Finishing the book means death; I abandoned the whole world.

[Narrative pollution detected: Moral blackmail]

[Effect: All those present must undergo the "sacrifice test," and those who refuse will be marked as "cold-blooded animals" and suffer a moral death penalty.]

"Hehehe, it would have been so much better if everyone had followed my script. At least we could have died with a clear conscience, and perhaps fewer people would have died. But now there's no way around it. I can only make everyone a memorable scene in my apocalyptic tale!"

The rag doll in Lin Ruyan's arms suddenly opened its eyes, and a golden mist burst out of the doll's mouth, instantly filling the entire bank lobby.

"A domain! It's obviously very powerful, Little Ye Tian! Look at Emperor Ruyan's doll, why don't you have one!" Liu Tianyong was very excited. After all, it was the first time he had seen one.

"Watch out!" Ye Tian shoved Yong Ge away from his excitement, but was grazed on half of his body by the golden mist. Immediately, red marks of "selfishness" and "disregard for the overall situation" began to appear on his body, and their transparency began to increase visibly.

"Author, stop it! She's using collective guilt manipulation!" Ye Tian gritted his teeth. "This woman has tied her storyline to the aesthetics of sacrifice; anyone who questions her will be judged as the villain!"

Within the golden mist, the eyes of the hidden survivors began to glaze over and become unfocused. They slowly stood up, their faces gradually revealing a fanatical resolve.

"We must sacrifice!" the girl with glasses murmured to herself, "for everyone."

"For Sister Ruyan's story!" Another middle-aged man picked up a broken piece of glass from the ground and pointed it at his own throat.

"For everyone's sake! What do our personal interests and sacrifices matter!" An old woman ran up and headbutted Liu Tianyong.

"Stop! Stop! Stop!" Yongge waved his red pen, writing rapidly in the air:

Everyone gains an "immunity to moral blackmail" debuff for five seconds.

The words, barely formed, were corroded by the golden mist, only managing to save the uncle who was about to commit suicide. Yong Ge's narrative weight was plummeting:

[Current narrative weight: 510→470→430]

"It's useless," Lin Ruyan laughed maniacally. Her white dress began to grow, transforming into a wedding gown woven from countless "tearful moments," "heartbreaking scenes," and "unresolved regrets."

"My readers may be few, but each one is a pure tearjerker! They love to see sacrifice, they love to see a loyal and devoted heroine live on carrying her brother's portrait! This is my path to completing a novel!"

The rag doll in her arms also began to swell, transforming into a huge monster core composed of "sacrifice" and "dedication," merging with the previous monster that embodied morality.

She transformed into a golden statue of the Virgin Mary, stained with blood and tears, holding an open book in her hands, the pages of which clearly bore the names of everyone present.

"Now, it's the classic trope of a younger brother dying tragically to save his older sister, and the older sister turning evil and seeking revenge. And you! You are the villains who drove my brother to his death!" Lin Ruyan stood on the shoulders of the statue of the Virgin Mary, looking down at the crowd.

The loosened boy hovered and attacked, the ligature marks on his neck tightened again, his face quickly turned purple, and he was about to die.

"Damn! This plot is so melodramatic!" Yong cursed. He tried to write "[The boy breaks free from his constraints]", but the ink in his red pen was absorbed by the tearful eyes of the Virgin Mary statue, transforming into "an even more tragic sacrifice".

"It's no use. In this field, being moved is the highest narrative principle!" Lin Ruyan opened her arms as if to embrace the whole world.

"The more you resist, the more cold-blooded you appear; the more cold-blooded you are, the more power I wield!"

Yong smacked his lips, stopped what he was doing, looked at the boy who was about to suffocate, looked at the survivors around him, and looked at the "selfish" mark that was spreading all over Ye Tian. Suddenly he smiled happily.

"You're right!" Yong nodded. "In this world, being moved is indeed powerful, but do you know what's even more powerful than being moved?"

