You asked for healing, but wrote Honkai Impact 3rd?

Fortunately, the amount of content they actually produced was not that much.

Most people submitted around seven or eight thousand words of content.

A small portion contained actual prose, while the majority consisted of outlines or detailed plot summaries.

From such material, one could discern the general future direction of a work.

To see if it was a good story, looking at these was enough.

Similarly, to judge the quality of an author's prose, reading just the first three chapters was sufficient.

However, these were merely the evaluation standards for web novels.

Because the genre was not restricted, some wrote scripts, while others wrote short stories in the vein of traditional literature.

Therefore, it was also a test for the judges themselves.

They all possessed a certain level of experience, allowing them to review manuscripts at a rapid pace.

Whether they could discover gold like Su Nian would also become apparent this time around.

It was just that...

It seemed that the content was becoming a bit dull and uninteresting.

Yesterday, Otto and Welt had watched Su Nian, that master of involution, create his work from start to finish.

This had invisibly raised their threshold of expectations, making them compare every book they saw to what Su Nian had written.

Once the standard was set so high, it became somewhat unfriendly to the other contestants...

The judges rarely offered words of praise, which left the viewers in the chat confused.

The standards were raised?

[Their expressions don't look too good; I think these stories are actually quite decent.]

[Maybe it's because they are professionals, so their requirements are higher.]

[I think it's because of Su Nian. Without a doubt, this is Su Nian's doing!]

[...The judges seem to have dark circles under their eyes. Could it be that they, like us, couldn't sleep all night, which is why they aren't praising anyone today?]

[Why are the judges shaking their heads and sighing repeatedly? Have the pride of Shenzhou really fallen to this state? Is this the distortion of human nature, or the loss of morality?!]

[Your show is called Approaching Su Nian, right?]

Su Nian knew nothing of this, yet he had already become the culprit behind the industry's rising standards.

Dark, it was truly too dark.

If he were to find out, he would definitely shout that he was being wronged!

He had merely written a story normally and then passed out; he had done nothing else!

How did he end up shouldering the blame for promoting involution?

Finally, through the judges' persistent panning for gold, some relatively better works successfully surfaced.

Gold will always shine; even though Su Nian's light had overshadowed them, he could not monopolize all the traffic alone.

No matter how fast Su Nian wrote, a million words would take at least several months to complete, but the content produced by others could be read in just three or four days.

Therefore, this competition was never meant to uplift only one person from the start.

At this moment, they all shone together like gold.

"Wuxia genre... the joy of vengeance, forgetting each other in the Jianghu... not bad. The expressive power in all aspects is extremely strong; the author must have a profound understanding of Shenzhou history."

"A medieval setting, a romance genre? But it's not bad either. The emotional aspects are written with great detail, the entanglement of love and hate... it is indeed enough to stand out among them."

" ...Sci-fi genre, but a game script? It is actually on par with the brilliance of my Kallen Fantasy..."

Some relatively superior themes were selected, as were some that were quite ordinary.

Otto and Welt had witnessed how Su Nian created his work and what the finished product looked like, so they always subconsciously compared it to the content written by other contestants.

To this day, they had not found a single novel that surprised them more than the one Su Nian had created.

Finally, they reviewed that extremely familiar work.

"The Past's Paradise"

Many people present had already savored this story.

But when it appeared on the big screen before the judges once again, they still excitedly flooded the chat.

[Celebrate, for the one appearing now is:

The one true god of this competition!

Also the novel with the greatest hope of achieving godhood!]

[He leaves cliffhangers.]

[But the work is still excellent...]

[Because there's no follow-up, I'm dead!]

The bullet comments drifted across the top of the teleprompter in the judges' room, a scene truly filled with complaints... and a harmonious atmosphere.

Their opinions were unanimous.

That was to urge Su Nian to update.

"The audience is so enthusiastic, aren't they? I wonder if everyone is thinking, 'I really want to see what happens next... I'm so curious, so curious!'" Elysia mimicked the lines she had seen in Su Nian's livestream yesterday.

She adjusted the content of the lines slightly.

The audience in the livestream at this moment were actually those who had missed the opening ceremony and had joined after the production team's break.

They hadn't seen the host, Elysia, yet.

