Literary Master 1983

Chapter 270 Deciphering
Su Tong asked, "What are you doing with the book on Morse code? You were originally a doctor, I've never heard of you being a spy."

Yu Hua said, "Decipher it!"

"Huh?" Su Tong was dumbfounded.

Yu Hua said unhurriedly, "What kind of editor are you? The reason why these few copies of Yu Qie's 'Lurking' are so expensive is because the cover shows the ending of the story."

Su Tong suddenly remembered; his city, Suzhou, was relatively close to Shanghai, he seemed to have heard someone mention it. Yu Qie's books weren't just revised versions of the story; he also introduced some new elements.

However, when it comes to deciphering code, Yu Hua is still far inferior to Su Tong.

Yu Hua's high school grades were not ideal; his small county only admitted about 40 students, with only a few being recent graduates. They lacked basic understanding of college application procedures, and some even applied to Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard, becoming a laughingstock of the time. Su Tong, on the other hand, was a Chinese literature major with excellent science grades; he had been admitted to Yenching Normal School based on his outstanding mathematics scores.

The first book Su Tong ever bought was "Calculus." Throughout high school, he consistently placed in the top three in school math, physics, and chemistry competitions. Upon graduation, due to his strong math skills, he was sought after by companies outside the humanities, with eight companies offering him a choice.

Otherwise, why would it be called "Little Yuqie"? They're just too similar. Su Tong can't write poetry and has been rejected by journals many times. Yuqie's only shortcoming in literature is also that he can't write poetry.

After buying the book, the two men sat on the floor of the Xinhua Bookstore on Jinling East Road and began to study how to decipher it.

Morse code itself doesn't directly correspond to Chinese; it needs to be converted to English first, and then translated into Chinese. When Yu Hua figured this out, he was a little overwhelmed: "This Morse code is too complex! No wonder Li Ya was outmaneuvered by Yu Zecheng. He needs to know both Morse code and English; Yu Zecheng is indeed the kind of talent the Party and the State need!"

Su Tong was engrossed in looking at the cover of "Lurking" and told him to keep quiet.

This cover is truly ingenious; it's rumored to have been designed by Yu Zecheng. The medals, the radio, the Morse code, and the interplay of light and shadow, like a knife's edge, divide the entire image into two distinct sides. This single image alone brought back memories of Yu Zecheng's undercover career for Su Tong. And she sensed his situation—"his name was unknown, but his achievements were extraordinary."

Then, Su Tong began translating the Morse code into English. This string of Morse code uses dots and dashes in different arrangements to represent English letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. Su Tong found them one by one according to the codebook in the reference book, wrote them down on paper, and finally turned them into a sentence.

Su Tong read the words directly into Chinese: "The deep sea... is still lurking."

Upon hearing this, Yu Hua immediately asked, "You mean, the deep sea is still lurking?"

“Yes, the deep sea is still lurking.” Su Tong read it again. Suddenly, he felt an indescribable sense of power here, realizing that this was the part of the decades that Yu Qie hadn't written about. He couldn't help but shed tears, saying, “The deep sea is still lurking! Yu Zecheng was truly a noble person, a pure person!”

Yu Hua was also influenced by him and said in a deep voice, "I finally know why this book sells so well! It has a sense of 'surprise,' Su Tong. The plot of a good novel has a sense of 'surprise,' which is reasonable but you can never predict it."

Su Tong nodded and said, "Yes, that's exactly what happened! I read a book before about a man who had a bad relationship with his father and was very cold towards him. After his father died, he thought he wouldn't miss his father. One day, while he was sorting through his father's belongings, he saw the razor his father had used. The razor was pushed aside, and it clicked..."

"Some stubble has fallen out?" Yu Hua asked.

"Yes, seeing these stubble stubbles immediately moved me. I knew he regretted not spending more time with his father. This novelist must have been thinking about his own father. I knew he wasn't writing the novel just to get paid; he genuinely had a life story, and it's very possible his father really died before he wrote it!"

Yu Hua immediately read the sentence again: The deep sea is still lurking.

He also felt that sense of being caught off guard and "surprise attack". Yu Hua finally understood why Yu Qie insisted on making a fancy cover. It was not to be unconventional, but to make readers feel involved in the process of deciphering the story.

