Fantasy Writers 1860

Chapter 123 This "hole" is... (Two parts combined)

"Ms. Editor-in-Chief, there is a letter for you." The assistant walked into Dickinson's office with an envelope in her hand.

Dickinson took the envelope, saw that the sender was Dorian, and immediately tore open the seal and took out the contents.

It was a stack of manuscript paper.

"Feed Yi Yi out—is that a name? How strange—"

Even so, knowing it was Dorian's new work, she still read on attentively.

Even if it weren't for that, she would still check out what it was about just because of the strange name.

The story begins in an extremely mundane way: after a typhoon, a church in the village was blown down, leaving behind a bottomless black hole.

A young man shouted loudly into the cave, "Hey—come out!"

However, no echo came up from the bottom of the cave. So he picked up a small stone nearby, intending to throw it into the cave. A timid old man tremblingly waved his hands, trying to dissuade the young man from doing so.

"You absolutely can't throw that down there! You might get some terrible punishment." But the young man had already dodged it and thrown the stone into the hole. However, there was still no echo coming back up from the bottom of the hole.

"So the novel's title is what this young man shouted?" Upon seeing this, Dickinson raised her eyebrows slightly, still somewhat puzzled.

Based on the style of Dorian's previous two novels, she could already sense a strong sense of irony in these few lines.

Subsequently, renowned scholars, magicians, and magical experts from various parts of the country used various methods to explore how deep the hole was and where it led.

All detection methods failed. Neither magic nor magical machinery could affect the hole. Anything projected onto it, whether physical objects or magical energy, was silently absorbed by the hole.

People discovered that this was a true "bottomless pit".

So, a shrewd businessman stepped forward, contracted out the cave, and started a novel "cave-filling company."

o

[The "Cave-Filling Company" sent people to explain to them that this was a very safe cave, and even after thousands of years, it would not cause any harm to the surface. Furthermore, the villagers would benefit from it. Once everyone understood this, they felt reassured. And, the railway connecting the city to the village was quickly completed and opened to traffic.]

This bottomless pit became the "perfect dumping ground" for the entire society: confidential documents, corpses of people who died of disease in hospitals, counterfeit money seized by the police, evidence of murders committed by criminals, and even sewage and exhaust fumes discharged from factories.

All the filth, trouble, and shady things that arise in human society are continuously poured into this bottomless pit.

"Using a bottomless pit as a metaphor for humanity's escape from its own sins—a brilliant idea," Dickinson murmured to herself.

language.

She continued reading:

No matter what was thrown in, the hole treated everything the same, tirelessly washing away all sorts of filth from the entire city. Gradually, the ocean and sky returned to their beautiful azure blue, new buildings continued to rise, and everyone felt they had found the perfect solution to all their problems.

Her fingers gripped the edge of the paper tightly, and her breathing became rapid.

Because she discovered that there was only one page left on the manuscript paper, but the whole story was still somewhat unclear.

Based on Dickinson's previous experience, this indicates that the "Dorian ending" is about to take effect.

She took a deep breath and slowly turned to the last page:

Under a clear blue sky, a construction worker was working at a height. Suddenly, he heard a young man's voice above him: "Feed him out." Immediately afterward, a small stone fell from the sky above him.

But he was too busy squinting and gazing smugly at the distant horizon. Ah, our city is getting more and more beautiful! Of course, the insignificant little pebble didn't even register in his sight.

The story ends abruptly here.

"hiss

Dickinson gasped, her pupils contracted, and she felt a dense mass of tiny needles pricking her back in that instant.

She put down the last sheet of paper in her hand, her heart pounding.

There was no explosion, no preaching, just a small stone.

But everyone who reads this will immediately realize what is about to happen: the corpses thrown into the hole, the sewage,

Evil will descend from the sky and utterly destroy this seemingly glamorous city.

"This is terrifying!"

She turned back to the first page and read it again, word by word.

Just like her previous works, "The Necklace" and "The Cop and the Hymn," it's short, concise, full of unexpected twists, and profound in its meaning—indeed, it's a great story as always—" Dickinson murmured to herself.

But for some reason, she always felt that something was different.

Although the novel is still short, concise, and full of plot twists, Dickinson, with the intuition of a top writer, vaguely sensed something "unusual" about it.

In "The Necklace," a woman spends her entire life pursuing a fake necklace, only to be met with a cruel truth at the end. In "The Cop and the Hymn," a homeless man attempts to spend the winter in prison by committing crimes, but is arrested when he tries to reform.

Both of these works are based on the themes of "human nature" and "fate," which are common in literature.

And this piece, "Feed It Out" —

Dickinson frowned, her fingertips lightly tracing the paper.

This story seems to have a slightly different flavor —

"Forget it, I don't want to think about it anymore." She called her assistant, "Put this article in next week's edition, on the first page, with an illustration."

The assistant glanced at the title: "Feeding—Out? That's a really strange title."

"This is Mr. Dorian's latest work," Dickins said.

The assistant's eyes lit up immediately: "Mr. Dorian's new work? No problem then. Even if he wrote about his grandmother's apple pie recipe, we will publish it in full."

After her assistant closed the door and left, Dickinson leaned back in her chair, gazing out the window at the still hazy sky despite it being midday.

"Ah, I think I understand why he wrote such a story—"

Three days later, the latest issue of Bentley Weekly quietly arrived in bookstores and in the mailboxes of subscribers in major cities across the empire.

The story of "Feed—Out" is not long; most readers only need the time it takes to eat breakfast and drink a cup of coffee to finish it.

I can finish reading it, but what happens afterward is far more than a cup of coffee can wash away.

In the tavern, the workers passed the story around; in the coffee shop, the well-dressed employees discussed it intensely.

