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

Lu Chenyuan looked at the butler and shook his head:

"An author who has been hailed as a god by readers across the internet is being acquired at a premium that is too high. The Weiguang platform is now treating him as a core asset and is holding on tightly. Even if we throw in tens of millions of star coins, we may not be able to buy him out along with his copyright."

Lu Chenyuan stood up, walked to the monocrystalline silicon floor-to-ceiling window, and looked down at the downtown area shrouded in smog.

"But what if he's a disgraced plagiarist? What if the Weiguang platform, under pressure from public opinion and withdrew its sponsors, has to abandon him?"

Lu Chenyuan turned around and calmly stated a business fact:

"The gods who are enshrined on the table are priceless, and the glimmer of light will treat them like ancestors. But those who have fallen into the mire can be acquired at the lowest cost. As long as the fire burns big enough, their commercial valuation will be reduced to zero."

The butler's processor instantly caught up with this business logic:

"I understand. After his divine status is shattered, he will lose all commercial value and channels of expression, and lose equal bargaining power."

"That's right."

Lu Chenyuan walked to the bar and calmly issued instructions:

"Inform us through Xingwang's channels not to speak up for Weiguang. Instead, push Yuntu in its direction and solidify the 'plagiarism' accusations so that he can completely lose his foothold in this industry and not be able to utter a single word."

"Once Weiguang terminates his contract and he returns to the days when he has to carefully budget even for synthetic starch, send the security team to the Seventh Slum."

Lu Chenyuan downed the ice water in his glass in one gulp and casually placed the empty glass on the marble countertop.

"Take him back to the underground laboratory on the floating island of Eden."

"What our 'virtual companion' project lacks most right now is how to teach AI to have genuine compassion and humor. Since it can make millions of people at the bottom of society laugh and cry with just its own hands, it shows that its brain's ability to analyze the underlying emotional code far exceeds our current computing power."

Lu Chenyuan looked at the cover of "To Live" on the holographic projection:

"Provide him with the best life support equipment, connect him to a brain-computer interface, and cut off his unnecessary external communication channels. From now on, he will no longer need to be an online novelist to earn those subscription fees. He only needs to stay in the sterile cabin and write emotional logic specifically for our virtual companion model."

Lu Chenyuan turned his head, as if he could already see the Lu Group's vast future in the spiritual consumption market.

"YunTu Zhao Hongbo's vision is too narrow. All he wants is a monopoly on the online literature market, while what I want is to make those poor people willingly hand over the money they would have spent on nutrient solutions to Lu's electronic phantom."

"Go and do it."

Lu Chenyuan turned around, his voice flat:

"Geniuses who have lost their social identity are the most cost-effective research and development consumables."

……

Chen Jianjia sat at her desk, the holographic screen's blue light shining on her cool face, making the edges of her frameless glasses appear slightly white.

On the screen, the dense barrage of bullet comments and malicious terms scrolled wildly like cyber junk.

She sat quietly in the old wooden chair, habitually straightening her back.

It was as if she was facing not the chaotic internet, but students who had made mistakes in front of her.

But her tightly pursed lips betrayed the turmoil in her heart.

As she watched those who used "twenty years old, from the lower district, and disabled" to forcibly deduce that Yu Huashi must be a plagiarist, her brows furrowed deeper and deeper, her eyes revealing a profound sense of absurdity and intellectual disdain.

"absurd."

She picked up the clear water glass beside her, took a sip of the cooled boiled water, and then placed the glass on the table with a dull thud.

As a teacher with a good higher education, she may not understand the competition for online traffic in online literature, but she understands what real writing is and what the weight of the soul is.

Yuntu's online supporters said that Yu Huashi's live stream last night was like an emotionless typewriter doing "human input".

But Chen Jianjia was sitting at this desk last night, watching the live stream with her own eyes.

As she finished writing, a warm tear fell from off-screen and shattered on the mechanical keyboard. In that instant, she clearly felt a suffocating sadness.

Would a thief copying from an old book shed such a heavy tear because he was copying someone else's story?

The scene of her home visit to the Seventh Slum a few days ago involuntarily floated into Chen Jianjia's mind.

That dilapidated iron door that made a screeching sound when pushed open, that dark dwelling that never saw a ray of natural light and whose walls were seeping water.

And that young man, trapped in a rusty wheelchair, with no feeling in his legs, yet still keeping his back ramrod straight.

When he spoke to her, he was polite and courteous, without the timidity and fawning often seen in people from the lower class of the city when facing teachers from the middle class, nor did he have the resentment and bitterness that one might have for their fate.

He simply accepted his disability and poverty with equanimity, and in that dilapidated living environment, he tried his best to maintain the dignity of an older brother.

There was still a lingering echo.

The ten-year-old girl who took the money her brother earned and was so proud of his achievements that she wouldn't even take the free synthetic cookies.

In a life where even basic sustenance was a struggle, the young man, paralyzed in both legs, not only bore immense pressure but also used the story of "The Little Prince" to protect the last sanctuary in his sister's heart.

Chen Jianjia sighed softly, took off her glasses, and rubbed her temples.

Capital and envious netizens thought that they could label a genius as a thief by using an age paradox and a verdict.

Because in their narrow-minded view, the muddy streets of the city are only fit to breed maggots, not great souls.

But Chen Jianjia read all 120,000 words of "To Live".

She knew perfectly well that the young man who was so frugal that he even had to carefully budget his purchases of nutrient solutions was just like a sponge, absorbing all the suffering from the lowest levels of this cyber age, and then, in that corner where even breathing felt heavy, he typed out his pain line by line with his calloused hands.

Chen Jianjia did not speak out on the StarNet.