Drama Queen Reborn as a Top Student!-Chapter 992 - 495: Escaping Love (2)

This was the question she posed, and it was also the dilemma she was currently facing in her creative process.

She wanted to come to this platform, seeking a genius to resolve her confusion. Perhaps new blood could spark greater inspiration, offering her fresh ideas.

At the moment she saw the young man, she had a strong premonition that she was in the right place.

The broadcast announced that Liu Runxi was about to respond.

The young man remained silent, like a sculpture lost in thought.

Countless eyes from both on and off the stage were fixated on him, while in the audience, Yan Lu nervously clutched onto Gao Yuyue’s hand.

"Why did he choose literature? His forte is clearly science and engineering, why put himself through this?"

Gao Yuyue rolled her eyes: "What misconception do you have about God Liu? He’s a genius in all subjects with a photographic memory, just slightly behind Shen You’an..."

That slight difference was merely a contest between geniuses, unrelated to ordinary people like them.

Moreover...

Gao Yuyue raised an eyebrow: "Don’t you think the question posed by Teacher Xiang Xue’er is interesting? It’s practically tailor-made for him, I’m really looking forward to his answer."

Yan Lu paused, pondering carefully, and suddenly realized.

"Indeed, God Liu is usually so reticent, never uttering a word without being prompted. This is a great opportunity to see what he truly thinks."

"Avoidance, in literature, is not a monolith. It is Jude’s fearful retreat from the shackles of secular marriage in Hardy’s novels, the instinctive withdrawal into a shell when faced with the great unknown in Kafka’s world, the desperate evasion of the prophetic cycles of fate by members of the Buendia family in One Hundred Years of Solitude, accelerated often by love. It is also Jia Baoyu’s passive resistance to the golden jade union in Dream of the Red Chamber, culminating in an ultimate escape to confront an uncontrollable fate. Even in Emily Dickinson’s poetry, avoidance becomes an active choice, a near-sacred solitude, internalizing surging emotions into brilliant poetic lines—the soul selects her own society, and then shuts the door."

The young man’s voice held the unique clarity and calmness of someone with a scientific mind, yet carried a distinct literary rhythm.

Xiang Xue’er’s eyes brightened; she hadn’t expected the young man to possess such an enormous literary database, using precise examples to analyze the diversity of "avoidance," indeed a logical mind of science.

Next, from Gatsby to Wuthering Heights and then to Love in the Time of Cholera, Liu Runxi used a scientific mindset to deconstruct literary phenomena, proposing a sharp analytical framework to critically perceive literature, revealing the cost and the entrapment nature of "avoidance."

The analysis seemed clear at this point.

"Avoidance, more often than not, leads to a cage rather than redemption, is a cowardly surrender rather than a profound necessity, and yet..."

Inadvertently, a subtle change occurred in the young man’s calm tone, as if an imperceptible ripple had seeped into his extreme rationality.

"However, when we stand outside of literature, at this moment and this place, re-examining this proposition from the perspective of an individual who has long kept an important variable in an equation in a state of avoidance, I discovered a paradox."

The entire room fell into a silence so profound that one could hear a pin drop.

Xiang Xue’er quietly awaited the young man’s argument.

She had a strong premonition that at the climax of the argument, the young man would collide with the truth of emotion at the end of logic.

This was the character she wanted to shape, the elusive inspiration she sought.

"I can analyze character behavior using mathematical models, deconstruct textual intentions using literary theory, and even recite hundreds of passages on love and avoidance. But when I tried to apply this precise analytical framework to..."

The young man paused.

"...to my own ridiculous and unconscious evasiveness, all the logic failed."

Yan Lu exclaimed in shock, quickly covering her mouth, excitedly tugging Gao Yuyue’s sleeve.

"He’s finally confronting his own heart."

Xiang Xue’er sat up straight.

"This failure does not stem from a lack of knowledge or intelligence, but because love may be the only phenomenon in the universe that cannot be fully integrated into any definitive model. It is like a quantum superposition state, collapsing into reality only at the moment you observe it. Avoidance is the refusal to observe, attempting to maintain that ambiguous, safe possibility perpetually, yet thereby forever losing the opportunity for reality to be born, it is a kind of... "

The young man paused briefly, as if searching for the right words.

"...cowardice towards existence itself."

Xiang Xue’er marveled; it was an insight and metaphor of genius.

"In literature, those characters who fall into the abyss due to avoidance, their warnings are thunderous, but what touches me more is those who, in desperate situations, still choose to bravely face the faint glimmer of love. They are not without fear, but choose greater courage in the face of fear, the courage to face their true inner needs."

"Just now, while analyzing these brave souls, an uncontrollable specific smile appeared in my mind, a distraction that has troubled me for a long time, a variable I tried to screen out, to optimize away with countless formulas and lines of poetry. I’ve finally understood that my avoidance of her does not stem from the lofty inevitabilities found in literary models, nor from Emily Dickinson-like sacred solitude; it simply stems from..."

The young man smiled slightly, his gaze frank and sincere.

"...a fundamental variable in a genius’s emotional equation—fear, fear of losing control, fear of imperfection, fear of the precision-operating system being overwhelmed by the unpredictable torrent of emotion."

"But literature, the strictest and most compassionate mentor, as well as the logical endpoint of this debate, reveals to me that the true cage is not the risk that love might bring, but the heart that imprisons itself out of fear. Avoidance is a more thorough surrender than any possible failure."

"Thus, to answer the debate, in the eternal landscape of literature, avoiding love may bear profoundness in character building, but at its essence, it more often reflects human frailty, a shortcut leading to a more profound entrapment, which most often does not lead to redemption but to a self-constructed prison."

Facing countless eyes below the stage, the young man smiled calmly and confidently.

"To me, the greatest takeaway from today is not winning the competition, but finding the coordinates of my true heart in this discourse on avoidance. The chain of logic clearly points to the only solution: cowardly surrender ends here."

The young man bowed deeply.

"Thank you to the debate, thank you to literature. The next inquiry, I will personally address that variable."

A moment later, thunderous applause erupted from the audience.

Yan Lu covered her mouth and burst into tears: "Is he confessing?"

Gao Yuyue remained silent.

"How is he more romantic than Rong Xianning? I can’t take it, please, you guys should get together."

Gao Yuyue pursed her lips: "Pushing logic to the extreme, love cannot be modeled. He’s finally come to realize."

"It’s a pity An’an didn’t see it."

Yan Lu shook her phone: "I recorded it all. I’ll show it to An’an as soon as possible. She will be moved, right?"

As the biggest shipper of the two, Yan Lu never gave up and finally saw the glimmer of hope now.

Gao Yuyue shook her head: "An’an is more rational than him."

A person with higher pursuits will never be confined to the world of love.