Descent into Collapse

Public opinion exploded. Yue Shi's words were spreading, their reach growing wider by the second.

Official institutions reacted a step behind the curve, but not by much.

The morning after the live broadcast ended, the Cyber Information Management Office received a notice from their superiors to investigate the identity of this Moral Hero.

The handler opened the system and entered the facial features of the long-haired man from the video. The system matched for a fraction of a second before a window popped up.

【No Matching Records】

The handler thought he had made a mistake and entered it again, but the result remained the same.

He tried different keywords, different databases, and various search methods.

Still nothing.

The Moral Hero was like a man who had never existed. Birth records, household registration, academic files, social security payments, bank accounts, phone numbers... every trace was a blank. Even that face looked like an AI-generated composite.

The handler stared at the screen for a long time before picking up the phone and dialing his superior.

“Chief, I can't find anything on that man.”

“What do you mean you can't find anything?”

“Exactly that. There are no records. It's like the target appeared out of thin air.”

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end. “Keep looking.”

“Yes, sir.”

The handler continued his investigation. He checked surveillance footage, tracked movements, and traced every location the Moral Hero had stayed in since appearing in the city.

The streets he walked, the shops he entered, the people he contacted—many of these segments had records.

But when these records were strung together, they only proved he had indeed been active recently; they could not trace his past.

In this hyper-digitalized society, a man without an identity was rarer than an albatross without a leg band.

Official interest in Yue Shi intensified rapidly. How could a person grow from birth to adulthood without leaving a single trace?

Unless this person really had just appeared out of thin air.

Soon, a higher-level meeting was convened. There was no specific list of attendees, the location was not disclosed, and no records were kept of the proceedings.

However, passersby later recalled seeing several unmarked helicopters hovering over the provincial capital that day, landing on the roof of a mysterious building.

A cordon was set up around the building. Men in black uniforms stood at every entrance, strictly checking everyone entering or leaving.

The meeting lasted three hours. Afterward, the attendees left in different vehicles. No one accepted interviews, and disclosing any information to the outside was strictly forbidden.

But a piece of news quietly leaked through certain channels: the meeting had decided to establish a Special Investigation Task Force for the Moral Hero incident. Led by the Provincial Department and coordinated across multiple sectors, they would conduct a comprehensive audit of the Moral Hero's background.

The investigation had two directions: first, who exactly was this Moral Hero, and second, whether his rhetoric posed a substantial threat to the existing moral system.

The way the news leaked was also subtle; an anonymous account posted a thread at three in the morning disclosing the matter.

The post was deleted within three minutes, but screenshots had already spread across the internet.

Netizens left comments in droves beneath the screenshots.

Yue Shi paid no attention to any of this. He found a random hotel to stay in, tossed the Snow Leopard onto the bed, and went to take a shower.

Hot water washed over him as steam filled the room, the mist on the mirror obscuring his face.

When he came out, the Snow Leopard had already claimed the entire bed, lying sprawled out on its back to reveal its furry belly.

Ghost floated over from the side. “The authorities want to investigate you, so I made their meeting records public. You're trending again.”

Yue Shi combed his long hair and said nonchalantly, “Let them search. If it comes to it, I'll just find some time to kill them all.”

...

Three days later, Yue Shi stood on the rooftop of an abandoned commercial building, looking down at the city beneath his feet.

The city's night view should have been prosperous and brilliant, but now it looked like a pile of dying embers. Scattered lights flickered in the darkness, and many windows were black, their occupants gone.

Three days. It had only been three days since his broadcast ended.

The propagation speed of the Extreme Evil contamination was much faster than he had anticipated. The foundations of this world were too fragile; they couldn't withstand his machinations.

The Good Person Card and moral scores—rules built upon human morality—seemed indestructible, but in reality, they were merely a thin layer of ice. Beneath the ice lay bottomless water, where countless eyes looked upward, waiting for the surface to crack.

On the first day, people began picking fights on the streets. The malice in their hearts expanded wildly, and the numbers above their heads could no longer restrain them.

A homeless man with a 3 over his head beat a drunkard with an 8 to the ground, stepping on his head. “So what if your score is higher than mine? Do you dare hit back? If you hit back, it's a mutual brawl, and you're no longer the perfect victim. Your score will drop even lower.”

The drunkard lay on the ground, struggling a few times, but he did not strike back. The thought that “if my score drops, I'm finished” was still stuck in his mind.

But by the second day, on that same street, two people were brawling. Nosebleeds splattered onto the pavement, and neither stopped. They had not only become desensitized but had also realized that a drop in score wouldn't cause instant death—so what was there to fear?

On the second day, people began engaging in looting sprees. When a cashier shouted at one, he looked back and said, “My score is higher than yours. You should pay for me.”

The cashier froze for a moment before picking up the scanner and smashing it against the man's head. Others in the supermarket didn't call the police or try to stop it; they just watched. As they watched, their hands began to itch, and they joined in.

Shelves were overturned, and goods were scattered everywhere. Many people scrambled to snatch what they could. The numbers above their heads plummeted, but no one cared.

By the third day, the collapse of order was like a dam bursting, a total washout.

People were everywhere, and conflict was erupting at every turn.

Some were robbing, some were setting fires, and some were kneeling on the ground, weeping.

Governed by malice, they instinctively committed evil everywhere. The numbers above their heads were still ticking, but a portion of the population had ceased to care entirely.

They did whatever they wanted, their faces wearing a nearly frenzied excitement. Their scores had already dropped into the negatives. They were pure villains, unmasked bad seeds acting like beasts.

The legal protections for a Moral Bankrupt were already limited, and more negative-scorers raced to follow suit. They discovered that when a person truly stops caring about their score, the world actually has no way to deal with them.

There were also those who still cared about their scores. They were also committing evil, but they were smarter about it, knowing how to gloss over their misdeeds.

These hypocrites lived more comfortably than the pure villains. While the pure villains became rats in the street, the hypocrites stood in the spotlight, receiving the admiration of the masses.

And then there were those with firm wills who could temporarily resist the contamination. They did nothing wrong, attempting to maintain order and help others, wanting to restore society to its original state.

But soon, they realized they couldn't.

Because everyone around them had turned bad. They were good people, but in a world where everyone was doing evil, not doing evil made them anomalies, and they were targeted at every turn.