Chapter 145 This is a war that cannot be won through debate.

The lady's words were like a judge's final verdict, severing the last thread of hope.

Tommy stood frozen in front of the porch, the paintings he held in his arms suddenly feeling incredibly heavy, so heavy that he could hardly breathe.

Casey, who was standing to the side, did not speak or shed a tear.

She simply stepped forward quietly, took Tommy's cold hand, and led him slowly around, walking down the steps one by one.

Behind them, the heavy wooden door closed.

Along with their last remaining fantasies, they were permanently locked behind that door.

In the night breeze, the two walked back to the car as if their souls had been ripped out of their bodies.

With a muffled roar, Casey drove the old, secondhand car, with Tommy in the back, aimlessly onto the dark country roads of England.

The carriage was eerily silent.

Tommy sat in the passenger seat, staring blankly at the darkness outside the window, saying nothing and shedding no tears.

The car drove on the deserted highway for a long time when Tommy suddenly spoke in a hoarse voice, asking to pull over.

As soon as the car came to a stop on the muddy shoulder, he pushed open the car door and stumbled into the boundless, dark wilderness beside the highway.

At first, the only sound in the wind was the sticky sound of footsteps treading on muddy water.

Immediately afterwards, a roar erupted from the darkness.

This is not the roar of a hero at the end of his rope, but the meaningless lament of a beast trapped in a dead end, uttered in the wilderness.

He was like a child who couldn't find his way home, waving his arms wildly in the mud and howling in agony.

All the hopes he had accumulated over half a lifetime, all those strokes he had made in countless late nights to prove that he "possessed a soul," shattered into dust at this moment with the howling wind.

Casey did not break down or cry out.

She pushed open the car door and waded through the cold, muddy water, her steps uneven.

She went to Tommy, who was completely devastated, and without offering any further words of comfort, simply stretched out her arms and hugged him tightly in the cold wind.

She let Tommy struggle and wail in her arms until he exhausted his last bit of strength and got down like a rag doll.

On a bitterly cold winter night in England, two young people destined for surgery embraced tightly in the mud.

There were no miracles from heaven, no resistance, only a helpless submission after fully recognizing one's fate.

When Kitahara Iwa calmly wrote "Silent Embrace in the Wilderness" with his fountain pen in the study, and handed the ink-stained manuscript paper out the door, the living room next door fell into a long silence.

Professor Arthur looked at the few pages of Japanese manuscript he had just taken over, and his voice, which had been translating in a low voice, stopped abruptly.

He didn't say anything more, but just clutched the few thin sheets of manuscript paper tightly in his hand.

The paper crunched with a soft, shredding sound, and the aged knuckles were a glaringly pale white from the excessive force.

For him, what he held in his hands at this moment was no longer just words, but two souls whose tomorrow had just been completely strangled in the mud.

Ian, who was sitting to the side waiting for the translation to be polished, did not urge him either.

He took off his slightly fogged glasses, turned his head, and gazed for a long time at the Thames River outside the window, which was completely swallowed by the night.

Although Kitahara Iwao did not use any sentimental words in his writing, Tommy's desperate scream seemed to penetrate the paper through the ink, gripping the throats of everyone in the apartment.

After a long silence, Ian slowly withdrew his gaze.

He took a deep breath of the damp air, his voice hoarse as if it had been roughly sanded.

"Arthur, let's continue translating."

The veteran critic, known for his calm and acerbic remarks, spoke with a heavy, hoarse voice, "No matter what Kitahara writes next... we have to accompany these two children to the end."

This mournful cry in the wilderness was like a final, fleeting moment of light before life faded away.

After that, the story didn't even bother to struggle anymore, but instead slid inevitably toward a chilling, desolate end with a heartbreaking calm.

No miracle occurred.

Tommy made his fourth donation.

There was no separation of life and death, no weeping at the sickbed; Kitahara Iwao explained Tommy's "completion" in a plain tone.

Of the children who used to run on the Haysham lawn, only Casey remains.

And she finally received the notification to end her career as a caregiver and prepare to begin her first donation.

The calendar on Kitahara Iwa's table has now turned to the fourteenth day of his seclusion.

The thick fog in London completely enveloped the apartments along the Thames.

As the distant, somber chimes of Big Ben at midnight pierced through the glass and faintly entered the room, Kitahara Iwao was working on the final scene of his novel on his manuscript paper.

Casey drove alone to Norfolk.

In Haytham's childhood legends, this was the corner of England that sheltered "all lost things".

She stood at the edge of a desolate, empty farmland, in front of her a wire fence covered with discarded plastic bags.

Gazing at the deserted horizon, she imagined Tommy walking towards her from the other side, smiling and waving.

But even at the end of the tragedy, Kitahara Iwao didn't let Casey shed a single tear. He wrote Casey's final inner monologue on a piece of paper: "I just imagined it briefly. I didn't lose control, and I didn't cry. I just turned around, got back into the car, and drove to where I was supposed to be."

With that line of text, Kitahara Iwa drew the last period of the book, then screwed on the cap of his pen and quietly looked out the window at the dark river for a while.

