I asked you to write a light novel, but you wrote about living?

Yu Wen, captured on camera, suddenly chuckled softly.

"They say I couldn't write 'To Live' because I didn't have that kind of experience."

Yu Wen repeated the most widely circulated statement on the internet, his smile deepening.

"The more I hear this, the more interesting it seems to me."

"Following this logic, shouldn't all writers of cultivation novels have to ascend to immortality first?"

Yu Wen tilted his head, as if he were seriously pondering the question.

"You can't expect an author to first swallow a golden elixir, undergo a tribulation of lightning, stand on a sword, and fly 30,000 miles into the sky before they are qualified to write 'Soaring Through the Sky on a Sword,' right? If that's the case, they'd probably have to go to the Immortal Realm to report before they even start writing the book."

[Hahaha, it flew 30,000 miles into the sky in a flash, I'm dying of laughter!]

The way he was seriously pondering it was hilarious.

[It's as if he actually went and asked.]

"There are also those who write system articles."

Yu Wen shrugged:

"Following this logic, does he really need a system tied to his brain? A 'ding' sound, 'Congratulations, host!' Without that sound, how can he write about the protagonist having cheat codes, signing in, and winning prizes?"

"Those who write about tomb raiding have it even worse. Do they all have to go down into tombs, touch gold, and wrestle with zombies before they dare to put pen to paper?"

"To write about interstellar warfare, you have to personally pilot a warship out of the atmosphere, exchange fire with aliens, and only if you're lucky enough to survive can you write a few lines?"

The comments section was filled with laughter.

Stop talking, I'm laughing so hard I'm crowing!

[I even arm-wrestled with a rice dumpling! Hahahaha]

[StarCraft author: Then I'd rather not write anymore]

This rebuttal is so down-to-earth, everyone understands it!

After Yu Wen and the others' laughter subsided slightly, they slowly stopped talking.

"Then it must be really tough for us writers."

"To write about a murder case, you have to kill someone first; to write about emperors and generals, you have to usurp the throne first; to write about survival in the apocalypse, you have to destroy the world first to have material."

He smiled, but his tone turned slightly somber.

"Following this logic, all the authors in the entire Federation should have been arrested long ago."

[They couldn't hold it in anymore, and they all ended up in jail, hahaha!]

That makes sense...

Wow, he didn't get angry or lose his temper; he just made that set of questions sound like a joke.

Wait, it seems like he really convinced me?

……

But "To Live" is written so realistically, it's not the same thing, is it?

That "different" comment was almost immediately pushed back to the top by someone with extremely high privileges.

Immediately afterwards, the online trolls, as if they had planned it in advance, changed their angle.

The long post that had been prepared beforehand, along with its title, was made into a new line of holographic text and reappeared before Yu Wen.

[Peeling back the layers of Yu Huashi's character, even a genius's imagination can't conjure up details that feel earthy and relatable.]

[Teacher Yu, it's true that you don't need to experience things firsthand to make up a story. But the details in "To Live"—how Niu Ben cracked his whip while plowing the fields, how he dug up grass roots during famine years, how he ate clay—every single detail is so real. Can such earthy things be imagined? This analysis has been read by millions of people online. Please, don't try to argue, respond directly.]

The lively atmosphere in the live stream room suddenly froze.

This time, the online trolls learned their lesson.

Instead of tackling the overused and dead-end topic of "cultivation and systems," they cleverly shifted the battlefield to the dividing line between "fiction" and "reality."

Immediately afterwards, several carefully prepared comments followed, each one landing on that new crack.

[That's right! Cultivation and interstellar travel are fictional worlds created out of thin air; no one has ever seen them, so you can make them up however you want. But "To Live" depicts a real, existing era; it's based on verifiable facts!]

[You can write whatever you want, but if you want to recreate the true history, even a small mistake in the details will expose the lie. How could a twenty-year-old disabled man from the lower-middle district who had never worked in the fields write those details of farming and famine so accurately?]

[Caught red-handed for shifting the focus, huh? No one can refute the fictional world, but this incredibly realistic "reconstruction" precisely proves that he possesses a rare, old-fashioned book that we've never seen before!]

The moment that "conceptual fallacy" was uttered, the neutral audience, who had initially been amused by Yu Wen and almost convinced, subtly changed their expressions.

[Hmm...that makes sense, writing something fake and writing something real are definitely not the same thing.]

[That's right. No one can find fault with a fantasy cultivation world you create, but when it comes to recreating a realistic era, even a small mistake will expose the flaw.]

Now that you mention it, it's a bit suspicious that he could write so convincingly...

The doubts that Yu Wen had suppressed have resurfaced little by little from this new angle.

That influential figure, certified as a "narratologist," seeing that the time was right, delivered the most "sincere" blow.

[Professor Yu, we're not being unreasonable. With fictional subjects, no one can find fault with how you write. But *To Live* is different; it recreates a real, flesh-and-blood era. This level of authenticity cannot be achieved through mere imagination. That's why we wonder, where exactly does this "earthy" quality come from?]

The holographic text that shot out menacingly, along with a new wave of doubts that filled the screen, pressed down once again on the young man in that beam of cold light.

This question is much more tricky than the previous "experience-based" approach.

It took a step back, acknowledging that "fiction doesn't require personal experience," yet it remained firmly grounded in the word "truth."