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

Chapter 46 Damn it

At 9:20, the comment section for "To Live" was already bustling with activity.

【ID: Rampage Mechanical Arm】: Wait a minute, why isn't Fengxia talking? Author, come out here for a second.

【ID Pure Love God of War】: I could tolerate my mother dying, after all, she was old. But Fengxia's actions are really going too far. She's only a few years old.

[ID Electronic Keyboardist]: It took me two readings to realize that Fengxia really is mute. The author is truly ruthless.

【ID Cyber Cultivator】: Killing off the father wasn't enough, killing off the mother wasn't enough, now they've made the daughter mute. Are they going to kill off Jia Zhen in the next chapter too? Reported!

【ID落霞与孤鹜】: I thought it was because I was slow to recognize people, and it took me two seconds to realize it. Then I went to look up the part where Fengxia was singing earlier.

[The Night Watchman of ID Old Bookstore]: The author's tone in writing this passage is particularly light. He doesn't say that Fengxia is pitiful. He writes that Fengxia is smiling, and then writes "her front teeth have all fallen out." It's just a light sentence.

【ID Cloud Above the Wind】: Why are those people who kept saying "The God of War has returned" now silent?

Zhou Mingxuan saw this and moved.

He knows who was tagged in this post.

He opened his own posting box.

I typed a line of text.

Deleted.

Another line was typed.

It was deleted again.

When he typed it for the fourth time, he stopped and cleared all the content he had typed.

In the end, he only sent one sentence.

【明明如月】：Brothers, please delete my previous prediction about the "return of the God of War".

Twenty seconds later, he added another message.

[明明如月]: I misjudged him.

Someone immediately tagged him in the comments.

【ID Rampage Mechanical Arm】: Boss, don't go! Analyze it again. Long Er hasn't been dealt with yet, and I haven't gotten my revenge. Feng Xia has a high fever and can't afford a doctor. Logically speaking, there should be a villain that can be created, right?

Zhou Mingxuan looked at the @ tag and thought for a while.

[Mingmingruyue]: No, that kind of plot won't be in this book.

After sending this message, Zhou Mingxuan turned off the retinal projection.

The synthetic steak on the heating plate is already heated up.

He didn't go to get it.

He leaned back on the sofa, his head tilted back.

The holographic star on the ceiling slowly rotated.

That was the "Starry Sky Mode" that the upper-class residents loved most, the same one as in the Garden of Eden. He remembered that when he first moved into this apartment, it cost him two months' salary to activate this feature.

……

Study room on the third floor of the School of Narrative Languages at Weiming Academy.

9:20 PM.

[The novel "To Live" has been updated with 6000 words.]

After the four people finished reading, no one spoke for a long time.

Lin Wanxian said, "Fugui has really not improved at all."

"You just realized that?"

Lu Zhao flipped the page back to the section where Fugui knelt before the regimental commander.

"After fighting for two years, crawling out of piles of corpses, I met a man in charge, grabbed his leg and called him 'Company Commander.' Not only did I call him the wrong name, but I kept repeating the same thing over and over again: 'I want to go home.'"

"What else could he be thinking about if he doesn't want to go home?"

"We should think of something else."

"for example?"

Lu Zhao couldn't answer.

Revenge seems too fake, and achieving merit doesn't seem like Fugui's style.

He vowed never to be manipulated again, making him seem more like a character from another book.

But Lu Zhao still felt unwilling.

A person who has endured so much hardship should leave something behind.

Even if they don't become smarter, they should at least become more ruthless and tougher, so that they won't still be someone who can be bullied by everyone and only knows how to beg for help when something happens.

"So what you hate isn't that he wants to go home," Jiang Ci said. "What you hate is that after all he's been through, he's still the same."

"right."

Lu Zhao finally found the source of his discomfort.

"Before he lost all his family fortune, he was muddle-headed. After he lost all his family fortune, he was still muddle-headed. Before he was conscripted into the army, he was incompetent; after returning from the battlefield, he didn't seem to have gained any more ability."

"Others, after suffering a loss once, at least know to avoid it next time; he, however, suffers this time and waits to suffer the next time."

Lin Wan felt that the truly unpleasant thing about Fugui was precisely this.

Why do people always change after experiencing hardship?

"Isn't that how it's always written in stories?"

"A great calamity can awaken one to the truth. A humiliation can teach one to endure and bear the burden. When the time is right, one can take back everything lost," Lin Wan said. "But most people are not like that."

"What about most people?"

"Cry when it hurts, and go on with life after it's over. You'll still make the same mistakes and still be afraid of the same things."

Fugui is not forgetful, nor is he unaware of pain.

He simply lacked the ability to transform that pain into something else.

It won't turn into ambition, wisdom, or the ability to turn his life around. When hardship befalls him, it's just hardship; it doesn't teach him anything.

Lu Zhao read the sentence "I want to go home" again.

At first, I just felt humiliated, but now, looking at it again, I suddenly realize that these words could only have come from Fugui's mouth.

If it were someone else, they would be thinking about making a name for themselves, seeking revenge, or how to protect themselves in chaotic times.

