Invisible Violence, and a Book No One Asked Me to Write
I recently joined the 7-Day Writing Challenge on Matters, using this platform for the first time. To my surprise, I found that readers here are highly receptive to long-form writing and serialized fiction, and the interactions are of great quality. In my existing networks on FB / Threads / IG, people mostly consume short posts and industry analyses. I had never been able to find the right place for my long-form creative writing. Now, it seems I have.
Why Write — Day 1
My name is Lin Zhaoming. This is a fictional name. But everything underneath is real.
I wrote a book about the workplace. It is not an inspirational book. It does not teach you how to get promoted, how to communicate with your boss, or how to get a high score on your performance review.
It is a book about how a person, trapped inside a system, gets their shape slowly ground away.
Why I decided to write it requires starting from a bit further away.
You open your phone, and the world you see right now probably looks like this:
AI is changing everything. Every company is talking about AI transformation. News headlines read "Millions About to Lose Their Jobs." On social media, people are selling courses—"Learn AI in Three Days, or You Will Be Obsolete." Some are selling anxiety. Some are selling the cure. The anxiety and the cure come from the exact same group of people.
Major American tech companies talk about AI changing the world while simultaneously using AI as an excuse to lay off tens of thousands of people. Stock prices go up. Unemployment goes up. Both happen at the same time. Nobody finds this strange.
Here in Taiwan, the traditional hardware industry is undergoing a very quiet contraction. It is not a dramatic wave of bankruptcies. It is a chronic shrinking—fewer orders, fewer people, but the workload hasn't decreased. Those who stay do more work and bear greater pressure, yet this pressure will never appear in any news.
At the same time, the Law of Attraction tells you: your frequency is wrong. Positive thinking tells you: your mindset is the problem. Success gurus tell you: you are simply not working hard enough.
All arrows point back at yourself.
But for some things, pointing the arrow at yourself is just wrong.
I have worked in three different companies. Across three regions. Across different industry states—some sunsetting, some healthy, some massive but rotting from the inside. I am not a sociologist. I have not done systematic field research. I am just an engineer who happened to sit in different positions, and whose two eyes, fortunately, aren't blind yet.
What I saw made it impossible for me to continue believing the explanation that "it is your own problem."
I saw: a person who was regarded as a trusted professional in one company, moved to another company, and with the exact same skills and the exact same attitude, became a "management problem." It wasn't him who changed. It was how the system looked at him that changed.
I saw: there is a kind of violence in the workplace that leaves no trace. No one hits you. No one yells at you. But you are assigned to do something impossible, and then recorded as "incompetent." You are trapped in a room for a three-hour conversation, you come out not knowing what just happened, but you signed a document. You file a complaint, and the investigation report is handed back to the person you complained about. Your version becomes "subjective feelings." Their version becomes "the record."
These things are extremely hard to prove. Because all the harm occurs within a legal framework. Performance reviews. Meeting minutes. Improvement plans. Every step has documentation. Every document is technically correct. But added together, what they do is grind a person to dust.
It wasn't until the Dentsu incident in Japan, after that young female employee overworked herself to suicide, that society began discussing corporate mental violence. But the discussion quickly passed. The system tweaked some surface-level things. The core structure didn't move. Because the core structure isn't one bad manager. It is an entire filtering mechanism—it doesn't need to teach anyone how to do bad things; it only needs to filter out the uncooperative ones. After a few cycles, those who remain naturally fit that shape.
Taiwan's Labor Standards Act protects against visible harm. Overtime hours. Severance pay. Contract clauses. But mental violence isn't in there. Gaslighting isn't in there. Systemic cognitive distortion isn't in there. Government resources lean towards enterprises. Media attention is on tech nouveau riche. No one is reporting the story of a middle-aged engineer being slowly hollowed out in an office. Because that is not news. It is too slow. Too quiet. Too undramatic.
And exactly because it is so quiet—many people don't know what is happening to them.
