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

On the maglev train in the Xiacheng District.

The carriage was packed with low-income laborers who had just finished their night shifts.

The air was filled with the smells of engine oil, sweat, and cheap synthetic tobacco.

The vast majority of people were leaning back in their seats with their eyes closed.

A faint, eerie blue light flickered beneath their eyelids—a sign that they were connected to inexpensive retina displays.

A young man in a tattered jacket leaned against the car door, and on the retinal projection, the text of "Heavy Armored Warlord," ranked eighth on the bestseller list, scrolled rapidly upwards.

"Skip the environmental descriptions and pre-battle dialogues, and jump straight into the mech battle."

The young man's lips moved slightly, issuing a voice command.

The system instantly filtered out the 30,000 words of build-up and jumped directly to the climax.

Two minutes later, the latest 120 chapters of the serialization were all completed.

There are currently no new chapters for "Heavy Armor Warlord". Pay 20 Star Coins to send a request to the main engine to unlock the remaining 20,000 words of climax analysis ahead of time.

The young man glanced at the account balance on his wrist device.

20 Star Coins.

That's exactly the price of a strawberry-flavored nutrition bar.

If he passes by, he'll have to go to the ration station to collect free ash-based synthetic starch for dinner tonight, and eating too much of that stuff will make him nauseous.

He swallowed hard, hesitated for a few seconds, but ultimately couldn't resist the thrill of mechs battling each other, and ran his thumb across his wrist.

[Payment successful, generating subsequent storyline...]

The young man let out a sigh of relief, closed his eyes again, and immersed himself in the explosions and carnage created by the code.

The carriage was quiet, with only the low-frequency vibrations of the train moving.

Looking down the long aisle, rows of tired faces, swaying with the train carriages, mostly shimmered with the same faint blue light.

Some people unconsciously smiled, while others muttered a curse under their breath because the plot suddenly stopped, before resignedly opening their account balance.

……

Zhongcheng District, Xingyao Media's IP incubation meeting room.

On the holographic projection screen hung the book that ranked fourth on the Spark Cup bestseller list: "The Black Rose in the Ashes".

Word count: 200,000.

Several IP product managers in suits sat at the long conference table.

Several cups of steaming hot synthetic green tea were on the table.

"The character parameters of the second male lead need to be slightly adjusted."

The project manager flipped through the electronic reports in his hand, his tone as if he were discussing a part on an assembly line:

"The merchandise development department just reported that pre-sales of the virtual companion skin for the 'obsessive' male protagonist have dropped by three percentage points recently. Audiences are starting to get tired of it."

He circled a line on the report with a red pen and looked at the operator opposite him.

"Reduce the weight of 'controlling desire' in the underlying keywords for the second male lead by 15%, and add some labels for 'battle damage' and 'vulnerability'."

The operator adjusted his glasses and tapped his fingers on the keyboard:

"Understood. I'm already patching up the personality in the emotional model. For the next chapter's outline, I'll have the AI ​​expand the description of him being hit by high-frequency rays while covering the female lead's retreat, showing his battle damage and coughing up blood, to around three thousand words?"

"Can."

The supervisor nodded:

"After the draft is completed, send it directly to the art department and have them generate concept art of the second male lead's battle damage according to the latest chapter description. We'll package it together with the novel's serialization and release it tomorrow morning."

In the meeting room, no one cared about the book's literary merit; they only cared about the angle from which the second male lead was injured, and whether it would sell tens of thousands more sets of virtual skins.

……

An underground machine room located at the border of the Xiacheng District and the Zhongcheng District.

A gaunt man wearing thick-rimmed black glasses was staring at a matrix workbench in front of him, which consisted of six screens.

The main screen displays the real-time rankings of the Spark Cup.

Third place: "SSS-level Plunder: I devoured the entire network's computing power".

Word count: 220,000.

Unlike other miners who rack their brains to come up with plots, the skinny man's work interface had no document editor, only a huge web crawler program and densely packed keyword weight sliders.

"Currently, the top three most searched terms on the Weiguang platform are: 'Mechanical Mutation' with the largest increase, 'Corps Collapse' with the second largest increase, and 'Underground Boxing' with the third largest increase."

The man, with an unlit synthetic cigarette between his teeth, rapidly dragged the mouse to maximize the generation weight of these three keywords.

"Activate the 'stitching' algorithm."

He gave voice commands into the microphone and skillfully operated the backend.

"Scrape the most-viewed fight scenes from the top 50 trending works. Extract their action vocabulary and rhythm framework."

The man stared at the rapidly spinning stream of code on the screen:

"Incorporate these three trending search terms into the new chapter. The male protagonist goes to fight in underground boxing matches, and his opponent is a mutated chaebol henchman."

