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

In the monitoring room, seven or eight reviewers, who usually prided themselves on being "invulnerable" and "heartless," turned their retinal projections onto the novel with a mix of nonchalance and pickiness.

During the first hour and a half, people in the monitoring room occasionally exchanged a few words.

"This Fugui is such a spendthrift."

"The old man's death was a bit abrupt; this author doesn't follow the usual formula."

An hour later.

The occasional conversations that used to echo in the monitoring room have quietly disappeared.

Quiet.

A heavy silence enveloped the office area, with only the background noise of the running servers and the occasional heavy breathing.

The teasing look on Xiao Chen's face had long since vanished without a trace.

He watched the scene where Youqing was having his blood drawn at the hospital, his mouth slightly agape, and the menthol stick he was holding somehow fell onto the table.

He just felt like there was a rough wad of cotton stuck in his throat, and it hurt to swallow.

He thought of his younger brother in the lower city, the little boy who always lied to him, saying he was "full" in order to save a drop of nutrient solution.

The senior reviewer sitting opposite Liu Feng, who had just mocked him, was now looking down and gritting his teeth.

When he turned to the passage about Fengxia dying from postpartum hemorrhage in her hospital bed, a muffled, sour sound came from his nose. He silently took off his glasses and vigorously wiped his reddened eyes with the back of his hand.

They review massive amounts of AI-generated online articles every day, witnessing countless magnificent deaths and epic sacrifices, but those are all illusions built from data, industrial products calculated to stimulate dopamine.

Now, what they see is blood on coarse linen clothes, mud under the fingernails of the poor, and Jia Zhen's silent despair as she lay prostrate before her son's grave for an entire afternoon.

There was no sentimentality, no roaring, only a silent acceptance of fate.

Ninety thousand words, short as a dagger, without any twists and turns, directly piercing their conscience as "human beings".

I don't know how much time passed.

"Smack."

Old Zhang, the top auditor sitting at the very back, gently closed the retinal projection.

This man in his forties, who was usually stern and rarely smiled, had an undisguised glint of tears in his eyes.

Unlike young people who lose control of their emotions, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and seemed to be calming the turbulent waves in his heart.

After a while, Lao Zhang opened his eyes, looked around at his colleagues who also had red eyes, and said in a deep but powerful voice:

"We sit here every day, reviewing millions or tens of millions of words of electronic garbage, looking at the pleasure and tears pieced together by algorithms. Over time, we even forget what real literature and real books should look like."

He pointed to the tan-colored cover on the screen, his tone revealing a long-lost sense of awe:

"This book, 'To Live,' doesn't use any techniques to please the reader. It simply tells the story of how an ordinary person endures hardship. It makes us, who have long been numb, feel pain again and feel the resilience of human beings."

Old Zhang sat up straight and brought up his work interface on the virtual console:

"A good book, a truly good book that can cleanse the soul, should not be buried under the data of those industrial assembly lines. If such works are allowed to sink because they are short or not manipulated by studios, it is a disgrace to our Weiguang Literature and a dereliction of duty for us reviewers."

He pulled up his official account, "Gold Medal Reviewer - Brother Zhang," which has millions of followers, and without any further ado, directly posted the link to "Living."

He typed out a review that was completely different from his usual book recommendations:

[Ten years in the industry, reviewing millions of books. Today, I give the highest rating of my career to this 90,000-word book. In this era filled with algorithms and false prosperity, it's like a mirror, reflecting the depth and resilience we've long forgotten. This is a literary masterpiece that everyone should calm down and read word by word. Good books should be seen by more people.]

Seeing Lao Zhang's actions, Xiao Chen also wiped his face hard, logged into his official account, and looked determined:

"Brother Zhang is right, good things should be shared. We usually turn down so much junk food, it's time to do something for real literature!"

Immediately afterwards, the other reviewers in the monitoring room seemed to have been awakened to some long-lost professional ideals, and they all responded by using their official authority to start driving traffic to the book.

[Senior Reviewer - Daoke]: Book recommendation! "To Live" is a very heavy book, but it has a kind of life force that makes your scalp tingle. I highly recommend it to everyone, so that you can experience what true literary quality is.

[Official Review - Night Owl]: If you haven't read it yet, please stay. Tonight, I want to recommend this book, which is only 90,000 words long, to everyone who feels tired in life.

……

early morning.

On the homepage feed of Weiguang Literature, the most unusual scene since the site's launch has appeared.

Normally, the official reviewers are only responsible for finding problematic content and banning illegal content. For the first time ever, they collectively stepped in, without any commercial intent, relying entirely on their passion and respect for good books, and frantically campaigned for and endorsed the same book.

With its official "Gold Medal" certification and sincere reviews from various senior reviewers, it instantly became the most credible GG account.

With the strong recommendation of these official reviewers, coupled with the wild popularity accumulated by word of mouth among individual readers, the data of "Living" finally ushered in a real explosion!

Readers who wandered around late at night saw the official channel filled with highlighted recommendations and, filled with curiosity, clicked on the links in droves.

On the real-time leaderboard of the Spark Cup, the red line representing the data for "To Live" pierced directly through the original chart border.

The rankings soared to astonishment in everyone's eyes.

800 people...

300 people...

100 people...

80 people...

It is steadily advancing towards that coveted top ten position at a speed visible to the naked eye.

This handcrafted novel, only 90,000 words long and filled with profound suffering, has finally found its moment on the Weiguang Literature platform.