They only know they are getting more and more exhausted. More and more reluctant to go to work. More and more doubtful of themselves. And then someone tells them: go take a positive thinking class. Adjust your mindset. It's your frequency that's wrong.
I wrote this book not to accuse a specific company.
Accusing a single company is too easy. Change to another one, and the exact same shape will grow back on a different chair. I saw the exact same shape in two completely different companies—different industries, different scales, different nationalities, different economic situations. This is not an isolated incident. It is a replicable structure.
I am also not writing to sell misery. My story isn't exceptionally miserable. There are plenty of people who suffered worse than me. Some stayed inside for ten years before getting out. Some never got out.
I am writing because I happen to possess something most people do not: perspectives from both sides. I have been an expat, seeing what policies look like when handed down from headquarters. I have also been a local employee, seeing what policies turn into when they hit the ground. Most people have only been on one side. The expats think the company is what it looks like in the town hall. The locals think the company is what it looks like in the pantry.
I have done both. So I know: neither side is the full picture. But if you piece both sides together, you will see something completely different from either.
If I don't write about this thing, it will go into the coffin with me. Because the expats can't see it, the local employees can't articulate it, and people who have been on both sides like me—are rare.
So I wrote it.
I used a fictional name, a fictional company, and fictional locations. But the structure inside is real. Every scene has its prototype. Every piece of dialogue has its origin. I changed all the identifiable details, but I didn't change the structure. Because the structure is the point.
I wrote it in the mildest way possible. No sensationalism. No accusations. No preaching. Just laying out, piece by piece, the things a person experiences inside a system. To let you see for yourself. To let you judge for yourself.
If you feel something is off in your workplace—not an explicit wrongness, but that kind of "something feels weird but I can't articulate it" wrongness—this book might give you some vocabulary. Not answers. Vocabulary. So you can start describing that thing you have always felt but could never clearly express.
If this book only helps one person—helping one person recognize that shape a few months earlier, and leave a few months earlier—that would be enough.
Starting tomorrow, I will tell Lin Zhaoming's story. Three companies. Three places. The same person, in three completely different roles.
This is the first entry of "7-Day Writing | My Workplace Persona". Lin Zhaoming is a fictional character, but the system he experiences is real. This series is adapted from the serialized novel "Mirror Realm: The Persona System Murder Incident".
Everyone is Acting in a Play Called "Busy" — Day 2
The prompt asked: "Moments when you had to act unlike yourself to cater to social demands."
It is not a moment. It is every day. It is what everyone in the entire company is doing every single day.
First, let me tell you about the world you see in the news.
Tech companies say they are doing AI transformation. In the town hall, the executives' presentations are beautiful: "AI-driven decision making," "Operational excellence," "Leaner, faster, smarter." Stock prices go up because of these words. Investors are highly satisfied.
And then the same company lays off thousands of people. Including the people who were actually working on AI.
You read that right. The slogan is AI. The people fired are the ones doing AI. Because the function of the slogan is not to get things done. The function of the slogan is to make the stock price go up. The people who do the work and the people who make the stock price go up do not have to be the same group of people.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This is the quarterly logic of publicly traded companies.
But what the news won't tell you is—beyond the thousands who were laid off, there are thousands more who stayed. Those who stayed face a different kind of hell.
Work is shrinking. Orders are decreasing. Departments are merging. But those who stayed cannot appear to have "nothing to do." Because having "nothing to do" in this system equals death. In the next round of layoffs, the names on the list will be those who look like they have "nothing to do."
So everyone is acting.
Acting what? Acting busy.
A sea of thirty driver modules could technically be cut down to just two flagships. It is technically feasible. But if you just cut them directly—where is the process? Where is the research? Where are the obstacles you overcame? Where is your value?
So you must first claim it's very difficult. Then claim you did a lot of research. Then claim you overcame many challenges. And only then, cut it down to two. The exact same result, but with an entire play inserted in the middle. That play has only one audience member—the performance review form.
