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

In the Ninth District of Lower Manhattan, on a side road near the Third Public Hospital, a "Rapid Installation" construction vehicle was parked under a rusty, blackened utility pole.

The notification set on the watch buzzed.

The young man deftly tossed the last household's toolbox into the back seat and reached out to press the holographic projection transmitter on the car roof.

A beam of pale blue light silently spread from the car roof, hanging above a small patch of wet cement by the roadside.

The face jumped out from the light screen.

"here we go."

He grinned, leaned against the car door, and began to look at it intently.

This watch lasted for the entire match.

Several times during the meal he wanted to drink some water, but he would bring the cup to his lips and then put it down again.

Several times I tried to raise my hand to wipe my face, but my arm would rise and then fall back down.

The surrounding noise from District 9 seemed to be completely shut out by that pale blue light curtain.

He stared blankly at that beam of light, from the "senior cultural scholar of Shangcheng District" throwing out his killer move all the way to Yu Wen's last sentence, "It is you who hold up this whole world."

When the light curtain faded, he was still sitting on the hood of the car.

After a long while, he looked down at his hands, his knuckles thick and calloused, with ash from the last household of the night embedded in his fingernails.

Listening to these words that dissected life, death, and suffering, the young man felt an indescribable shock.

As a low-level installer who spends his days struggling in the mud of the downtown area and dealing with cold electronic components, he has seen many poor people who cannot afford medical bills outside the nearby hospital, and many lives that die on the streets like stray dogs, without even a body bag.

Every day before dawn, several frozen or starved bodies are swept out of the slum streets and alleys, and the scavenging trucks take them away like a pile of useless scrap metal.

Life here has no weight.

In his mind, life and death in the lower city meant power outages, physical ruin, and a humiliating end.

Living is about earning a dose of nutrients for tomorrow; dying is about adding fuel to the fire in the city's incinerator.

He never imagined that such agonizing suffering could be analyzed in words and language to such a profound and soul-stirring level.

Shocked, the young man couldn't help but sigh to himself: You really can't judge a book by its cover!

Others only watched online, but he had actually seen Yu Wen in person!

In that basement where even the walls were leaking, sat a rather delicate-looking young man in a broken wheelchair. He looked somewhat frail, and people like him usually wouldn't live long in the downtown area.

Who would have thought that such a delicate-looking disabled young man would have such a terrifying level of thinking!

That kind of insight into life and death, that kind of clarity that allows one to look down into the abyss while standing in the mud, is something that ordinary people simply cannot reach.

The image on the holographic screen went dark, turned into fragments of light, and disappeared; the live stream had ended.

The young man stood in the night breeze, savoring the moment for a long time.

As he was about to pack up his equipment, he turned around and discovered that someone had been standing silently beside him without him noticing.

She was a middle-aged woman with a haggard face and gray hair.

She stood a few steps away, staring blankly at the patch of air where the holographic projection had just disappeared, as if she had lost her soul.

The young man noticed her, assuming she was a patient's family member coming from the hospital across the street.

As he was winding up the cables, he chimed in to himself:

"Hey sis, you're watching the live stream too? I've read this author's books, they're absolutely brilliant, have you read them too?"

The woman remained silent, ignoring him, and simply looked in the direction of the projection.

The young man didn't seem to mind and continued to savor the moment, saying:

"What this author said is truly shocking... But you would never guess, I've actually met this young man before! I was the one who installed his livestream camera setup today, and I even got his autograph! Tsk tsk, I personally witnessed this great author writing this stuff in such a dilapidated, damp basement, a place that didn't even have a decent window..."

Before he could finish speaking, the woman next to him suddenly turned her head.

"What?!"

The woman seemed to wake from a dream, rushed forward, grabbed the young man's arm, and her voice trembled violently:

"You know where he is?!"

The young man was taken aback when she grabbed him.

The woman continued to tug at his sleeve without saying a word, her eyes instantly reddening, and she pleaded urgently:

"Tell me where he is! Please tell me, which basement is he in?"

The young man frowned, and immediately became alert.

For people in their line of work, matters involving other people's privacy are absolutely a bottom line.

Once you break the rules, you won't be able to get any work in the lower city area.

So he quickly withdrew his hand, chuckled awkwardly, and said:

"Hey, ma'am... I was just bragging. I'm always taking orders and running around, my brain's all muddled, how could I remember who lives where?"

But the woman refused to believe him and continued to cling to him relentlessly.

Her tears began to fall uncontrollably.

The young man's face darkened, and he forcefully brushed her hand away, saying bluntly:

"Sister, this is someone else's privacy. Even if I knew, I would never say anything. That's the rule. You should leave now and not keep me from finishing my work."

The woman was pushed back half a step.

She was already weak, and this almost caused her to lose her balance, staggering and leaning against the rusty bus stop sign next to her.

The dim light of the streetlamp shone on her, making her tattered coat look empty, as if only a skeleton remained inside.

She didn't grab the young man's sleeve again, nor did she cry loudly.

She just stood there, her whole body trembling.

In those cloudy, bloodshot eyes, there was a plea that seemed almost desperate.

Amidst silent sobs, she muttered the reason to herself...

The young man's movements as he packed up the equipment suddenly slowed down.

The data cable, which was being held between my fingers, slipped from my hand without warning and fell into the sewage puddle at my feet with a "plop".

The splashing mud hit his work boots, but he didn't even blink.

He stood there stunned, his mind going blank for a moment.

The surrounding noise seemed to fade away in an instant; even the coughs of the homeless man in the distance and the hum of the neon lights could no longer be heard.

Only the cold night wind of District 9, mixed with the smell of medicine from the hospital, passed between the two.

He looked at the haggard, trembling middle-aged woman in front of him and remained silent for a long time.

After a long while, he slowly moved his dry throat and spoke in a hoarse voice:

Even if I tell you…

"But you heard it too..."

He looked at the woman and said slowly:

"He just said on his live stream that he's moving."