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

Upper City, Eden Floating Island.

Lu Chenyuan leaned back on the smart sofa, and the latest chapter of "Living" that had just been updated was displayed on the holographic projection.

As the heir to a conglomerate, he has enjoyed top-tier genetic optimization and a sterile lifestyle since childhood, but that doesn't mean he's a machine without empathy.

On the contrary, he possesses an extremely keen ability to perceive emotions.

When Lu Chenyuan read about Fugui being conscripted into the army, struggling among piles of corpses, his mother dying of illness, and Fengxia becoming mute due to a high fever, he truly felt a heavy and sorrowful feeling that struck his chest.

But he quickly picked up the ice water next to him and took a sip, suppressing his emotions.

"It was still an exaggeration after all."

A rational smile curved Lu Chenyuan's lips as he muttered to himself.

In his mind, the lower-class people in the downtown area did live like rats in the gutter, struggling and humble, but they were not so unlucky as to be this miserable.

The capriciousness of fate and all the unexpected events seem to have been precisely targeted and struck one person, which is extremely abnormal from a data science perspective.

"However, this author's writing skills and style have indeed reached the pinnacle."

A hint of genuine admiration flashed in Lu Chenyuan's eyes. To be able to break through the reader's emotional defenses and make all the misfortunes seem justified simply by breaking down and layering suffering without using a system cheat code, this control over words and rhythm was actually far more powerful than the top-tier AI model that he had spent a lot of money training.

It was this silent, unyielding resilience and endurance that gave Lu Chenyuan a strange sense of dread.

"housekeeper."

"Young Master."

The android butler glided forward silently.

What is the current ranking in the Spark Cup?

"Young master, today is Saturday, a peak traffic day. With the impact of extremely large real active data, 'Living' is currently firmly in tenth place."

"A carbon-based brain that has not undergone any AI modification has written underlying logic that even the 'Muse' model cannot analyze."

He tapped his fingers lightly on the side of the crystal glass, producing a crisp sound:

"I need to know the physical address of this uploader, no matter which slum in the downtown area it's in. I need to see all the author's real information."

"Understood, young master. The mainframe is tracing the nodes in reverse and should be able to locate the coordinates soon."

Lu Chenyuan leaned back into the sofa, his gaze returning to the earthen-yellow cover.

Just a few seconds later.

"Reporting to Young Master, the mainframe is tracing the nodes in reverse, but it's encountered a bit of trouble."

A glint of deep blue data flashed in the butler's eyes:

"The target node has just generated an extremely large torrent of uplink data, which has obscured the real IP address."

Lu Chenyuan narrowed his eyes slightly:

"What is he doing?"

"He is broadcasting live to the entire federal cyber network."

The butler projected a crude 2D image in front of Lu Chenyuan.

In the center of the image, there is only a pair of hands with distinct knuckles and a badly worn old-fashioned mechanical keyboard.

Lu Chenyuan raised his head and looked at the screen.

It was a very simple line of black text on a white background:

[Using traditional writing techniques, live-streaming the finale of "To Live".]

……

Meanwhile, in the central district, an underground studio.

Dozens of keyword architects stopped what they were doing and stared at their supervisor, Lao Zhao.

Old Zhao sat in front of the large screen, his eyes bloodshot.

Instead of just looking at data reports as usual, he forced himself to sit in his chair and read through the newly updated 90,000-word article in one go.

As a seasoned veteran who had been navigating the cyber-themed online novel scene for over a decade, he was convinced that the book must contain some extremely clever and subtle "suppression before praise" model.

But he was wrong.

In this wasteland era where AI can instantly generate world-destroying special effects with just a few commands, his eyes, long since numb to words, were actually pierced by those unadorned, simple Chinese characters, and he even felt a tightness in his chest when he tried to breathe.

"Brother Zhao..."

The chief architect beside him swallowed nervously, breaking the silence:

"Can we replicate the emotional structure of this book using a large model?"

"What a load of rubbish!"

Old Zhao slammed his hand on the table, his voice hoarse like a broken metal pipe:

"This isn't an algorithm at all! There are no satisfying moments, no upgrades, it's all pure descent! If you let a large model analyze it, the mainframe will just immediately flag it as a logical failure! Because in the machine's computing power model, this kind of pure suffering without any resistance is invalid data that cannot be monetized!"

