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

Carter picked up the cup of hot water, took a sip, and then slowly began to speak:

"I was in my office on the West Coast last night when you were doing your live stream."

"My subordinates told me that a book called 'To Live' has been published in the Eastern region and has gone viral online."

He chuckled. "To be honest, I didn't take it too seriously at first. I come across several of these phenomenal bestsellers every year, and nine times out of ten they're just AI-generated hype. The data looks good, but once you flip through a couple of pages, it's all empty."

"I had my assistant pull up the whole book. I speak Chinese, and I usually read these things myself."

He paused, and the casualness that had just been present in his grey-blue eyes slowly faded.

"Last night I read from the first word to the last word."

"After watching it, I sat in my office for a long time."

Carter didn't look at Yu Wen; his gaze was fixed on the glass of water on the coffee table.

"Later I did two things."

"The first thing I did was have the tech department work overnight to run an AI translation and send me the English sample chapter."

"That manuscript..."

He shook his head, seemingly still somewhat unwilling to accept it:

"The words are all correct. The sentences are also coherent. But I just can't continue reading."

"It's like looking at something through a plastic sheet."

"The plain language Fugui spoke, the hidden meaning in it, AI couldn't find. The simple, plain sentences you wrote, the flavor, AI couldn't find either."

"What it turned out was an empty shell."

"You wrote about Fugui entirely in plain language, simple and ordinary. As his family members died one by one, he didn't cry much. He just told the story in a calm and ordinary way. But it is precisely because of this calmness that it is hard for the reader to bear."

"AI doesn't understand. As soon as it sees that someone has died, it thinks it has to be written in a more tragic way, so it adds a bunch of beautiful and sentimental words to it."

"Adding this on makes it worse. Fugui is no longer Fugui; he's more like an actor, playing the victim on stage."

He paused for a moment, picked up the water, and took another sip.

"So I did the second thing."

"I did it myself, picked out a few paragraphs, and retranslated them on my computer using my own English."

"Translate it once, delete it. Translate it again, still wrong, delete it again."

Carter smiled, a smile tinged with a stubbornness that even he found amusing.

"I revised it for most of the night. It wasn't until dawn that I finally understood something."

He looked up at Yu Wen.

"The English version of this book cannot be handed over to AI. Nor can it be given to just any translation company."

"There needs to be someone who can translate that breath of life back into English, word by word."

"I think that person should be me."

He didn't say anything more generous, but simply leaned forward slightly, his tone sincere.

"Mr. Yu."

"The book 'To Live' is from our company, Weiguang. As for the English version, I'll handle the internal procedures within the platform."

"But this book is yours."

"Before we take any action, I'd like to hear your opinion first."

"If you'd like, I'd like to try translating it into English."

After Carter finished speaking, there was a moment of silence in the living room.

Yu Wen did not answer immediately.

He leaned back in his wheelchair, his eyes downcast, his fingers unconsciously resting on the worn-out old keyboard on his knee.

To be honest, Carter's words left a somewhat complicated feeling in his heart.

"To Live" is by Mr. Yu Hua.

Every single word and phrase belongs to the gentleman.

He, Yu Wen, simply moved it here from another world, exactly as it was.

Now that the book is going to be published in English, the first thing that comes to his mind is not anything else, but two people in another world, another time and space: Mr. Yu Hua and Bai Ruiwen.

Bai Ruiwen, that blond, blue-eyed American guy in his early twenties who had just graduated from college.

He first watched the movie "To Live" in a university class, and then wrote an analysis.

Later, he went to Taiwan and bought Yu Hua's original work in a bookstore in Taipei. He took the book back to his dark and damp basement where he had been renting for nearly a year and read it in one go.

After reading it, he made up his mind to translate the book.

He contacted Mr. Yu Hua through intermediaries to request authorization.

He was in his early twenties then, with little fame and experience.

If it were someone else, they would probably put on airs, want to see the resume, and want to see the sample seal first.

But Mr. Yu Hua did not.

The gentleman simply replied with a very generous statement: "Then you can come."

After the manuscript was translated, major American publishers rejected it one by one; Chinese novels had no market.

Bai Ruiwen was in a hurry and wanted to find any university press to print it.

Mr. Yu Hua only said one sentence: No, wait a little longer.

This book definitely has a market.

Sure enough, not long after, Random House bought it.

Later, "To Live" sold well year after year on the other side of the ocean, and even American high schools used it as a model for English writing.

That's a matter between Mr. Yu Hua and Bai Ruiwen.

Sitting in his wheelchair, Yu Wen looked at the man in front of him who also had blond hair, gray-blue eyes, fluent Chinese, and who had also stayed up all night in his West Coast office reading "To Live" from beginning to end. He couldn't describe the feeling in his heart.

He thought of himself...

He traveled through time and typed out the words of "To Live" from Mr. Yu Hua, word by word, into the broken keyboard borrowed from this body. The place where he typed it was also a dark and damp basement.

Bai Ruiwen read "To Live" in one go in his dark and damp basement back then.

And it was in his dark and damp basement that he wrote "To Live" word by word.

Two basements, spanning two worlds, facing each other from afar.

The awkward and complicated emotions in Yu Wen's heart slowly dissipated.

He thought, if Mr. Yu Hua was so generous as to hand over his book to an American young man in his early twenties who had nothing, why couldn't he, Yu Wen, do the same?

He looked up at Carter.

"Mr. Carter."

"You didn't sleep all night and flew all the way from the West Coast."

"If you want to translate this book, then go ahead and do it."

I believe you.

Carter paused for a moment.

He probably didn't expect that the young man in the wheelchair would answer so readily.

He's been in this line of work for over a decade and has shaken countless hands.

Before any hand reaches out, the other person is already weighing things up – their background, their qualifications, and the benefits they can bring.

Only Yu Wen's eyes lacked that.

There was only one kind of trust he had ever had in his life.

Carter was momentarily speechless.

He remained silent for a long time.

After a long silence, he stood up and solemnly extended his hand to Yu Wen.

"Mr. Yu, thank you."

"I did my best with this book."

Yu Wen smiled, raised his hand, and shook hands with him.

"You're welcome."

Yu Wendao: "What you should thank is this book, 'To Live'."

"If it weren't for it, you wouldn't have flown over here without sleeping all night; if I weren't the one who wrote it, you wouldn't have held my hand and said these words."

"We were all brought together by it."

Carter paused for a long while, then slowly withdrew his hand and sat back down on the sofa.

He didn't say anything more.

Some things are better left unsaid.