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

Zhou Mingxuan sneered and sank deeper into the sofa.

From its title to its cover, from its synopsis to its nonsensical "preface," this book exudes an arrogance and absurdity that is completely out of step with the entire online literature industry.

There are no short, concise paragraphs, no highlighted or emphasized system prompts, only dense blocks of text that feel extremely oppressive to look at.

He subconsciously glanced at the data panel in the upper right corner.

[Status: Ongoing]

[Number of words: 2 words]

"Twenty thousand words?"

Zhou Mingxuan's brows furrowed even more.

In this era of cyberpunk novels where AI can generate 300,000-word drafts with a single click and publish a book on the same day, 20,000 words is barely even a basic outline; it's pitifully little, not even enough to fill a tooth gap.

This inhuman layout, the pretentious preface, and the pitifully short word count caused Zhou Mingxuan to feel a strong sense of unease. His right hand had already instinctively risen, ready to directly click the red close button.

But his finger, which was hovering in mid-air, paused for a moment.

It's only 20,000 words.

With his reading speed after having a brain development chip implanted for a long time, he could finish scanning very quickly.

"Oh well, it's only 20,000 words, it won't take much time, so it's fine if it's wasted."

Zhou Mingxuan convinced himself.

That post warning about "dying from poisoning" really went too far in terms of sensationalism. He was genuinely curious about what kind of nerve-wracking things a "wild lunatic" who didn't play by the rules and didn't even use AI-generated content could write.

"Fine, I'll see how long you can keep up this act as a so-called 'writer'."

Zhou Mingxuan gritted his teeth, enduring the extreme discomfort in terms of visuals and reading habits. With a heart full of complaints, criticisms, and a hint of barely perceptible curiosity, he lightly swiped his finger across the virtual interface, skipping the preface and officially entering the main text.

Zhou Mingxuan took a deep breath, increased the font size of the retinal projection, and focused his gaze on the first line of the text.

When I was ten years younger than I am now, I had a leisurely job collecting folk songs in the countryside.

"?"

A question mark slowly appeared on Zhou Mingxuan's forehead, completely bewildered.

"What kind of nonsense is this? Don't you even know what the 'Golden Three Chapters' are? There's not even a single cheat code at the beginning, he's actually going to the countryside to collect junk... wait, collect some kind of folk songs? Is this male lead a junk collector? What kind of variant of the 'loser' genre has this kind of opening?"

Zhou Mingxuan suppressed the urge to complain, and continued to scan downwards with his finger tracing patterns in the air.

Soon, he saw the second paragraph.

That summer, I almost fell in love; I met a beautiful girl...

"oh!"

Zhou Mingxuan sneered, revealing an expression that said, "I see right through you."

"After all that suspense, it turns out it's just a melodramatic harem romance novel? But the writing is so bland! What kind of adjective is 'pleasing to the eye'? Doesn't the author know how to use an AI model's vocabulary? Doesn't the author know how to describe the girl's 'holographically perfect model proportions' and '3D silicone-like luster'? This author really can't create any imagery at all."

He shook his head as he looked down, feeling his intelligence being relentlessly rubbed down by this amateur author.

Then, the scene shifts, and the so-called "male protagonist" doesn't encounter any stunning beauties, but instead meets an old man with a face full of wrinkles who is plowing a field.

Zhou Mingxuan saw the old man's lines as he called out to the cow:

[Erxi and Youqing, don't be lazy! Jiazhen and Fengxia are doing a good job, and Kugen is doing well too.]

"Pfft—cough cough cough!"

Zhou Mingxuan almost choked on his own saliva.

He stared wide-eyed at the line of text on the projection, repeatedly confirming that he hadn't misread it.

The old man was calling out those names to a cow!

"Has this old man's brain been fried by radiation?! A cow with five people's names?! Is this some kind of schizophrenic cybernetic cow? Or is this old man a hidden beast tamer, and this cow is actually a super synthetic beast formed from the fusion of five souls?"

Zhou Mingxuan's worldview was greatly shaken.

This plot is completely illogical; it's like someone who's drunk too much cheap engine oil spouting nonsense.

But that wasn't the most devastating thing for him.

In the following episode, the "I" who collects folk songs sits under the shade of a tree with the old man, who begins to reminisce about his past.

Then, the novel suddenly switched perspectives without any system notifications or paragraph highlights!

The old man, Fugui, began to slowly recount his story in the first person, "I," about how his family owned more than 100 acres of land when he was young, and how he went to the city to patronize prostitutes and gamble.

Seeing this, Zhou Mingxuan was completely speechless; his patience had finally reached its limit.

"Stop! Stop! Stop! What the hell are they doing?!"

Zhou Mingxuan suddenly sat up from the sofa, hardly believing his eyes:

"A novel within a novel?! What's this called? A nesting doll?! And they even switched to first-person narration?!"

In the world of cyberpunk online novels, the first-person perspective has been dead for decades because it provides too little immersion. AI models have long since listed "first-person perspective" as an absolute no-go point.

What's more, the author unexpectedly switched the narrative perspective in the first few hundred words, marginalizing the "male protagonist" who appeared at the beginning and replacing him with a decrepit old man as the protagonist!

"This is like dancing in a minefield of online novels!"

Zhou Mingxuan was so angry that he laughed instead.

He decisively switched out of the reading interface and opened the author's homepage called "Yu Huashi".

really!

[Attention: 0]

[Number of works: 1]

[Author's Badge: None]

"I knew it! He's definitely a complete newbie who hasn't even scratched the surface!"

Zhou Mingxuan slammed his hand on the sofa armrest and couldn't stop complaining:

"They know nothing, yet they dare to write nonsense! The perspectives are randomly shifted, the characters are completely ruined, the narrative is dragging, and there's absolutely no logic! A cow calls out five names, the male lead starts out as a useless storyteller, and the protagonist is actually an old man?"

He had only read less than 800 words when he was completely certain that the warning post was too conservative.

This is not a "hardcore survival novel" at all; it is a complete and utter piece of garbage with no chance of being salvaged!

"Even if the underlying AI of the cloud-based big data model were infected with a virus, it would absolutely not be able to generate such illogical and nonsensical 'poisonous' entities!"

Zhou Mingxuan rubbed his throbbing temples and delivered his final death sentence to the novel:

"This was definitely typed by some brain-computer interface malfunctioning lunatic in the downtown area, someone with cyberbullying!"

He snorted coldly, his gaze immediately locking onto the red "Exit" button in the upper right corner, ready to leave this garbage dump that was tormenting his eyes for good.