Yong Ge's sudden behavior and words left Lin Ruyan somewhat bewildered.

"Yes, it's embarrassing!"

Yong Ge raised his red pen, pointed it at himself, and wrote on his chest:

Looking at the tragedy before him, Liu Tianyong realized that it was all so contrived!

Yes, it's pretentious!

The boy was strangled, yet remained in a near-death state; the female protagonist's white clothes were spotless in the apocalypse; the blood and tears shed by the statue of the Virgin Mary smelled of honey; even the posture of sacrifice seemed rehearsed countless times. This didn't feel like an apocalypse; it felt like a cheap stage play.

[Liu Tianyong felt his toes digging into the ground; he was about to have a severe case of embarrassment.]

He couldn't help but wonder if this woman thought he was acting in a melodramatic post-apocalyptic story—the kind of clichéd plot that even short video platforms wouldn't bother promoting.

The moment the words were written, the entire golden mist domain trembled violently.

"You! What did you write?!" Lin Ruyan screamed.

Why is my emotional threshold decreasing?!

"Because you're not sincere enough, honey." Yong grinned. "Your sacrifice was too deliberate, so deliberate that it made me feel awkward. And awkwardness is precisely the biggest killer of touching moments."

The statue of the Virgin Mary began to crack, and the words that evoked tears peeled off piece by piece.

"Impossible! My readers buy into this! They love to see protagonists tortured! They love to see saintly figures!"

"That's right, your readers love real sainthood and real torment of the protagonist, not acting." Yong Ge walked forward step by step, his red pen drawing a scarlet trajectory in the air.

"True sacrifice is silent, true suffering is great, and you are!" He pointed to the boy.

"You can't even bear to let your own brother die a quick death, keeping him hanging on as a backdrop. This isn't a sacrifice; it's like posing for a photo at a tourist attraction!"

[Narrative logic conflict detected: hypocrisy vs. truth]

Cracks appear in Lin Ruyan's "tragic heroine" persona.

"Shut up!" Empress Ruyan completely lost control. She lunged at the boy, a dagger formed from "righteousness" appearing in her hand. "I'll kill him with my own hands! To complete my climax!"

"Finally showing their true colors?" This was the moment Yong Ge had been waiting for.

He suddenly picked up his pen:

[Lin Ruyan, female, 28 years old, author of "healing" novels, has finally torn off her disguise.]

The dagger in her hand wasn't pointed at the monster, but at her own younger brother.

She realized that her so-called "aesthetics of sacrifice" was nothing more than a fig leaf for selfishness.

What she longed for was never salvation, but rather that poignant beauty of having "lost everything."

But now, her public image has collapsed.

"No! Stop writing!" Lin Ruyan stared in horror as the words seeped into reality. "You can't define me! I'm the female lead! I'm the light of this world! I am..."

She is a murderer!

Yong wrote the last line.

The dagger stopped a centimeter from the boy's throat. Lin Ruyan's body froze. She looked down and saw the "blade of righteousness" suddenly turn around and point at her heart.

This is the ultimate backlash of "moral kidnapping." When the author's hypocrisy is exposed, all the moral shackles imposed on others will backfire on the author.

"No! This isn't fair!" Lin Ruyan's voice was hoarse. "I just want to be seen, I just want someone to cry for my work!"

"Then go die!" Brother Yong's gaze turned cold. "The more gruesome your death, the more tears you might get from the readers."

The dagger pierced through.

The narrative ends! Lin Ruyan's body begins to collapse and disintegrate, just like a rejected manuscript, turning to ashes page by page. Her "story" has been forcibly ended, and the ending is: "The hypocrite dies from his own hypocrisy."

The rag doll in her arms let out a shrill scream, trying to escape. Ye Tian was already prepared; a flash of light appeared: [This item has been abandoned by its owner and has entered the "Unclaimed" state.]

The rag doll instantly shrank and turned into an ordinary rag.

