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

The next day, early in the morning.

The basement of the No. 7 slum in the Lower City remains dark and quiet.

Yu Wen lay on the worn-out sponge mat, breathing evenly, fast asleep.

Yesterday's high-intensity output of nearly 50,000 words almost drained the last bit of strength from this broken body.

He was completely in a deep physiological hibernation at this moment, and had no idea that during the time he closed his eyes, Weiguang Literature and even the entire StarNet's underlying literary sector had experienced an unprecedented earthquake.

Meanwhile, in the high-class single dormitory of Weiming Academy in Zhongcheng District, sunlight was already shining through the smart constant temperature glass onto the desk.

The pale blue light projected onto the retina went out completely.

Jiang Ci sat at her desk, staring at the cup of black coffee in front of her that had long since lost its warmth, without picking it up for a long time.

As the most composed third-year doctoral student in the Department of Nautical Languages, she had dissected countless brutal historical materials from pre-civilizations about the Great Famine and death without batting an eye, and was accustomed to using cold academic standards to measure and summarize suffering.

But now, that once-proud academic logic has failed.

There was no screaming or any exaggerated physical pain.

She just felt that the room was unusually quiet, so quiet that she could only hear her own slightly heavy breathing.

A huge, overwhelming emptiness and powerlessness, like cold water in winter, slowly seeped over my head, making even the slightest movement of a finger feel exhausting.

Fengxia's laughter, Youqing's blood, Jiazhen's peaceful death...

These dry words, devoid of any sorrowful rhetoric or deliberate sentimentality, shattered all her academic sense of superiority as an observer, dragging her into that suffocating yellow earth.

Jiang Ci slowly leaned back in his chair, his fingers lingering on the virtual keyboard for a long time before finally opening the small group chat that the four students had created privately—the [Pre-Civilization Documents Rescue Team].

[Xin Yi (Jiang Ci)]: "The novel 'To Live' had a major update last night, 50,000 words! You guys haven't read it yet, have you?"

Saturday morning was quiet in the group chat. Last night was Friday, and these graduate students had a rare break. They went to a holographic simulation bar in the central district for drinks, and none of them bothered to look at the "homework" assigned by their mentor, Shen.

A little over a minute later, Lu Zhao popped up.

【The Uneducated Salty Fish (Lu Zhao)】: "Senior Sister Jiang, you're up so early? The synthetic tequila from last night is still going wild in my head... Who's going to look at homework on a weekend morning?"

【Evening Breeze (Lin Wan)】: "I just finished my makeup and was about to go get brunch. Wait, senior sister, how many did you say? Fifty thousand words? Won't the author be restricted by the anti-depressing mechanism?"

[Observer (Cheng Shuqiao)]: "Weiguang's review process has been unblocked. I just saw the notification and haven't had a chance to read the main text yet."

Looking at the replies in the group chat, Jiang Ci gazed at the sunlight outside the window and typed out a sentence that felt extremely oppressive.

[Xin Yi (Jiang Ci)]: "I just finished watching it. I suggest you cancel your morning plans and find a quiet place to watch it. Don't eat while watching."

The moment those words were spoken, the group fell into complete silence.

For these three people familiar with Jiang Ci, the shock of this sentence was no less than a thunderclap from a clear sky.

Jiang Ci is usually very concise with words, so for her to recommend a book in such a commanding and solemn tone, and even remind them "not to eat," means that there must be some kind of extremely terrifying energy hidden in these 50,000 words.

【The Unread Salty Fish (Lu Zhao)】: "...What exactly is written in these 50,000 words that can make Senior Sister Jiang so serious? I'm going to check it now."

【Lin Wan】: "Then I'll postpone my plans to go out... After my senior sister said that, I suddenly feel a little unsure."

The group chat fell silent again.

This silence lasted for nearly two and a half hours.

……

10:15 AM.

The chat interface, which was as quiet as a dead group, suddenly popped up with a voice message.

It was sent by Lin Wan.

