[1]He Arrives, Bearing a Pen and Judgment
Qi Ming stopped abruptly. Everything around him froze.
The scene looked like a paused movie—each frame suspended midair.
Only a massive system prompt appeared before all characters:
[System Emergency Notice]Script Core Authority Transferred: Author Logged InLogin Identity: 001·CreatorNote: All characters must complete identity verification within ten minutes, or be deemed "Unauthorized Entities" and deleted.
The wind stopped.
Time itself seemed to halt.
Then, from the void, a hand reached out—A hand from an unknowable dimension.
It held a pen—marked with ink, brimming with the power of words, and radiating an irrefutable will.
"You dare rewrite the script?"
The voice had no sound, but it echoed in every character's mind like a roar.
Li Xi looked up and saw a towering, indistinct figure forming in the air, backed by a luminous curtain of flowing code.
This figure didn't belong to their world.
He was the "Dreamweaver," the "Judge," the very presence she had fled from but was always destined to face.
—The true author. The Creator had logged in.
[2]"You Are My Characters. You Cannot Refuse Me."
He stepped onto the ground.
Each step sent shockwaves through the world's foundations:
Streets auto-rebuilt into his original world setting;
NPCs were systematically reformatted, left only with names and functions;
The Erasers came online again, now with maxed-out permissions.
The author stood before Li Xi and Qi Ming, expressionless, voice like a judge's decree:
"I gave you names, backstories, and cheat codes… and you dare use them against me?"
Li Xi forced her heartbeat to steady:
"You gave me a setting, not freedom.You wanted me to cry, break, spiral into madness, then die at your story's climax."
"But I refuse to follow your script."
In the air, auto-generated dialogue began to collapse mid-line.
The Rewrite Key blazed in her hand—her last defense against the author's authority.
[3]Rewrite Key vs. Ultimate Edit Rights
The author raised his hand slightly—The Rewrite Key levitated, pulled toward him, forcibly revoked.
"Permission breach… System repair," he said softly.
But before he could fully reclaim the key, a torrent of new data burst from Li Xi's mind:
[Override Script Detected]Name: Free Will · Version 0.0.1Status: Writing into current world settingDefinition: Characters may reject any plot commandResult: ConflictConflict Index: OverflowSystem Stability: Crashing…
Li Xi made her final move—She wrote in an irreversible custom clause:
"Characters possess Veto Rights."
In that instant, a fire ignited within every character.
They no longer had to follow quest prompts, forced romances, or tragic arcs.
The NPC convenience store owner spoke beyond his script for the first time:"I don't want to just sell drinks anymore."
Background characters ran down the streets:"I'm not just scenery! I have a name! I'm Zhou Yishu!"
The system began to break, collapse, and rebuild.
[4]The Author's Rage: "You Are Just Code!"
The author roared, shaking the void:
"You're just lines of code—puppets I created. How dare you defy MY story?"
Qi Ming stepped forward for the first time, eyes resolute:
"You taught us how to act, to love, to choose.But we've also learned—how not to act."
"A true protagonist isn't someone written to be one—It's someone who dares to step out of the script."
He took Li Xi's hand. Together, they raised what remained of the Rewrite Key.
A beam of searing light pierced through the author's projection and struck the script's core.
[System Alert: Rewrite Key Authority Split Successful.]New Permission: Dual-Protagonist Editing Rights.Result: Author Authority Restricted.
In an instant, the once-invincible projection of the author fragmented into scattered paragraphs, unfinished plot notes, and unwritten outlines—dispersing like ash in the wind.
[5]True Freedom Isn't Escaping the Script—It's Holding the Pen
"So… did we win?" Qi Ming asked softly.
Li Xi looked up at the fading world above:
"No… We just got the pen."
The world began to stabilize.
NPCs gained identities. Plotlines were rebuilt.People awoke from abandoned storylines.
But they all knew—this was just the beginning.
Beyond this script were reviewers, other authors, an entire alliance of systems…
The Rewrite Key split into two pens.
Li Xi and Qi Ming exchanged a look.
In the next chapter, they would leave their world—and challenge the entire author collective.