Morse code seems very simple today, but it was actually quite simple back then, which is why various forms of coded messages and codebooks emerged. However, for ordinary people unfamiliar with it, converting it into the final answer according to its prescribed format involves a tedious and painstaking process. For this single sentence, two intellectuals, Yu Hua and Su Tong, spent several tens of minutes in Asia's largest bookstore. For those who are not in a bookstore or lack the necessary resources, it would likely take several days, months, or even years to verify it.

When they finally found the answer after much effort, it was this sentence: The deep sea is still lurking.

Do you imagine Yu Zecheng smiling at you?

This is a message Yu Zecheng sent you. You are the comrade Yu Zecheng wants to contact.

At this moment, there was a huge shock – because everyone naturally assumed that Yu Zecheng, who had become a wealthy businessman, would use this Morse code to indicate his bank password, where his assets were kept, and so on, but they never expected it to be such a sentence.

Moreover, he himself had spent so much time on just one sentence, while Yu Zecheng had lived in such an environment for almost his entire life... The shock and emotion immediately surged like a tide, and this emotion also constituted part of the novel's reading experience, allowing the story to complete its cycle at the end.

He's a true genius!

And that was indeed the case. Inside the bookstore, people kept deciphering the code, sighs and exclamations rising and falling. Then, the codebreakers would fall into a deep, silent slumber, tears streaming down their faces. They were unwilling to casually tell others their results, but rather wanted others to participate in the deciphering process.

If someone asks them, "What happened to Yu Zecheng in the end? He became a wealthy businessman in Hong Kong, and he was living a very exciting life?"

They said, "Go and decipher it yourself."

That evening, all the major bookstores in Shanghai that stocked "Lurking" sold out. Countless post offices, state-owned bookstores, and individual booksellers went to printing plants and publishing houses to inquire when the next batch of "Lurking" would arrive.

"Comrade, the first batch of 300,000 copies was printed. Did they really sell out in just one day? How is that possible? Are you speculating and secretly hiding the novels to sell on the black market?" The printing plant was also helpless: "All 300,000 copies have been taken away. We don't know why they sold out so quickly!"

"How much longer do we have to wait? We're starving! We're waiting for rice to be cooked!"

"One week!"

"A week? How can we wait a week?!"

"Our schedule is already full, so we have no choice but to wait."

A smarter person suddenly realized: "If I don't have 'Lurking,' a Morse code reference book will do."

The printing plant manager said with a wry smile, "The reference books are sold out too! Only a few of these books are sold nationwide each year. They are mostly purchased by institutions. Our last printing was three years ago. We thought it would last for ten years... but we didn't expect even the codebooks to be snapped up!"

Suddenly, someone realized: "Our current printing process relies entirely on state-owned bookstores. To put it more bluntly, it mainly depends on the saleswomen with braids in Xinhua Bookstore. They fill out forms about book sales, and then every now and then submit the forms to headquarters, which then assesses how much to purchase... and then the publishing house places the order with the printing plant! So, we need to get those saleswomen to submit the forms immediately!"

"Correct!"

"Yes!"

Everyone understood, and they all rushed to the nearest Xinhua Bookstore. But when they actually got there, they discovered that these state-run bookstores had already submitted their orders—how could bookstores not notice a book like "Lurking" that sold out on the same day?
Suddenly, the entire Shanghai market was gripped by Morse code fever. The public had never heard of this intriguing game before; readers were being asked to decipher the "intelligence" sent by Yu Zecheng! And from who-knows-where, rumors began to circulate that "Morse code can be used to develop children's intelligence!"

So the school specially copied the Morse code of Yu Zecheng's last words onto the circulating newspaper in the corner, along with a Morse code conversion table, for the elementary school students to decipher.

A big red flower will be awarded for cracking it!

It didn't matter if they couldn't decipher it, as parents at this time could almost always get off work on time. They would come to help their children decipher the code after work, and they often had the idea of ​​buying "Lurking". As soon as they heard that there was a game to play and the last intelligence sent by Yu Zecheng, the couple would try to decipher it.

Yu Qie is currently on the train and is unaware of the code-breaking frenzy that has erupted in Shanghai. If he did know, he probably wouldn't be surprised.

This is exactly the same trick that the original publisher used, which influenced a generation of people born in the 1980s and 1990s.

