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

When the iron door to the basement was pushed open again, Yu Yin practically ran in.

The acid rain outside intensified, soaking her large, dark gray coat. However, she held her hands tightly to her chest, as if afraid that the hard-won bottle of medicine would get even a speck of dirty water on it.

"Brother! I bought it!"

The little girl proudly placed the two bottles of pink liquid on the table, then immediately turned to fiddle with the rusty heater:

"Take your medicine first, I'll heat up the food right away!"

Without hesitation, Yu Wen unscrewed the cap and drank the inferior nerve-blocking solution in one gulp.

A cold liquid with a strong chemical smell slid down my esophagus.

Just a few seconds later, that familiar feeling, as if rusty gears were being injected with top-quality lubricant, returned.

The dull pain from his broken legs, the stench from the basement, and the exhaustion in his body were all forcibly shielded by the power of the medicine.

His already extraordinary modern soul, within this body free from the constraints of pain, once again entered a terrifying state of "hypermeability."

"Da da da da da..."

The sound of the mechanical keyboard striking the keys was as dense as a torrential downpour.

In "To Live," Fugui's family is destroyed, and his pregnant daughter Jiazhen is forcibly taken away by his father-in-law. He abandons his status as a young master and rents Long Er's land to make a living, enduring the most difficult and impoverished days in the mud. The scene of Jiazhen's determination to return and suffer with him is transformed into heavy and heart-wrenching words that dance wildly on the screen.

After a while, Yu Yin carried a bowl of reheated starch porridge to the computer.

"Brother, eat a couple of bites before you write."

Yu Wen's eyes were fixed on the screen, his pupils reflecting the dark blue glow of the code.

He didn't turn his head at all; he simply instinctively reached out his left hand to take the bowl, while his right hand continued to rapidly type on the keyboard.

He mechanically scooped up the paste with a spoon and put it in his mouth, not even noticing that some paste got on the corners of his mouth.

Seeing her brother's almost frenzied state, Yu Yin didn't say anything to disturb him.

She quietly took a towel and wiped her brother's mouth, then turned and went to the washbasin in the corner, where she quickly washed her body, which was covered in black market dust, with the very limited amount of filtered water.

After what seemed like an eternity, the sound of typing finally stopped for a moment.

"elder brother……"

A faint, almost inaudible call came from the tattered foam mat in the corner.

Yu Wen suddenly snapped out of his daze, pulling himself out of that state of intense concentration.

He turned his wheelchair around and saw that Yu Yin was already lying on the bed wrapped in that tattered blanket.

In the dim light, the girl huddled under the blanket, only her small face showing.

At ten years old, she was heartbreakingly thin due to long-term extreme malnutrition and overwork, but her eyes were unusually large and sparkled in the darkness.

"What's wrong? Are you feeling unwell?"

Yu Wen subconsciously lowered his voice.

"No……"

Yu Yin shrank her chin further into the blanket, looking at him timidly:

"Brother, I want to hear your story."

Upon hearing this, Yu Wen was stunned.

The original owner's memories surfaced at the opportune moment.

In this era, people from the lower class like Ni Ni, who have a little spare money, will spend it on virtual brain-computer interfaces to experience AI-generated, illusory dreams of "domineering CEOs" or "interstellar warriors".

But Yu Wen and Yu Yin were too poor.

The only broken computer in the house was the original owner's tool for making a living by writing, and Yu Yin had never been exposed to those dazzling virtual worlds.

During her short and arduous ten years of life, her only entertainment and spiritual sustenance was listening to her brother, who wrote novels, tell her stories every night before going to bed.

Last night, she was so tired from working overtime at the scrap yard that she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Tonight, she didn't have to work overtime, and the little girl's craving for it kicked in.

Yu Wen originally wanted to take advantage of the effects of the medicine to finish writing tens of thousands more words of "To Live".

But when he saw his ten-year-old sister wrapped in a tattered blanket, her eyes full of expectation, his heart, which had been hardened by the cyber wasteland, instantly softened into a puddle of water.

Screw the drafts.

He wheeled himself to Yu Yin's bedside.