Jiang Ci opened the voice message, and Lin Wan's suppressed sobs, thick with a nasal tone, immediately came through:

"This author is insane... Waaah... I can't take it anymore, I really can't take it. How could they write it like this? How old is Youqing? What did Fengxia do to deserve this? Why do they have to crush all the good things in front of you, bit by bit? I feel like I'm being held underwater, just when they give me a breath of fresh air, they press me down again..."

Lin Wan's emotions completely collapsed.

As a girl with the most delicate and sensitive mind, she thought that yesterday's deafness and muteness was the limit, but she did not expect that this 50,000-word essay would be a one-sided massacre.

Immediately afterwards, Lu Zhao's message popped up.

Gone was his usual playfulness and nonchalance in his writing; you could feel the heaviness in his voice, even through the screen.

【The Unread Salty Fish (Lu Zhao)】: "I take back what I said yesterday about Fugui being a coward. Damn it... this isn't cowardice, this is vitality. These 50,000 words gave me chills. Before, when I read those trashy online novels that were just for the sake of being sad, I felt nothing, and even wanted to laugh. But this book is different... it's so natural, so natural that you feel like the lower class of that era was just like that, uprooted like weeds."

【The Unread Salty Fish (Lu Zhao)】: "Senior Sister Jiang, now I understand why you told us not to eat. When I saw the part where Jia Zhen was lying on the grave, I sat on the chair for half an hour, unable to recover. This book is poisonous, really poisonous."

The group chat was silent for a few seconds.

Cheng Shuqiao, who had been silent until now, sent a long message.

As a brilliant doctoral student with the strongest academic ability, his writing still maintains the habit of analysis, but it is also deeply shocking.

[Observer (Cheng Shuqiao)]: "This is not only the destructive power of emotion, but also a dimensional reduction attack of technique."

Did you notice? In these 50,000 words, three stages are spanned, and the three most important people die, but the author never uses even a single adjective like "heartbreaking" or "devastating."

This is the ultimate expression of "plain description" and "restraint." He has drained all his emotions, leaving only cold, hard actions and events.

The calmer he was, the more the readers felt the pain amplified a hundredfold.

This is truly masterful narrative control. Uncle Shen is right; we were all mistaken yesterday.

【Xin Yi (Jiang Ci)】: "Hmm, this is definitely not something that can be written with the depth of 'having a dream'. Behind it is a terrifying brain that is trying to rediscover the roots of humanity in this cyber wasteland."

Four proud and ambitious students who had spent their lives studying literature in the ivory tower of Weiming University were completely captivated by the handwritten words of an author from the Xiacheng District at this moment.

Just when the atmosphere in the group was extremely tense, Lu Zhao suddenly sent a screenshot.

【The Unread Salty Fish (Lu Zhao)】: "Wait, you guys are so busy feeling bad, have you even looked at the homepage of Weiguang Literature or the rankings of the Xinghuo Cup?"

Jiang Ci paused for a moment, then switched to the chat interface and logged into the Weiguang platform.

The next second, a look of extreme shock flashed in her usually calm eyes.

On the homepage of Weiguang Literature, where the various recommendation slots were originally dominated by works manipulated by major companies, an extremely bizarre phenomenon has now appeared—almost all the official reviewer columns and top recommendation comments are flashing the same book's name: "To Live".

And when you open the real-time leaderboard of the Spark Cup, you see a name that was ranked over 14000 yesterday, at the bottom of the data.

Right now, it's hanging in the extremely conspicuous position of [86th place]!

Furthermore, the red line representing popularity is climbing at an unreasonable and frenzied pace, with recommendation votes and competition votes scrolling so fast that the numbers are almost invisible.

【Late Breeze (Lin Wan)】: "My God... in just one night, they broke into the top 100?"

【The Unread Salty Fish (Lu Zhao)】: "When I first saw it, I thought there was a bug in Weiguang's algorithm! I checked the data and it's all true! The homepage is full of official reviewers spontaneously promoting it, and the votes below are all from real readers who were tortured and broke down."

[The Uneducated Salty Fish (Lu Zhao)]: "Yesterday we were watching him on screen sitting in that shabby place, typing word by word on an old keyboard... and this morning, he's going to single-handedly shatter those lists that big companies built with supercomputers!"