The screen jolted violently, the focus shifting away from the mangled, bloody mouth of the tiny fancy rat. The camera began to race through the room—the perspective of a little girl running.
From this toddler-level viewpoint, table legs and sofas loomed like giant stone pillars, retreating rapidly on either side.
Then, a chubby little hand appeared at the bottom of the frame. On the inner side of the wrist was a thin, needle-like white scar with a porcelain texture.
The hand gripped the edge of a desk. The field of vision rose sharply, sweeping past neat elementary textbooks and workbooks, finally locking onto a metal object shimmering with a cold, bluish-gray light.
The hand reached out again, dark red residue seemingly trapped under the fingernails. It firmly grasped the object, which seemed slightly heavy for a child: a stapler.
In the frame, that small, scarred hand slowly covered the top of the stapler. As the muscles tightened, the metal piston emitted a bone-chilling "creak".
Along with the "click-clack" of grinding metal parts, the vision swung 180 degrees. The previously blurred background suddenly snapped into focus.
—[Wait... look at the balcony on the left!]
—[That curved floor-to-ceiling window... and that specific black load-bearing pillar on the frame...]
—[That's the exact same background from every one of Goddess Lolo's "Sunset Goodnight" livestreams!]
Fans in front of their screens scrambled to take screenshots for comparison.
They discovered that although the wallpaper in the room was a youthful floral print instead of the current minimalist marble, and the expensive leather bed was then just a small princess bed—the skeleton of the room did not lie.
The sliding glass door cut at a 45-degree angle between the balcony and the master bedroom, the walk-in closet entrance on the left with its complex European plaster molding but no door, and the translucent long-strip wired glass in the bathroom designed for lighting...
These "architectural fingerprints" spanned over a decade, perfectly overlapping with the layout of the luxury mansion "Lolo" had flaunted in her Vlogs.
—[The depth of the closet, the balcony's aspect ratio, even the position of that damn ceiling relief...]
The energy in the chat plummeted. Comments became sparse.
—[Everyone, stay sharp! This doesn't prove the little girl on the screen is our Lolo!]
—[Where's the evidence? Who knows who this malicious girl is? Are we judging her based on a single scar on her hand?]
Just as the crowd tried to rally their spirits, a single comment shattered their self-deception:
—[Then why did all of you assume it was a "little girl" before she even spoke?]
The user added, as if fearing someone wouldn't understand:
—[I mean, before she even opened her mouth.]
This was the final blow, stripping away the psychological defenses of everyone watching. It forced them to face the doubt they had harbored from the start: Stop pretending. You believed it long ago; you're just too stubborn to admit it.
The loyal fans who usually dominated the front lines fell silent.
Someone tried to type, "This could be a CGI recreation," but looking at that 45-degree sliding door, they deleted the words character by character in defeat.
Others tried to draft beautiful words to trigger nostalgia, but their hands hovered over the Enter key, trembling too much to press down.
The truth was a silent sledgehammer, leaving them seeing stars. Only a few "hard-mouths" remained, led by those three university students. Yet no matter how much they blustered, it would not affect the little girl's next movements on the screen.
On the other side, the white rat floating in mid-air had a belly heaving violently. It was clear "it" was in agony, yet with its mouth sliced open, "it" could not emit a single scream.
"It" had thought the punishment was suspended or delayed, but as the utility knife faded into a shimmering illusion, a monstrous "instrument of torture" capable of crushing its spine appeared: the stapler.
In Zhu Yulu's shrunken vision, the stapler was no longer stationery; it was a steel gate of death glowing with a ghastly light. "It" could clearly see the rough wear and tear on the base of the stapler—vicious scars that, as the knife vanished, slowly occupied its entire world.
As "it" stared at the stapler, the sense of familiarity finally connected: This was from childhood... so, this is Maomao?
Though she had committed countless acts of slaughter and tortured innumerable animals over the years, she had a vivid impression of Maomao.
That was the first time she discovered how simple it was to strip away a life. All it took was pressing down on this cold block of metal.
Even if that was her "First Sin", and her mental state back then was fractured, what truly caused this nightmare to take root was the fact that Maomao bore the weight of all the resentment from her broken home.
In her childhood, the psychological pressure had been immense; seeing Maomao, she couldn't help but think of her deceased father and the mother who constantly avoided her.
That illusion of power—of controlling life and death—became her only "poison" to soothe the domestic agony.
"Mao... Mao... Sor... ry..." Zhu Yulu's mangled lips trembled desperately, every syllable accompanied by a spray of blood.
