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

Chen Jianjia sat at her desk with the synthetic sandwich in front of her that she hadn't been able to finish eating.

She activated the retinal projection and typed the two words Yu Yin had told her into the search box: "Live."

The page that popped up was so rudimentary that it made her frown slightly.

In an era where even pop-up ads are pursuing 3D holographic modeling, the cover of this novel looks like an old newspaper that hasn't been washed properly.

She rarely reads online novels.

She has received a good higher education, and her occasional leisure time consists of watching beautifully packaged short films and television dramas.

In her mind, online novels and those short dramas are pretty much the same. They are nothing more than a down-on-his-luck young master suddenly inheriting the family fortune, or a bullied lower class person gaining superpowers and trampling those who look down on him underfoot.

She clicked on the first chapter.

The first two words that catch the eye are: [Preface].

Chen Jianjia paused for a moment while drinking water.

"A true writer only ever writes from the heart..."

She raised an eyebrow slightly as she read the sentence.

A paralyzed young man living in a moldy basement and having to scrape together money to pay for his sister's tuition by scavenging garbage, calls himself a "real writer" right from the start?

That's a bit of self-praise.

With a slightly scrutinizing attitude, she skipped the preface and scrolled down.

The story begins in the first person, with a folk song collector encountering an old man named Fugui.

Then, the perspective smoothly shifts to the old man's memories of his youth.

Fu Gui was a wealthy young master who wore a silk robe and rode on the back of a fat prostitute, swaggering through the city. In the end, he was tricked in a casino and lost more than 100 acres of his ancestral property in one night.

Chen Jianjia shook her head slightly as she watched this scene.

According to the typical plot of the short dramas she had watched, the male lead should suddenly realize his mistake, use hidden means to defeat his enemy named Long Er, and reclaim his ancestral property.

But as she continued scrolling down, the anticipated "counterattack" did not occur.

The father-in-law took Jia Zhen away with great fanfare, banging gongs and drums.

Fu Gui's father breathed his last on the latrine.

Fu Gui took off his long gown, put on coarse cloth clothes, and humbly rented land from Long Er, learning to toil like an ox in the mud.

There were no miracles, no cheat codes.

Fugui crashed solidly into the mud.

Chen Jianjia unconsciously lowered her hand from the water glass.

"Ring ring—"

The bell rang for the first class of the afternoon.

Chen Jianjia took a deep breath, forcibly turned off the retinal projection, picked up her lesson plan, and walked towards the classroom.

But for the entire afternoon, the words, carrying the earthy smell of soil, seemed to have taken root and lingered in her mind.

At five o'clock in the afternoon, the school bell rang.

The children poured out of the school gate in a swarm, and the other teachers also packed up and left one after another.

"Teacher Chen, aren't we leaving yet?"

The teacher at the next table greeted me as she passed by.

"I still have some lesson plans to finish, you can go back now."

Chen Jianjia smiled and nodded.

Once the office was empty, she immediately reactivated the projector and opened the book.

She originally only wanted to take a quick look at what Yu Yin had written to get a general idea of ​​the situation.

But now, she finds herself unable to stop.

Jiazhen returned wearing a light red cheongsam, carrying her newborn son on her back.

Fu Gui went to the city to ask for a doctor, but was conscripted and spent two years rolling in piles of dead bodies.

Fengxia developed a high fever and became deaf and mute.

The sky outside gradually darkened, and the smog in the lower city area shrouded the windows.

The office lights were off, with only the faint blue light from the retinal projection reflecting on Chen Jianjia's cold face.

Just as she finished reading the previous chapters and was about to exit the interface, a row of dense update notifications suddenly popped up in the upper right corner.

[The novel "To Live" has been updated. This update contains 50000 words.]

Chen Jianjia was stunned.

50,000 words?

She swiped the virtual cursor and clicked directly into it.

The serialization mechanism of Weiguang Literature has forcibly cut this masterpiece into pieces.

Previously, readers could only read four thousand words a day, and their emotions were interrupted just as they were being stirred up.

At this moment, Chen Jianjia unexpectedly became the first reader on the entire internet to directly experience 50,000 words of emotional outpouring without any external comments or spoilers.

Yu Wen typed those 50,000 words in the basement, his heart breaking with grief.

Chen Jianjia was reading so hard in her empty office that she felt almost suffocated.

The plot then moves to the point of Yuqing's death.

That thirteen-year-old boy wore out the soles of his shoes trying to donate blood for the county magistrate's woman.

Upon arriving at the hospital, the doctor, disregarding the life or death of a child, drained Youqing's blood completely in order to save that important figure.

[Youqing's lips were turning blue, but he still asked, "Did you get it?"]

The doctor said, "Drawing your blood is to save lives, why don't you draw more?"

