He fiercely criticized the Manchu scholar clique and the twelve emperors of the Qing Dynasty.

On the screen, a dense barrage of comments about "feeling resentful for giving so much" scrolled by. Tens of thousands of young men lowered their guard at this moment, throwing their most genuine confusion at this complete stranger, a senior from the Department of History at the University of Tokyo.

"Friends, I've seen many people say they've invested several years in this and are reluctant to give it up," Zhao Shuyao said calmly. "Let's take an example, like playing cards, which is very common in boys' dormitories."

He held up one finger.

"Your luck has hit rock bottom tonight. You've already lost half a month's living expenses, and with only ten minutes left before the dorm supervisor turns off the lights, are you planning to bet the rest of your living expenses in those last ten minutes to win it all back?"

Zhao Shuyao shook his head.

"Impossible. This is called the sunk cost trap. You won't be able to recover your losses in ten minutes. You'll lose everything, even your breakfast money for tomorrow. What should you do then? It's simple: admit you're unlucky, put the rest of your money in your pocket, go back to bed, and minimize your losses. That's winning."

There was a brief blank space in the comment section.

"It's the same in relationships." Zhao Shuyao picked up his cup and took a sip of water. "Don't count how much you've spent in the past, brothers. Remember this: money is for building your own confidence and for others to see. It's definitely not for spending on others without any limits."

In the lower left corner, reporter Wang pushed up his glasses and his pen flew across the paper as he took notes. His logic was so straightforward it was almost cruel, yet it precisely hit the nail on the head regarding the trap of modern consumerism.

Zhao Shuyao had no intention of stopping there; he decided to add fuel to the fire.

"I believe there are quite a few brothers in the live stream who come from wealthy families or have some capital from their own businesses." Zhao Shuyao leaned back in his chair, a hint of mockery flashing in his eyes. "You might as well observe how they date."

"They would drive nice cars to pick up girls and go shopping. When they passed by luxury stores, they would go in and buy things, but the bags they bought were for their older sisters; the perfumes they picked out were for their younger cousins. The passenger seat was piled high with nice things, but not a single one was for the girl next to them who was 'on the probationary period'."

Zhao Shuyao spread his hands.

"A strange thing happened. The girls who usually shout in front of you that they are 'slow to warm up' and 'need to be tested for sincerity' suddenly become not slow to warm up when faced with a man who only spends money on them. They become extremely understanding and don't even get angry anymore."

Zhao Shuyao looked at the camera, a cool smile playing on his lips.

"Why? Because the strength you display is called capital, while unconditionally giving away living expenses is called tribute. Brothers, those who know, know. I don't need to tear this veil any further, right?"

The number of viewers in the live stream immediately exceeded 50,000.

After a five-second pause, the barrage of comments erupted in an unprecedented burst.

"It's like a bolt of lightning! I was the damn fool who dreamed of making a comeback in ten minutes!"

"Teacher Zhao's words are a million times better than those so-called relationship gurus I've seen online."

"It's so true. Last week, I drove my dad's A6 to pick up my blind date. I bought my niece a gold bracelet and put it on the center console. The girl's attitude was so good that I was a little uncomfortable."

"I'll cancel the order right now and return the necklace I was planning to send tomorrow!"

This kind of analysis, which completely strips away emotional filters and directly addresses the underlying logic of human nature and self-interest, has turned the live stream into a battleground for awakening.

Seeing the trending topic, Zhao Shuyao knew the time was right and it was time to close the net.

He gripped the mouse and switched the desktop image to the next one.

"I've just answered some of your questions. Now, let's go back to our original topic: the accusation by Xiaoyu that I 'abandoned my wife after successfully passing the postgraduate entrance exam.'"

The screen flashed, and a long screenshot of WeChat with a timestamp appeared in the center of the screen.

"As you can clearly see above, November 20, 2014, at that time, I was still in the library of Southeast University preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination, with a full month left before the written test."

Zhao Shuyao stretched out his finger and tapped on the chat bubble on the screen.

