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

When Yu Wen returned to the basement, he was sitting in front of the computer, looking up StarNet data.

"Brother, I'm back!"

Yu Yin placed the blanket on the dilapidated iron-framed bed, and like a treasure, took out the items from her pockets one by one and placed them on the table:

"I bought the medicine, and some meat-flavored egg white liquid! Oh, and bro, Uncle Scar also gave me half a pancake!"

Yu Wen looked at his younger sister's face, which was red from the cold, reached out and took a vial of egg white liquid, unscrewed the cap, and held it to her lips:

"Take a sip first and see if it tastes like meat. You can keep the bread for tomorrow morning."

Yu Yin swallowed hard and carefully took a small sip.

That long-lost, rich, fatty aroma melted in her mouth, and the little girl's previously dull eyes instantly brightened, but then her eyes reddened slightly.

"It really does! It tastes like... synthetic beef!"

She licked her lips, somewhat dazed, and said:

"Brother, the last time I tasted this flavor... I think it was when I turned seven. I've almost forgotten what meat tastes like..."

Yu Wen looked at her without saying a word.

With a three million yuan penalty for breach of contract looming over him, he knew he had no right to promise a better future.

He simply reached out and gently ruffled her somewhat dry, yellow hair, his tone calm:

"If it tastes good, drink it all."

Watching Yu Yin carefully sip the egg white liquid, Yu Wen withdrew his gaze and looked at the metal box on the table.

With these two legitimate intermediate-level nerve blockers, he could at least guarantee that he wouldn't be tormented by that agonizing backlash during his upcoming high-intensity writing sessions.

But this is not enough.

The three million debt is like a high-frequency particle knife hanging over the carotid artery.

To survive, the current daily organic traffic of 4,000 words and sporadic tips are barely enough.

Yu Wen opened the backend of Weiguang Literature.

The pale blue light from the screen illuminated Yu Wen's ashen face.

In the author backend of Weiguang Literature, a newly popped-up red system notification obscured his data panel.

[System notification: Your work "Living" has exceeded 20,000 words in effective updates, unlocking your eligibility to participate in the "Spark Cup" Newcomer Writing Contest.]

In fact, on the very first day after he transmigrated, Yu Wen saw the huge poster on the homepage that read "First prize: one million star coins plus an S-level recommendation spot".

But he couldn't click on it.

The underlying algorithm of the Weiguang platform is extremely ruthless and mercenary.

"Discarded drafts" that are less than 20,000 words or whose initial data does not meet the requirements are not even qualified to be used as cannon fodder.

The "Click to Register" button was always grayed out and unselectable for him.

Until now.

Yu Wen gripped the mouse and moved the cursor to the button that had finally lit up.

"Click".

[The novel "Living" has been successfully submitted to the "Spark Cup" essay contest. Current ranking: 14285.]

Yu Wen opened the real-time holographic leaderboard of the Spark Cup and scrolled the page directly to the top.

The first book on the list is titled "Cyber ​​Ascension: From Cybernetics Repairman to Mechanical God".

In just three days since the start of the competition, the word count has already reached a staggering 320,000 words.

The various reward and follow-up indexes drew a straight, glaring red line, leaving those below far behind.

Second place goes to "My Daily Life as a Tycoon in the Lower City," with 150,000 words. Although its update frequency is lower than the first place, the book's donation section is flooded with donations, and the comment section is receiving a large number of high-level, verified accounts every second, all of which have spent real money to generate buzz.

Third place: "SSS-Level Plunder: I Devoured the Entire Network's Computing Power," 210,000 words. This book exhibits extremely bizarre data fluctuations; every few seconds, likes and recommendation votes experience an abnormal surge of tens of thousands.

Yu Wen continued scrolling down.

"The Black Rose in the Ashes", "The Cyber ​​Cultivation of a Psychopath", "The Uncrowned King of the Downtown"...

The books in the top 50 of the bestseller list all have at least 100,000 words.

In this field where production capacity is frantically built up by AI big models, writing 30,000 words a day is just the most basic entry ticket.

Yu Wen glanced at the pitiful "24000 words" in the background of "Living" and the update status bar that was forcibly locked at "maximum 4000 words/day" by the platform's "anti-depression mechanism".

Throwing someone into this meat grinder that relies entirely on word count and data ranking is tantamount to fighting a fully armed mecha monster bare-handed.

