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

In the dialog box in the upper right corner of the screen, the progress bar for "Upload/Complete Book" flashed by instantly, and a green checkmark popped up.

In the live stream of Douyang, those hands fell heavily off the screen and were never raised again.

The battle-damaged 2D camera still works faithfully, with only a wooden table with frayed edges and a black mechanical keyboard with an oily surface and severely worn keycaps in the lens.

A few drops of water still lingered on the space bar of the keyboard.

In the upper right corner of the screen, the number of online users shows no sign of decreasing.

"1,501,204".

The numbers paused for a second, then jumped to "1,582,311", and then broke through 1.6 million.

In this cyber age where holographic split-screen and retinal projection are already standard features of life, no one will close one software just to open another, as was the case in the old days.

At the same millisecond that Yu Wen pressed the left mouse button, 1.6 million live accounts simultaneously activated the reading screen of the Weiguang Literature Platform on the other side of their field of vision through retinal interaction commands.

An extremely strange phenomenon occurred in the live stream.

The number of online viewers continued to climb, but the interactive area of ​​the entire live stream fell into an eerie silence.

Just moments ago, the scrolling bar was flooded with messages due to the official strong intervention of Weiguang to crack down on online trolls, and even caused the underlying algorithm to lag. At this moment, it seems that all the vitality has been instantly drained by some invisible force.

There were no bullet comments, no gift effects, and even the system's built-in like floating screen stopped.

The entire public chat was as clean as a piece of paper that had just been bleached, or rather, like a wordless tombstone standing in the cyber wasteland.

At this moment, 1.6 million people collectively fell silent, turning all their attention to the newly unfolded reading screen.

……

Zhongcheng District, Weiguang Literature Headquarters Building, Top Floor Data Monitoring Center.

"Drip—drip—drip—"

A sudden and piercing low-level hardware alarm echoed through the spacious server room without warning.

On the large screen above the main console, the ring indicator light representing the server load status changed from a safe, dark green to a warning bright yellow in just two seconds, and then soared to a glaring scarlet red.

"General Manager Chang!"

The data director suddenly stood up from the holographic console, his movement so abrupt that he knocked over the data cable beside him.

He didn't have time to tidy up; his hands left blurry trails on the virtual keyboard as he tried to allocate available resources, his voice filled with barely concealed anxiety and shock.

"Instantaneous concurrent read volume exceeded 2.1 million! And it's still rising!"

The data director turned around, his forehead covered in sweat:

"Weiguang's initial goal was simply to grab a little long-tail traffic from the gaps between giants. Our initial data center architecture and backbone network bandwidth did not reserve any capacity redundancy at the level of these giants! The backup servers in Zones C and D, which were used for underlying defense, have now seen their CPU utilization soar to 98.5%! The temperature of the liquid cooling system is approaching the red line!"

Weiguang Literature is a small platform. No matter how ambitious Chang Liren is, the objective gap in hardware is undeniable.

Normally, the computing power is close to the upper limit of the safety threshold when it can support 300,000 to 500,000 daily active users.

Now, 1.6 million people did not leave the live stream, nor were they scattered across different time periods. Instead, at the very moment Yu Wen clicked to upload, within the same millisecond, they retrieved the last two chapters of "To Live," totaling nearly 10,000 words, across screens.

This unprecedented torrent of data, without any pre-warming or buffering, was like a sudden tsunami, crashing heavily onto the fragile breakwater of the micro-light platform.

"Cut off computing power channels for all non-core businesses."

Chang Liren stood behind the control panel, his hands in his trouser pockets.

He didn't look at the frantically flashing red alerts or the fluctuating load data; his gaze remained calmly fixed on what was directly ahead.

"Stop all the underlying computing power for the splash screen, the recommendation rotation algorithm, and even the recharge channel. All server resources should be allocated to the details page and reading page of 'Living.' Ensure that every user who clicks in can see the main text within 0.1 seconds."

The data director paused for a moment, then gritted his teeth and nodded: "Understood!"

Old Zhang stood next to Chang Liren, holding an unlit synthetic cigarette between his fingers.

He also didn't look at those technical indicators.

On the largest screen in the center of the control panel, no code was displayed. Instead, Lao Zhang manually brought up the text pages of the last two chapters of "To Live".

……

Every corner of the cyber world.

In the overcrowded subway lines, inside the musty-smelling capsule hotel cabins, at the brightly lit office desks in the high-rise buildings of the central district, and in the dimly lit internet cafes of the lower district...

Countless holographic split screens and retinal projections lit up in the darkness.

The faint light from the screen reflected faces in various poses, yet all equally holding their breath.

Their gazes moved slowly downwards along the plain, square characters on the e-ink screen.

They first witnessed Erxi's death.

Erxi, the boy with the tilted head, earns his living by working as a porter.

At the construction site, it was sandwiched between two rows of collapsed precast concrete slabs.

When the crane lifted the concrete slab, all the bones in his body were broken. He was stuck to the concrete slab, and they couldn't even piece together a complete corpse.

Then they witnessed the death of Kugen.

That child who grew up relying on Fugui, so sensible it was heartbreaking, yet who couldn't even afford a few good beans.

When he fell ill, Fugui felt sorry for him and cooked him half a pot of beans.

Then, in that dilapidated thatched hut, the child was stuffed to death by half a pot of cooked beans.

There is no grand setup, no villainous framing, and no one to hate or condemn.

It was a death that was extremely absurd, yet perfectly in line with the underlying logic of that era.

All readers, upon reading this passage, feel as if a rough, water-soaked burlap sack has been stuffed into their chest.

Then, they saw Fugui.

This once wealthy young master buried his father, mother, Youqing, Fengxia, Jiazhen, Erxi, and finally Kugen.

After being truly and utterly alone.

He took out the crumpled change he had originally intended to leave for Kugen from under his pillow and went to the market.

He neither bought a coffin nor wine.

He bought an old ox from a butcher's knife; the ox was so old it was about to lose its teeth and was about to be slaughtered. He named the ox Fugui.

On the ridges of the fields at dusk, the sunlight stretched everything out long.

"Today, Youqing and Erxi plowed one mu (approximately 0.16 acres), Jiazhen and Fengxia plowed about seven or eight fen (approximately 0.16 acres), and even Kugen, who is still young, plowed half a mu (approximately 0.25 acres). As for you, I won't say how much you plowed, because you'd think I was trying to embarrass you. But then again, you're getting old, and to be able to plow this much land is already a great effort."

The old man and the ox gradually disappeared into the distance. I heard the old man's rough, moving voice drifting from afar. His singing floated like the wind in the empty evening. The old man sang—

"In youth, one wanders the world; in middle age, one seeks hidden treasures; in old age, one becomes a monk."

……

120,000 words.

The entire family was wiped out.

Only one person and one ox remained.

The once bustling Xu family compound, once home to the young master who squandered money like water in the casino.

In the end, only an old man wearing a coarse cloth jacket and an old ox also named "Fugui" remained.