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

West Coast Region, Microlight Literature Division.

Two hours after "The Old Man and the Sea" was released, Carter stood in the center of the data hall, watching the curves representing reads, shares, and discussions break through the warning lines one by one.

The server has completed its third expansion.

None of the promotional plans prepared in advance by the marketing department were ever put into use.

The operations manager quickly walked to his side.

Should the second round of promotion continue?

Carter shook his head.

"No."

"Redirect the budget to expand the server capacity and increase the capacity of public reading terminals."

The supervisor hesitated for a moment.

"What about publicity..."

Carter looked up at the data wall.

Initially, the buzz was concentrated on the literature channel and in the live streams of a few anchors.

Today, zones representing news, employment, healthcare, ports, and public communities are lighting up one by one.

"The readers have already done it for us."

The supervisor nodded and turned to leave.

Carter remained standing in the same spot.

He recalled his reaction when he first read the manuscript in the Eastern region.

By then, he already knew the book was good enough, and he believed that those on the West Coast who had actually seen the sea would be able to recognize the details hidden in the text.

However, the current level of attention it has generated still exceeded his expectations.

This book does not stop at the port and coastal communities.

It is reaching a wider audience by traversing communication channels that have nothing to do with reading, fishing, or even the ocean.

Carter received communications from the usual people.

When the light screen lit up, Chang Liren first glanced at the data wall behind him.

"How's the West Coast?"

"The server is about to collapse."

Carter answered calmly, but a smile had already crept onto his lips.

"You were right back then."

"A truly good story doesn't require the reader to know which region it belongs to."

Carter looked at the curve, which was still rising.

"I was worried that people on the West Coast would initially perceive Mr. Yu as an Eastern author who was unfamiliar with the region."

"Nobody cares about this issue anymore."

Chang Liren smiled and said:

"Did they feel a sense of kinship with this old man?"

Carter paused for a moment.

"They started to remember themselves."

After the communication ended, a new report popped up in the center of the data wall.

[The West Coast region has officially surpassed the East Coast region in new readership.]

Carter stared at the number for a moment, then closed the report and turned to walk toward the still-busy staff.

"Continue to expand capacity."

"Tonight, no one who wants to know about Santiago shall stop outside the pages."

……

Outside the data hall, more and more people have already opened that book.

The initial tremor was limited to the literature section of StarNet.

But in the following period, "The Old Man and the Sea" swept into every corner of the West Coast region at an almost out-of-control speed.

For the first time, the West Coast main server of Weiguang Literature triggered an overload alarm due to a single volume of 50,000 words.

The page for the work experienced several brief glitches, but new readers continued to flood in.

Popular works that consistently rank high on the charts and are backed by massive promotional resources still maintain a large readership.

But at that moment, everyone's attention was drawn to another scene.

There was only a dilapidated little boat there, and a white fish skeleton tied to the side of the boat.

The skeleton traveled down the StarNet's transmission chain, past the literature channel, through news, entertainment, and public communities, and finally landed in the darkest, dampest neighborhood on the West Coast.

In an underground prosthetic modification workshop in the lower city, an old mechanic with an oily hand is dismantling a mechanical arm that a bankrupt mercenary had mortgaged.

The mercenary sat by the worktable, head down, without saying a word.

Losing this arm means his prosthetic rating will drop again.

This also means that starting tomorrow, he may not even be able to get the lowest-level escort missions.

After the old mechanic finished disassembling, he didn't say anything sarcastic or cynical as usual.

He paused for a moment, then suddenly picked up the welding torch again and slowly engraved a line of letters on the mercenary's remaining metal shoulder armor.

Sparks fell.

The charred marks gradually formed a sentence.

【A man can be destroyed but not defeated.】

The mercenary looked up and stared for a long time.

In the end, he said nothing, but with his only remaining hand, he patted the old mechanic's shoulder heavily.

Similar scenes began to appear repeatedly in the lower city.

An unemployed heavy industry operator sprayed that sentence on the wall of an abandoned factory.

Long-haul truck drivers burdened with huge loans set it as the welcome message when the cockpit restarts.

While praying for patients who couldn't afford prosthetic body maintenance, Pastor Cyber ​​in the underground clinic mentioned the old man who returned to shore empty-handed.

It gradually became more than just a line from a novel.

It's more like a code.

A code word for those who haven't won, can't see hope for the time being, but are still preparing to face the next day.

Pier 7.

Several old sailors, whose jobs had long been replaced by automated machinery, pooled their remaining credits and purchased the public projection access to "The Old Man and the Sea".

After nightfall, they set up an old projector on the abandoned deck.

The sea breeze blew across the rusty railings.

Lines of text about ocean currents, fishing lines, and poisonous jellyfish appeared on the dark sea surface.

These elderly people, who had spent most of their lives at sea, were initially picky about the details in the book.

Some people thought that laying cables in San Diego was too risky.

Some people criticized him for going to sea alone.

Some people were holding cheap synthetic rum, repeatedly chanting "Agua mala," saying that they had also suffered from those toxic rums when they were young.

But when the old man returned to the port with the fish bones, the deck gradually quieted down.

An old sailor with two missing fingers tilted his head back, finished the bottle of wine, and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

"That old bastard."

He gazed at the dark sea in the distance, his voice hoarse.

"How come you're just as stupid as we were when we were young?"

The person next to him chuckled twice.

He laughed for a while, then fell silent.

The next morning, the white fish skeleton was sprayed onto the exterior wall of an abandoned warehouse at Pier 7.

There is a line of smaller text below.

[Day 85, back at sea.]

This photo was shared millions of times in just a few hours.

As their influence continues to grow, those who have always stood at the top of West Coast culture are the first to feel uneasy.

The West Coast's AI Narrative Research Center held a closed-door meeting overnight.

They input the entire text of "The Old Man and the Sea" into the latest generation of creative models, asking the models to deconstruct its emotional curve, conflict points, and reasons for its spread.

The model quickly produced a report that was dozens of pages long.

Character arc light.

Suffering density.

Expectation of failure.

Emotional compensation.

All the data was calculated clearly.

However, when researchers asked the model to recreate a similar work based on this report, it quickly generated dozens of versions.

An old man, a lone boat, a giant fish, a shark, and the ultimate loss—all are present.

It even knew when to let its palm bleed, when to break its weapon, and when to take away the old man's last possession.

All emotional moments fell precisely at their predetermined locations.

But as the researchers read through the papers one by one, no one was ever truly retained.

Those pains were like a precisely programmed sequence.

You can see every step, but you can't understand why someone continues to walk on.

The chief architect sat in the analytics room all night.

As dawn broke, he shut down the still-running model, removed the neural access device, and left only two sentences.

"It can calculate how much strength the old man has left, how long he can hold on, and how much force his arm will bear when he swings the rudder next time."

"But it couldn't figure out why, even knowing that the fish was already beyond saving, it would still smash it again."

This statement was quickly leaked on StarNet.

The entire West Coast cultural scene was subsequently engulfed in an even larger debate.

Some believe that "The Old Man and the Sea" simply struck a chord with the public at the right time.

Some insist that Yu Huashi merely used an ancient writing style to achieve an accidental victory against modern communication mechanisms.