Lin Zhaoming watched all of this. He is a technical person. His logic is very simple: if there is a problem, solve it. If thirty can be cut down to two, cut it. No acting required.
But here, the one who doesn't act is the anomaly.
He wasn't someone who just sat there waiting to die. He kept looking for a way.
He proposed efficiency improvement plans. Three pages. Clear numbers. Calculated time savings. Zero risks. He sent it out, and the reply was: "Put it on the review list, we will look at it in the next cycle." The next cycle never came.
He tried to find new projects to dive into. Every time, he was either told "I will handle this for now," or the project was transferred away halfway through. The things he produced—analyses, reports, proposals—would appear in some meeting, but the name on them wouldn't be his.
He even tried to contribute in the most basic ways: helping people do VLOOKUPs, organizing documents, running administrative tasks for the welfare committee. He did everything. But after he did it, someone in the cafeteria would ask: "What exactly does that Lin guy do?" "I don't know. He seems to do a little bit of everything."
He did a little bit of everything. But what the system needed wasn't what he did. What the system needed was what he acted.
Once, the team needed to reduce headcount. At dinner, everyone talked about their difficulties. Mortgages. Cars. Kids. Tuitions.
Everyone's pressure was real. Everyone's anxiety was real.
But Lin Zhaoming had nothing to say. No mortgage to pay. No car to maintain. His silence, in this competition, meant he had no right to stay.
He later realized: this is the ultimate form of "having to act unlike yourself." You are not being asked to play a role. You are thrown into a game, and the rule of the game is—whoever is more miserable gets to stay. And the only "performance" you can give is to perform your pain.
He couldn't perform it. Not because he had no pain. But because his pain wasn't the kind you could use in a competition.
The company's direction said: simplify. No new projects. Focus on the core.
What was being done under the table: everyone desperately trying to keep their own projects. Keeping projects equals keeping positions. Keeping positions equals not getting laid off, and then 6 people fighting for 2 projects to do the work of 8 people.
The contradiction between the company's direction and the under-the-table strategies is not an accident. They are two faces of the same system. The top needs to say "we are transforming." The bottom needs to act "we are very busy." The people in the middle—people like Lin Zhaoming who just want to work and not act—get ground to dust.
This is the world described in "Mirror Realm."
It is not a story about a bad boss. It is not about a particularly terrible company. It is an entire system that forces everyone to perform. And those who refuse to act are identified by the system as foreign objects, and then expelled.
Tomorrow: The traces left by work on the body and soul.
Good People Don't Get Good Rewards — Day 3
The prompt asked: "The traces left by work on the body or soul."
I won't talk about the physical traces. Insomnia, neck and shoulder pain, inexplicable fatigue—these are too common, talking about them is like taking a number in a queue.
I will talk about a much deeper trace. A tearing at the level of values.
When Lin Zhaoming entered the industry, he carried a very simple belief: do your job well, and the results will speak for themselves.
It wasn't naivete. It was common sense. He had seen this belief function—in an old company with limited resources, an engineer's value was whether he could keep a machine older than himself running. No one was acting. No one stole credit. Because they were too poor. So poor they couldn't even afford masks. Doing work was just doing work.
He carried this baseline with him for over a decade.
And then he joined Lingyun Synthesis.
What he saw wasn't as simple as "bad people doing bad things." If it were bad people doing bad things, it would be easy to handle—just leave.
What he saw was: an entire system training people to become a specific shape.
Coercion. It exists. Not the kind in movies with a knife to your throat. It's "Catch-up, 30 min"—a thirty-minute meeting on the calendar that turns into six hours after the door closes. The boss's tone is very sincere. You explain your version—he doesn't listen. Not refuting you. But treating it as if you never spoke. Six hours later you come out, your mind scrambled. No records.
Deterrence. It exists. You file a complaint, and the investigation report is handed back to the person you complained about. The conclusion is that your "communication style needs improvement." The next person who wants to complain sees this result and won't complain. You don't need to threaten anyone. One precedent is enough.