"There's no need to consider the logical coherence with the preceding text."

The man spat out the cigarette butt and pressed the execute button: "Just make sure there's a high concentration of dopamine stimulation every 500 words."

On the secondary screen, segments of text, entirely spliced ​​and stitched together by algorithms, with logical gaps but an absurdly fast pace, began to be generated continuously and automatically uploaded to the update interface of the Weiguang platform.

……

In the central district, there is an underground office area in a commercial office building.

Dozens of architects sat in front of their computers, empty coffee cups and menthol nasal inhalers scattered on their workstations.

The left screen displays the parameter panel and prompt input box, while on the right screen, the large model is scrolling down at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye, showing newly generated chapters.

Old Zhao, the manager of the studio, slowly walked to the workstation of the third group, holding an electronic report.

"The Spark Cup has only been running for three days, and the follow-up rate curve has already started to flatten out."

Old Zhao pulled over an empty chair, sat down, and pointed to the data on the architect's screen:

"The 11th-ranked 'Abyss Walker' has a slightly higher traffic. Our readers are getting a little tired of our standard mecha battle template."

The architect stopped clicking the mouse, picked up his cup, and took a sip of water.

"So what should we do in the next volume? Increase the villain's fighting power, or speed up the leveling-up pace?"

"Let's get the mood right, all this fighting and killing is no fun."

Old Zhao looked at the screen: "Bring up the side story of the protagonist's 'ex-wife' from the early stages. In the next chapter, have her die at the hands of the villain, using that as an anchor point for the emotional outburst."

The script proofreader next to me slid his chair closer:

"Brother Zhao, according to the outline, this character was intended to be saved for the mid-to-late game to create a faction reversal. If we bring him out to sacrifice him now, the tragic twist calculated by the AI ​​might feel a bit forced."

"So don't let AI predict death scenarios on its own."

Old Zhao tapped his pen on the table twice:

"AI doesn't feel pain; it only uses empty words like 'heart-wrenching' and 'rivers of blood,' its approach is too outdated. You need to manually switch in and write a 50-word core contextual anchor for it."

The architect skillfully cleared the original environment build commands:

"What specific details should be included?"

"Write about some human reactions that defy common sense."

Old Zhao thought for a moment, then calmly said:

"For example, when her chest is pierced, she shouldn't cry out in pain; instead, she should instinctively reach out to cover the protagonist's eyes, not wanting him to see it. Or, before she dies, she should keep apologizing, saying that she has dirtied the cheap prosthetic body that the protagonist just saved up to buy."

"Use this illogical 'minor pain point' as a base to lock down the generation framework. Let the large model revolve around this detail and expand it into a 20,000-word climax."

The architect nodded without saying anything unnecessary.

He pondered for a few seconds, then typed out precise restriction words on the keyboard.

"It's set. With detailed anchor points as the core, the emotional tone is locked in as 'suppression followed by an explosion'."

The architect pressed Enter: "Start building."

There was a momentary pause on the right side of the screen, followed by a torrent of polished and expanded text that cascaded down like a waterfall.

"Once generated, it will be sent directly to the main console. I will proofread it once and then send it out."

Old Zhao stood up, took the report, and strolled towards the next workstation.

……

Microlight Literature Headquarters, Data Center Monitoring Room.

On the huge circular screen, the data cables of tens of millions of entries were intertwined, like a rolling sea of ​​red blood.

First place: The ultimate dopamine rush generated by the Pangu Engine.

Second place: a tear collector used by financial tycoons to test the psychological defenses of the lower classes.

The third place goes to a pure Frankenstein's monster that completely abandons logic and only chases trending search terms.

Fourth place goes to GG, whose derivative products were meticulously planned and executed by a group of product managers.

Fifth place: Absurd gibberish that tests the human threshold for laughter.

……

Eleventh place: the studio's assembly-line productions.

In this absolute dominance zone woven from algorithms, computing power, capital, and traffic, each of the top ten positions represents the ultimate form of industrialized harvesting.

"72 hours into the Spark Cup competition."

The on-duty AI emitted a synthesized voice devoid of any emotion.

"Current number of surviving works: 14,285."

"In the past hour, due to a sharp drop in data triggering the elimination mechanism, 3,412 works have been eliminated."

"Total number of words generated across all platforms in one hour: 42 billion words."

The rankings refreshed, and the numbers fell like streaks of light.

At the very bottom of this sea of ​​blood, filled with billions of words and the power of capital, at position 14285, hangs a book called "Living," with a total word count of a mere 24,000.