Chapter 161: The Master's Astonishment [Third Batch: Seeking Subscriptions]

Misjudged?

Chen Yingsong muttered to himself, his gaze lingering once more on the author's name. The name Zhang Chu made his somewhat sluggish brain spin rapidly. "Is that the kid who writes poetry?"

Deng Yiming chuckled, "That's him! He's considered one of the dark horses for this competition, but the kid is a bit stubborn. He refused to enter the poetry category and insisted on joining your fiction group. Judging by the look of it, is he writing pretty well?"

"It is quite good. The story's pacing is smooth, and the writing style adds luster to the plot. Even with an Indian kid as the protagonist, it doesn't feel out of place at all. He's got quite some nerve; a piece like this is very difficult to master."

Chen Yingsong knew of Zhang Chu's big reputation. This irreverent kid had no shortage of talent, but he always came up with eccentric things. Two unconventional poems and one adapted lyric had left people torn between laughter and tears.

If he were only willing to walk the straight and narrow path, Zhang Chu's name might just be on the list of young poets right now!

"Then I won't disturb you any longer. Go on reading. Your group has a heavy workload," Deng Yiming said and walked away.

Resuming his reading, Chen Yingsong immersed himself once again in the ocean of words. Under Zhang Chu's pen, the once mundane zoo life became utterly fascinating. However, at this point, Pi and his family decided to set sail for Canada. The cargo ship docked at the port of Manila, where an engine was repaired and numerous supplies were loaded before they resumed their voyage across the Pacific.

In the unpredictable world, a massive storm struck the freighter, sinking the entire vessel in just over ten minutes. Pi escaped alone into a lifeboat!

The lifeboat bobbing among the waves faced unimaginable dangers. Most critically, that Bengal tiger named Richard Parker was swimming right beside the rescue boat.

An exhausted teenager and a starving fierce beast—a human tragedy seemed about to unfold!

Chen Yingsong's heart tightened in suspense. Even knowing the protagonist couldn't possibly be in mortal danger, he still couldn't help worrying about him.

Sharks swam around the lifeboat. Beneath the tarpaulin inside the cabin was the fierce tiger. On the gunwale stood a gorilla with a broken leg, along with a spotted hyena that had already boarded the boat. Gale-force winds and torrential rain brought danger lurking on all sides.

When dawn broke, an orangutan floated over, sitting atop a small island formed by a pile of bananas. This was also the only animal Pi actively rescued.

"Why these particular animals? Do they carry any special meaning, or is it just a coincidence?"

While reading, these questions popped up in Chen Yingsong's mind.

Just like writing poetry, many imageries could not appear out of thin air; many things had their own representative meanings.

Yet, for the time being, he could not draw any conclusions—after all, the available information was simply too scarce.

When a carnivore stays with an injured herbivore, the outcome is naturally self-evident. In the dead of night, the injured zebra had its leg bitten off alive by the hyena!

Even with textual descriptions, such bloody content made Chen Yingsong feel somewhat averse. His grandson must never read this book; it would frighten him.

Zhang Chu's description was very concrete, reading almost like a wildlife documentary: the hyena's bright red mouth, and the zebra's loose, blood-dripping severed limbs.

This was both a strength and a weakness, as it would cause many parents to forbid their children from reading it.

The drift across the Pacific did not stop there. The hyena killed the zebra, and then killed the orangutan. The terrifying part was that Richard Parker, the most horrific apex predator, had actually been on the boat all along!

As the narrative progressed, the tense atmosphere of the story grew even denser. Now that the zebra, the orangutan, and the hyena had all been eaten, was Pi next in line?

At first, Pi's mind was entirely consumed by how to put the tiger to death and reclaim his living space on the lifeboat.

However, after careful consideration, the six methods he thought of turned out to be useless, because Pi realized that if he fought Richard Parker, the loser could only be himself!

Because once the waves calmed down and the tiger had eaten its fill of the animal remains on the lifeboat, it actually turned to show friendliness toward him, just like a cute, oversized cat.

In the end, Pi concluded that his only path to survival was to ensure food and water for Richard Parker. As long as the tiger was not hungry, he himself would be in no danger.

Thus, this 16-year-old Indian boy fished out a fishing rod from the lifeboat's storage room, took out the seawater desalinator, and began angling and dissecting sea turtles as well as fish of all sizes.

Only then did Chen Yingsong discover that the animal habits written about in the opening section finally had a practical use here. Without the experience accumulated from growing up in a zoo during his childhood, Pi would have been completely unable to domesticate or break the tiger's fighting spirit!

"Why were so many animals able to escape from the cargo ship, yet those crew members and passengers were nowhere to be seen?"

A lingering doubt took root in Chen Yingsong's heart, and he hoped to find the answers in the subsequent chapters.

...

An entire morning passed, and Chen Yingsong had only read about half of the content. Meanwhile, the poetry and prose groups had already evaluated quite a few outstanding works, making their own progress remarkably slow.

At the dining table, the group chatted while eating, exchanging thoughts with one another.

Cao Xiuwen took a sip of pigeon soup, shook his head, and said, "There are very few people with true literary literacy these days. I remember when we judged submissions back in the early 2000s, there were all kinds of good articles. But today, out of the thirty-plus prose pieces I saw, almost none of them deserved a score of 60."

"You can say that again. It's the same in the poetry group; there are only one or two poems that are barely passable. Reading those poems is practically an insult to my eyes. I'd rather stay in the office reading submissions for *Poetry Magazine*; at least the quality there is a bit higher."

Ma Qiwei joined in with his own complaints. A collection of diverse works naturally varied in quality, but the fact that almost everything they saw was unsatisfactory felt somewhat terrifying.

"If the rest of the submissions maintain this level, I won't even dare call myself a judge anymore. Are we supposed to just pick the tallest dwarf among a crowd of short people?"

At this moment, Chen Yingsong, who had finished eating at a leisurely pace, chuckled instead. "I actually found a good one on my end, and it completely exceeded my expectations."

The people around the round table immediately fixed their gazes on him, full of anticipation for the rest of the story.

"Old Chen, stop keeping us in suspense. Tell us what it's all about!"

"You guys really are lucky. Who wrote it?"

"We've got nothing better to do anyway, let's hear it."

A smile appeared on Chen Yingsong's face. He laughed and said, "Some of you might already know the author of this book. Zhang Chu—yes, the young man you guys in Ma Qiwei's group talk about all the time. He wrote a book called *Life of Pi*. Right now, this book doesn't feel fantastical at all; instead, it's rather bloody and not very suitable for children to read."

Ma Qiwei let out an "Oh?" of surprise. "He even has time to write this? Isn't there another book of his online that hasn't finished yet?"

"Old Chen, what score do you think this book deserves?" Cao Xiuwen asked, rubbing his chin.

"Based on what I've seen so far, I'd give it 75 points. I spent the whole morning reading just up to the point where they start drifting on the ocean, and I want to see what happens next. If the subsequent parts are even more exciting and carry deeper humanistic connotations, then we can bump up the score a bit."