In that shell where her mouth was sliced open and could not close, her plea for mercy sounded like a leaking bellows, each word accompanied by the "hissing" of air passing through shredded membranes.
"For... give... me... okay..." "It" stared with protruding red eyes, crimson with hemorrhaging, trying to locate Maomao's position.
At that moment, what she sought wasn't true atonement, but the late and cheap self-preservation of a victimizer encountering equivalent retribution.
The audience heard it too, though they struggled to grasp the full context.
Behind the floating stapler, the air began to ripple like water. A semi-transparent, golden-edged silhouette slowly materialized.
It was several times larger than Zhu Yulu's current body, looking down at the "Little Master" who had once given it nightmares.
It was Maomao. It didn't cry out; it only fixed its terrifyingly calm eyes on the stapler's trigger.
In the divine space, Qinghong asked BluePhoenix with curiosity, "Lord Blue Phoenix, do you think Maomao will let that woman go?"
The Blue Phoenix, who had already calmed down and flown to the water mirror to watch alongside Qinghong, did not answer directly.
Instead, with a high-and-mighty, profound expression, it said: "The Thought-Domain is a special space bestowed by the Great One upon the Divine Beasts who administer justice on Her behalf. Within it, souls of obsession are kept from dissipating, and all obsessions—past or present, living or dead—can manifest."
Qinghong was only half-understanding and pressed, "So?"
The Blue Phoenix continued, "Every case and every punishment is woven together by the obsessions of souls, whether they are still living or deceased like Maomao, 'them', or even you..."
It glanced specifically at Qinghong. "Only when these obsessions intertwine does this space appear. If one obsession changes, the space destabilizes, and you will feel it."
Blue Phoenix then asked her directly: "If Maomao truly gives up now, what about you? Will you give up too?"
Without a second thought, she replied, "No! Never!" Her eyes burned with the fierce fire of hatred.
The Blue Phoenix nodded its head. "Once the Cocoon of Causality is woven, it is no longer controlled by a single individual. Maomao might soften its heart, but the thousands of moments it was torn apart, the despair it buried in the cold nights... they do not agree. This space was never opened for 'forgiveness'."
Back in the screen, Maomao moved. It came before Zhu Yulu, staring "it" in the eye to ask the question it had harbored for so long. Its voice was ethereal and chilling, as if questioning her soul: "Have you ever regretted it? Not just now."
"It" wanted to say, "I have," but when the words came out, they involuntarily became: "Never."
The moment this word fell, Zhu Yulu felt the entire Thought-Domain laughing at her clumsy lies.
This one word was like red-hot irons, burning through her final shred of dignity. Her red eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets, her throat making "he-he" sounds of desperate gasping.
Having heard the answer, Maomao vanished instantly—no warning, no delay. Only the stapler remained, pulled wide open to signal that the "Punishment Continues."
On the other side of the screen, the little girl didn't press down as if stapling paper.
Instead, she flipped the top of the stapler all the way back, as if talking to herself or explaining to the rat: "You're too naughty. Most of your body can move now, so Little Master has to pin you down."
The rat's violent struggling had already torn the fur and flesh away. The rat's head, back, upper left limb, and lower right limb had regained "freedom" and were thrashing wildly.
At this moment, the audience's attention was pulled into the perspective of the white rat—Zhu Yulu's perspective. The livestream frames overlapped eerily. Billions of viewers felt their sight zoom in and pull closer, as if they, too, were being dragged into that trembling, tiny shell.
Especially for the loyal fans of "Lolo", there was no escape. They could not avert their gaze; the screen tracked the movement of their heads, ensuring they had a front-row seat to the fully extended, flattened stapler as it descended slowly.
Zhu Yulu looked up, staring point-blank at the falling "monster".
From its perspective, the once-delicate stationery had transformed into a rotting, steel execution rack. It could see the springs hidden within the dark circular holes of the stapler's body and the embossed English letters—"MADE IN..."
That string of stamps, once a symbol of industrial civilization, dissolved into a mess of horrific gibberish within the rapidly falling shadow. The last thing it saw were those rust-eroded letters, looking like an ancient curse of death.
The tip of the silver steel staple pressed coldly against the flesh of its upper left limb—the final confirmation before the end.
Immediately, as the little girl on the other screen slammed her fist down, a heavy "BANG—!" echoed.
It wasn't the sound of stapling paper, but the muffled thud of a metal firing pin shattering bone. Zhu Yulu felt half of its body lose sensation instantly, followed by a searing pain, hot as molten lava, exploding along its left side as the nerves were forcibly spiked through.