Around the turn of the millennium, a series of decoding books about juvenile detectives were introduced to mainland China. The books allowed readers to follow several protagonists on adventures and deductions, making extensive use of Morse code, Native American folklore, ciphers, geometric decryption, and more. This series was originally written by Americans, but it did not cause a sensation in the entertainment-rich United States at the time, as American teenagers were exposed to a lot of entertainment activities at an early age. However, unexpectedly, after the books were introduced to mainland China, they became a huge success, with the entire series selling tens of millions of copies.

Students are obsessed with decoding games, imagining themselves joining the adventure. Even their parents are itching to join in, becoming like big kids in their thirties and forties. Many parents anonymously stated in interviews: "I actually bought it for myself."

The Shanghai literary and art market's approach, which requires Morse code books to complement its content, is still too high-end and demanding. The book *Lurking* has been published by more than ten publishers, including Sichuan Publishing House, which uses its "Towards the Future" series as its flagship product and focuses on popular science for teenagers… This publisher immediately realized that a significant portion of *Lurking*'s sales were purely driven by the gimmick of deciphering Morse code.

Therefore, they later obtained Yu Qie's authorization to adapt the novel for younger audiences, turning all the intelligence Yu Zecheng received from the organization into puzzle games, and adding the decryption codes to the book's appendix, which made "Lurking" extremely popular among teenagers.

The refined and cultured intellectual Yu Zecheng became a comrade-in-arms and protector in the eyes of teenagers. When the story ended and everyone was about to close the book and leave, Yu Zecheng's final intelligence was passed on to you: the deep sea is still lurking! The incredible ending immediately influenced several generations.

……

Guan Moye was the last to see the novel. Yu Hua had written him a letter, urging him to decipher the code, but Guan Moye lacked the necessary resources and it took him a long time to finally do so.

When he saw the last sentence, his feelings were different from those of the average reader. He felt more that Yu Qie, a character created by the author, was mocking him.

Didn't he make some compassionate remarks before? Yet Yu Zecheng himself preferred to continue lying low, meaning he didn't appreciate his sentiments.

Upon seeing this statement, Guan Moye felt a complex mix of emotions. He was moved by Yu Zecheng's purity—Yu Zecheng was someone even his enemies admired—but he also felt deeply wronged, as people were misinterpreting him. Ultimately, he chose to write a letter of repentance, which read:

“When I was young, I loved reading ‘red classics.’ I read them as adventure books about heroes always winning. Later, as I grew older, the adults made me read books that were ‘neither successful nor unsuccessful.’ I read a book called ‘Red Sun’ that described the Battle of Menglianggu. At the beginning, it was about our army’s defeat, the troops’ pessimism, and the cadres’ depression. I burst into tears. I thought it was too unrevolutionary and uncomfortable. I instinctively felt disgusted.”

"Later, Ouyang Shan wrote a book called 'Three Families Lane,' which I read with great enthusiasm. When I read about Qu Tao's sacrifice, I felt like the end of the world had come, and I lay on the cowshed and cried. I was very sentimental at that time, and I even filled all the blank spaces in my Chinese textbook with the name 'Qu Tao.' I didn't understand why people had to kill each other, and why good people had to die innocently."

"—I also borrowed a copy of 'Song of Youth.' I received the novel in the afternoon. I knew that if I didn't go to cut grass, the sheep would go hungry, and if the sheep went hungry, I might be punished by going hungry myself, but I still couldn't resist the temptation of the book. I buried myself in the haystack and finished reading the thick book 'Song of Youth' that afternoon. My body was covered in welts from ants and mosquitoes."

"I crawled out from behind the haystack, feeling dizzy and disoriented. The sun was already setting. I heard the sheep bleating loudly in the pen, and I was filled with anxiety and distraction. I thought my mother would beat me, but when she saw my bruises, she sighed forgivingly and said, 'You're such a fool!' She forgave me, and I immediately felt a true sense of happiness. This was the first time I had done something 'terribly wrong,' and instead of being criticized, I had shocked others."

“I saw myself in Yu Zecheng’s loyalty to underground work, but of course Yu Zecheng would not be as tolerant of me as my mother was. We also have different ideas, but I still want to apologize to him. I was really shocked by him. No matter where Yu Zecheng is, I will pay him the utmost respect and hope that he is doing well.”

(End of this chapter)