Even in some aristocratic estates, the ladies and gentlemen dressed in corseted gowns were deeply pondering this novel.

Compared to the refined poetry of "The Hall of Foyle Street," this novel is closer to the everyday experiences of ordinary people. Every city has the problem of garbage disposal, especially a cosmopolitan metropolis like Lentinion, where everyone knows the principle of "out of sight, out of mind."

The first reaction of everyone after the chills was to turn their heads in unison to look out the window at the smog that smelled of sulfur and seemed like a thick soup that would never dissipate.

"Isn't this hole the inner river of Lentinion?"

At the "Cable" tavern in the Sheffield district, a group of dockworkers were loudly discussing something around a crumpled newspaper.

"Isn't this hole the Londinion River? They dump all sorts of garbage in there, killing even the fish!"

"It's not just fish! Look at all the trash floating on the river, and the black wastewater from the factory. Aren't we just throwing more trouble into it?" another worker with a thick beard said angrily. "When I was little, I could swim, catch fish, and wash clothes in the river, but now—"

As usual, a few workers who had just finished get off work gathered at the "Cable" pub, one of whom was holding a copy of Bentley Weekly and reading a short story from it to everyone.

Everyone was captivated by the simple story and listened intently until the last small stone fell to the ground, at which point everyone fell silent.

Soon, everyone suddenly realized the meaning behind the ending. A chill ran from the soles of their feet to the top of their heads, making the group, who had come to drink because of the cold weather, feel even more chilly.

The space for the reader's imagination left by the story becomes incredibly heavy at this moment.

A young worker suddenly slapped his thigh: "Our factory boss said we can just dump the garbage and wastewater directly into the river, and the river will wash them into the sea. Anyway, the sea is so big. We can just dump the smoke and dust into the sky, anyway, the sky is so big—"

"Just like the man in the story who ran the hole-filling company, these capitalists can find ways to make money from anything, only to end up with a mess—in this story, at least no one escapes in the end, but what about reality? The reality is that after they've ruined Lentini, they run off to their country estate to enjoy the clean air and water!"

"Speaking of which, how does Mr. Dorian's brain work? How can he write such exquisite stories?"

"You've only recently arrived, so you might not know, but this Mr. Dorian was in this very tavern just last month, reading the newspaper to everyone!"

"Huh? John, you're joking again, aren't you? —"

"Iron Hand" Greg sat quietly at one side of the bar, drinking his drink, not participating in the discussion for the time being.

He watched his fellow workers angrily hurling insults at each other about the factory owner and capitalists, or reminiscing about the clear, bright skies of his childhood in Lentinion.

Some unusual thoughts began to form in my mind.

Was that seemingly frail boy who appeared here last month really Dorian?

The name was fairly common, and I hadn't asked for his full name at the time, nor did Bentley Weekly print a single photograph of the author.

Although everyone now swears that this Mr. Dorian used to read newspapers here before, especially to the owner of the "Cable" tavern, it's mostly just a joke and a way to impress the newcomers.

Deep down, everyone still felt that a writer capable of producing such excellent articles would never come here to work and drink with them.

Whether it was the same person or not, at least in Greg's view, the Dorian who worked with them last month had a much greater impact on them than the "Dorian" in the magazine now.

It was his expressive recitation that brought the story of "The Million Pound Note" to life for everyone, opening the door to a new world for them, which is why more and more people are now interested in novels.

Greg still sometimes wonders, what if that Dorian back then was actually the Dorian of today's Bentley Weekly?

"Isn't this the Imperial Diet?"

In a café in Lentini's West End, Douglas, the literary editor of Time magazine, puts down his magazine; his coffee has gone cold.

How long has the Environmental Protection Act been submitted? It's been discussed every day, with countless amendments and opinions circulating, but there's still no result. Passing it is problematic, and rejecting it is also problematic.

No matter how many voices are raised, how many petitions are submitted, or how many motions are proposed by members of parliament, there is no response and no results are produced.

Isn't this just a bottomless pit?

His muttering resonated with several gentlemen present: "Yes, I feel the novel's message is a satire of the Imperial Diet. This 'hole' is a reflection of the current procrastinationist attitude in the Diet: putting things off and leaving the problem for future generations to solve."

"That's right, and the ending of the novel—the pebble falling down—isn't that a metaphor for how all the problems that have been delayed and covered up will eventually be unable to be suppressed and will eventually erupt in a violent form?"

"Those damn bureaucrats keep saying that factory pollution is no problem, that the rivers will naturally purify themselves. In all these years, when have they ever cleaned themselves up? They've been treating all of nature like a hole! The rock has already fallen! The increasingly worse air quality in Lurentinion over the years is that rock!"

"This brings us to the Environmental Protection Bill, which has been stuck in Parliament for almost a year—"

Douglas looked at the indignant crowd in the coffee shop, gave a wry smile, and flipped back to the end of the story, reading it again from the beginning.

The literary scene in Britannia is about to undergo a dramatic change! Not long ago we had Mr. Hakimi, and now another Dorian has emerged—

He couldn't help but think of his good-for-nothing nephew, Braden.

After bringing down the Morning Star and being sued by the Lentinion Weekly, he was spared imprisonment thanks to his father's connections, and his father paid the fine in full. However, after such a blow, he was completely distraught, staying at home every day complaining and drowning his sorrows in alcohol.

"Now he's lost even his resilience, willpower, and courage. Luckily, my brother didn't plan to let this kid take over the family business. He really knows his son well." Douglas shook his head slightly, picked up his cold coffee, took a sip, and felt his mouth was full of bitterness.

"Isn't this hole the home of those greedy commoners?"

In the lounge of the temporary parliamentary office at 5 Kingdom Avenue in the Loia district, several opposition members of parliament were huddled together reading this novel, and none of them looked too happy.