Framing. It exists. You make an analysis, and the conclusion differs from the official narrative. Three weeks later, a line appears in the meeting minutes: "Lin Zhaoming's report was evaluated and deemed unable to reflect the complete situation." Your analysis wasn't deleted. It was redefined. From "discovery" to "subjective judgment." From "evidence" to "personal opinion."
Fabricating data. It exists. Not forging numbers—that's too crude. It's "reinterpretation." Going from thirty modules to two, which originally just required a direct cut, gets packaged into an "optimization process" that went through countless difficulties. Every document in that process is real. But the story they tell together is fake.
These things are not done by one bad person.
They are done by a whole group of people. And they do it very naturally. One person says half a sentence, the other knows how to pick it up. One person gives a look, the other knows which sentence to omit from the meeting minutes. No meetings are needed to collude. No conspiracies. Because this unspoken understanding has been calibrated for years.
And what broke Lin Zhaoming the most wasn't the existence of these behaviors.
It was the source of these behaviors.
These people were not born this way. They were filtered out.
A system runs for ten or twenty years. Every review cycle is a filter. People who can't do these things will leave—they won't get promoted, they get unhappy, they get marginalized, and eventually, they leave. Those who can do it will rise. They will be given more power. They will be placed closer to the core.
After a few cycles, those who remain are no longer "ordinary people trapped in a system." Those who remain are a batch of people selected by the system. Their core skills are: fabricating narratives, severing responsibilities, redefining facts. And these skills have been practiced until they are as natural as breathing.
Do they know what they are doing? Yes. But that "knowing" operates on a level that requires no thought. Like breathing—you know you are breathing, but you don't have to stop and think, "I am going to take a breath now."
"Good people always get good rewards"—the premise of this sentence is: the system can recognize who is a good person.
But what if the system itself is designed to filter out good people?
If after several cycles of elimination, everyone who stays is of that shape, and you are the only one who isn't—then it's not that you "haven't received your good reward yet." You are an existence identified by the system as a foreign object.
But there is one thing he wants to make clear here.
He is not saying "kindness is useless." He is also not saying "you have to become like them to survive."
Exactly the opposite.
He has seen people who chose to become that shape. They kept their positions. Got promoted. Got better numbers. But the price they paid was themselves. Their judgment turned into obedience. Their professionalism turned into a performance. Their language turned into a script that had nothing to do with them. They kept their jobs, but they lost who they were.
That trade is not worth it.
There is no need to obsess over good vs. evil, right vs. wrong. There is no need to nail yourself to a moral high ground and fight the system to the death. But the cost of giving up your conscience is incredibly high—so high you might spend your whole life and never be able to buy it back.
Lin Zhaoming's final choice was simple: don't become part of it. Not because of bravery. But because he calculated it—the cost of becoming part of it was far more expensive than leaving.
As for the rest, let it be.
This is the deepest trace work left in Lin Zhaoming's heart.
Not insomnia. Not shoulder pain. It was the rupture of a belief, and what grew back after the rupture.
The belief he carried for over a decade—"do your job well, and the results will speak for themselves"—was proven wrong here. Not occasionally failing. But structurally invalid. Because what this system evaluates isn't what you did. It's what you performed.
After he left, it took him a long time to accept this.
After accepting it, the world changed. It didn't become darker. It became clearer. He no longer asked, "Why do good people get no good rewards?" He began to ask a much more useful question: "How does this system operate?"
The first question is a victim's question. The second question is an observer's question.
From a victim to an observer—this was the starting point for him writing this book. It was also the only useful trace work left him.
Tomorrow: Have you consciously "managed" a certain aspect of yourself in the workplace?
The Reason for Staying — Day 4
The prompt asked: "Have you consciously managed a certain aspect of yourself?"
Lin Zhaoming thought about it for a long time. The answer is: yes. But what he managed wasn't the kind of thing others thought it was.
What he managed was—staying.
