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

After that brief description went viral, new comments kept appearing:

【ID Thirty-seven years old is in the prime】: When people reach middle age, they become middle-aged; when they get old, they become old. But after reading this, I don't think this old man is old at all.

[ID Lower City Prosthetic Repairman]: If you run out of harpoons, use a knife; if you run out of knives, use a stick. It's similar to me repairing this broken mechanical leg. When parts are discontinued, I grind them myself. I'll take it one day at a time.

[Sixth day of unemployment in ID Central City]: Yesterday, the company laid off employees. Twelve years of service resulted in an automatically generated farewell letter. I always felt that I had wasted those twelve years feeding dogs. But now, looking at that fish skeleton, I suddenly feel that it at least proves that I really survived there for twelve years.

[ID Shangcheng Securities Analyst]: From the perspective of returns, this overseas venture was a complete failure. From a human perspective, I am not qualified to use the word "failure" to describe it.

[ID Early Morning Freight Track]: People used to tell me that hard work would pay off, but now I understand that it's not always the case. But the lack of reward doesn't mean that those who tried were laughable.

[ID Seventh Dock Porter]: The old man wasn't unaware that the sharks would continue to come; he just had something in his hands, so he kept fighting. Watching him fight like that really made my head spin.

[ID Shangcheng District Old Surname]: We are taught from childhood that failure should be hidden and weakness is not worth showing. But the elderly can admit that they have been defeated and still maintain their dignity. Perhaps admitting failure itself requires courage.

【ID Junkyard Gold Digger】: The fish meat is all eaten, but the bones are still there. The money is gone, the reward is gone, and others don't even know what happened. But what's done is done, and no one can say it didn't happen.

[ID Automated Mining Night Shift Worker]: I used to think that "not being defeated" meant always holding on and never admitting defeat, even if it meant dying. Now I realize that it means you can lose, you can get tired, you can lie down, but you can't feel worthless in your life just because you didn't bring anything back this time.

[ID 17-digit elevator administrator]: The world won't understand you just because you've suffered, nor will it compensate you just because you've risked your life. But you can still decide whether or not to stand up the next time your dorsal fin appears.

[ID Midtown Full-Time Mother]: The boy cried when he saw the old man's hand injury. He didn't ask how much the fish sold for. It turns out that the people who truly care about you don't see what you bring back, but how much you were hurt to come back.

【ID just turned 18 and doesn't want to go to work】: To be honest, I haven't fully understood it yet, but I hope that when I become like him, I can be like him.

Hundreds of replies quickly appeared under this comment.

Some people laughed at him for thinking too far ahead.

Some people say they are already old.

Some people silently opened their contacts and sent the link to the work to someone they hadn't contacted in a long time.

In a cramped shared room in the lower part of the city, a worker who had just finished his night shift sat on the edge of the bed, staring blankly at the fish skeleton.

Inside an office building in the central district where the lights were still on, someone didn't immediately close the layoff notice for the first time.

In the residential buildings of Shangcheng District, suspended above the clouds, some people remove their neural access devices and sit alone in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down at the city lights that never go out.

They live at different altitudes.

They have different bodies, jobs, and destinies.

Some people never see the real ocean in their entire lives.

But that night, they all saw the white fish skeleton dragging beside the small boat.

It's like seeing someone give everything, only to end up with nothing that can be exchanged for money.

I also saw him shoulder the mast, fall down again and again, and get up again and again.

More and more comments are beginning to repeat that sentence from the book's synopsis.

At first, there were only a few scattered ones.

Then came hundreds more.

Several thousand.

Tens of thousands.

Accounts from different backgrounds and different cities kept joining until the entire book review section was completely flooded with the same sentence.

……

Within an hour of the official conclusion of "The Old Man and the Sea," the backend graph of Weiguang Literature's headquarters showed an anomaly.

The outbreak did not originate in the West Coast region.

It is the Eastern Region.

Chang Liren stood in front of the data wall, staring at the almost vertically rising curve, and remained silent for a long time.

This was completely different from what they had expected.

The decision to launch both Chinese and English versions simultaneously was made to minimize traffic interference from capital in the Eastern region, allowing West Coast readers to make their first judgment on the work without being influenced by external word-of-mouth.

According to the original projections, "The Old Man and the Sea" should have first resonated on the West Coast.

That sea, that port, and the lives of those fishermen—they all belonged there.

Once the first round of positive word-of-mouth has spread on the west coast, it will then be relayed back to the eastern region.

But the actual situation is exactly the opposite.

The Old Man and the Sea is only a little over 50,000 words long.

Yu Huashi has just amassed millions of readers in the Eastern region with his novel "To Live".

The first people to enter the work's page quickly read to the end.

Within forty minutes of its release, the work had already garnered millions of readers in the Eastern region.

Although the West Coast also received a homepage recommendation, its real-time data was only one-tenth of that of the Eastern region.

It's not that the featured placement is ineffective.

However, for most readers there, "Yu Huashi" is still just an unfamiliar Eastern name.

Many people, upon seeing the title "The Old Man and the Sea," assume it's just another ocean-themed work following the recent trend.

Someone clicked on the profile.

Someone added it to the bookshelf.

However, not many people actually start reading right away.

As a result, in the first hour, the data from the Eastern region was almost unchallenged.

But those who finished reading did not leave immediately.

They remain on the artwork page.

Someone was staring at the marlin, which was now just a skeleton.

Some people repeatedly read the passage where the boy discovers the scars on the old man's hands.

Some people stopped at the spot where the last few tourists mistook for fish bones and didn't slide any further for a long time.

……

This sea is incredibly far from the Eastern Region.

The readers here may not have been to sea or held a fishing line.

But they still understood why the old man continued to sail on the eighty-fifth day.

He also understood why, after losing the harpoon, he still picked up the knife; and after the knife broke, he still picked up the short stick and the rudder.

The discussion in the Eastern region quickly made it to the homepage of StarNet.

Subsequently, more and more readers thought of the same question.

What will people on the West Coast think when they read this book?

Do they feel a sense of familiarity with Santiago?

Will you think of your father, grandfather, or an old man who once sat by the harbor?

What would they say if they saw a big fish reduced to a skeleton?

[ID East District Repairman]: I'm really curious to see what kind of expressions people on the West Coast will have when they read this book.

[ID Cross-Region Gossip Expert]: We've already finished reading it, and now we just want to know how they'll react when they finish reading.

[ID Old Town Bus Driver]: We can only tell that this old man wrote it so realistically. They should be able to see just how much he resembles the people around them.

[ID Midtown Culture Observer]: Are there any West Coast broadcasters currently reading this book? Preferably someone reading it for the first time, and not someone who has searched for book reviews beforehand.

[ID: Downtown Online Wanderer]: I guess they'll start by questioning, then become stubborn in the middle, and finally fall silent.

[ID is still working overtime at 4 a.m.]: Don't spoil the fishbone, just call the people in.

【ID Pure Love God of War】: I just want to know if they can't hold back when they see a boy crying.

[Victims of ID: The Old Man and the Cow]: Old fishermen, dockworkers, and football fans, all of them were asked to read it.

As a result, a large number of Eastern accounts flocked to the West Coast region.