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

West Coast Region.

On the StarNet holographic platform, Douglas, a popular streamer with millions of followers, is leaning back in an expensive custom-made gaming chair, idly scrolling through the screen in front of him that is flashing with a ghostly blue light.

"Alright guys, it's time for the most boring part of the week, the 'new book review' segment."

Douglas tilted his head back, took a large gulp of synthetic beer, let out a burp, and spoke with a touch of practiced mockery:

"Let me see what kind of industrial garbage this week's AI literature production line has created for us poor readers... Mecha Shark? Deep-sea cybernetic bodies? Cyborgs dominating the four oceans? Oh my god, can't these capitalist companies make their code come up with something fresh?"

Just as he was about to click on a popular local novel that was at the top of the StarNet popularity chart, the chat pool in the live stream suddenly froze for a moment.

It's not ordinary network latency, but rather a lag caused by a momentary overload of the underlying data stream.

Immediately afterwards, a dense barrage of comments flooded down like a burst dam, with an extremely ferocious pace.

【The Old Man and the Sea】

【The Old Man and the Sea! 】

【The Old Man and the Sea! ! 】

……

[Host, please give your review of this book.]

[Let's watch quietly, no spoilers, and observe.]

Douglas paused for a moment, still holding the can of beer in his hand, his eyes fixed on the screen.

He stared at the accounts, all bearing the "Eastern Region" IP prefix, that had taken over his livestream like uninvited guests. His eyebrows shot up, his face filled with disbelief.

"The Old Man and the Sea? The author... Yu Huashi?"

"What the hell?"

Douglas couldn't help but burst out laughing, spraying beer foam all over the table.

He spread his hands and made an extremely exaggerated expression of helplessness towards the camera:

"Come on, bro, are you guys serious?"

"That Asian native who wrote 'To Live' published a book with a West Coast background? You guys came to my live stream in the middle of the night, almost crashing my server, just so I could see how an Asian person who probably has never even seen what an ocean wave looks like cobbled together a retirement vlog using clumsy translation software?"

The viewers from the West Coast who were initially AFK in the live stream instantly perked up upon hearing this wildly funny joke, and started cheering wildly along with the streamer:

[The Old Man and the Sea? Good heavens, just hearing the title, I can already smell the musty, earthy odor of a nursing home.]

[An Easterner writing about our West Coast fishing life? Don't be ridiculous. Does he even know the difference in salinity between the Gulf Stream and coastal waters? It'll probably just be a bunch of machine-translated California place names, then some old man using "Eastern kung fu" to fight plastic sharks.]

[I bet ten star coins that before the old man sets sail, a voice will definitely echo in his head: "Ding! Congratulations to the host for binding the 'Strongest Sea King System'! Newbie gift pack issued: a glowing titanium alloy harpoon!"]

[Yes, yes, yes! That giant fish must have been eight thousand meters long. Then the old man stood at the bow of the boat and shouted, "Sword, come!" He then rode a surfboard and flew off on his sword to chase the fish!]

[Then this fish couldn't just die like that in the end. The marlin was actually the sealed Dragon King of the East Sea. The old man had to take out an ancestral "Nine-Turn Resurrection Pill" and stuff it into his mouth, instantly rejuvenating him into a muscular man. He then used a set of Tai Chi moves to turn the Dragon King into sashimi on the deck.]

[Help, the imagery is too vivid! I can already picture that old man chugging our tequila while shattering ocean waves with his inner energy.]

Seeing the increasingly absurd comments filling the screen, Douglas laughed so hard he almost fell over in his gaming chair, slapping the table and wiping away tears of laughter from the corners of his eyes.

"Okay, okay, guys, stop it. Your imaginations are even wilder than those out-of-control AI models."

Douglas finally managed to stop laughing, slammed the can of synthetic beer heavily on the table, pointed at the screen, and said with obvious anticipation:

"Since my friends from the Eastern region insist that I expose this clumsy cultural imitation, then today we'll take a look at this Eastern genius's masterpiece and see together on which page this old man awakened his 'fishing system,' and on which page he pulled out his flying sword!"

Faced with the West Coast netizens' frenzied mockery, mixed with stereotypes, the group of East Asian accounts that came from other regions in the live chat showed an extremely strange restraint.

There was no rebuttal whatsoever.

【Yes, you're right. He does know kung fu, and he even knows Tai Chi. Let's take a look.】

[Yes, the system went live on the second page. Host, quickly read the main text.]

Drink some more wine to soothe your throat, so you don't forget your lines later.

"Fine, then I'll satisfy your masochistic tendencies."

Douglas shrugged, casually clicked on the link to Weiguang Literature, and projected the text onto the huge public screen in the live stream room.

Douglas cleared his throat, intending to start by using the most sarcastic and critical tone to nitpick and criticize word by word.

But when his gaze swept over the first paragraph, the playful smile on his lips froze slightly.

What comes into view is a stark, succinct depiction, stripping away all ornate language, cyberpunk high-tech vocabulary, and even the absurd "system notification sound."

The writing is dry and rough, like a piece of salted fish that has been dried by the sea breeze for eighty-four days, hard and unyielding.

He patiently tried to find the exaggerated style common in online novels, but when he read the description of the old man's sail [patched with a flour bag, rolled up, it looked like a flag that symbolized eternal failure], he was deeply moved.

Douglas unconsciously sat up straight.

These words were like an invisible needle, suddenly pricking his nerves.

Existing AI literary models are absolutely incapable of writing such heavy and disheartening words. They only understand the pleasure derived from algorithms and do not understand what "the flag of eternal defeat" means.

The viewers on the West Coast who were just spamming "flying sword" and "Eastern Kung Fu" in the live stream seemed to be taken aback by these unexpectedly cold and hard words, and the scrolling speed of the comments slowed down significantly.

"This old man... is a bit strange."

Douglas muttered something, his smile fading, and continued scrolling down.

In the novel, it is dawn, and the old man rows his small boat alone into the Gulf Stream deep in the ocean.

Douglas originally thought that what followed would be the trope that Eastern authors love most: "encountering a mutated deep-sea monster" or "discovering underwater ruins."

However, the text on the screen simply described a "Portuguese warship" (Portuguese jellyfish) drifting on the sea.

It floated on the water like a translucent purple bubble...it was absolutely beautiful in the sunlight.

"Tch, I knew it."

Seeing this, Douglas finally seized his opportunity, pointing at the screen and sneering:

"Standard AI-generated landscape description: a liberal arts student who's never seen the sea likes to use words like 'beautiful' to describe jellyfish, completely unaware of how venomous they are..."

Before he could finish speaking, his gaze fell on the next two lines of text.

【"Agua mala," the man said. "You whore."】

"Aguamala," the old man said. "You son of a bitch."

Douglas's prepared laugh was cut off in his throat.

His body, which had been casually leaning back in the chair, suddenly trembled as if he had been electrocuted.

"Wait...what the fuck?!"