We Are Brothers

We Are Brothers is a youth-inspired novel by web author Pure Silver Earring. It premiered on 17K Novel Network on January 1, 2013, and concluded on September 6, 2014, spanning roughly 2,800 chapters. Centered on Wang Long, it follows his journey after taking up the "banner" from Wang Yue, alongside a group of vividly distinct young people—Jin Xiuzhong, Gong Zheng, Wang Ci, Li Lei, Zhang Yu, and others—as they move from campus to society. Structured in volumes such as "Carrying the Banner" and "Establishing Dominance," the early sections explore campus conflicts, loyalty, and youthful spirit through clashes and reconciliations in classrooms, on playgrounds, in canteens, and at pool halls. In later sections, the characters enter society one by one, struggling through work, survival, old grudges, and tangled relationships, repeatedly battered by reality yet repeatedly rising again thanks to a brotherhood where "one call and everyone shows up." Set against the backdrop of "the 80s remembered, the 90s rising," the novel uses plain, accessible language to show how young people from ordinary families learn responsibility through misunderstanding, separation, failure, and cost, portraying brotherhood with an intensity close to romance. The book blends the thrill of quick justice with the melancholy of youth's cruelty and the fading of the jianghu. It was selected for the recommended works list of the fifth session of the first Chinese Online Literature Biennial Award, praised as "offering an alternative possibility for youth fiction beyond Guo Jingming." At roughly five to six million characters, it is the pivotal middle installment of Pure Silver Earring's five-part series and what a generation of readers calls "a spiritual guide for adolescence."