'?"

He became a little curious, so he decided to watch another work before going to sleep.

Su Qingshan moved his mouse and clicked on the short story titled "Wolf." He looked at the screen with some surprise and found that the work in front of him was only one page long.

"It's so short? Is it even 500 words?"

As we all know, even short stories rarely have fewer than 1000 words. Normal works are between 2000 and 5000 words. After all, if the word count is too low, it is very difficult to tell a complete story.

Of course, if the same story can be written in even fewer words, it further demonstrates the author's formidable skill.

Su Qingshan also became interested: "Interesting. It's so short, what story does it tell?"

This novel is indeed very short, and the story is quite simple.

Su Qingshan finished reading it in less than half a minute, but instead of closing the page and leaving, he frowned and read it carefully again.

The story of this novel is so short that it can be summarized in just a few sentences:

A butcher bought some meat and was carrying a bamboo basket full of bones home at night when he encountered two wolves. He threw them the bones, but they ate them and still followed him. In the end, the butcher leaned against a haystack and confronted the two wolves.

After a while, one wolf left, while the remaining wolf sat on the ground pretending to sleep. The butcher took the opportunity to jump up and kill the wolf. Just as he was about to leave, he noticed that behind the haystack, the wolf that had left earlier was digging a hole, trying to ambush the butcher from behind. Half of its body had already crawled into the hole. The butcher attacked from behind and killed the remaining wolf as well.

The story ends with the author seemingly reflecting that the beast's schemes were nothing special, merely adding to the absurdity.

Is it really that simple?

Su Qingshan thought so after reading it the first time, but he always felt that something was not right, so he read it a second time.

Su Qingshan, who possesses a high level of literary cultivation, indeed noticed a different flavor when he read it for the second time.

This short story uses the tale of a butcher encountering and killing a wolf to mock the wolf's cunning and eventual downfall, while praising the butcher's resourcefulness and courage. It teaches people that when facing enemies as fierce, greedy, and cunning as wolves, one must abandon illusions and not compromise or back down; only by daring to fight and being good at fighting can victory be achieved.

From the wolf's perspective, it can also be interpreted as: Don't think that you can do whatever you want just because you are fierce and cunning; doing so will only lead to your own destruction.

That should be enough for most readers to get to the point.

but!

Su Qingshan asked himself the same question once again.

Is it really that simple? Or is there some other meaning behind it?

Even a junior high school student could do this level of reading comprehension, but Su Qingshan still felt a strange atmosphere in the story that lingered in his mind and could not be dispelled.

The whole story is shrouded in a hazy and mysterious veil.

Unable to unravel this mystery, Su Qingshan was restless and unable to sleep!

He read the story carefully from beginning to end several times, even reading it word by word and sentence by sentence.

Believe it or not, Su Qingshan has gained some new insights!

This story is about the contest between a wolf and a butcher. There are two main reasons why the wolf kept following the butcher without attacking him directly.

The first reason is that the butcher has a machete, and if the wolves rashly attack, they are likely to be injured, or even killed. The cunning and selfish wolves are well aware of this, and none of them want to be the first to step forward, since they are likely to be killed if they do, so they stay behind.

The second reason is that they want to find opportunities to attack when the butcher is exhausted or makes a mistake, so as to obtain the greatest value with the least benefit!

There are reasons why the wolf still failed.

First, wolf packs only consider short-term gains.

They are willing to take great risks to hunt butchers, but the profit is merely enough to fill their stomachs. They might not necessarily starve if they didn't hunt butchers. However, if the hunt fails, their lives are in danger. The rewards are simply not proportional to the risks!

This means that, faced with enormous risks, we cannot blindly pursue profits; we must be aware of potential dangers.

For most people, this is already a very good explanation.

Chapter 182 How much cunning can beasts possess? They only bring laughter (Bonus Chapter! 3/30)

However, Su Qingshan did not stop there. Instead, he shared the short story in a chat group called "Short Story Enthusiasts Club".

This group consists entirely of book lovers who enjoy short stories. Everyone has a decent level of literary skill. There are over 500 people in total, and Su Qingshan's ID is Wolong.

He's an administrator in this group and quite popular; everyone knows him. So when people saw him sharing something at 3 a.m., it still drew a few responses.

[What time is it? Are you still awake? Are you reading short story award entries?]

[A kindred spirit! The quality of this work is so high, I don't even want to sleep.]

[Whose novel did Wolong share? *The Wolf*? *Thousand Swords*? I've never heard of those names.]

【Qian Jian? I think he's an author of long novels.】

At this moment, Su Qingshan sent a message: "Don't worry about anything else for now, take a look at this novel first."

The group chat fell silent immediately; it was clear everyone had gone to read the novel.

He continued typing and shared his understanding in the group.

"That's about all I can think of. Do you think there's anything else?"

After a while, the person reading the novel returned, and the group chat became lively again. It was obvious that many group members had been staying up all night reading short stories and hadn't slept at all.

[A stroke of the pen startles the wind and rain: I've finished reading it. In just over four hundred words, this author is truly remarkable; to be able to write a complete story in four hundred words is quite impressive. As for the deeper meaning of the novel, I didn't quite understand it, but I feel the author is probably satirizing the cunning of wolves?]

[Everything is Renewing: My thoughts are similar to Waron's. I feel this is a short story that warns people against being too greedy. It touches on human nature, making it a superior work.]

[Pillow Jade: Don't jump to conclusions so quickly; this story is far from simple.]

Upon hearing this person named [Zhenyu] speak, the group immediately flooded with comments of "worshiping the big shot," clearly indicating that this person's words carried considerable weight in this short story enthusiasts' group.

According to some rumors, he may be a very famous writer and a member of the Changkong City Writers Association.

Zhenyu didn't keep anyone in suspense and directly posted a message.

[Zhenyu: I want to first correct a common misconception. When reading novels, do you usually view the story from a human perspective? Do you inherently believe that wolves are not good people?]

Upon hearing this, everyone in the group was shocked!

On the surface, this novel is indeed about humans defeating wolves, and the readers are naturally all humans, so they will naturally take the butcher's perspective into account. Even when commenting on wolves, they will do so with a superior, God-like perspective.

[Pillow Jade: What if we shift our perspective and look at this story from the wolf's point of view?]

Su Qingshan stared blankly at the chat box. He tried to follow Zhenyu's advice and simulated the whole story from the wolf's perspective. He was immediately shocked!