He pointed dejectedly to the Spark Cup real-time leaderboard on the right.

Today is Saturday, a fierce battleground where major conglomerates and studios vie for resources and traffic.

This book, which doesn't even have a decent graphic designer on its cover, has already broken through all the barriers built up by supercomputing power and firmly secured its tenth place.

Just as Lao Zhao slumped in his chair, questioning his existence, the data analyst responsible for monitoring online public opinion suddenly ripped off his headphones, his voice even distorted with excitement:

"Brother Zhao! Look at the pop-up on the Weiguang platform's homepage! That 'Yu Huashi'... he's online! He's started streaming on Douyin, in that 'ancient typing' pure physical keyboard livestream room!"

Old Zhao suddenly raised his head:

"Live streaming? Why would you be live streaming at a time like this?"

"He posted an announcement in the live stream..."

The data clerk swallowed hard. "He said, today... is the final chapter of this book!"

……

The underground computer room is located at the border of the Lower District and the Middle District.

A gaunt man wearing thick-rimmed black glasses cleverly used web scraping software to extract the emotional code from the novel "To Live" and directly imported it into his own popular male-oriented novel.

So, in his latest update, the male protagonist, who was originally invincible, suddenly encountered a series of tragic twists and turns without warning. Even some supporting characters with cheesy settings like "Youqing" and "Fengxia" appeared out of nowhere and were forcibly given tragic endings by the author.

An hour later, the independent writer's comment section was completely flooded with angry readers.

His readers had never read "To Live" and naturally didn't know about the Qing Fengxia reference. What angered them was the extreme disconnect in the plot and the collapse of the sense of satisfaction!

[Is your brain-computer interface leaking electricity?! What kind of insane plot is this?!]

[Where did this toxic plot point come from?! I read your book for the thrill, to see the protagonist unify the galaxy, and you suddenly give me this inexplicable and frustrating trope?!]

[I'm giving up! All the satisfying buildup of hundreds of thousands of words was ruined by this sudden, disgusting scene!]

While readers were furiously denouncing the trend and cancelling their subscriptions, they were also indignant and followed the data trail to find out where this disgusting "toxic" trend came from.

Soon, they followed the clues and uncovered the culprit behind the book "Living" by Weiguang Literature.

"So this lousy book is what's corrupting the atmosphere!"

The angry male readers instantly transformed into a cyber mob, surging towards Weiguang Literature.

Meanwhile, the die-hard fans of "To Live" who were eagerly awaiting the "return of the God of War" were not to be outdone, and the two huge fan groups directly engaged in an extremely fierce cyber war on the forums and book review sections.

The barrage of insults and whistleblower reports pushed the popularity of "To Live" to an even more distorted peak.

……

Compared to the fierce battles outside, the atmosphere in the IP incubation conference room of Xingyao Media in Zhongcheng District was unusually sober.

On the holographic projection, the data red line representing the infighting between "To Live" and various male-oriented online novels is soaring wildly.

The project manager leaned back in his executive chair, his eyes bloodshot.

He reached up and pinched his aching brow. The image of Jia Zhen's suffocating silence before her death flashed through his mind, and an uncontrollable dull pain rose in his chest.

To be honest, as a human being, he admitted that he was thoroughly humiliated by these 90,000 words, to the point that he broke down and spent half the night in his office smoking in silence.

But as a trader, he knew he must never let personal emotions cloud his business judgment.

The supervisor picked up his cup, took a big gulp of the slightly cool synthetic green tea, and forcibly suppressed the heavy, turbid feeling that belonged to human beings in his heart. He looked at the staff members on both sides of the conference table, whose eyes were also red and who were obviously also being tortured.

"Don't worry about what's going on outside."

The supervisor put his blue light blocking glasses back on, tapped the table, and regained his machine-like rationality:

"The target audience and emotional triggers of this book are completely different from ours. We mainly target female readers, selling virtual companions and sweet romance emotional value. This kind of gruesome suffering, even just a touch of it, would directly shatter our dream bubble."

He decisively swiped away from the panel in front of him and issued the final instruction:

"Notify the operations department to avoid the peak traffic period of 'To Live' for all the female-oriented IPs we have. Let them fight it out, we choose to stay out of it. We won't get involved in this mess."