Chapter 94: Poetry Magazine

"He is nothing like the Tripitaka I used to imagine, but damn, this is exciting." After reading the first day of Journey to the West Diary, Wei Wenlin offered that verdict.

Though he did not especially enjoy reading, the flood of jokes in it was truly side-splitting. He was not the sort of person who liked to probe too deeply; a glance at the surface-level spectacle was enough for him.

How the Buddha was forged, the appraisal of Golden Cicada, the comparison to troubled youth, and even the Buddha, who had once attained enlightenment beneath the bodhi tree, becoming a man meditating beneath an apple tree instead.

Most important of all, after a few apples came crashing down, the Buddha even wrote his own work, The Scripture of the Three Laws. It immediately brought Newton to mind, as if the coffin lid of the great god of physics could no longer hold him down.

Zhang Chu spread his hands and said with a smile, "That is exactly the point. Our slogan is to overturn Journey to the West!"

"In those days even monks had lightning rods? That is absurd beyond reason. Not rigorous enough," Wei Wenlin said in mock seriousness. "Looks like I will have to come every day to push you for updates. All the netizens should thank me."

"Thank you, my foot. Do you know that lack of sleep every day leads to a shortage of inspiration? How am I supposed to write without inspiration?"

Zhang Chu yawned, copied that passage, pasted it into his microblog, and posted it. Journey to the West Diary was officially under way.

At that moment, Wei Wenlin seemed to catch the sleepiness too; drowsiness surged up at once. He had come only to read the novel, and now that his goal had been achieved, all his energy vanished in an instant.

"Keep writing, then. I need to go home and catch up on sleep. Last night some middle school classmates dragged me to a bar until past two, and then I went to the internet cafe for an all-nighter."

"Get lost and go to sleep. Don't drop dead on me."

"My body is as tough as they come!" Wei Wenlin waved and walked out.

Chu Lan was coming in carrying several steamed buns and two cups of soy milk. When she saw Wei Wenlin, she immediately called out, "Xiao Wei, have you had breakfast? Auntie just bought some steamed buns. Come eat while they're hot."

"Aunt Chu, I still have something to take care of at home, so I have to go. Goodbye, Auntie."

"This kid came rushing over to find you, and now he's rushing off again?" Chu Lan said, a little bewildered, but in the blink of an eye his figure was already gone.

Zhang Chu calmly took a bun, bit into it, and said, "Maybe he wants to go home and use the bathroom."

...

The one truly sitting on a toilet was Liu Zhen. He had just graduated that year, rented a place outside to work, and every morning at seven thirty the first thing he did was squat on the toilet.

If he did not spend ten or twenty minutes in the bathroom, nothing would come out. It was a classic habit problem. By force of habit, Liu Zhen opened the microblog and looked at the fresh news he had missed last night.

He had only just refreshed the page when he saw that Zhang Chu, whom he followed, had posted the first day of Journey to the West!

"Damn it, this Journey to the West is nothing like the one I know. It's all parody." Liu Zhen had expected as much, but when the article really appeared, he was still rather surprised.

Though he said that, he actually quite liked this style. Beneath the humor were all kinds of allusions and irony, very much like Zhang Chu's usual microblog posts.

"Hahahaha, Xuanzang is actually mocking Golden Cicada up above. When he regains his memories, will he laugh himself to death? And heavenly thunder and lightning too. If it really struck him dead, who would go on the pilgrimage to fetch the scriptures?"

Though there were only four or five hundred characters, the jokes came one after another in dense succession, and there were even jabs at Zhang Chu himself.

"From knowing nothing to grasping the truth, all it takes is memorizing a few laws. It's like when you're completely absorbed in a detective novel and someone suddenly tells you who the killer is at the end; you'd want to kill him on the spot."

Many readers with a taste for mischief liked to spoil the later plot of Sherlock Holmes on Zhang Chu's earlier microblog posts. Unfortunately for them, they had run into the king of cliffhangers; no one could spoil the ending of Mind Crime.

The comments below were almost all likes. Only a joke-teller of the highest order could have written such a bizarre Journey to the West diary.

"Anyone who doesn't want to be a joke-writing prodigy is not a good writer. Zhang Chu, you must be trying to laugh me to death so you can inherit my thousand yuan in Ant Credit."

"I watched Journey to the West on TV back in elementary school. If there were a Journey to the West like this now, full of joy, humor, and nonstop teasing, I would definitely watch it again!"

"Newton: I became the Buddha??"

"Where can I buy How the Buddha Was Forged? Seeking to purchase!"

"Is Zhang Chu writing a novel using the technique of writing jokes?"

"Well written..."

"Wait! Journey to the West Diary starts from the first day. That means it begins before Tripitaka even set out, right? Their pilgrimage took more than ten years. How long is he going to keep writing this diary?"

...

Early that morning, Ma Qiwei called Yan Liu, the head of the Chinese department at Yanjing University. Although it was summer vacation now, with someone of that stature, even the department head had to be on full alert.

"Old Ma, what wind has blown you my way?" Yan Liu said nervously and with great deference. As the current editor-in-chief of Poetry Monthly, Ma Qiwei held an extraordinary position in the world of Chinese poetry and literature alike.

"Xiao Yan, I am here to ask about someone. Do you know that student Zhang Chu? He is one of your department's students this year."

Yan Liu naturally knew Zhang Chu. He was the most famous freshman in their department this year, the gaokao champion snatched from Tsinghua University, a writer who had abandoned science for literature. "Yes, yes, of course. Are you looking for him about something?"

Ma Qiwei smiled and said soothingly, "Nothing major. He wrote a poem, and it was quite interesting, so I wanted to talk with him. Send me his phone number."

To be acquainted with a literary master like Ma Qiwei, Yan Liu truly could not fathom what kind of astounding luck Zhang Chu had stumbled into. At the same time, he was curious: wasn't this fellow writing detective fiction? How had he come to Ma Qiwei's attention?

"Certainly. Please don't hang up for now. I'll find his information in the school system right away."

Zhang Chu was also one of Yanjing University's specially cared-for students, so his phone number was easy to find.

After noting down Zhang Chu's number, Ma Qiwei personally dialed it.

...

In Jiangcheng, inside the Hanlin Pavilion Bookstore.

Zhang Chu was sitting idly behind the cash register. His father had gone to pick up goods today, and the two clerks hired by the bookstore had both taken leave, so the duty of minding the shop had fallen to him.

Thunder rolled outside, lightning tore open the sky, and raindrops the size of beans slapped down in torrents. There were not many people on the street, and the bookstore itself was especially quiet.

Suddenly, the phone beside the keyboard lit up, and a landline number with the 010 Beijing area code appeared on the caller ID.

"Why would someone from Beijing be calling me?" Zhang Chu was somewhat puzzled, but he still answered. "Hello, who are you looking for?"

After hearing a young, somewhat immature voice, Ma Qiwei took the initiative. "May I ask if this is Student Zhang Chu? I am the editor-in-chief of Poetry Monthly. I saw a poem you posted online before and thought it was quite interesting, so I would like to publish it in our magazine. What do you think?"

Zhang Chu blinked hard. Could he have run into a scammer?

Poetry Monthly was, after all, a national literary magazine. The poem posted online was a parody version. Could these editors really have such sharp eyes that they could see through the true original hiding inside this mangled adaptation?

"Student Zhang, do you know Poetry Monthly?" Ma Qiwei asked tentatively after hearing no response for a long while.