Yu Wen took a deep breath of the slightly musty, cold air in the basement, closed the rankings, and put his hands back on the keyboard.

……

As an emerging platform, Weiguang Literature launched the "Spark Cup" and a million-yuan prize in order to break the monopoly of established giants such as "Yuntu" and "Xingyue", with the intention of frantically attracting fresh blood from the grassroots.

But in the year 2077, the generous rewards attracted far more than just clueless newcomers.

In this tightly controlled cyber network, everyone's retinal terminal is bound to their absolute real identity.

The platform's AI can instantly identify, with just a quick glance at the underlying code, whether the person behind the computer screen is a newly registered newbie or a platinum-level expert "disguised" from a rival company.

However, the operations department of Weiguang Literature adopted a tacit "blind spot policy" in this regard.

What they want is traffic, explosive data, and topics that can generate buzz on the platform.

As long as these established authors are willing to adopt the persona of "newcomers" to write books on the platform, the platform may even secretly give them preferential access to traffic.

At this moment, a carnival of capital, computing power, and humanity is quietly unfolding in every corner of this folded city.

……

In the central district, in a prime riverside apartment where land is extremely valuable.

On the huge holographic workbench, the real-time traffic data of "Cyber ​​Ascension," the first-place winner of the Spark Cup, flashed on the left, while hundreds of messy, original source documents floated densely on the right.

A man wearing a dark gray custom-made shirt stood in front of the stage, his brows slightly furrowed.

"Cyber ​​Ascension has now surpassed 300,000 words, raising readers' dopamine threshold and causing a slight decline in readership for the usual killing scenes."

The man picked up his black coffee, took a sip, and quickly swiped his finger across the discarded drafts section on the right.

These were all ideas submitted by the "inspiration miners" at the bottom, and he glanced at the vast majority of them and swiped them directly into the crushing station.

Suddenly, his finger stopped on an extremely rough document.

The man's gaze locked onto one line of text:

To get half a dose of anti-inflammatory medicine for his sister, he had his left hand chopped off at the root by a butcher in the back of the street and attached a rusty industrial chainsaw. The chainsaw had no nerve interface for anesthesia; every time it turned, his brain felt like it was being ground into a meat grinder, but he smiled and told his sister it was the latest model of robotic arm…

The man's eyes lit up instantly.

He cut out the text and threw it into the central control screen.

"Pangu Engine".

"exist."

A mechanical female voice sounded.

"Extract the emotional code of despair and pain from this discarded draft, use it as a new '0 to 1' starting point, and seamlessly integrate it into the plot of the eighth volume of Cyber ​​Ascension."

The man's slender fingers swiped through the air to create a complex parameter panel, and he quickly issued commands:

"Let's make this chainsaw-wielding character a low-level henchman the protagonist just recruited. The henchman's sister was kidnapped by a wealthy tycoon from the upper district, and the henchman was brutally murdered while trying to save her. When the protagonist arrives, all that's left at the scene is a blood-stained, rusty chainsaw."

"The core inspiration has been extracted. Please indicate the direction for the climax development."

"I'll use my personal vocabulary to package it. One chapter will be enough to build up the sense of oppression, and the next chapter will have the protagonist carrying this rusty chainsaw and smashing through the tycoon's building, pushing the thrill of killing and the emotion of revenge to the extreme."

"Plot tree derivation and vocabulary packaging are in progress... Draft generated."

A dense text of 20,000 words instantly appeared on the screen.

The man put down his coffee cup, his gaze sweeping across the rapidly scrolling text like an eagle's.

A few minutes later, he suddenly tapped his fingers on the table:

"Stop! In Volume 8, Chapter 7, the protagonist's reaction to seeing his underling's corpse is too stiff! It's a standard template of intense anger, lacking any sense of pain. Delete that section and replace it with a description of his physical reaction—drying and laughing maniacally. Also, the tycoon villain's pleading lines are too verbose; change them to him only uttering half a word before the protagonist slices off his vocal cords with that chainsaw!"

"Parameters have been corrected; partial reconstruction in progress..."

A few seconds later, the revised paragraph reappeared.

The man stared at it for a moment, then his brows relaxed in satisfaction.

"Keep pushing it down with this texture and rhythm."

He picked up his coffee again:

"Generate the next 50,000 words of the climax before midnight tonight. After formatting, send it to my review terminal. I'll personally proofread it twice and then release ten chapters to crush the competition. Those who want to compete for first place can give up tonight."