Shardchat destroys fun

I think you should consider reaching out to them. Message a few people at the top around your payout and ask who you should avoid in your payout, the payout 1 hour before you and in the 2 hours after you. If they are at all reasonable they will let you know who to avoid and stop targeting you if you avoid them.

If you continue to attack people around their payouts though, they will continue to assume your initial rejection of the invitation to join was a specific - "F. U. I don't care about you loosing crystals because of my high and mighty concerns with 'cheating' which I define using a rule book I made up for myself that no one else has seen." - because right now that's probably how they see your thinking.

Due to human nature - as a group they will not change that opinion without quite a bit of a push. You as an individual could take a step back and very easily see the situation from their point of view if you chose to. You are a nuisance to them, costing them crystals and making them pay attention to the game when they could otherwise be living their lives. Of course they are going to target you. If you were a new player who didn't know about shard chats maybe they'd be more forgiving but it sounds like you are pretty experienced and know exactly what you are doing.

P.S. not making any judgement on whether it should be like this... I don't think it should... but it is. With that in mind you may want to take some action to make the best of the situation. The above is the only thing that realistically is going to work unless you enjoy spending a lot of crystals to have a war with them and annoy them (which is also totally legitimate but from your complaints about being targeted I guess that's not the case).