8:00 PM sharp.

The servers at the Tomato Novel platform felt the pain the very first second.

"What about the two server groups we added?"

"They're holding up... temporarily holding up." The voice from the operations team lacked confidence.

At 8:03 PM, "to live" officially went online.

The full text, totaling 120,000 characters, was released all at once, not serialized.

This operation itself did not conform to any of the rules of the web novel platform.

The editors stared at the backend reading data, their expressions complex.

"Five minutes... the number of concurrent readers has exceeded 800,000."

"This is a free literary novel."

"I know."

"800,000."

"I know."

No one spoke again.

— —

At the same time.

Song Yuanzhi sat in his study with his desk lamp on and his computer screen glowing.

He had two windows open in front of him. On the left was the page for "to live" on the Tomato Novel platform, and on the right was a blank document with the title already typed out: "Reading Annotations on <to live>."

In the blank document, he had already listed several categories in advance: rough language, logical contradictions, flat characters, and unrealistic plot points.

This was his habit.

He had been doing literary criticism for twenty years and had read more bad books than most people had read books in their entire lives.

He had seen even more books written by celebrities crossing over into literature, but the ones worth reading could be counted on one hand.

He clicked on the first chapter, leaned back, and picked up his teacup.

He laid his eyes on the first paragraph.

"When I was ten years younger than I am now, I got a job with nothing to do, collecting folk songs in the countryside —"

Song Yuanzhi's gaze paused.

He put down his teacup and leaned forward a bit.

This opening was cleaner than he had expected. There was no flowery language, no deliberate literary affectation; it was just someone talking.

He continued reading.

Ten minutes later, his right hand moved, shifting toward the blank document, ready to record the first annotation.

His fingers hovered above the keyboard.

He thought for a moment, then pulled his hand back.

It wasn't that he couldn't find any faults. It was that he wanted to read further before deciding.

Twenty minutes passed.

He had read the part where Fugui squandered his family fortune in his early years.

Song Yuanzhi frowned. It wasn't because it was written poorly, but because he faintly sensed a kind of restraint behind the narration. In writing about squandering the family fortune, there was no glorification of the thrill, no lavish details of the extravagance; just a few events and two or three lines of dialogue were enough to make a person's absurdity clear.

This writing style did not look like that of a novice.

His hand moved toward the annotation document again, then stopped.

He decided to read it all the way through first.

Forty minutes passed.

Fugui's father had died. His mother was sick. The family was ruined. He had been captured to serve as a soldier.

Song Yuanzhi tilted his teacup on the table and found that the tea had gone cold. He didn't go to refill it.

One hour passed.

Fugui had returned from the battlefield alive.

In this context, Song Yuanzhi read the weight behind the words "to live."

But he didn't write anything in the annotation document.

That document remained empty.

One and a half hours passed.

Youqing.

When Song Yuanzhi read the part where Youqing ran to school to donate pig blood, the corner of his mouth twitched. He almost laughed.

This child's image was so vivid. Lively, sensible, liked to run, and cared about the family's sheep.

He continued reading.

He took off his glasses.

He rubbed the space between his eyebrows with his thumb and index finger. He rubbed for a long time.

Then he put his glasses back on and continued reading.

Every person's death was not dramatic.

There were no sensational passages, no long passages of psychological description, and not even any loud wailing. Things just happened, and Fugui was still alive.

When Song Yuanzhi finished reading the last paragraph, the time was 11:20 PM.

The ending was Fugui and that old ox walking away into the twilight.

He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.

The tea on the table had gone completely cold, and the annotation document was still blank.

The four categories he had listed had not had a single one filled with content.

It wasn't that he didn't want to fill them in.

It was that he couldn't.

Song Yuanzhi sat in his study for a long time.

He remembered the sentence he had said during the day: "Let's see what kind of joke this piano champion can write."

Remembering this sentence now felt like slapping himself in the face.

He opened the Weibo editor.

The cursor blinked for a long time.

The sharp phrasing he had originally prepared—he couldn't type a single word.

In the early morning, Song Yuanzhi posted a Weibo.

It was only one sentence.

"I take back my words from last night. <to live> is not a joke."

After posting it, he put his phone on the table and went back to rubbing his eyebrows.

After this Weibo was posted, the internet was silent for about twenty seconds.

Then it exploded.

"Wait... did Song Yuanzhi say that? That Song Yuanzhi??"

"Did I read that wrong? Song Yuanzhi is admitting his mistake? He's been scolding books for twenty years; when has he ever admitted he was wrong??"

"It's over, even Song Yuanzhi says it's not a joke. What level is this book actually at?"