Let's start with some background.
Lin Zhaoming had an out. He hadn't borrowed money to buy a car. He didn't have a mortgage in a school district. He had no highly leveraged lifestyle nailing him to one position. If he wanted to leave, he could leave at any time.
His colleagues were different. International schools. Car loans. School district mortgages. Every month's expenses outran the income. When they talked about "if I lose my job," the fear on their faces was real. They truly felt they had no way out—even if that way out was dismantled by their own hands.
These people fought over who was more miserable at the layoff dinner table. Mortgages. Cars. Kids' tuitions. Everyone's pressure was real. Lin Zhaoming had nothing to say. His silence, in this competition, meant he had no right to stay.
But he stayed. Not because he needed the job.
He stayed because he did the math.
If he left—he would be fine. Find another job. Continue living. He had the conditions to do so.
But if he left—those engineers on the supplier's side running tests every Saturday and Sunday would lose the one person who knew the problem wasn't with them. Those people crushed at the very bottom of the system, who didn't even have the vocabulary to complain, would lose the one person willing to ask one more question.
He wasn't sure if his existence had any use. He wasn't sure if staying one more day could change anything.
But he knew: if he left, even that person who was "unsure if they could change anything" would be gone.
So he stayed. Staying one more day was one more day. Blocking one bad thing was one thing blocked. Saving one person from one day of overtime was one day saved. Keeping one real number in a modified report was one real number preserved.
No one knew about these things. No one would thank him. Because successful prevention leaves no record—you stopped a bad thing, the bad thing didn't happen, so no one knows it almost happened.
This was what he "managed."
Not an image. Not a persona. Not "making the boss feel I'm engaged."
It was a presence. A presence that occupied a position, creating one more obstacle in the system.
He knew it sounded absurd. One person, in a company of thousands, thinking his staying could block anything. But he had seen it—one person asking one more question, and a supplier engineer got wrongly blamed one less time. One person refusing to sign a problematic document, and a testing line didn't run in the wrong direction for three months.
One person. One time.
He didn't know how much these added up to. He would never know.
But he has to say one thing.
In the elite world, being a "good person" can be scored.
ESG reports. CSR projects. Diversity metrics. Every item has a KPI. Every item can be written into the annual report. "How many people we helped this year"—there are numbers. There are charts. Bar graphs. Applause.
These things have nothing to do with conscience.
Conscience cannot be scored. Conscience has no KPI. The way conscience operates is: in a moment when no one is watching, you make a choice that no one will ever know about. No one will applaud. No one will write it in a report. You aren't even sure if you did the right thing.
But you did it. Because you couldn't not do it.
The days Lin Zhaoming stayed, every single day was like this. No applause. No validation. No effectiveness reports. Just one person sitting at a desk, doing what he felt was right.
His colleagues felt his "commitment was too strong." His boss felt he "didn't know how to protect himself." HR felt his "communication style needed improvement."
No one knew what he was doing. Because the things he did didn't exist in the vocabulary of this system.
Later, he was laid off.
The reason for the layoff was "incompetence." Black and white. Filed.
He stayed there for four years. For the first two years, he thought compliance was the way out. For the last two, he knew it wasn't, but he chose to stay. Every time he blocked something. Every unmodified number. Finally recorded in the system as: incompetent.
If calculated by the elite world's scoring method—he lost. Zero points. Negative points. Being laid off is a deduction.
But Lin Zhaoming knew one thing. The thing he knew couldn't be written in any report, couldn't be tied to any ESG metric, couldn't be tallied by any system.
He didn't become part of it.
As for the rest, let it be.
Tomorrow: A difficult moment experienced in the workplace.
The Things That Didn't Happen — Day 5
The prompt asked: "A difficult moment experienced in the workplace."
The most difficult moment wasn't being bullied. Wasn't being laid off. Wasn't being trapped in a meeting room for six hours.
The most difficult moment was when someone died. And then, it was as if nothing had ever happened.