Su Nian hadn't provided a specific description of Elysia's appearance.

Everyone only knew that she was a sweet girl who loved to dress up.

But her tone and the feeling she gave off were exactly the same as the Elysia written in the story!

[WTF, WTF! This woman gives me the same vibe as Elysia!]

[Look at the name tag on her chest, her name is Elysia.]

[Huh? Did she break the fourth wall?]

[By the way, is there a possibility... that the characters Su Nian writes all have prototypes in reality?]

[Kevin is another host, and you can actually find a few of the Thirteen Flame-Chasers online.]

The topic returned to the beginning, regarding the characters themselves.

However, the production team clearly couldn't come forward to respond to these topics.

But, now that they were aware of the situation, they had no complaints about Su Nian using them as prototypes to create his story.

Moreover, they could even empathize with the characters' situations at the time through Su Nian's story.

Of course, none of this was the most important thing.

The main point was that Elysia had no objections.

As the most social person in the organization, Elysia had contacted her friends online yesterday to ask for their opinions and to persuade those who were worried.

Yesterday...

"Such a magical experience, such a brilliant story—if it were to be stopped halfway, wouldn't that be a huge pity?"

"Everyone hasn't experienced the brilliant parts that follow yet; if we stop it now, we might regret it for a long time, you know~"

The others let her have her way.

They could never do anything about Elysia; they just treated it as a little toy that she was interested in.

Su Nian's story used a portion of their settings, but they hadn't experienced the later parts of the story.

Furthermore, the story Su Nian wrote didn't disparage anyone.

Let her be, and let him be.

"It's just a coincidence, so let's focus our perspective on the story itself."

Elysia guided the audience, and the judges carefully reviewed the current plot Su Nian had written once more.

It was time for the preliminary scoring of Su Nian's work.

Among the 64 contestants present, he was the only one whose main text was extremely complete.

Because his main text and his outline differed significantly, one had to read the outline to understand the main text.

This was a result of the "fictional world-building."

But it was also very puzzling, wasn't it?

It was called an outline, but it was more like a pre-reading guide.

Yet, this "pre-reading guide" was incredibly brilliant, retaining a reader base for the riddle-like plot of The Past's Paradise written by Su Nian.

"Elysia, I would like to request a connection with contestant Su Nian. Could you help me inform him?"

At this moment, Eden proposed an application to connect with Su Nian.

Judges connecting with contestants was rare, and it hadn't happened many times in the history of the competition.

Because the judges were of a higher caliber, connecting easily might seem unfair to other contestants if they provided guidance.

Generally, they didn't connect easily.

But now, Eden's request for a connection wasn't for guidance.

Or rather, after reading the entire story, there was nothing she could guide him on.

What she had now was merely curiosity about his thoughts during the creation process.

She was so perplexed that she... applied for a connection at this moment.

Chapter 62, Judges Connect, The Choice of Story Direction (4k)

"I also need to request a video call with contestant Su Nian."

Like Eden, Otto also wanted to exchange some thoughts with Su Nian.

He should have met with Su Nian yesterday.

However, Su Nian had gone to sleep far too early and even requested to cut the live stream.

Not a single soul knew what Su Nian had been doing inside the studio.

No one had expected that she wouldn't even step out the door, simply collapsing onto the sofa to sleep.

The faint dark circles under Otto's eyes were not the result of being unable to see the aftermath and thus losing sleep all night.

Although not being able to see what he wanted to see was indeed agonizing.

It was not enough to keep a man of his composure and grace from sleeping.

The truth of the matter was...

Otto had been preparing for a fated encounter, intending to display his charisma as a leader and recruit Su Nian under his banner...

He already had plenty of experience.

The unpleasant business that had occurred with Welt Joyce in the past would absolutely not happen again.

Otto was so confident that as long as Su Nian saw him in person, she would surely agree to his invitation.

But last night, he had staked out Su Nian's studio door for the entire night.

He hadn't seen Su Nian step out of the room, not even for a single step!

As for the orders he had previously given, Schicksal had indeed sent an invitation to Su Nian, but... it had received no response.

According to the results of his investigation, no matter who it was—Schicksal, Anti-Entropy, figures from the Shenzhou Film Industry, or Eden's manager—Su Nian had ignored them all.