In her memory, the last story the original owner told her was a typical cyberpunk AI wish-fulfillment novel trope—"Wasteland Mad God".

It tells the story of a poor boy from the downtown area who accidentally finds an old-fashioned laser sword, and then fights his way up to the top, trampling those tycoons under his feet.

The original owner hadn't even mentioned where the protagonist obtained the second divine weapon.

But looking into Yu Yin's pure eyes, Yu Wen suddenly felt that those stories filled with killing, violence, and false dopamine were unworthy of this little girl who still maintained a clean soul even in the mud.

"Okay, I'll tell you."

Yu Wen tucked the blanket around her, his voice gentle:

"However, we won't tell that story of fighting with laser swords today. I'll tell you a new one, a... fairy tale from a long, long time ago."

"fairy tale?"

Ten-year-old Yu Yin blinked, her eyes full of curiosity. "Is it like the princesses in the holographic movies of the Upper City, living in sterile pods?"

"No, it's the story of the Little Prince."

As Yu Wen looked at the peeling paint on the basement walls, memories of his past life flowed out like a clear spring.

"Once upon a time, there was a little prince who lived on a planet only slightly larger than himself. That planet was called B612. Every day, the little prince only needed to move his chair slightly to see forty-three sunsets."

"Planet?"

Yu Yin frowned in confusion:

"Is it like those 'Eden' fortresses floating in the air in the upper city? But it's only slightly larger than a person... Won't he fall into the radioactive cloud below when he turns over in his sleep?"

The girl from the cyber slums had no concept of the universe or stars in her mind; all she knew was the cold metal dome above her head and the poisonous abyss beneath her feet.

"He won't fall, because that's his planet."

Yu Wen smiled gently, not correcting her basic physics knowledge, but continuing the story:

"On that planet, there grew a rose. It was the most beautiful and unique flower the Little Prince had ever seen in the entire universe."

"What is a rose?"

Yu Yin tilted her head. "Is it some kind of newly developed advanced synthetic nutrient? Is it sweet or salty?"

Upon hearing this question, Yu Wen's heart suddenly ached.

This poor child grew up in the downtown area, where there was only reinforced concrete and acid rain, and had no idea what real plants were.

"It's not for eating."

Yu Wen's voice softened further, "It's a life that grows from the soil, with red petals and thorns to protect itself. It's very delicate; it gets cold when the wind blows and needs to drink clean water when it's thirsty."

"what?"

Yu Yin opened her eyes wide with tension:

"It would be killed by the acid rain outside! The rain outside is so corrosive, why didn't the Little Prince put it in the tin cabinet?"

"Because the Little Prince loved her, so every day he would put her under a glass dome, water her, shield her from the wind, listen to her complaints, and listen to her boasts."

Yu Wen patiently described that tender image.

He then told the story of how the Little Prince left his planet, came to Earth, and met a fox.

The fox said to the little prince, “To me you are still just a little boy, like millions of other little boys. I don’t need you, and you don’t need me either. To me I am just a fox, like millions of other foxes. But if you tame me, then we will both need each other.”

Yu Wen looked into his sister's eyes and softly repeated that classic line:

"To me, you are unique in the world; and to you, I am unique in the world."

"Taming..."

Yu Yin murmured the word as if she understood but didn't quite.

In the lower city, people are like discarded parts that can be replaced at any time.

For every scavenger who falls today, ten will take their place tomorrow.

There is no "unique" here, only "cheap consumables".

"elder brother……"

Yu Yin's eyes suddenly reddened. She stretched out her small, calloused hand from under the tattered blanket and tightly grasped two of Yu Wen's fingers, her voice choked with emotion:

"So...brother, you tamed me, and I tamed you, right? In this entire Seventh Slum, in this entire Lower City, we're the only ones who can't live without each other. If I didn't have you, I'd just be a piece of junkyard, ready to be irradiated at any moment..."

Yu Wen's eyes instantly welled up with tears.

He took his sister's cold little hand in his own and nodded solemnly:

"Yes. Even if there are billions of AI codes outside, even if there are countless glamorous heiresses, to me, you are the one and only Yinyin in the entire universe."