Live Broadcast

“Otherwise what?” Yue Shi interrupted him. “Otherwise, no one would do good deeds anymore? So what you’re saying is that people in this society don’t do good deeds to help others, but to receive feedback?”

The Moral Committee member said, “Rules are rules. This world has special rules like the Good Person Card, and humanity has derived more social rules around it. High-scorers are rewarded, and low-scorers are punished. This system has run smoothly for a long time. What right do you have to say there’s a problem with it?”

Yue Shi said, “The problems are massive. Tell me, out of your 1,523 points, how many are from sincere gratitude, and how many were bought with money?”

The Moral Committee member’s face turned beet red. “How can you slander a man’s innocence like that!”

“Fine then.” Yue Shi took his phone from his pocket, opened a page, and projected it onto the large screen.

Those were screenshots Ghost had helped him capture by hacking into the system—the transaction records for a certain day on the moral black market. The time, location, transaction amount, and participants were all crystal clear.

The Moral Committee member’s name appeared in the buyer column three times. The most recent was three days ago: twenty thousand yuan spent to purchase fifty expressions of gratitude.

The studio erupted in chaos.

The Moral Committee member stood frozen. The color drained from his face as if it had been sucked out. His lips trembled, but he couldn’t say a single word.

Beside him, the philanthropist lowered his head, the professor looked away, and the host scrambled to signal the director to cut to a commercial.

But as Yue Shi had said before, this was a live broadcast, and with Ghost there, the director couldn’t cut it at all.

Countless online viewers were watching everything through the lens.

“This is immoral behavior! You’re not respecting my privacy!” the Moral Committee member’s voice cracked.

“Quibble all you want.” Yue Shi put away his phone.

“The rules have turned morality into a commodity. When morality can be quantified, fraud becomes inevitable. This is economics, not ethics.”

He turned to the camera. The lights hit his face, making the 1 above his head look exceptionally lonely.

“Have you ever thought about what happens to a truly good person in this system? He does good without seeking anything in return, so his score won’t be very high. With a low score, it’s easy to fall into a death loop, gradually becoming a Moral Bankrupt. Once someone is a Moral Bankrupt, no one believes in their goodness. No one cares about their goodness, so they struggle in the low-score zones. They either have to turn bad and learn to farm moral points like everyone else, or stay trapped in the mire forever.”

“This isn’t morality. This is moral inflation.”

“The rules themselves do not punish low-scorers, nor do they reward high-scorers. Discriminating against the low-scored, praising the high-scored, punishment and reward—all of this is a shackle humanity has placed upon itself.”

The studio remained silent for a long time.

The contamination of Extreme Evil was spreading, diffusing wantonly across online platforms through Yue Shi’s voice.

“I’ve said everything I need to say. I’m going back to enforcing justice for heaven. Goodbye.” Yue Shi stood up and walked toward the side of the stage with a steady pace.

Behind him, the host opened his mouth to say something, but his mind was in a daze.

The director was shouting in the headset, but the host couldn’t hear him at all. He just watched as the long-haired figure abruptly vanished.

...

After the live broadcast ended, the related trending topics exploded.

The words Yue Shi spoke in the studio were sliced into countless fragments and spread across the internet in various forms.

Some made them into short videos with stirring background music. Others made them into stickers, editing the words “Moral Inflation” in bold red font onto the images.

Although what Yue Shi said was basically meaningless platitudes, miraculously, every word was like a nail that easily took root in people’s minds.

The rules themselves do not punish low-scorers, nor do they reward high-scorers. Discriminating against the low-scored, praising the high-scored, punishment and reward—all of this is a shackle humanity has placed upon itself.

At first, people just shared it. Like sharing any piece of trending news, they swiped their fingers across the screen, tapped once, and were done with it.

But soon, sharing turned into discussion. The discussion spread from online to offline.

In offices, in breakrooms, someone would suddenly put down their chopsticks during lunch and ask, “Do you guys think that Moral Hero was right?” The people at the table would fall silent for a few seconds; then some would nod, some would shake their heads, and some would pretend they hadn’t heard.

The person asking would immediately know what was what. This kind of fresh rhetoric was the best way to filter out the idiots in one’s circle. Those who blindly accepted it or blindly rejected it were essentially confirmed cases, and one should avoid having too much contact with such idiots in the future.

Discussions in schools were even more heated. Students, whose worldviews were not yet mature, were the easiest group to incite. Moreover, their world was black and white, and they had a natural suspicion and rebellion toward rules.

Online, the discussion gradually heated up to a boil, with supporters, opponents, and fence-sitters each holding their ground.

Supporters said, “The Moral Hero has torn away the world’s fig leaf,” while opponents asked, “What right does a man with 1 point have to talk about morality?” The fence-sitters said, “They both have a point, but we still have to look at the specific situation.”

The arguments grew more intense and emotional, eventually evolving into a free-for-all. It was no longer about right or wrong, but about picking sides and attacking one another.

Amidst the chaos, some things were quietly changing.

Someone posted anonymously in a comment section: “I’ve been a volunteer for three years and have never gained a single point. Because the people I helped didn’t know who I was or who to thank, but I didn’t care. Seeing the Moral Hero’s words today, I suddenly feel like I’m not alone.”

That post received over a hundred thousand likes and more than twenty thousand replies. Many replies consisted of only three words: “You are not.”

Another trending post came from a young man who had once farmed points on the moral black market. He said he didn’t farm points because of poor character, but because it was nearly impossible to get anywhere in this society with a low score. He had to have a beautiful score just to live a normal life.

As clips of the live broadcast spread far and wide, the contamination also spread.

Yue Shi’s goal was never to help this world correct its mistakes. He had always been doing evil in its purest form.

The rules of this world were built upon the foundation of human morality, and the core of morality was the definition of “what is good and what is evil.”

Extreme Evil was gradually contaminating human hearts and attempting to indirectly contaminate this unique world rule.

When everyone donned a cloak of hypocrisy and possessed extremely high moral scores yet performed not a single good deed, the concepts of good and evil would be completely distorted. Even murder could be interpreted as “releasing the victim from their suffering.”

Perhaps then, this rule would begin to loosen from the inside, like an old tree hollowed out by termites—appearing lush on the outside, but riddled with holes within.

With Ghost fueling the fire, the broadcast video spread rapidly. Every comment, share, and secondary creation was a cumulative layer of mental contamination.

As netizens watched the video, every word Yue Shi spoke left a mark in their minds.

Those marks would sprout, corroding their souls and giving rise to one villain after another...