November 1024. Lin Zhaoming saw a post on his computer.
An engineer. Power supply related. Work pressure. Dead.
Every detail in the post was something he recognized. Infinite testing. Not knowing what mistake to admit to. Three to five-hour meetings where the goal wasn't communication, but distortion.
He sat in front of his computer, staring at it for a long time.
In less than a week, the post disappeared. The discussions were blocked. That person was as if they had never existed.
He couldn't talk to anyone about this.
Not because he was afraid. Because if he spoke, the other person would ask: "How do you know?"
How did he know? He had been in that system for over three years. He had seen the same tactics. The same infinite testing under three lines managed by the same boss, the same pressure, the same "your lack of stress tolerance is your personal problem."
He had seen it—but "having seen it" is not evidence. In the vocabulary of the system, his "having seen it" is called "subjective feeling."
And that dead person—in the vocabulary of the system—needs no explanation. Because that person no longer exists.
This wasn't the most difficult part. The most difficult part was what came next.
Lin Zhaoming had done some things during those four years.
He halted an infinite test once. He refused to sign a problematic document. He restored a number that had been altered in a supplier engineer's report. He pointed out in a meeting that two versions of a schedule didn't match.
Every time, it was very small. Every time, no one thanked him. Every time, he wasn't sure if what he did was of any use.
But he believed—or rather, he chose to believe—that these things added up, perhaps saving someone a bit of pressure. Perhaps giving a certain engineer one more week to breathe. Perhaps allowing a problem on a production line to be caught one more time.
Perhaps.
He would never know.
Because there is a cruel paradox here.
That dead person—his death proved that the danger was real. Proved that the system kills. Proved that Lin Zhaoming's worries over the past four years were not delusions.
But the things Lin Zhaoming did—halting, refusing, restoring—if they truly worked, if they truly saved someone—that person didn't die.
If that person didn't die, it means nothing happened. If nothing happened, it means they didn't need saving. If they didn't need saving, it means the things Lin Zhaoming did—never existed.
Death has records. Being saved does not.
A person dies, there are posts, discussions, blockades. Even if erased, the traces remain.
A person doesn't die—there is nothing. No posts. No discussions. No records. Even the fact of "almost dying" itself doesn't exist.
Successful prevention never leaves a record.
This was the difficulty Lin Zhaoming faced.
Not the "I was bullied" kind of difficulty. Not the "I was laid off" kind of difficulty.
It was: I don't know if I saved anyone.
If you didn't save anyone—at least there is a clear fact to face. You can mourn. You can accept. You can move on.
"Not knowing if you saved anyone"—there are no facts. No conclusions. Only a question that will never be answered.
His sacrifices might have meant something. They might have meant nothing. And he had to accept every choice he made while forever residing in the unknown.
Someone might say: "Then why still do it?"
His answer is simple. Not because he believed he'd be rewarded. Day 3 already explained—good people don't get good rewards.
It's because the cost of not doing it was something he couldn't afford.
If he chose not to halt it—that test might have run to completion, and maybe nothing would have happened. But if something did happen—he would know he could have halted it but didn't. He would have to live with that "knowing" for the rest of his life.
That cost is more expensive than being laid off. More expensive than being written up as "incompetent." More expensive than anything.
So he did it. Did it, not knowing if it worked. Not knowing if it worked, but keeping on doing it. Keeping on doing it until he was laid off.
The day he was laid off, what he took with him wasn't a pretty resume. It was a question: those people he might have saved, he will never know who they are.
And that dead person—he was beyond his reach. He couldn't change it.
What could be changed leaves no records. What couldn't be changed, someone died.
This was the most difficult thing work left him. Not a moment. A question that will never be answered.
Tomorrow: A story of your willing sacrifice in the workplace.
The List of Costs — Day 6
The prompt asked: "A story of your willing sacrifice in the workplace."
It isn't a story. It is a list. But before talking about the costs, let's talk about something that was never recorded.
Year 1022.