"I'm reading the third chapter, and honestly... I don't dare to keep flipping pages now."

The comment section was refreshing at a rate of several hundred per second.

The topic #Song Yuanzhi retracts his evaluation# surged onto the hot search list within fifteen minutes.

Twenty minutes later, Song Yuanzhi posted a second Weibo.

This one was a bit longer.

"Just finished reading the full text, let me say a few words. The language is minimalist, but every sentence hits the mark."

"Suffering is written about for the entire book, yet not a single part of it is selling misery. The narration is restrained to an uncomfortable degree. It's not that the author can't write emotion; it's that he intentionally refuses to cry for the reader."

"The cruelest part of the entire book is not any one person's death, but the fact that after they die, the story continues. I have done literary criticism for twenty years and have encountered many works that were praised to the heavens, only to find they were nothing special when taken apart. But <to live>."

He left a line blank here.

"This is not a cross-border hobby. This is a piece of serious literature that is mature to the point of being terrifying."

Send.

At 12:30 AM, this long review had been reposted over ten thousand times.

The literary circle was shaken overnight.

The "Old School Bookworm" official account that had posted a mocking article during the day quietly deleted it at 1:00 AM.

There was no statement or explanation; it was just deleted.

The book reviewer "Between the Lines" added a post to their Weibo: "I admit I was rash. Having finished the full text tonight, I need to take a moment to process it before saying anything else."

Another blogger who had mocked it as a "scheduled cross-border car crash" during the day directly changed their Weibo: "I've read it. I have no qualifications to evaluate it. I recommend everyone go read it."

At 2:00 AM, the executive editor of "Contemporary Literature" magazine posted a message on Weibo, the wording very formal.

"The editorial department has noticed the work <to live> and is currently contacting the author's side, hoping to obtain authorization for an excerpt reprint."

The comment section exploded again.

"<Contemporary Literature>??? That's a top-tier domestic pure literature journal??"

"A novel published for free on the Tomato Novel platform is being actively contacted by a top literary magazine for a reprint... what kind of script is this?"

"What is Lu Zhixian's background anyway?? He's top-tier in music, a champion at playing piano, and now that he's written a novel, even Song Yuanzhi is convinced??"

2:15 AM.

Lu Zhixian's living room.

He sat on the sofa, with a bowl of half-eaten instant noodles on the coffee table in front of him.

His phone screen was glowing; he had just finished reading Song Yuanzhi's two Weibo posts.

After reading them, he put his chopsticks back into the instant noodles and continued eating.

His expression didn't change.

It wasn't that he was pretending to be calm.

He had read <to live> in his previous life.

He knew how much weight this book carried. That Song Yuanzhi could admit it showed that this person had a bottom line and hadn't spoken against his conscience for the sake of his reputation.

His phone buzzed.

It was a message from Old Zhao.

"Did you see Song Yuanzhi's Weibo?"

"I saw it."

"And the one about <Contemporary Literature>."

"I saw it."

"Lu Zhixian."

"Hm?"

"Just how much more stuff are you hiding?"

Lu Zhixian held the instant noodles, thought for a moment, and smiled slightly.

"Not much, it mainly depends on when I remember it."

Old Zhao didn't reply.

Lu Zhixian could imagine his expression right now.

It was probably that "giving up on treatment" look again.

Just as he was preparing to put down his phone to finish the instant noodles, a message from Lin Shiya popped up.

"You're still awake?"

"I'm eating instant noodles."

"I just finished reading it."

Lu Zhixian looked at these words, and his chewing slowed down.

"How was it?"

Lin Shiya's reply didn't come through for nearly a minute.

"My eyes are swollen."

A few seconds later.

"That part with Youqing was too much."

Lu Zhixian didn't reply.

"You aren't allowed to laugh."

"I didn't laugh."

"You are definitely laughing."

Lu Zhixian was indeed laughing.

But this time, it wasn't because he thought it was funny. It was because someone had spent an entire night reading this book, and then at 2:00 AM, told him that she had cried.

This mattered more to him than Song Yuanzhi's long review or the reprint invitation from <Contemporary Literature>.

At 3:00 AM, he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

The system panel was still glowing.

His popularity points were still rising.

He didn't pay them any mind.

Today was enough.

The next day at 9:00 AM, Lu Zhixian was woken up by the notification sound of an email on his phone.

He squinted his eyes and fumbled for his phone for a long time before opening his inbox.

There was a new email at the top of his inbox.

The sender was signed as — The Huawen Literary Award Review Committee Office.

He rubbed his eyes to confirm he hadn't read it wrong.

The title was only one line: "Regarding the confirmation of the official recommendation qualification for <to live>."