A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Guide for Failing Authors

At 11:59 PM, Ye Tian walked to the window, looked at the starry night sky, and slowly extended his index finger, pressing it to his forehead. At midnight, a beam of starlight streaked across the dark sky, piercing directly through Ye Tian's forehead, and he lay stiffly down. This was Ye Tian's Nth death. He thought he could be reborn again like the previous N times, but this time he couldn't be reborn, dying at the age of 30.

The protagonist dies, the story ends...

"Liu Tianyong! That's enough! What is this you wrote? Is that all? Is that all? Short and weak? Who the hell are you writing this for? I've put up with you for long enough. You haven't written anything in a month. I asked you to submit your manuscript, and this is what you write for me? Your name has the character 'Yong' in it. You really are brave! I think you've really gone crazy!" A roar came from the editor-in-chief Wang Qiang's office.

"Editor-in-Chief Wang, let me explain... uh, no, let me tell you, look at the protagonist's name, Ye Tian, ​​it's so imposing, it fits the online novel setting. He's been reborn N times, and these N lives must have been incredibly colorful. And the most unexpected thing is the ending, this time he didn't actually come back to life! The protagonist dies, look at any other book where the protagonist dies, look! Look! How anti-cliché is that?"

"I swear to God (please use your imagination), where are Ye Tian's many colorful lives? Where are the plots? Where are the details? Where are they?"

"Readers these days are so powerful. They've read so many wish-fulfillment novels that they know the plot better than the authors. Aren't many authors just writing plots based on the comments section? After reading this setting, they'll definitely imagine a million words of the perfect story. I'm doing this for the readers' own good, to give them some practice. Otherwise, with so many mindless wish-fulfillment novels, their brains will be completely rusted. It may be short, but the core is solid. It's concise and powerful, and it might just become a hit!"

"You son of a bitch! I don't know where to store this stuff, am I supposed to store it here?! Don't you think about yourself, or at least your ancestors? The fact that readers are only cursing your ancestors for eighteen generations is already a huge act of mercy!"

"Ahem, if the readers don't mind, I can also store my brain with them. That way, it will be easier for the readers to generate their own plot content. Besides, being black and red is still being black and red, and haters are still fans. As long as there is traffic, that's all that matters. I'm not the editor-in-chief."

"Get the hell out of here! Don't you dare see me again!"

"Alright, I'll head off work now. Call me if you need anything, I'm always here!" Liu Tianyong dodged the whistling folder board and rushed out the door, leaving only the sound of the board hitting the door.

"Brother Liu, you're amazing! You always manage to break the editor-in-chief's nerves!" The colleagues outside the door exclaimed in admiration.

"It's nothing, let's go, there's nothing to see here. Time to go home, time to go home," Liu Feng waved his hand casually and walked out.

Liu Tianyong whistled as he walked out of the company gate.

"Hey beautiful, you look radiant! Are you about to have some luck with the ladies? Is it because you bumped into me?" Brother Yong greeted the black-stockinged beauty who was passing by in a friendly manner.

"Get lost!" the woman in black stockings replied, both kindly and enthusiastically.

Ah, no matter what the words are, they sound so beautiful and moving when they come out of a beautiful woman's mouth.

Wait a minute, why is everyone's face glowing red? Liu Tianyong looked up at the sky, which was a deep crimson, illuminating every corner of the city.

Suddenly, my phone received a message: "Your character Ye Tian has requested to add you as a friend." The verification message read: Dear author, this is quite urgent.

Yong was completely confused. Ye Tian? The character I created? Add me as a friend?

Pass through quickly.

Yongge stared at his phone screen. Ye Tian's profile picture, which had just been sent a message, was completely black, with a line of small print after his nickname: "From 'The Nth Rebirth'."

Does this even have character titles with annotations?

[Dear author, this matter is quite urgent.]

Another message popped up in the dialog box: "[I'm stuck at the moment of death, as you wrote.]"