A person was pressured to the point of contemplating suicide.
Not the kind in the news. No reports. No investigations. No records at all. No one in the company would ever mention it. Because in the language of the system, this never happened.
But the persecution tactics persisted. The same pressure. The same meetings. The same distortions. Swap in a new person, and do it again.
Lin Zhaoming knew about this. Not because someone told him. But because he had been inside long enough, and he had seen the same tactics more than once.
This is the true background of why he stayed. It wasn't an issue of "should I get promoted." It wasn't an issue of "will my resume look good." It was an issue of human lives.
The Resume.
Some would say: "Four years without a promotion, the resume doesn't look good."
Yes. Some of the people who joined at the same time got promoted, some jumped ship, their resumes gaining a few beautiful titles. Lin Zhaoming's resume had only one line. Same company. Same position. Four years. Interviewers would ask: "No promotions in four years?"
But to be honest—in an era where AI is reshaping everything, the resume itself is no longer the most important thing. Titles will expire. Skills will be replaced. Those lines on the resume, half of them might not even exist five years from now.
Human lives don't expire.
Lin Zhaoming had halted a test that shouldn't have run. Refused to sign a problematic document. Restored an altered number. These things cannot be written into a resume. No interviewer will ever ask, "Have you ever stopped a decision that could have hurt someone?"
But conscience is more important than a resume. Even if it can't be written down. Even if no one knows.
Relationships.
His wife never asked him to quit. But her silence carried weight.
She didn't entirely understand why he wouldn't leave. She knew he had a way out. She knew he didn't need this salary. What she didn't understand was—why he had to use his own time and energy to block things that perhaps couldn't be blocked at all.
One time she said: "Do you know it's been a long time since you smiled?"
He froze. He didn't know.
Space for Survival.
This is the most expensive item.
Lin Zhaoming wasn't ignorant of workplace unspoken rules. He wasn't ignorant of factions. He had worked in three companies, across three regions. Where are there no factions? Where are there no unspoken rules?
But in the past—even if there were factions, people who didn't take sides still had space to survive. You could be a quiet technical person. Never stealing credit. Never joining any camp. Eating off your own abilities. Perhaps you wouldn't rise the fastest, but you could exist.
What Lingyun Synthesis taught him was: this space no longer exists.
Not taking a side equals having no protection. Having no protection equals your name can appear on any list. And once your name appears on a list—the character assassination begins. Your professionalism becomes "subjective feeling." Your analysis becomes "communication issues." Your social interactions are monitored. The people around you are systematically cleared out. Until you become an isolated existence within this system that no one dares to approach.
And then they say: "Look, he can't integrate into the team."
In the past, not taking sides just meant you were slower. Now, not taking sides means death.
Time.
Four years. From age forty to forty-four.
What did he do with those four years? What he definitively lost: some smiles. A resume that could have looked better. A world where "you don't have to pick a side to survive."
What he possibly preserved: some human lives. Some numbers. Some things that no one will ever know.
Everything was a "possibly." Not a single item could be confirmed.
Someone might ask: "Was it worth it?"
Lin Zhaoming doesn't know.
But he knows—if he had chosen to leave back then, he would have lived the rest of his life with a question: "If I had stayed, would things have been different for that person?"
He would rather carry "not knowing if it was worth it," than carry "what if."
This is his willing sacrifice. It is not a hero's story. It is a person who calculated a ledger, found it was a loss no matter how he calculated it, but saw that the number in the human lives column was larger than all the other columns combined.
Tomorrow: So work could also be like this.
So Work Could Also Be Like This — Day 7
After Lin Zhaoming left Lingyun Synthesis, he didn't immediately write a book.
He tried many things. Drew short comics. Built a world-building framework called "Mythogen Engine." Researched AI—not the "learn AI in three days" kind of research, but truly understanding its underlying logic, how it would change the flow of information, and how it would reshape human behavior.
At the time, these things seemed to be going their separate ways. But later he realized, everything was accumulating toward the same direction.
