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

Scarface spat to the side, raised his chin, and his rough voice carried a sinister undertone:

"How much money do these two siblings owe you?"

The air in the room suddenly became tense.

However, before the workers behind Scarface could even raise their wrenches, Baldy and Crew Head panicked.

It wasn't that they were afraid of these few low-level scavengers, but rather that they didn't want to cause any unnecessary trouble at the moment.

The man in the wheelchair is the future God of Wealth of StarNet, and he has just personally promised to balance the accounts.

"It's a misunderstanding, brother, it's all a misunderstanding."

The bald man's fleshy face twitched, and he hid the refrigerator behind his back, forcing a somewhat awkward, dry laugh while waving his hands repeatedly.

"We're all just trying to make a living in the lower city. There's no need to fight. We came here to discuss business. Now that everything's settled, it's all over. Really, it's all over."

The man with the buzz cut nodded in agreement, his dark gray metal prosthetic arm neatly placed against his leg, a forced smile on his face.

Yu Wen sat in his leather wheelchair, quietly watching this scene.

This was the first time he had ever seen the "Scarface Uncle" that his sister often talked about.

Yu Wen doesn't want to reveal too much about himself right now, and he doesn't want the details of his debt to frighten his younger sister.

So he turned his wheelchair around and spoke calmly:

"Scarface, it's alright. They are indeed my business partners. There was a small accounting issue earlier, but it's been cleared up now, and there's no dispute."

Scarface frowned.

He turned his head and looked at Yu Wen in the wheelchair.

Business?

In the Lower District, who doesn't know what these dark web debt collectors who specialize in illegally dismantling organs do?

But when he caught a glimpse of Yu Yin peeking out from behind him with a bewildered look on her face, he swallowed the curse he was about to utter.

Having lived for so many years, he could tell at a glance that Yu Wen was using lies to swindle the little girl away.

Uncle Scar didn't confront Yu Wen about his embarrassing debt on the spot.

"Are you sure it's resolved?"

Scarface looked at Yu Wen with a heavy gaze, and spoke without the slightest hint of politeness:

"Hey Yu, I'm not here for you today. What trouble you've gotten into or what mess you've got in debts, our scrap yard has no obligation to clean up your mess."

He paused, and the robotic arm emitted a slight grinding sound:

"But Yinyin works at my station every day. She's clean. If you can't protect her and spill dirty water on her, and if you need help, I can take Yinyin out of this room right now. As for your life or death, nobody cares."

In this precarious cyber slum, Scarface had witnessed countless incompetent adults selling their young family members to prosthetic companies in the upper district as consumables.

He didn't care whether Yu Wen, that useless person, lived or died, but he didn't want this girl to be implicated.

Yu Yin, who was hiding in the back, felt warm inside when she heard Uncle Scar's words, but she was also a little anxious.

She hurriedly emerged from behind Scarface's oversized work jacket, her small hands clutching the greasy leg of his work pants, and looked up at him, protesting:

"Uncle Scar! I wasn't lying to you at the junkyard last time, my brother really did make money writing books! They really are my brother's business partners, my brother never lies, we're already rich!"

Looking into the little girl's clear and determined eyes, Uncle Scar was slightly taken aback.

He looked up again at the two debt collectors opposite him.

These two thugs, who were usually so domineering, seemed to have lost their temper at this moment, nodding and agreeing repeatedly.

"Yes, yes, Miss Yu is right, it really solves the problem."

The only sound in the room was the "plop" of water droplets hitting the metal bucket.

Although Scarface couldn't understand how a useless person confined to a wheelchair could make these two thugs submit, he looked away now that the situation had indeed stabilized.

"OK."

Scarface didn't ask any more questions, stepped aside to make way for them, and glanced at the bald man and the crew-cut man:

"Since everything's alright, let's go."

"Let's go, let's go now!"

The bald man ripped off a tuft of hair and quickly slipped out through the crack in the door.

Scarface glanced at Yu Wen, said nothing more, turned around and led a few workers from the scrap yard away down the dark corridor with heavy steps.

The crude industrial robotic arm moved further and further away in the passageway, and the "click-clack" sound it made eventually disappeared into the dull background noise of the slum.

The rusty iron gate closed again.

Once again, only Yu Wen and Yu Yin remained in the dilapidated basement.

……

Baldy and Crew Head hurried away down the dimly lit corridor. Only when they reached the entrance of the Seventh Slum and saw the black, peeling-painted hovercar did they finally breathe a sigh of relief.

The bald man opened the car door and threw the refrigerator he was holding into the back seat.

He took out a synthetic cigarette, lit it, took two puffs to calm himself down, and then pulled out his encrypted communicator to dial the dedicated line of the data operations officer at Xinghui Studio.

"Boss, we've got our eye on that three million. He has the money in his account, and it should be deposited into Xinghui's corporate account tonight."

There was a two-second silence on the other end of the phone.

"Three million? What three million?"

The operations officer's voice sounded somewhat bewildered, clearly as he was searching his mind for the source of this account.

After a long while, accompanied by the sound of the computer's backend page being scrolled through, the operations manager finally said "Oh," his tone becoming nonchalant again:

"That...that disabled writer from the slums, what was his name again??"

For the high and mighty Starshine Studio, crushing a lowly person from the downtown area is as easy as casually brushing a speck of dust off their clothes.

The reason for filing the lawsuit and demanding such a high amount of damages was purely to go through the legal process and legally confirm that the other party had "plagiarized" the work, so as to completely clear Pei Zhixing of the blame for plagiarism.

Once the lawsuit was over, the judgment was thrown into the bottom-level dead accounts database of the system.

The operations manager didn't even bother to remember the other party's name, let alone expect a useless person who couldn't even afford synthetic starch to pay back this huge sum of money.

"Can he really pull out three million?"

The operations officer's voice carried a hint of absurdity, as if he were listening to some fantastical tale:

"Where did the money come from? Did you remove all your organs and sell them on the dark web?"

"Boss, we brothers have had our share of trouble on this job."

The bald man dusted off his cigarette ash:

"The commission for debt collection..."

"As long as the money arrives, you'll get your share."

The operations officer interrupted him somewhat impatiently:

"But I need to confirm where his money came from. Could it be dirty money that got him into some trouble?"

The bald man glanced at the crew-cut man next to him, then lowered his voice and spoke into the communicator:

"Boss, we just ran into the author alive in the basement!"

There was sudden silence on the other end of the phone.

After a full two or three seconds of silence, the operations manager, as if he had heard some idiotic joke, snapped:

"What living author? Are there dead authors out there? Have you got acid rain in your head?"