197: The story has come to an end.

"Tap, tap, tap—"

Inside the command hall, the judges, who had been worrying about Lin Que's progress,

suddenly caught a crisp, subtle sound with their eardrums.

Then, the sound changed.

It was no longer intermittent tapping, but a sudden downpour of rain.

"Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap—"

On the screen, Lin Que's fingers moved faster and faster.

It was a kind of muscle memory etched into his soul.

In his previous life, during countless late nights under the pressure of clients demanding overnight revisions, he had developed the abilities of a 'tentacle monster'.

His fingertips danced across the keycaps, moving even faster than his brain's commands.

The torrent of thoughts accumulated over two hours found a vent at this moment, transforming into characters frantically extending across the screen.

"This..."

Tao Zhiyan was about to take a sip of water, but his cup froze at his lips.

He watched as the word count column on the right side of the screen jumped at a terrifying frequency.

One thousand words.

Two thousand words.

In just half an hour, the document's word count skyrocketed by three thousand!

"Doesn't he need to think?"

An academician from the School of Literature adjusted his glasses, his voice trembling.

"How is this writing? Even copying from a book wouldn't be this fast, right?"

Gu Changfeng remained seated firmly, his hand gripping the purple clay teapot with involuntary force.

As the text unfolded with violent intensity,

the story on the screen tore away the final layer of tender veneer, revealing a bloody skeleton.

[This is the truth of the wall.]

[In this highly automated world, machines have replaced 90% of human labor.

The fifty million lower-class inhabitants of the Third Space have become redundant burdens.

To reduce resource consumption, the rulers designed this folding mechanism.]

[Depriving you of your time, stuffing you into hibernation pods, stacking you like cargo. This is not just physical isolation; it is the most 'dignified' way to handle the 'useless population'.]

"Tsk—"

Clicks of tongues and sighs echoed through the command hall.

How was this science fiction? This was a book of social prophecy cloaked in a metallic shell!

"This knife... it stabs too deep."

Zhou Wenyuan's expression was grave as he muttered to himself.

"He turned social class stratification directly into an insurmountable law of physics. This wall isn't built on the ground; it's built into one's fate."

The director seemed to sense this suffocating tension and specifically enlarged the screens of Lin Que and Xu Changge side-by-side.

On the left, on Xu Changge's screen, the writing was elegant like poetry.

He described the moss on the ancient city walls and the sorrow of literati touching the bricks under the setting sun.

It was the accumulation of history.

On the right, on Lin Que's screen, the writing was as coarse as sand.

It was the smell of engine oil, the smell of swill, the piercing screech of hydraulic rods rubbing together,

and the struggle of Old Knife rummaging through trash for a few dozen bucks.

Gu Changfeng looked at these two images and sighed inwardly.

One was a meticulously pruned white rose raised in a greenhouse.

The other was a wild, iron-thorned bramble rooted in the ruins.

On the screen, the plot continued to advance.

After surviving nine deaths, Old Knife finally smuggled himself into the First Space.

There was no sour stench there, only neatly manicured lawns and bright floor-to-ceiling windows.

He met the client.

Qin Tian, a graduate student in finance.

This elite from the First Space, dressed in well-tailored loungewear, took the letter Old Knife had risked his life to deliver.

He was polite, even pouring a glass of water for Old Knife.

But that was all.

He turned a blind eye to the bleeding wound on Old Knife's body and showed zero interest in the harrowing journey Old Knife had taken.

All he cared about was whether the letter had reached his sweetheart's hands.

Finally, to express his 'goodwill', Qin Tian pulled several crisp, large-denomination bills from his wallet and stuffed them into Old Knife's hand.

["Keep the change," Qin Tian said with a smile. "Consider it a tip for your hard work."]

[Old Knife gripped those few light pieces of paper, looking at Qin Tian's face, which was so clean it didn't have a single visible pore.

He suddenly understood that in this world, the hardest wall to scale wasn't a steel folding foundation hundreds of meters high.]

[It was this dignified indifference.]

[They don't even need to speak harshly to you, because in their eyes, you are just a speck of dust in this massive machine, not even worthy of being hated.]

"Good!"

Tao Zhiyan couldn't help but slap his thigh hard.

"This is the real wall!"

This kind of upper-class 'decency' was more suffocating than direct insults.

With this plot point, Lin Que had hammered the theme of the 'wall' from the physical level deep into the spiritual level.

While everyone was still savoring this plot, the rhythm of the text on the screen suddenly accelerated.

An accident occurred.

Old Knife missed the optimal window for his return trip because of Qin Tian's delay.

Alarms blared shrilly as the city's folding sequence initiated early.

[Rumble—]

Those present felt as if they could hear the roar of that steel behemoth awakening through the words.

Tens of thousands of tons of high-rises began to flip under the drive of hydraulic rods; the earth was like a carpet being rolled up.

The once-flat roads instantly stood upright, becoming vertical cliffs.

Old Knife was like an ant between two massive millstones, sprinting through the gap between life and death.

[If he were even a second slower, he would be folded into the depths of the earth's crust, becoming a smear of blood in the foundation of this bustling city.]

Several elderly professors could no longer sit still; they stood up from their chairs, hands propped on the edge of the table, staring intently at the screen.

"Run! It's about to close!"

A young teaching assistant couldn't help but shout internally, completely forgetting that this was just a novel.

The words became a camera lens, frantically switching in every reader's mind.

The crushing sound of hydraulic rods, the explosive sound of compressed air, Old Knife's heavy gasping... This was a truly blockbuster-level reading experience.

Finally, an instant before the city completely closed, Old Knife rolled and fell into a pipe filled with sewage.

He tumbled back into the sour, putrid Third Space garbage station.

By now, five full hours had passed since Lin Que began writing.

From eleven in the morning to four in the afternoon, Lin Que had maintained the same posture, without even bending his back once.

The can of Red Bull in front of him had long been empty, and his forehead was covered in fine beads of sweat.

His face looked somewhat pale due to the high-intensity mental exhaustion.

But his eyes were still bright.

It was as if they were burning.

Looking at that silhouette, Gu Changfeng was momentarily reminded of a literary giant he had seen in his youth.

That state of complete immersion, bordering on madness, where one could exhaust oneself for the sake of an inspiration... that was talent.

It was the kind of talent where the heavens gave you a bowl of rice and then chased after you to feed you.

On the screen, the story reached its end.

There was no celebration after surviving a disaster, nor any grand feat of overthrowing the system.

[Old Knife dragged his broken leg back to that dim capsule room.]

[He took the money he had exchanged his life for, smoothed out each bill, and stacked them neatly.]

[That was the school selection fee for his adopted daughter, Candy, to attend kindergarten in the First Space.]

[Not a penny more, not a penny less—just enough for one year.]

[What about after one year?]

[Old Knife didn't know. Maybe he would have to climb the wall again, or maybe he would die between those two millstones.]

[But at least for now, Candy could go and see that place where the sun never sets.]

This sense of powerlessness—of 'giving everything just to stay in the same place'—

was like steel wrapped in cotton, slamming into the hearts of all the judges.

There were no hysterical accusations, yet it was more despair-inducing than any accusation could be.

The cursor flickered at the final line.

Lin Que's fingers hovered in the air, pausing for a second.

Then, they fell heavily.

[Old Knife glanced at the electronic clock on the wall. Six o'clock.]

[Time to go to work.]

...