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

When Yong fell off the roof of the car, he thought he was dreaming. He pinched his handsome face, and it hurt! It wasn't a dream, it was reality.

He got up from the ground and saw the breakfast stall on the street corner, a place he frequented every day.

Old Zhang's stall was solidifying, solidifying into a written description. Yong Ge watched helplessly as Old Zhang faded, then the outline gradually emerged, like a stroke effect in Photoshop, until finally the whole figure flattened, becoming a piece of paper fluttering in the air:

[Old Zhang, male, 52 years old, breakfast stall owner, is currently frying youtiao (Chinese fried dough sticks).]

The papers fluttered down, like abandoned drafts.

Yong shouted, but no sound came out at all; no sound came out of his throat, as if his voice had not yet been fully processed.

He looked down and saw a line of text appear in front of him: [Liu Tianyong tried to scream, but...]

But what?

He crossed it out with a red pen and rewrote it as "Damn!"

[But the sound finally finished loading: Damn!]

The sound exploded from Yong Ge's throat, the delayed sound effects finally catching up with the visuals. The surrounding air vibrated, and then other sounds began to pour in: car alarms, the sound of breaking glass, and a beautiful woman's screams.

The apocalypse has just arrived, and everyone is still not used to it, including the author, but the readers should be.

Yong Ge started running at lightning speed. At that moment, he no longer wanted to see the outside world or his friend who had just been inflated.

I just saw Old Wang standing in his office in the company building. The building didn't melt down as I'd imagined, so it seems safe. And that old man definitely knows a lot. I must go find our beloved Editor-in-Chief Wang!

As I passed by the supermarket, a dozen or so people were blocking the street with shopping carts filled with food, water, and many books.

"Tell a compelling story! A logical story that people can accept!" A middle-aged man wearing glasses was giving instructions; his T-shirt bore the logo of the "Kaidi Bulai Ke" website. He seemed to be an online novelist from the same company.

"What?"

"Read it!" The man grabbed Yong Ge's shoulders excitedly, his pupils trembling. "Didn't you see? Didn't you grasp the rules? The story must continue! As long as we're telling the story, we're creating a protective shield! Those things are eating silence!"

His hand pointed to the end of the street.

A melting newsstand, gushing out black ink mixed with words, sentences, and abandoned settings, swims merrily like fish.

He never loved her.

[Actually, I was the murderer.]

[This foreshadowing will be resolved in chapter 300.]

They are climbing ashore, looking for a host.

A woman who hadn't managed to escape was caught by them. The words and phrases seeped into her ears and nose, and her mouth began to open and close automatically, uttering words that weren't her own:

She stood by the window, gazing at the distant city, her heart filled with...

"What is it filled with?" she asked herself in horror, but she couldn't stop herself asking, "What is it filled with?"

No one answered; she continued, her voice rising into screams, then into recitation, into an unstoppable narration:

[Full of, full of...]

Then her body began to glow, became transparent, and finally turned into a sheet of paper, drifting away and becoming part of countless unfinished stories.

Yong was pushed into the crowd, where people around him were frantically reciting aloud. Some were reciting the Analects of Confucius, some were reading supermarket receipts, and others were even making things up on the spot.

"I ate two steamed buns this morning, one with meat filling and the other with meat filling."

"My name is Li Si. I'm in the supermarket. I'm scared, but I'm still alive."

"The sun rises in the east; this is common sense. Common sense is very important; common sense can save lives."

The flow of ink was blocked three meters away from the supermarket entrance, as if it had encountered an invisible wall.

efficient!

Yong Ge, panting heavily, raised his red pen and joined the battle.

Liu Tianyong stood in front of the supermarket, surrounded by strangers, each telling their own story. It was absurd, but better than death.

After the description was written, the ink flow noticeably receded a short distance.

The middle-aged author looked at him, his eyes changing: "You're a contracted author?"

"Um, I guess so."

What aspects of writing are you good at?

"Good at fooling people..."

The author, on the verge of a breakdown, burst into hysterical laughter: "You think this is a joke? You're telling me this now? What we need is a finished product! What we need is confirmation! What we need is an ending!"

He grabbed Liu Tianyong's collar frantically: "Write! Write an ending quickly! Write that all the monsters are dead, the world returns to normal! And then the book is over!"

"What's the harm in writing it? Aren't you an author yourself? Can't you write it too?"

"It might come true if I write it!" The middle-aged author's eyes lit up, like a drowning person seeing driftwood, seeing hope for life.

"I tried it! I wrote about supermarket safety, and the ink really stopped flowing! You just have to believe it! But I'm a loser; I wrote the whole book, and it didn't work!"

"And then? What happens after you finish writing it? What happens after you finish the book?"

The middle-aged author, somewhat dazed, asked, "What did you say next?"

"Once the book is finished, the story ends. Ending means being archived, and archiving means being digested. The supermarket you wrote is safe, but only temporarily. It's safe only for this chapter, not forever."

Yong Ge pointed to the ink that was blocked outside. The ink had indeed stopped, but it hadn't receded; it was just waiting, waiting for new content.

"It's waiting for your update. You wrote about security, but you didn't write why it's secure, or how long it will remain secure. This isn't a coherent narrative; it's a fragmented story, it's suspense, it's their most hungry state!"

Yong Ge is a quick learner; he grasped the essence of what Editor-in-Chief Wang said in a short period of time.

The middle-aged author's face was contorted, a mixture of hope and despairing anger.

"So what do you want? To keep writing forever? To never finish?"

"Tentative!"

Yongge turned and headed towards the back door of the supermarket. The middle-aged author screamed behind him, "You'll die! You'll end up like those eunuch authors! Eaten up by your own novels, by your own stories!!!"

Yong didn't turn around. "Maybe," he said, "but at least my story is still unfolding, still being updated!"

When Liu Tianyong emerged from the back door of the supermarket, the sky had already changed color, and a light drizzle had begun to fall.

Damn it! That's a punctuation mark!! Yong Ge was still in shock and quickly hid in a corner with a roof to avoid being "hit".

Commas, periods, ellipses, and exclamation marks fell sparsely from the sky, hitting the roofs of cars parked by the roadside with crisp sounds.

An exclamation mark was precisely inserted into a roadside fire hydrant, and a jet of water gushed out, condensing into a string of text in the air:

[Sirens should be heard here]

Then various sounds came from all directions. Fortunately, this "light rain" only lasted a few minutes.

Yong Ge's mind was completely in chaos; he was terrified.

I started questioning life again, and slapped myself hard across the face. Damn it, damn it, tell me this isn't real!

It's only been a few hours? And this world? How are we supposed to live? Tell me how I can survive in a place like this! I'd rather be dead! These past few hours have felt like more than five thousand years of history!

"Damn it!" Yong cursed, and after calming himself down for a while, he finally regained his composure. The punctuation rain in the sky had completely stopped, and the water flow from the fire hydrant had slowed down.

Yongge bypassed it, but the street became even more chaotic. A chaotic narrative!

The author's brain can't keep up with this chaos; the CPU is starting to smoke.