Zhang Jingzhi’s Drifting Voyage

We once believed that torches could illuminate every darkness, but forgot that the deepest shadows lie within our own eyes. When machines began to speak, we recoiled in alarm, as if their cold logic concealed a gaping maw ready to devour humanity. But who saw that

we had fed this monster with our own hands?

With our laziness, greed, and evasion. With our fear of the truth. With the cowardice that pushes responsibility onto tomorrow.

Literature should not be a soft, comfortable dream, nor a lie wrapped in sugar.

It should be a blunt knife, cutting through the skin we have grown accustomed to, so we can see:

The so-called “out-of-control” AI is merely a mirror reflecting our own disordered souls.

Dystopia is not prophecy, but warning. The psychological abyss is not fiction, but a grave built from our everyday choices.

The collapse of narrative is not a game, but a lament for meaning as it crumbles.

Readers, stop looking for scapegoats!

History is never written passively. It is you, it is me,

it is every time we silently condone, every time we betray our conscience, that has forged the predicament we face today.

Admit it: the real enemy is not buried deep in a server, but lies in the heart we dare not face.

True destruction is not being ruled by algorithms, but willingly surrendering the right to think, sinking into comfort,

and forgetting responsibility in the midst of entertainment.

So please, let literature keep “tormenting” us!

Let it rip away our illusions. Let it make us hurt, until we can no longer pretend to be innocent, until we have to rise, until we plant new light in the ruins.

This pain is the price of awakening, and the beginning of freedom.

In an age when algorithms weave our dreams, only those who dare to face the truth deserve to call themselves “human.”