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

The old blind man released his grip and leaned back in his wheelchair.

Yu Yin's grip on the glass tube stopped abruptly.

Her breath hitched, and her gaze involuntarily fell on the old blind man's face.

"It's normal that you spend all your time in the basement and don't pay attention to information online."

The old blind man didn't notice her strange behavior. He put his hands into his greasy sleeves, and the red light in his two mechanical prosthetic eyes flashed.

The one-eyed man beside him nodded in agreement, then raised the wine jug in his hand and shook it.

"Little girl, your blind uncle wasn't lying to you. Last night, the entire internet was buzzing with comments."

The old blind man ignored the one-eyed man and stared straight at Yu Yin.

"I listened to it on the audio last night, and then sat in my wheelchair smoking for half the night. I was deeply moved."

The old blind man's voice became very low:

"Life is tough for you two siblings in the lower city, and your brother is paralyzed. You could consider enrolling in a school."

The old blind man paused for a few seconds, then his withered lips opened and closed again, uttering the sentence slowly and deliberately:

"There's a great line in the book: People live for the sake of living itself, not for anything beyond living."

Yu Yin stood in front of the counter, her body straight.

Her fingers, gripping the glass tube, tightened involuntarily.

That was the book her brother had typed out last night in that leaky basement, on that worn-out keyboard, word by word with his twitching fingers.

Last night, she was so focused on the frantically jumping donation numbers in the bottom right corner of the screen, which were in units of "tens of thousands," that she didn't even bother to read the text inside.

She only knew that her brother had made a lot of money, but she didn't know that what he wrote could make these cripples and seasoned veterans in the black market, who were used to life and death, discuss it with red eyes and smoking early in the morning.

The old blind man's prosthetic eye gear turned twice, and looking at Yu Yin's motionless figure, he chuckled hoarsely.

"What, you're so young, yet you're affected by these words?"

Yu Yin looked at the old blind man, then glanced at the one-eyed man beside her who was still savoring the memory.

A huge surge of heat rushed up her spine.

She wanted to tell them loudly that the book was written by her brother, who was paralyzed in both legs and couldn't even stand up.

But the words my brother had told me last night echoed in my mind: "Don't flaunt your wealth."

Yu Yin bit her lower lip tightly.

She pressed her lips into a straight line, suppressing the pride that was about to spill from her throat.

She didn't refute or reveal a word; she simply lowered her chin slightly.

She nodded blankly, put the cold glass tube into her pocket, picked up the warm starch cake, and turned to walk towards the cabin door.

"Uncle Blind, I'm going back."

"Go."

The old blind man waved his hand behind his back and pulled out another cigarette.

Yu Yin pushed open the heavy hatch and stepped out. Acid raindrops fell on her hair.

As the heavy metal door behind them gradually closed, a faint, smoky conversation drifted intermittently into the cold air through the increasingly narrow crack in the door.

"These days, there are still people who can understand the hardships of the downtown area so thoroughly..."

The one-eyed man let out a burp.

"That is, in the book."

The old blind man exhaled a puff of smoke. "In reality, that old ox would have been torn apart and eaten long ago..."

"Old blind man, what kind of person do you think this author is? To write something like this, he must be some kind of old monster, maybe seventy or eighty years old, halfway to the grave!"

"Who knows?"

The old blind man's voice became indistinct:

"Anyway, he's someone who's tasted bitterness like wine. Like that young man in the Yu family, confined to a wheelchair, who never even leaves the house, he probably could never write like this in his entire life..."

"Clang!"

The door panel was completely closed.

The sound of gears meshing completely isolated the conversation from the abandoned spaceship wreckage.

Yu Yin stood in the puddles outside the pharmacy.

Hearing the last sentence, her tense face suddenly relaxed.

She reached into her pocket and touched the protein solution, letting out a soft hum in the rain. An uncontrollable smile spread across her face.

She turned around, hugged the starch cake tightly, and ran towards the basement.

……

Yu Yin was holding a brown paper bag containing synthetic starch cake in her arms, and in her right pocket were two bottles of high-purity protein liquid that she had bought from the old blind man.

She waded through the puddles and walked down the dimly lit stairs, stopping at the entrance to her own basement.

Two tall men stood outside the rusty iron gate.

The man on the left is bald, wearing a black waterproof jacket, and has a silver briefcase with a biomedical logo hanging from his waist.

The man on the right had a buzz cut, and his right arm, from the shoulder down, had been replaced with a dark gray industrial-grade metal prosthetic body. The hydraulic bearing made an extremely faint hissing sound when he moved.

Yu Yin stopped in her tracks, her gaze sweeping over the bald man's briefcase and the buzz-cut man's metal arm, staring at the two strangers.

What are you people doing?

The bald man and the crew-cut man turned around at the same time upon hearing the sound.

They worked as debt collectors at the very bottom of the urban area, their hands stained with blood, and their tool bags contained high-voltage electric knives for severing optic nerves and expanders for harvesting organs.

But at this moment, looking at the thin little girl standing on the steps, the men's grimaces instantly relaxed.

With his short-haired, metallic fingers, he loosened the buckle at his waist, and a gentle smile appeared on his lips.

That's just how people are. No matter how many dirty jobs they've done outside, they'll subconsciously put on a smiling face when facing a child who doesn't understand anything.

"Little sister, is Yu Wen living in this room?"

The man with the buzz cut bent his knees, squatted down, and hid the mechanical arm with metal barbs at his side, keeping his gaze level with Yu Yin's and speaking as softly as possible.

"It's my brother."

Yu Yin looked at them, her steps unwavering:

"Do you need to see him?"

The man with the buzz cut and the bald man exchanged a glance in mid-air.

Based on just these few simple sentences, they had already figured out everything about the house:

This little girl, with her wary yet innocent eyes, had no idea that her brother was burdened with a staggering debt of three million star coins.

"We are your brother's business associates."

The bald man straightened up, pointed to the tightly closed iron gate, and said with a smile:

"Come over and talk to him about something."

Upon hearing that the person was looking for her brother to discuss business, Yu Yin's wariness lessened considerably.

All night yesterday, she watched her brother sitting in front of the computer, watching the data and messages pouring in like crazy.

It's perfectly reasonable that my brother is now getting business contacts after making money from writing books.

"Oh, then come in."

Out of politeness, Yu Yin freed one hand and took out the worn-out electronic key from her pocket.

She walked to the iron gate and swiped her finger on the rusty access control sensor.

"drop."

The latches inside the iron gate clicked open with a crisp sound.

The bald man and the man with the buzz cut looked at each other again.

The bald man's right hand, which had been reaching for the breaching tool at his lower back, quietly lowered itself.

It would be ideal to save the trouble of smashing the door with a cutting machine and walk straight in without bloodshed.

Yu Yin pushed open the heavy iron door with both hands and went in first.

"Brother, someone is looking for you."