Before Liu Tianyong could figure out how to reply, the third message appeared immediately.

[Furthermore, you wrote it wrong.]

"What did I write wrong? It's only a few words." Yong replied subconsciously.

[Slowly extend your index finger. You wrote "index finger," but I extended my middle finger!]

Liu Tianyong is going crazy. [Does this matter?]

[Important. Because you misspelled a word, my death posture was incorrect, the rebirth protocol wasn't triggered, and I'm currently stuck at 0:0:0. I can't die, and I can't come back to life. What's more troublesome is that, due to some unknown reason, a bug in the narrative space is invading the real world.]

Liu Tianyong looked up at the sky, where the crimson color had intensified. What the hell was going on? Even as a consistently unsuccessful online novel writer, he had never imagined something so outrageous.

Pedestrians on the street were taking pictures with their phones, saying things like, "What a beautiful sky!"

A man in a suit suddenly froze at the intersection, but his shadow didn't stop. Instead, it took a few more steps forward, then turned around and waved to the man in the suit. The man in the suit was also waving uncontrollably, in sync with the shadow on the other side.

"Damn it!" Liu Tianyong couldn't help but curse.

My phone kept ringing incessantly; over a dozen apps popped up notifications simultaneously, all with the exact same title:

[The novel "The Nth Rebirth" that you've been following has been updated!]

Yong Ge thought to himself that he hadn't updated his blog. He swore that he had only written a few words, and that his manuscript had just been rejected by our respected Editor-in-Chief Wang!

Without realizing it, I opened my phone and found that the document on it was moving on its own, the cursor was jumping, and the text was scrolling:

[Ye Tian lay on the floor, his consciousness hovering between life and death. He felt something tearing apart—not his body, but the force that separated fiction from reality, the force of narrative!]

Then Yong Ge heard countless voices echoing in his mind:

What happened next?

What happened next?

What happened next?

Liu Tianyong got goosebumps all over his body. What the hell were these sounds coming from all directions?

A little girl waiting for the bus nearby suddenly asked, "And then?"

Her voice was hoarse, unlike what a child would make. The old man next to her turned to Liu Tianyong and asked, "And then?"

Then came the third, the fourth. People all over the street, one after another, repeated the same sentence in different tones.

What happened next?

Yong wanted to run, but his legs wouldn't obey him. It wasn't that he couldn't run, but that he really couldn't move, as if he were nailed to the ground.

Ye Tian sent another message: [Author, did you see this? This is narrative hunger. If the story isn't finished, the readers will get hungry, and if they get hungry long enough, they'll come and "eat" it themselves.]

[Eat? What to eat? This is absolutely outrageous! The door is open for the absolute most outrageous thing ever!]

[Eat reality, eat logic, eat everything that can be described.]

Yong Ge can finally move, and the first "monster" has crawled out of the screen.

It came from a teenager's phone on the roadside. The teenager was reading a post-apocalyptic novel when the screen went black, and then a pale hand emerged from the frame. It was pale and white, with a slight beautification effect, and the fingers were long and slender, very beautiful.

But each joint of his fingers was engraved with lines of small characters. Those were "paragraphs" from a novel.

The boy reacted very quickly, throwing his phone so fast it left a blur, but the beautiful hand was even faster than the boy's blur, instantly grabbing his wrist.

It wasn't the feeling of grasping his body that was grasping me, but rather the feeling of grasping his name!

Our Brother Yong watched helplessly as the boy's name tag changed from "Zhang Wei" to "Passerby A," and then the boy's true form began to fade, like pencil marks being erased, disappearing inch by inch from his feet upwards!

Finally, only the hand that reached out from the screen remained, clutching the phone, as it fell to the ground. The screen remained lit, displaying a new line of text:

[Zhang Wei, male, 23 years old, died on the first day of the apocalypse. No further plot developments. Filming completed.]