The white bubble from the woman was very long: "Zhao Shuyao, let's call it quits. I'm going to do an internship at my workplace, and I'll be meeting different people there. You studied history, and even if you get into graduate school, what can you do? Work at a museum and earn a few thousand yuan a month? You can't give me the future I want, so let's not waste each other's time."

Below are the three green replies from the man, spanning three days.

"Can't we really wait a little longer?"

"I saved up a bit more from my part-time job this month. Next week, I'll take you to that Western restaurant you wanted to go to. Can we meet up and talk?"

"Even if you have to wait until after my exams?"

Finally, a striking red exclamation mark appeared, indicating that the other party had enabled friend verification.

Zhao Shuyao looked at the screenshot, his tone calm and undisturbed.

"Everyone," Zhao Shuyao raised his eyes, "not only did I fail to get into graduate school, but I was also the one who got dumped. Moreover, I even tried to persuade him to stay in an extremely humble way."

"I'm not ashamed; that was a truly foolish period of my life. So, in this widely circulated 'heartless man's essay,' how exactly did I manage to travel back a year to abandon her after succeeding in my postgraduate entrance exam?"

Ironclad evidence.

The timeline, transfer records, and the fact of the breakup formed a perfect closed loop of evidence, completely dismantling the victim persona created by the ex-girlfriend.

The barrage of comments instantly unified, with five real netizens speaking out in succession:

"So the guy was the one who was sucked blood and then kicked away. That's so unfair!"

"Being dumped a month before the postgraduate entrance exam in my senior year, someone with a weaker mentality would have been completely ruined. Teacher Zhao's ability to persevere and get into the University of Tokyo is truly remarkable."

"The cost of spreading rumors is too low! That woman used other people's money to date a rich man, and now that Teacher Zhao is popular, she's trying to ride his coattails and kick him while he's down. She's shameless!"

"We must sue her and make her compensate us for the damage to our reputation!"

"Is this how capital works? They can ruin a person just by finding an ex-girlfriend and making up a story. If Teacher Zhao didn't have the habit of taking screenshots, he'd never be able to clear his name!"

Just as everyone in the live stream was condemning the rumor-mongers and supporting Zhao Shuyao.

A sudden change occurred.

The scrolling speed of the public screen on the right suddenly increased, and a series of bullet comments with similar formats and surprisingly consistent tones forced their way into the normal discussion flow like a tide.

"Even if she was wrong, so much time has passed, and you, a grown man, still keep these screenshots? You're too scheming!"

"Break up is fine, but you exposed your ex-girlfriend's privacy to tens of thousands of people. Are you trying to destroy her completely? How will she ever get married again?"

"What's a little grievance? What's wrong with a man being more magnanimous? You're so petty; I'm so glad she broke up with you early!"

"One should be forgiving when possible. A girl was just venting online, and you're making a mountain out of a molehill. What kind of man are you!"

The appearance of these comments is highly inflammatory. They completely avoid the question of right and wrong, and jump directly to the moral high ground, attempting to redefine Zhao Shuyao's behavior with "magnanimity," "gender disadvantage," and "scheming."

Reporter Wang frowned in the live chat window. This was clearly a combined attack by online trolls and some extreme netizens. This kind of moral blackmail based on "I don't reason with you, I only talk about perspective" is the most difficult to deal with on the internet.

If you go along with their explanations to explain why you didn't delete the records, you'll fall completely into the self-justification trap.

Zhao Shuyao, who had been leaning back in his chair, slowly sat up straight.

He stared at the frantically flashing words on the screen advising people to be generous, and his brain made a judgment in half a second.

When the other party sees that the facts cannot be refuted, they begin to abandon logic and make emotional judgments. If they show any sign of grievance or weakness at this time, normal netizens will be confused and thus be led astray by the online trolls.

In this bottomless online jungle, the only way to break free from moral blackmail is to tear apart their hypocrisy.

Zhao Shuyao wasn't angry. He even found it somewhat amusing.

"Generous?" Zhao Shuyao repeated the word.

Instead of launching into a lengthy logical deduction, he moved his mouse directly to the private message icon in the Toutiao backend.

