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

At 1:40 a.m., at the entrance of the headquarters of Weiguang Literature.

Liu Feng took off his work badge hanging around his neck, stuffed it into the worn-out old cloth bag, and let out a long breath.

I worked overtime for quite a while tonight.

He looked up at the ceiling, where several highly realistic virtual stars were scattered across the pale blue dome.

In a few hours, those stars will slowly disappear and be replaced by an equally realistic "sunrise".

Liu Feng had been watching this show for five years and was already numb to it.

His residence is two maglev stops away from the headquarters of Weiguang Literature.

It's past this time; the last train has already left, so I'll have to take a night-shift low-altitude commuter train instead.

Liu Feng walked along the auxiliary road under the office building toward the commuter station, subconsciously taking out his wrist terminal from his pocket and putting on the lightweight retinal extension patch.

The retinal projection unfolds automatically.

A notification that had been pushed to him a few hours earlier and that he had set to "special attention" sat quietly in the corner of the screen:

[The novel "Living" has been updated. Current total word count: 30000 words. This update contains 6000 words.]

Liu Feng paused for a moment.

He worked as a moderator for five years, and his watchlist only contained one book—the one he personally unblocked: "To Live".

He recalled that the book was stuck at 24,000 words just two days ago because the system's "anti-depression mechanism" only allowed 4,000 words to be released each day.

He opened the lock himself by manually intervening.

The author has now released six thousand words in one go.

Liu Feng clicked on the link as he walked.

The latest chapter of "To Live" unfolds on the retinal projection.

The newly updated 6,000 words: Fugui's mother fell ill, so Fugui went to the city to ask for a doctor. However, he was knocked unconscious by the butt of a rifle by a group of soldiers on the street and was forcibly assigned to an artillery company and taken to the front line as a conscript.

This part of the story was written quickly and ruthlessly.

There are none of the "awakening," "comeback," or "last-ditch counterattack" that you'd expect in an AI wish-fulfillment novel.

There was only one unfortunate man who was swept away by the tide of the times, without even having a chance to say goodbye.

Liu Feng read as he walked.

After reading the last paragraph, he stopped on the sidewalk by the roadside.

The commuter cabin station was just fifty meters ahead; he could see the blue lights on the platform, but he didn't move.

As if possessed, he scrolled back to the very beginning of the book.

Those two words still hang there quietly.

【preface】

Liu Feng stared at the two words, lost in thought once again.

He worked as a reviewer at Weiguang Literature for almost five years.

In five years, he handled at least hundreds of thousands of novels.

Without exception, the first chapter of every single one of these hundreds of thousands of books is titled "Chapter 1: Annulment of the Engagement," "Chapter 1: Awakening," "Chapter 1: The System Arrives," or "Chapter 1: I Am Invincible"...

They're all using the same formulas that are considered bestsellers, and they all rely on the three-second rule of dopamine.

Even the platinum "large model tamers" hired by Cloud Atlas Literature for tens of millions of star coins never had a single second of "preliminary work" in the opening sequences they generated using the Pangu Engine.

The AI ​​mastermind will automatically determine that any text that does not contain the keywords "slap in the face," "show off," or "awakening" in the first chapter is low-quality code.

"preface……"

Liu Feng whispered the two words.

He recalled the old professor with retro glasses who had once written this word in the corner of the blackboard during his elective literature course at the university.

It was springtime in the year 2069, and he was still a boy who harbored a sliver of fantasy about words.

The old professor said at the time, "A long, long time ago, after human writers finished writing a book, they would habitually write a paragraph before the main text, explaining why they wrote the book. This paragraph is called a 'preface'."

At that time, a student in the class raised his hand and asked, "Teacher, why don't they just send out a holographic interview? Why do they have to write a separate text?"

The old professor remained silent for a long time, then smiled and said, "Because they feel that interviews are performances for others, while the 'preface' is something they say to themselves."

Liu Feng still remembers that lesson today.

He later failed to get into the School of Literature and was assigned to Weiguang Literature as a reviewer.

Later, his daily work consisted of filtering dozens or even hundreds of novels produced by AI at ten times the speed, and sending those that were non-compliant, too depressing, or too unconventional to the recycle bin with a single click.

Liu Feng stared at the two words on the screen, and as if possessed, he opened the contact list on the internal communicator.

Scroll down, scroll down, until I find a name I haven't contacted in a long time—

Shen Yanqiu, Visiting Professor at Weiming Academy

This was his mentor at the university.

The year we graduated, the old professor left his personal contact information with every student in the class, saying:

"If you ever see anything online that doesn't seem to be written by AI, remember to let me know."

five years.

Liu Feng had never used this method of communication. Because in the past five years, he really, really hadn't seen it.

He hesitated for a few seconds, then typed a line:

"Teacher Shen, sorry to bother you at this hour. It's nothing urgent. I came across a novel I was reviewing today called 'Living.' It's quite strange that the author actually wrote a 'Preface' before the main text. Do people still do this these days? Liu Feng."

send.

He didn't expect an immediate reply.

At this hour, the old professor should have been asleep long ago.

Liu Feng turned off the terminal, got up to pack his things, and prepared to catch the last maglev train.

……

Weiming Academy Faculty Apartment, Block B, No. 17.

Shen Yanqiu is 62 years old this year.

Logically speaking, at his age, he should be living a comfortable retirement in a resort area in the upper district.

But he didn't go.

He didn't like that kind of life.

A person who doesn't "wait" isn't truly alive.

He still lives in this old faculty apartment and teaches an elective course on "Pre-civilization Stylistics" to a few graduate students in the Department of Narrative Languages ​​once a week.

Recently, only three students have enrolled in this course.

At 2:20 a.m., Shen Yanqiu was sitting in his study, staring blankly at a thick paper notebook.

He has suffered from insomnia for decades.

It's not a physical problem, it's that my mind can't calm down.

Throughout his life, he studied things that no longer existed: rhetorical structures, syntactic rhythms, and narrative rhymes from pre-civilization eras.

The deeper he researched, the more isolated he became.

Throughout the entire Federation, there are no more than twenty people who can understand what he is saying.

This included his junior fellow student, Su Huaijin.

The desktop terminal suddenly lit up.

A new message came from a name that hadn't been seen in a long time.

Liu Feng

Shen Yanqiu pushed up his glasses and opened the message.

He read it once.

Then I read it again.

The old man tapped his fingers lightly on the table for a long time.

"preface……"

He murmured the two words softly, as if afraid of disturbing something.

He remembered.

He used this word in class.

Shen Yanqiu stood up and pulled open a dusty wooden drawer from the innermost part of the study.

Inside were several paper research manuscripts that he had printed and bound himself.

The top book has five words handwritten on its cover:

A Study on the Lost Preface

This is a booklet he wrote twenty years ago, which has never been published and no one has read it.

He turned to the first page, where his own handwriting, penned years ago, was still clearly visible:

"A preface is a literary form in which the author explains himself. It does not point to the reader, the market, or profits. It points to the author himself, to his motivation for writing, and to the unwitting dialogue between him and his work."

"When writers of an era stop writing 'prefaces,' it means that writing in that era is no longer for themselves."

Shen Yanqiu closed the booklet.

He stood in the study for a long time, then walked to the terminal and sat down again.

He opened the visitor portal for Weiguang Literature.

Professors at Weiming Academy can anonymously access any commercial literary platform, a privilege granted to them by the federal Cultural Heritage Research Act.

Although he hadn't used this privilege in twenty years, because there was no need to.

What are some worthwhile reads in commercial online novels?

He slowly typed two words into the search box:

Alive.