After tidying up the four-centimeter-thick stack of Japanese manuscripts, he stood up and opened the study door.

In the living room, the two elderly people, who had been waiting for two days to see the latest developments, were staring blankly at the long-cold red tea on the table.

Hearing the door hinges click, they both looked up.

Kitahara Iwa walked up to them and gently placed the heavy stack of final drafts on the coffee table.

"Finished writing."

Kitahara Iwa spoke slowly.

Upon hearing this, Professor Arthur immediately sat up straight and quickly picked up the final manuscript handed to him by Kitahara Iwao.

After several hours of intense interpreting, the old professor's voice was completely hoarse.

When he used his nearly hoarse voice to slowly recite Cathy's most profound and heartbreaking farewell, a farewell rooted in the very essence of British culture...

"I know Tommy is gone, and I know I'm going to leave too, but I'm willing to stand here a little longer."

Until this inner monologue, in which even the accusation is completely abandoned, is uttered, and the last period of the entire book is drawn.

The translation fell completely silent. That quiet march towards destruction was more penetrating than any dramatic description of death.

A long, deathly silence fell over the apartment. The only sound was the faint crackling of the embers dying out in the living room fireplace.

Professor Arthur slowly placed the last page of the manuscript on the coffee table.

He didn't speak, but simply took off his reading glasses and covered his eyes with trembling hands.

The 72-year-old old-fashioned scholar tried his best to suppress his breathing, but two lines of turbid tears still silently slid down between his wrinkled fingers and dripped onto his knees.

Ian, sitting next to him, pursed his lips tightly and leaned wearily into the depths of the sofa.

He didn't shed tears, but his eyes were a deep red, as if burned by emotion, and his hands, clasped on his knees, trembled slightly from the force of his grip.

The two seasoned scholars sat side by side on the sofa, neither of them uttering a word to break the somber atmosphere.

They sat there quietly for almost an hour.

Until the fog over the Thames outside the window gradually turned white in the first rays of dawn, until the five o'clock chimes of Big Ben pierced through the thin fog and rang out heavily.

Professor Arthur finally lowered his hands slowly, looked up at the ceiling, as if the words had drained all his strength. He then took a deep breath of the cold air and broke the silence with a dry voice.

"Ian. In my life, I've read countless books and translated countless works of Japanese literature..."

Professor Arthur's eyes were filled with an overwhelming sense of shock as he said, "But I have never felt such utter powerlessness and awe as I close a book."

Professor Arthur paused for a long time, his gaze still fixed on the manuscript, before continuing, "We always thought that only European literature truly understood how to dissect the human soul."

Professor Arthur shook his head slightly, his voice tinged with self-mockery: "But compared to Kitahara's stack of manuscripts... how narrow-minded this deep-rooted sense of superiority seems."

Ian stared at the manuscript on the coffee table for a long time, listening to the last embers of the fireplace.

"Arthur."

Ian's voice wasn't impassioned, but it carried the certainty characteristic of a critic: "This work needs no vehement defense."

"Sir Richard's so-called 'cultural barriers' are completely dismantled in the face of this pure text."

"And we are very fortunate to be among the first British readers to be touched by it."

The morning light gradually streamed into the living room, slowly dispelling the thick fog over the Thames.

The thick stack of Japanese manuscripts—"Don't Let Me Go"—lay quietly on the coffee table in the soft morning light.

However, during the fourteen days that Kitahara Iwao was diligently writing, the criticisms directed at him by the London literary world not only did not subside with the passage of time, but instead became increasingly harsh.

Instead of backing down after that late-night television interview, Sir Richard turned his attack on Kitahara Iwao into a systematic and organized media campaign.

Over the next two weeks, he published a series of columns in several of Britain's most influential and long-established newspapers, every two to three days.

Each piece has a different perspective, but the core argument is highly consistent: Kitahara Iwa is an "Oriental Bubble" that was pushed up by commercial success and the jury's momentary leniency. His success does not represent the true level of Japanese literature, and the CWA jury's awarding of "Special Recommendation" to "Confessions" is a mistake that must be corrected.

The title of the first article by Sir Richard is "The Silent Eastern Trick: When a Bestselling Author Uses Commercial Packaging to Pretend to Be Literary Depth".

The article's core argument is that Kitahara Iwa was able to make it to the CWA finals not because the literary quality of "Confessions" met European standards, but because its "exoticism" perfectly matched a fashionable "cultural pluralism anxiety" among contemporary European intellectuals.

The jury's choice of "Confessions" was not essentially an endorsement of a work, but rather a demonstration of political correctness.

The second article is even more incisive in its language: "The Bubble of Genre Fiction: Why Commercial Crime Stories Can Never Cross the Threshold of Pure Literature".

This article no longer targets Kitahara Iwao personally, but expands its scope of attack to the entire field of "genre fiction".

Richard asserts in the article that crime novels, thrillers, mystery novels... no matter how well-written they are, they are essentially "consumer products," tools used to satisfy readers' immediate need for excitement and suspense.

They may be "good-looking", but they can never be "great".

