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

Just as Yong Ge finished sending the message "See you in the next chapter," a "ripping" sound came from the sky outside the window, like a piece of paper being torn in the middle.

The crack was widening, revealing a dense array of books underneath, their pages turning automatically. Yongge seemed to spot a title: *Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Revised Edition)*, by Narrative Graveyard.

"grass!"

Yong quickly stuffed his phone into his pocket, gripped the red fountain pen tightly, the barrel tingling—no, it was getting hot. Like a bone I'd pulled out of some kind of conduit (don't overthink it),!

The sound of shattering glass echoed from the office building; office windows were melting. The glass turned into a viscous liquid, flowing down the exterior walls. Lines of annotations were left on the walls:

The description is too bland; I suggest adding more conflict.

The character's motivation is insufficient and needs further development. [A turning point should occur here.]

Editor-in-Chief Wang sat calmly in his rocking chair, a cigarette between his fingers.

I've never seen you smoke in all these years of working here, but now that the apocalypse is here, you're never without a cigarette, you old bastard.

Editor-in-Chief Wang exhaled a puff of smoke, which drifted away and clung to the three tufts of hair on his head, making him look like a deity descending to earth. He spoke softly, "Update, if anyone's going to die, it'll be you first. I'm not in a hurry."

"To be old and not die is to be a thief" perfectly describes you!

Yong felt a sharp pain in his hand. He looked down and saw that the red pen was writing automatically, sucking his blood and using his finger as a medium to draw marks in the air.

[The author, Liu Tianyong, stood before the melting window, his figure somewhat blurred, as if erased by an eraser. He wanted to say something, but…]

Yongge abruptly pinched the pen tip, forcibly stopping the flow. Blood seeped from between his fingers, not falling to the ground, but hovering in the air, forming ellipses.

Yongge understood: this pen, this ability, this damned world—they all followed a common rule:

The story must continue. Even if the author wants to stop.

……

Yongge was frantically running through the streets, even though the buildings were about to melt! As for that Wang Laodeng, seeing how calm he was, I don't need to accompany him if he wants to die! The other colleagues in the company have also disappeared.

Why did the world suddenly become like this? Liu Tianyong racked his brains but couldn't figure it out. Was the whole world the same? He wanted to see if there was any hope of survival, to see his friend who had just been refilled.

The streets have become rivers of text.

It's not an adjective; there really is a river, a river formed of ink, with countless characters floating on its surface, like drowned corpses.

A man in a suit was standing by the river, reading aloud. His mouth was open so wide, and he was reading so forcefully that his jaw had dislocated, but the sound continued, forced straight out from deep in his throat:

He stood by the river, looking at his reflection, and suddenly realized that it wasn't him, but...

He jumped. Not a single drop of water was splashed; only lines of text floated to the surface: [He disappeared at the end of the narrative; cause of death pending.]

Yongge took a detour, stepping on the roofs of cars parked by the roadside. It felt like he was walking on leather covers. Looking down, he saw his reflection in the smooth surface—no image, a third-person description.

[Liu Tianyong, 26 years old, a struggling online novelist, is currently fleeing for his life in a sorry state. His hair is disheveled, his shirt is stained with ink, and there is a calmness in his eyes that doesn't belong to him—the kind of composure that only fictional characters possess, the kind of luck that the author protects.]

Stop it, where is the composure in my eyes? Are you sure you're not panicking? He quickly reached out to wipe the words away, but they only faded, they didn't disappear.

"Stop looking." A voice came from above.

Yongge raised his proud head and saw a person sitting on the street lamp, or rather, half a person, whose lower body was integrated into the lamp post, like an illustration that had been pasted on.

The man was holding a cell phone and typing furiously. (Just like the author is doing now.)

Who are you?

"I am a contracted author on KDbulake.com, Midnight Typewriter. Don't ask for my real name, you won't remember it anyway. I've been marginalized. My real name is in the side stories, it's not mentioned in the main story."

His fingers were practically blurring out of the screen as he wrote, "I wrote about myself climbing down the lamppost seventeen times, but it didn't work. It seems this setting doesn't make sense in the narrative."

Damn it, the world is like this, and you're talking to me about logic?

"What kind of logic is that?!"

"The lamppost needs someone to light it, so I have to keep it." Midnight Typewriter finally looked at Yongzi, his pupils turning into cursors, blinking pleasingly. "You're that slacker who likes to fool people when he writes novels, right? The editor mentioned you in the group chat."

"group?"

Wang Qiangjian's author group includes all the authors who are still updating their works. Aren't you in the group too? We need to…”

He didn't finish his sentence.

Because the "update urgers" have arrived.

That was the first time Xiao Yongzi truly saw the form of the person urging him to update. It wasn't like before, where they crawled out of the phone screen.

It is the complete form.

It rose from the ink-black river, like some kind of typographical error, its body pieced together from countless "paragraphs," its head as chapter titles, its limbs as page breaks, and a huge, constantly counting down number on its chest: 22:30:30

It no longer has a face; instead, it has a "Author's Notice" printed in bold, blood-red Song typeface, size 5.

[Dear Creator, your work "The Nth Rebirth" has been on hiatus for 1 hour and 30 minutes. According to the "Narrative Graveyard Contract Agreement", the "Gentle Request for Updates" process is now initiated.]

"Mild?" The Midnight Typewriter let out a bitter laugh. "It calls this mild?"

The person urging for an update raised their arm, which was composed of comments such as "Please update as soon as possible," "Readers can't wait," and "Is this a discontinued project?" with their claws pointing at a street lamp.

[Associated author detected: Midnight Typewriter, no updates for 72 hours. Forced correction initiated.]

The claw swung down.

Midnight Typewriter's body began to reassemble and take on a character: his limbs were elongated, his face was smoothed out, his clothes became a standard character uniform, and a name tag appeared above his head: [Passerby B]

[Passerby B stood on a streetlamp, witnessing the protagonist's escape. He had no lines because the author forgot to write one for him.]

A new line of text appeared under the author's "Author's Notice" face that urged updates.

Midnight Typewriter, now called Passerby B, has its cursor eye turned off, becoming a pitch-black period.

Yong wanted to run, but... he was stuck, still in that formatted way. He noticed a line of small print next to his feet: [Liu Tianyong froze in place. He realized this was the consequence of stopping updates.]

Fuck you!

He picked up his red pen and continued writing below that line:

But he picked up his pen.

The penholder was burning hot, like a bone pulled from a blood vessel.

He wrote:

The countdown from the person urging for more updates paused for one second, as if they were thinking.

"He wrote this? What kind of writing style is this? Narrative? Self-referential? It's unconventional!" the person urging for more updates analyzed.

Yong didn't give it a chance to finish its analysis and wrote: 【Get lost!】

A blob of red ink burst from the nib of the red fountain pen, like a comment, or a veto line drawn by Editor-in-Chief Wang on the document.

A stain appeared on the author's note to those urging for updates, and quickly spread, covering the words "gentle urging for updates".

The countdown has reached: 23:59:59

Then, it retreated, as if it had received an order from a higher authority. The ink river parted to make way, and it slowly sank down. The surface returned to calm, and a line of text appeared: "[Get out] This is not a valid narrative. One demerit has been given. Next update will be requested in 24 hours."

Yong Ge slumped on the roof of the car, his hands trembling violently. He felt completely drained.