Click to open.

An unedited list of private messages, filled with bright red text, was displayed bluntly to more than 50,000 viewers.

Zhao Shuyao scrolled the mouse wheel. The contents of those private messages jumped onto the screen without any embellishment.

"I'll get hit by a car and die as soon as I go out!"

May your entire family be wiped out!

"You scumbag, I've found out your parents are working on a construction site in the south. Your whole family is going to hell!"

"If the University of Tokyo's academic affairs office doesn't expel you, I'll put up banners and ruin your reputation!"

There were thousands of obscene curses, death threats against family members, and warnings of extreme real-world violence.

The previously heated online arguments fell into a deathly silence for ten seconds upon seeing these private messages. The shocking words had exceeded the limits of what any normal person could tolerate.

"All you saw was me methodically presenting evidence in the live stream." Zhao Shuyao's voice turned cold, revealing an undisguised sharpness.

"But do you know what I went through in those 48 hours?" Zhao Shuyao pointed to the private messages on the screen. "This is the consequence of what you call 'a girl venting her frustrations.' This is an organized, premeditated online attack aimed at completely nailing me to the pillar of shame, and even implicating my family."

Zhao Shuyao's gaze was sharp, fixed on the camera.

"If I didn't have the habit of keeping screenshots, if I weren't so mentally strong, the person sitting in front of you today wouldn't be someone who can reason with you, but a corpse that jumped off the roof of the teaching building!"

He paused, then his tone became extremely firm, carrying a ruthlessness rarely seen in intellectuals.

"You don't know what I've been through, yet you hide behind your keyboards advising me to be magnanimous. I only have one thing to say to you."

"Are you dead or not?"

Zhao Shuyao enunciated these four words with great emphasis, making them resounding and forceful.

The reporter, Wang, was startled by those words during the live broadcast. As a reporter from an official media outlet, he instinctively felt that those four words were too crude, but in the current situation, they struck him like a thunderbolt, delivering a satisfying and cathartic blow.

"Well said!"

"To hell with being magnanimous! You're just playing the saint until the knife gets stuck in your own throat!"

"Those people who deserve Teacher Zhao's magnanimity, why don't they just die!"

"We support Teacher Zhao in fighting for her rights to the end; we will never compromise!"

The voices of support on the public screen instantly drowned out the clamor of the online trolls. Zhao Shuyao's direct attack ripped the hypocritical moral facade to shreds.

Looking at the comments that had regained their composure, Zhao Shuyao knew that he had completely won the high ground in this battle of self-defense regarding private morality. He had not only clarified the facts, but also established a new era scholar persona of never being wronged and never engaging in internal strife.

"From today onwards," Zhao Shuyao's tone returned to calm, but with an undeniable sense of power, "I am not just a blogger popularizing the history of the Ming and Qing dynasties here. Anyone who dares to use such underhanded methods to smear me, I will stand right here at this table and confront you to the very end."

He picked up his water glass and took a sip.

"Alright, I've made my personal moral issues very clear. Now that I've cleared myself of the blame for being a scumbag, I believe you all have made your own basic judgment."

Zhao Shuyao leaned forward slightly, placed his hands crossed on the table, and the sharpness in his eyes subsided, replaced by the profoundness of a historian.

"Now, let's talk about something more cultured."

"When the live stream first started, a friend asked me, 'Since I'm acting so principled now, why did I write that paper praising the Qing Dynasty's territorial expansion when I was a first-year graduate student?'"

A cold smile appeared on Zhao Shuyao's lips.

Why is there such a big difference between my past statements and my current statements?

He stretched out his finger and tapped on the screenshot of the news article about Yan Chongnian suing him on the screen.

"Back then, I naively thought that as long as I wrote articles according to the rules set by certain people, I could get a share of the pie at this table. But later I found that the pot they served was full of bewitching soup that whitewashed the truth."

Zhao Shuyao looked directly at the camera.

"Today, with tens of thousands of people present, I want to settle accounts with that high and mighty Mr. Yan Chongnian and the circle behind him regarding the Ming and Qing dynasties."