The third article directly targets the credibility of the CWA judging panel itself.

The Shadow Behind the Golden Dagger: Lessons from a Loss of Judging Standards.

The article strongly suggests that the CWA judging panel has been "lowering its standards" in recent years to cater to the demands of the global market, and the recommendation of "Confessions" is just the latest example of this "slippery standard."

Sir Richard's articles triggered an incredibly complex chain reaction within the British literary world.

Some conservative critics who belonged to the same camp as him, those who had long regarded "maintaining the orthodoxy of European literature" as their core mission, successively expressed their support for Richard in their respective columns and social occasions.

Some of their wording was more tactful: "Sir Richard's concerns are not without merit; we do indeed need to be wary of the overgeneralization of judging standards."

Some were so blunt as to be almost shameless: "The fact that an Asian author made it to the CWA finals with a commercial crime novel shows that there's something wrong with our entry requirements."

Within two weeks, this sentiment gradually coalesced into a clear public opinion: "Defend the orthodox lineage of European pure literature."

This slogan was never officially proclaimed by anyone.

But it permeates the lines of those columns, the conversations in those literary clubs, and those elegant social circles that, under the guise of "defending taste," are actually "exclusive."

Kitahara Iwa's actions during these two weeks of "staying at home," not giving any interviews, not issuing any statements, and not responding to any of Richard's articles in any public forum, are noteworthy.

This was accurately interpreted by the conservative camp as a kind of "insecurity and escapism".

"Look, he can't even give a single word in rebuttal."

He knew he had no grounds for argument, so he chose to remain silent.

"This precisely proves that our judgment was correct. His work cannot withstand the test of European literary standards. Once placed under the real spotlight, it will instantly reveal its flaws, just like a cheap stage magic trick."

In the first week, The Times supplement set the tone: "Bestselling author from the East has gone into seclusion."

A few days later, a column in the Daily Express followed up with a sarcastic comment: "A conman who only knows how to use type tricks is trying to cover up his guilty conscience."

In the latter half of the second week of his seclusion, a London literary weekly even used a more pointed headline on its cover: "The Vanishing Trick of the Eastern Magician".

The accompanying image is a blurry picture of an Asian man's back as he walks toward a half-open door.

Their intentions are self-evident; they are implying that Kitahara Iwa is about to return to Japan quietly, ending what they consider a "misnamed" European trip.

Faced with this onslaught of criticism, not everyone chose to remain silent.

CWA President Colin did not stand idly by.

The day after Richard published his first column, Colin, in his capacity as chairman of the CWA, published a response in The Times.

The article uses very restrained language, but every sentence gets straight to the heart of Richard's argument:

"Each member of the CWA judging panel is a professional with decades of experience in their respective fields, selected through a rigorous process."

"Our review process consists of three rounds of independent blind review and one round of group discussion. Throughout the entire process, there were no external factors involved."

"Whether it's commercial pressure, political considerations, or so-called 'cultural pluralism anxiety,' these factors can influence the judging results."

"Attributing the nomination of 'Confessions' to a 'politically correct stance' is itself a disregard for the CWA's 60-year tradition of judging."

"If our judging panel can be swayed by such reasons, then the CWA doesn't deserve to exist for sixty years."

In the same week, Professor Arthur also published a lengthy article through the Oxford University Press academic newsletter, analyzing the textual quality and literary depth of the English translation of "Confessions" from the professional perspectives of translation studies and comparative literature.

Mr. Ian published his most outspoken commentary in the literary section of The Guardian, with the blunt title: “Where did Sir Richard go wrong: Some basic common sense about literary standards?”

Logically, an endorsement from the CWA chairman, an Oxford translation scholar, and the Guardian's chief critic would be enough to quell most literary controversies.

But the conservative camp did not give up; instead, they changed their angle of attack.

Less than 48 hours after Colin, Arthur, and Ian's article was published, several commentators in the conservative camp spoke out, misinterpreting the three men's defense as evidence of a "guilty conscience."

Why would the CWA chairman be so eager to endorse a work? Because he knows in his heart that the result is untenable.

"Professor Arthur and Mr. Ian have a long-standing working relationship with Kitahara Iwao's British publisher. Is their defense based on academic integrity or commercial interests?"

"When three people band together to speak out for a single work, it doesn't seem like they're defending literary standards; it seems more like they're covering up some kind of behind-the-scenes deal."

The most pointed accusation came from the editor-in-chief of a long-established literary quarterly.

In his column, he wrote: "When the chairman of a jury, a translator, and a critic all have to stand up to defend the same work, it's not about protecting literary standards, but about protecting a bubble they've all created."

"Or to put it more bluntly, they are degenerates who have been bought off by Eastern capital."

This label of "capital intervention" has pushed the debate to an irrational climax.

When President Colin saw this column, he slammed the magazine down on his desk, his face turning ashen.

But he ultimately suppressed his anger and made no public response.

He knew that under this deliberately incited "bloodline theory" sentiment, any rational self-justification would be further distorted. The more he defended himself, the more the other side celebrated.

This is a war that cannot be won through debate.