Chapter Three: A Debunk Is Still a Repost

Qiao Qi opened the emergency broadcast console to place the challenge rules on every public screen. The login page displayed a laughing face and four words: READ, NO REPLY. She entered a command. The screen marked it READ. Then the mouse, keyboard, and her hand all froze. It was not a crashed computer. Qiao Qi remained bent over the keys, unable even to blink. The laughing face slowly turned toward Lin Mo. A sentence appeared beneath it: MESSAGE READ. ACTION WITHHELD. For the first time, their duel of words entered the room as physics. Lin Mo did not touch another connected device. He pulled paper from the printer, wrote the challenge rules in marker, and found an old projector that had never been online.