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

Next to Zhou Mingxuan's ID, there was a dazzling gold virtual badge: [V8 Star Booker - Cumulative Reading: 15000 hours].

In this era where everything is measured by data, 15,000 hours of reading time means that this is a "veteran Shennong" who has fought his way out of the bloodbath of online novels.

The words of such a big shot carry significant weight among readers.

Soon, readers who were still frantically searching for books on the forum late at night came across this post that had been "blessed" by a big shot.

"Holy crap, a pro with 15,000 hours of experience personally tested and recommended it?"

"The big boss said it's going to make a strong comeback? Could it really be a hidden gem that's been overlooked because of its title and synopsis?"

"These days, it's rare to find a book that a big shot would say 'well written,' so brothers, I'm going to go for it!"

Driven by blind trust in Zhou Mingxuan's glittering badge, a group of readers, whose senses had been numbed by AI-driven industrial saccharin, clicked on the link one after another, filled with expectations of "turning the tide in dire straits," "playing dumb to fool the enemy," and "a powerful slap in the face," and plunged headlong into the 20,000-word text of "To Live."

An hour later.

The comment section of "To Live," which was originally so quiet that there wasn't a soul in it, suddenly exploded like a septic tank that had been detonated.

Scattered comments began to emerge wildly, but they were not the "urging for updates" or "discussions about the golden finger" that Zhou Mingxuan had expected. Instead, they were all cursing and swearing, filled with extremely tragic and traumatic emotions!

These readers went in expecting a lighthearted read, only to be met with the most powerful and uncompromising realism in the history of modern literature, leaving them seeing stars and having their worldviews shattered.

[ID: Rampage Mechanical Arm]: "What the hell is this crap?! This is supposed to be the male lead?! Going to a brothel and having a prostitute carry him to meet his father-in-law? Beating up his pregnant wife in front of the entire casino?! Does this bastard author have antisocial personality disorder in real life?!"

【ID Pure Love God of War】: "He died from poisoning, brothers! Does anyone understand? I thought the male lead losing all his family fortune was a setup, but he really did lose it all! The part where his father fell off the latrine and died made me throw up! What kind of garbage is this?!"

[ID Electronic Keyboardist]: "Hey you, the guy upstairs with 15,000 hours of experience, come out here! I believed your nonsense, thinking he was going to rise to power later on. I held my nose and watched my wife come home, and what happened?! The protagonist learned to farm?! What kind of rise to power is this?! Going to the fields to be a slave is called a rise to power?!"

【ID Cyber ​​Cultivator】: "What kind of garbage is this? The character settings are completely ruined! How can this kind of scumbag, stupid, and powerless old man be the protagonist? There isn't a single satisfying moment in the whole thing, it's all just frustration! Disgusting! I've reported this for being vulgar and depressing!"

[ID Night City Ghost]: "After reading 20,000 words, I felt like I was forced to drink sewage from a stinking ditch in the lower city for half an hour. Is the platform's censorship dead? How could such illogical, pure garbage be approved and released to take revenge on society?!"

The anger not only flooded the comment section, but some people even went back to the forum via the internet and bumped Yu Wen's book recommendation post to the top of the red text with "[Top Trending]", where they were all frantically criticizing the plot, the characters, and the bad points.

For online novel readers in this world, they are used to the protagonist being a morally flawless saint, used to the protagonist possessing world-destroying power, and used to the protagonist being able to crush the villain within three chapters even when encountering setbacks.

The brutally honest and dark side of humanity depicted in "To Live," and the sense of powerlessness of ordinary people in the face of fate, is like a rusty, blunt knife that brutally stabs into their fragile nerves, triggering the most intense rejection reaction.

However, in the cyber age where traffic is everything, "black and red" is also a kind of popularity.

No one expected that this phenomenal online ridicule and frenzy would inadvertently give this little book, which was originally destined to flop, a strange amount of exposure on the Weiguang Literature forum.