The statue of the Virgin Mary, having lost its core, collapsed with a crash. The words "sacrifice" and "dedication," having lost their object of attachment, drifted aimlessly in the air, eventually turning into countless specks of dust that fell to the ground.

You have defeated Lin Ruyan, the "moral kidnapper".

[Loot obtained: Fragmented Heart of the Mother (can be used to block one moral attack, but will temporarily reduce intelligence)]

[Gained narrative weight +200, current narrative weight: 630]

[Special achievement unlocked: "The Terminator of Hypocrisy" - You expose the performance built on the suffering of others, which is more difficult than slaying a dragon in this world.]

The survivors in the hall seemed to wake from a dream, collapsing to the ground. The middle-aged man, seeing the broken glass in his hand, was so frightened that he threw it away.

The girl with glasses coughed incessantly; she had almost choked herself to death while shouting about righteousness: "Cough cough cough, what was I trying to do just now?!"

"You all wanted to commit suicide just now, for the sake of Emperor Ruyan's work. Next time you encounter this situation, remember the first principle: in this terrible world, whoever advises you to sacrifice yourself, let them go first."

The girl nodded frantically.

Ye Tian drifted over, the "selfish" label on him fading: "Author, where did you learn this 'awkwardness overcomes all' technique?"

"Uh, after so many years of failing at writing... readers always think my writing is awkward, ah, hahaha." Yong's face was flushed, and he looked up at a 45-degree angle. He never thought that one day such an embarrassing thing could save his life.

"When it comes to melodramatic plots, who can write more than me! The more you write, the more you'll naturally know where the lies are! This woman's biggest mistake is that she thinks too highly of herself as the protagonist, forgetting that in real stories, even the supporting characters rebel!"

Yong Ge's embarrassment was only momentary, and he quickly returned to his inexplicable narcissism, overflowing with confidence. Of course, even a loser like him could be proud for once.

"What about his brother?"

"Send him to the hospital? Sigh, forget it, there probably aren't any hospitals around now." Yong sighed.

The following text appeared on the red fountain pen: "[Xiao Yongzi, well done. But be careful, killing one 'moral kidnapper' will bring more 'righteous messengers' to cause you trouble. After all, hypocrisy is a social animal. —Wang Qiang]"

Damn it, Wang Laodeng, weren't you dead? Why are you still showing up so often? Are you hiding somewhere spying on me?!

The bank lobby's public address system suddenly emitted a crackling sound.

A strange, electronically synthesized male voice, seemingly brimming with a sense of justice, announced: "Attention, attention. An author has been detected maliciously killing other authors within this area. The [Court of Justice] has launched an investigation. (Repeated: The [Court of Justice] has launched an investigation.")

"Please remain where you are to be questioned by the Narrative Ethics Committee."

"Otherwise, they will be considered an 'antisocial author' and an arrest warrant will be issued."

Yong Ge and Ye Tian exchanged a glance.

"Author," Ye Tian swallowed, "it seems you've gotten yourself into trouble with an official organization?"

"Holy crap! This place is so run-down, and there are still officials around?"

Yongge grabbed a red pen and shouted excitedly, "Let's run!"

"Where are we going?"

"Go find the readers Wang Laodeng mentioned!" Yong Ge kicked open the back door of the bank.

"Since the authorities are going to judge me, and perhaps those self-righteous, 'healing' authors are involved too, then let's find more readers to judge! Let the market decide who deserves to die!"

The two rushed out of the bank, with the girl wearing glasses frantically chasing after them, shouting, "Wait for me! I'll come with you! I'm a reader too!!!"

Behind them, the air in the bank lobby began to distort, and a group of human figures dressed in black suits and wearing red armbands with the words "Under Review" seeped out from the wall. The leader was holding a thick "Convention for Online Literature Creators".

As he ran, Yong wrote a line of large characters on the wall:

【Chapter 12 ends! 】

But the story isn't over yet, because the judges have arrived, and Liu Tianyong never accepts scrutiny!

[To be continued!]