Chen Jianjia's breathing became rapid.

She watched Youqing die in his hospital bed and watched Fugui bury his son under the tree at the entrance of the village.

She thought of the children in her class.

Tie Tou got into a fight over a meat-flavored packaging bag, and Yu Yin wouldn't even take a free cookie in order to save a few dollars to buy medicine for her brother.

If Keigo were alive in this cyber age, he would probably be sitting in the front row, raising his hand to grab a cookie.

The people and miners are drained of their blood and sweat in exchange for the neon lights of the upper city.

In the story, Youqing was drained of blood just to save the woman of a powerful figure.

Decades later, the logic of cannibalism remains so familiar.

Chen Jianjia clenched her fists.

She continued reading.

Fengxia got married, but her good days didn't last long. She died in childbirth at the same hospital where she gave birth to Kugen.

Jia Zhen contracted osteomalacia and lay in bed, exhausting her last bit of strength. Amid the grief of losing her son and daughter in succession, she quietly died in that dilapidated thatched hut.

There were no desperate cries, no lengthy embellishments.

The author's tone is as cold as ice, calmly recording the departure of one person after another.

Jia Zhen died a good death, peacefully and cleanly.

Chen Jianjia stopped sliding.

It was late at night, and the occasional metallic footsteps of patrol dogs could be heard outside the school.

She raised her hand and took off the frameless glasses from the bridge of her nose.

A warm drop of liquid slid down her cheek and landed on the cold desk.

She didn't wipe it.

This well-off, highly educated female teacher, who always maintained a strict and composed demeanor in front of her students, was now lying on her unlit desk, covering her face with her hands, her shoulders trembling uncontrollably.

She finally understood that the young man who wrote at the beginning, "A true writer only writes for his heart," was not boasting.

The clichéd plots in online novels that prioritize pure enjoyment seem so superficial and laughable in the face of this simple and unadorned book.

In this wasteland world filled with synthetic nutrient solutions and mechanical prosthetics, in that basement reeking of engine oil and mold, he used his bare hands to slowly break down and chew up humanity's deepest suffering, then presented it to her.

Chen Jianjia slowly raised her head, wiped away the tears on her face with the back of her hand, and put her frameless glasses back on.

The faint light from the retinal projection remained on, and the last line of text floated quietly in mid-air.

She didn't close the page.

A strange sense of unease spread from the bottom of my heart, like a waterlogged sponge, heavy and pressing on my chest, making it hard to breathe.

This feeling is not simply sadness, but a sense of emptiness and stagnation that arises after extreme suffering has stripped away the surface of reality.

The downtown area outside the window was completely shrouded in cold darkness, with only the searchlights from the distant junkyard occasionally sweeping across the gray sky.

Chen Jianjia leaned back in her office chair, sitting quietly in the unlit office, without moving for a long time.

Yu Wen.

The scene of the home visit a few days ago became clear again in her mind.

The cramped, damp basement, the pungent smell of engine oil, and the wheelchair covered in rust.

The young man in the wheelchair was thin and had no feeling in his legs.

But even in such a terrible environment, his back was straight, and when he spoke to her, his eyes were clear, and his tone lacked the fawning or hostility often seen in people from the lower rungs of the city; instead, it was calm and composed.

She originally thought that he was just a brother who was putting on a show of respect in front of his sister.

But now, after reading these 50,000 words, Chen Jianjia realized that she could no longer see through that person.

The author of "To Live" should not be a paralyzed young man in his twenties.

The book's profound descriptions of the land, the details of old-fashioned casinos and conscription, and the numbness and resilience of swallowing hardship...

How could one write these things without decades of life experience and without truly working in the field?

The history of the cyber era has long been lost. The people in the lower city are only concerned with whether they can get synthetic starch. Where can they find these old stories from the pre-civilization era?

What she found even more incredible was Yu Wen's narrative style.

For a person who is paralyzed in both legs, his life itself is a huge tragedy.

How can such a person maintain such a cold-blooded calmness in his writing when facing the heavy pressure of fate?

He didn't vent his anger in the book, nor did he denounce the injustice of the world. He was like a detached bystander, coldly watching Fugui's family head towards destruction.

What exactly did he experience, and what kind of world is in his mind?

Chen Jianjia stood up, tidied up the lesson plans on the table, and threw the unfinished synthetic sandwich into the trash can.

She turned off the retinal projector, picked up her coat, and headed towards the office door.

Walking down the empty school corridor, my high-heeled ankle boots echoed monotonously on the ground.

Chen Jianjia glanced at the direction of the Seventh Slum through the glass of the corridor.

More than the book serialized in Weiguang Literature, she was now curious about the author who sat in a moldy basement and couldn't even stand up.