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

On a Saturday in the downtown area, even the low-frequency rumble coming from the air filtration ducts seemed to carry a touch of weekend laziness.

There was no natural light in the basement, only the yellowish tungsten filament lamp in the corner burning tirelessly.

Yu Wen slept very soundly.

Last night, he typed 50,000 words in one go, pushing his already weak and broken body to its limit. When he opened his eyes again, it was already noon on Saturday.

Hearing the sound of someone turning over in bed, Yu Yin, who was drawing at a small table not far away, immediately put down her old paintbrush and ran over like a nimble little deer.

"Brother, you're awake!"

The little girl's eyes were bright and sparkling, and her face, flushed from a good night's sleep, had a healthy blush.

On Saturdays in the past, this sensible and pitiful girl would get up before dawn to work part-time at the garbage disposal station in the upper city or on the outskirts of the black market, picking up usable scrap metal in the acid rain to exchange for some food.

But ever since Yu Wen received the tip, he has forbidden Yu Yin from doing any dangerous manual labor on weekends and insists that she rest at home.

Seeing her brother nod, Yu Yin happily turned around:

"Brother, wait a minute, I'll go make lunch... no, I mean breakfast and lunch!"

In the corner of the basement, the stove, made from a repurposed old induction cooker, soon lit up with flames.

Today, the pot is no longer cooking that kind of inferior ash starch that smells like engine oil and tastes like mud.

Yu Yin carefully cut open a piece of "Grade B cultivated meat steak" that Yu Wen had specially bought last night, and then luxuriously poured some concentrated nutrient solution with a real wheat aroma into the pot.

In this wasteland era where natural crops have disappeared and humans rely on synthetic products from large factories to maintain their vital signs, the cost of this bowl of meat soup is equivalent to half a month's expenses for a family in the slums.

Before long, the long-lost aroma of oily fat, the aroma of "real food," filled the small, damp basement.

Yu Wen leaned against the headboard, watching his younger sister's thin figure busy at the stove, listening to the bubbling sound of the pot, and a gentle smile unconsciously appeared on his lips.

The two siblings sat around a small table made from discarded metal boxes and enjoyed a hearty meal of hot pork chop noodles.

Yu Yin ate with gusto, her mouth dripping with oil, scraping off every last drop of broth from the bottom of the pot with bread.

After eating and drinking their fill, Yu Yin rushed to wash the dishes, while Yu Wen skillfully used his hands to prop himself up and slowly moved onto the somewhat rusty wheelchair.

He wheeled himself to the old, assembled computer and pressed the power button.

The old cooling fan inside the computer case emitted a buzzing sound like a broken bellows.

Yu Wen slowly gripped the chipped mouse and logged into the author backend of the Weiguang Literature platform.

As soon as the page loaded, the information bar icon in the upper right corner turned bright red. The number representing unread messages wasn't 99+, but rather a red box that reached the system limit: [9999+].

The entire backend UI interface experienced a freeze lasting up to three seconds due to the massive influx of data.

Yu Wen leaned back in his chair, looking at the red dot, a "predictable" smile appearing on his tired face.

He knew all too well the destructive power of those 50,000 words last night.

Youqing was drained of blood, Fengxia died on the delivery bed, and Jiazhen breathed her last silently.

This kind of pure realism is sure to wreak havoc on cyber readers who are used to being fed industrial saccharin by AI models.

He picked up the chipped water glass next to him, took a sip, and moved the mouse to open the message list.

However, at the very moment the list expands and the data is completely refreshed...

Yu Wen's hand, which was holding the water glass, suddenly froze in mid-air.

His previously nonchalant smile froze completely on his face.

Instead of the large-scale book abandonment and abuse he had anticipated, the screen was filled with a dense, torrential rain of donation notifications.

While there aren't any extravagantly wealthy individuals with hundreds of thousands of star coins, the vast majority have only tens or hundreds of scattered star coins, yet the sheer quantity is staggering.

What shocked him even more were the comments that followed the donations:

[System notification: User 'Late Breeze' has rewarded you with 50 Star Coins! And left a message: Author, I beg you, let Fugui catch his breath, and let me catch my breath too, please stop torturing him!]

[System notification: User 'Roadside Wild Grass' has rewarded you with 100 Star Coins! They left a message: This is my meal money for today, I'm giving it all to you. I only ask that you be gentle in the next chapter and let Kugen grow up properly; this child is too pitiful.]

[System notification: An anonymous user has rewarded you with 200 Star Coins! They left a message saying: "My heart aches so much, I really can't bear to watch anymore. Author, could you at least let their family have a decent meal before they leave...?"]

[System notification: Reader 'The Night Watchman of the Used Bookstore' has cast 10 monthly tickets! and left a message: I won't urge you to update anymore, I just ask you to leave this community a little hope.]

In the comments section, no one was offering lengthy plot analyses, nor were they nitpicking over literary techniques. Instead, they were all heartfelt and genuine reflections after being completely overwhelmed by the story.

[Anonymous Reader]: "I was reading this under the covers late at night, and when Youqing died, I couldn't hold back my tears. He ran so fast every day cutting grass and feeding the sheep, he wouldn't even wear shoes, how could he just die from a blood test? Author, do you even have a heart?! Can you please change the plot?!"

[A working-class person in the lower district]: "After reading it, I felt so choked up, I couldn't even cry, I just felt so tight in my chest that I couldn't breathe. Jia Zhen is such a good woman, she has never had a good day with Fu Gui in her life... This kind of book takes several days to recover from after reading it once, I really don't dare to read it a second time."

【Cyber ​​Cow & Horse】: "At first glance, the title made me think it was some kind of feel-good story about a poor person's rise to power and face-slapping moments. But now I realize this book isn't about how to live a glamorous life; it's about how ordinary people desperately try to 'survive.' A speck of dust in the era becomes a mountain on Fugui's head..."

【The Calico Cat Isn't a Cat】: "This is too cruel. It's like tearing something beautiful to shreds right in front of you. Even though Fengxia was deaf and mute, she finally had a few days of peace and met a man who loved her, so why did she have to die on the delivery bed? Please, author, leave some hope for Fugui in the next chapter, please stop torturing him, okay?"

Although each individual donation is small, the thousands upon thousands of small donations, each accompanied by the tears of readers, have added up to an astronomical figure.

But that's still not all.

His gaze lingered beyond the lengthy comments, landing on the mandatory notifications in the backend system center, each bearing an official gold-edged certification.

[System notification with highest authority: Your work "Living" has triggered the "wild breakthrough mechanism" and has been strongly recommended on the homepage of "Official Reviewer - Night Owl"!]

[System notification with highest authority: Your work "Living" has been recommended by "Senior Reviewer - Daoke" across all channels with no parallax!]

[System notification with highest authority: Your work "Living" has been featured prominently in red by "Gold Medal Reviewer - Brother Zhang," and has been forcibly integrated into the platform's core traffic pool, regardless of word count requirements!]

Yu Wen swallowed hard and opened the real-time leaderboard for the Spark Cup.

"Living", ongoing... Word count: 90,000.

Current ranking: 10th!