What truly made him sit down and write "Mirror Realm" wasn't a sudden moment of inspiration descending.
It was seeing that the world was going mad.
On YouTube, algorithms fed by AI began massively pushing anxiety content. The more anxious the content, the higher the click-through rate. The higher the click-through rate, the more the algorithm pushed it. On Facebook, advertisements for anxiety courses appeared one after another. Law of Attraction. Positive thinking. Change your life in three days. Those selling anxiety and those selling the cure were the same group of people—he had talked about this in Day 1, but that wasn't just an observation; it was watching it happen with his own eyes.
In the forums, many people disappeared. Not left. But changed. The way they spoke changed. The way they thought changed. Everyone started communicating in a very short, fragmented, superficial way. No one read long posts. No one wanted deep analysis. Everything was accelerating, but accelerating toward the shallow end.
He knew—if he wrote what he wanted to write using the methods the world was currently getting used to, it would be impossible to write it at all.
So he made a decision: write it his own way. Regardless of whether anyone reads it.
From the very first word of "Mirror Realm," he knew this wouldn't be a mass-market book.
The subject matter is niche—systemic workplace violence. The format is niche—dense, long chapters of five thousand to ten thousand words each. The language is niche—dual editions in Taiwanese and Hong Kong traditional Chinese, written in the least algorithm-pleasing way.
But some things must be recorded.
Not to be a bestseller. Not for traffic. It's because the things he saw—the triple-layered system of what is said, written, and done; successful prevention leaving no record; the mechanisms filtering out good people—if no one writes them down, they will disappear. Not be deleted. But naturally, quietly, be forgotten.
The process of writing was a kind of spiritual salvation.
He moved those things he couldn't let go of, piece by piece, into the book. Every time he moved a piece, his body felt a little lighter. Not because he forgot. But because those things finally had a container. They no longer just existed inside his head, spinning endlessly.
After finishing "Mirror Realm," he wrote "GameVictory." 150,000 words. Forty years of tech industry history.
The mood while writing was completely different. "Mirror Realm" was tearing open a wound. "GameVictory" was opening up a field of vision. One looking inward, one looking outward. But only after finishing both did he find his own writing rhythm—his rhythm turned out to be long, dense, and slow. It's not that he can't write short pieces. It's that short pieces can't hold what he wants to say.
Now, he sits in his study every day.
No fixed workplace. No fixed working hours. No fixed income. Savings are depleting. The path ahead is unseen.
But he is very clear on one thing: if he shoots short videos for traffic, writes fragmented content for the algorithm, or chops long essays into lazy-packs to cater to the market—he will regress back into a wage earner drifting with the current. Superficially free, but actually bound by another system. No true autonomy.
The stability of the past—that 9-to-5 corporate stability with a monthly salary—has already vanished as capital continues to contract. That path cannot be returned to, nor is it worth returning to.
And to follow the trend—making short videos, chasing hot topics, selling anxiety—is just another way to abandon conscience. Essentially, it is no different from acting in Lingyun Synthesis.
What he wants is a third path: write what he wants to write. At his own pace. Speak the words he believes in.
If one day, he can sustain a living through writing—doesn't need to be rich, just enough to hold up—he feels that would be enough.
Not because it's romantic. But because he has tried all the other ways. Working for others. Complying. Acting. Each has a cost, and those costs are more expensive than being poor.
What he is doing now—writing "Mirror Realm," writing "GameVictory," researching the AI industry, building his own content ecosystem—every single thing is his own choice. Every single word is written by himself. No one asked him to do it. And no one can take it away.
So work could also be like this.
It is not a success story. It is a story of someone who finally found a way to make what is said, what is written, and what is done, all become the exact same thing.
This is the final entry of "7-Day Writing | My Workplace Persona". Thank you for reading this far. Lin Zhaoming's complete story is collected in "Mirror Realm: The Persona System Murder Incident", currently serialized on Matters.