The post gained increasing popularity and quickly attracted the attention of another group of people on the forum.

Those were several veteran readers with badges bearing the titles of "7,000 hours" and "8,000 hours" of reading experience.

They usually boast that they are like Shennong tasting hundreds of herbs and are immune to all poisons, so what storms haven't they seen?

Seeing the newbies in the group crying and screaming after being poisoned, the curiosity of these veterans was completely piqued.

"Is it really that exaggerated? 20,000 words can make someone nauseous?"

"What era are we living in? How can anyone still dare to write a male protagonist as a gambling addict? I'm going to check out this book and see just how toxic it is."

"Brothers, wait for me. I'm going to test some poison and then I'll be back to clear the mines."

With a hint of mockery and a superior scrutiny, these big shots with seven or eight thousand hours of reading time all entered the reading interface of "To Live".

After half an hour.

These seasoned veterans, who usually pontificate in forums and scoff at all sorts of AI tricks, were surprisingly silent.

Unlike newcomers who go on a rampage and spew insults, these familiar high-level IDs, with mixed expressions, left their conclusions after personally testing the waters in that popular post:

[ID Wasteland Old Shennong (Reading Time: 8500 hours)]: "Just finished reading the latest update and I have to say something fair: those brothers who criticized it earlier were right, this book is indeed very toxic, so toxic it gave me a stomachache and made my blood pressure skyrocket. But... if you look closely at the plot logic, it's not mindlessly toxic at all!"

[ID Logic Analyst (Reading Time: 7200 hours)]: "I second Old Shennong. Current AI-driven wish-fulfillment novels are toxic for the sake of being toxic, with all the villains rendered stupid. But this book, *To Live*, is different. Fugui losing his entire fortune isn't a forced gift of a cheat ability; it's because he was a spoiled young master to begin with, and Long Er's schemes perfectly fit the underlying logic of that era! His father's death from anger, his wife being taken away—every seemingly extremely frustrating plot point carries an undeniable sense of cause and effect. It's toxic, but extremely reasonable, even chillingly so!"

[ID Cyber ​​Scavenger (Reading Time: 8000 hours)]: "This book has no fancy words, no deliberate showing off, it's all plain language, but it can still completely overwhelm you. In short: it breaks all the clichés of online novels, using the coldest touch to depict the most realistic human nature. If you can't stand it, run! If you want to experience something different, you can give it a try. This book... is sinister."

The moment these insightful, even subtly praising, comments from "experts" appeared, the sentiment on the forum instantly became more nuanced.

"It's certainly toxic, but it's not mindless?"

This sentence was like a lightning bolt, cleaving through the fog of "industrial brainless saccharin" across the entire internet.

In this fast-food era where everything is about "brainless enjoyment," "brainless sweetness," and "brainless face-slapping," the words "logical" and "not brainless" are even rarer than the finest nutrient solution.

Readers suddenly realized that compared to those formulaic, AI-driven novels where even a three-year-old knows what to do next, this book, "To Live," despite its extremely frustrating plot, is full of the unknown and realism, and is incredibly rare.

The inherent human tendency to be wicked and the desire for the bizarre have been fully unleashed.

"Not mindless? Does that mean there's a really big plot twist later on?"

"Even a veteran with 8,000 hours of experience says the logic is sound, so I'd like to see just how this protagonist is courting death!"

"Let's go! As long as I don't lose my mind, I can withstand a couple of bites even if it's poisonous!"

And so, in this absurd cyber night, an extremely bizarre phenomenon occurred:

The comment section of "To Live" is still filled with curses and wails, but its clicks, readers, and even the negligible collection data have begun to show an incredible, steep upward arc because of its hardcore reputation for being "toxic but not mindless".

More and more readers, whose nerves have become numb from the tricks of AI, are drawn to this "poisonous weed" of only 20,000 words, like moths to a flame.