Fu Gui didn't have such far-reaching thoughts.

All he could think about was whether his mother was still alive, whether Jia Zhen was waiting for him, and whether his two children still recognized him.

"So it's not that he hasn't changed," Lu Zhao said, "it's that he can't change at all."

Jiang Ci corrected him: "It's not that it can't be changed, it's that the author doesn't allow him to use change to escape."

"What do you mean?"

"If Fugui becomes smarter and stronger after suffering, and can avoid every disaster in advance, then the suffering he endured will become his tuition fee."

"But the suffering in this book is not tuition."

"What's done is done. There's no reward, and it may not even be meaningful."

The study room fell silent again.

The book title is still displayed at the top of the page.

"To Live"

Lu Zhao had always felt that there was nothing to explain about these two words.

To be alive is to not be dead. Fugui survived disasters time and time again, so he is said to be alive.

Jiang Ci, however, did not see it that way.

"If it's just that he didn't die, the title is too simplistic."

"So what do you think it is?"

"A person can only live as himself."

Fugui will not become a self-controlled person just because he lost his family fortune;

Just because her father died doesn't make her a person capable of taking on family responsibilities;

They won't suddenly understand fate and the times just because they've returned from the battlefield.

He survived, but the suffering did not reshape him into another person.

"Many stories tell of how a person becomes a better person after experiencing something."

"Fugui doesn't have it."

"He's still weak, still confused, still useless. But he can only carry these things with him as he goes on."

Lu Zhao found it irritating.

"So, according to you, living means you can never change?"

"It's not that it can't be changed."

"No one needs to become a better person before they are qualified to live."

After saying this, Lu Zhao did not refute it further.

Lin Wan had already flipped back to the previous chapters.

When Fengxia first appeared, she would sing behind Jia Zhen.

She didn't have many scenes at that time; she was just a little girl on the edge of a field, barefoot, with bright eyes, and always on the move.

That passage was so ordinary that no one would bother to remember it on their first reading.

It wasn't until this hour that she ran out of the house to greet Fugui.

Fugui waited for her to call him "Dad".

The readers are waiting too.

But she just smiled with her mouth open.

When Lin Wan first read that passage, she didn't even immediately understand what had happened.

She thought Fengxia hadn't seen her father in so long that she didn't dare to recognize him for a moment.

After Fugui entered the house, Jiazhen told her about the illness, and she suddenly remembered...

Fengxia used to be able to sing.

"I just went back and looked for that section," Lin Wan said.

"I looked for it too," Lu Zhao replied quickly. "I remember writing about her eyes."

"Sparkling."

"right."

Neither of them said anything more.

Jiang Ci understood why they had to go back to look for them.

In the part where Fengxia becomes mute, the author barely mentions how pitiful she is.

There was no scene where Fugui held her and wept bitterly, nor was there a repeated explanation of what it meant for a child to lose their voice.

He only let Fengxia laugh.

She smiled just like she used to.

The only difference is that laughter used to be audible, but not now.

"The cruelest part isn't that she became mute," Jiang Ci said, "but that she was still as happy as before."

Lu Zhao shook his head: "How could she be the same?"

That's why I feel so bad.

Fengxia did not know how to grieve for her fate.

When she saw her father, she was still happy, she still ran out, and she still wanted to call out to him.

She didn't realize that the unspoken name would make others feel even more upset than she did.

"The author didn't even give her a chance to cry," Lin Wan said.

"It's not that they didn't give it to me."

Cheng Shuqiao had not participated in their debate about Fugui until this point, when he finally spoke up.

"She doesn't yet know she should cry."

This is more serious than crying.

A child lost his voice but didn't understand what it meant.

Only the readers remember that she once sang, that she could call him "Dad," and that every time she opened her mouth afterward, there would be no sound.

Lu Zhao said, "Some books are so tragic that you wish you could call everyone over and make them cry."

Parents cried, relatives cried, neighbors cried. The sky darkened, and the rain began to fall; the author seemed afraid the reader wouldn't understand the sorrow this scene conveyed.

"The more he wrote, the more I knew he was forcing me to cry."

"This book says nothing."

"It made Fengxia stand there and smile."

The real sadness isn't on that page.

It was after reading the past that I suddenly remembered how she used to sing.

Lin Wan didn't want to read any more of the content.

"This author will not let her off the hook in the future."

"He hasn't let it go yet," Lu Zhao said.

"What I mean is, not just Fengxia."

This sentence made several people think of Jia Zhen at the same time.

She married into the Xu family at its most glorious time, accompanied Fugui from being a young master to a tenant farmer, and then raised the child alone while waiting for him to return from the battlefield.

By now, she has suffered enough.

But in this book, no amount of suffering can ever guarantee future peace.

Lu Zhao asked, "Will Jia Zhen also encounter trouble later?"

"..."

"Stop talking..."

"I was just asking."

"Don't ask anymore."

"I'm starting to not want to read any further."

Cheng Shuqiao suddenly said:

"There are two more children."

Lu Zhao turned to look at him.

"What?"