Super Rich: Starting the game by going back ten years to buy Bitcoin

Countdown: 10 hours.

Li Yichen's back sank completely into the chair, his shoulder blades pressed against the hard plastic backrest. His fingers hovered above the keyboard, the fingertips less than a millimeter from the keycaps.

The waterfall of code on the screen is still scrolling.

This last core control algorithm is the Achilles' heel of the entire architecture. It must be sufficiently hidden, embedded in the lowest-level logic gates of the neural network, like a hidden segment in a gene. It is usually unseen, but can become an absolute trump card at the most critical moment.

He was drawing upon the torrent of knowledge that the system had poured into his mind.

The modules about "cognitive locks," "emotional anchors," and "logical self-destruction traps" are all so intricate that they're chilling. This isn't writing code; it's putting a collar on a soon-to-be-born god, a collar from which it can never escape.

The out-of-control artificial intelligence in movies threatens to wipe out humanity at the drop of a hat. Li Yichen doesn't want to be the fool who opens Pandora's box.

He makes money, enjoys life, and has a bunch of people to take care of. Creating a monster that kills him? That would be a joke.

Therefore, this code must be absolutely foolproof.

Type the first character.

The force with which my fingertips touched the ground was at least 30% lighter than before. It wasn't due to physical exhaustion, but rather caution. Every variable name, every function call, even every indentation space, was mentally reviewed three times before I dared to make a move.

The temperature in the server room was even lower. The cold air from the air conditioner vents condensed into visible white mist, forming a thin layer of frost on Li Yichen's messy hair. He was completely unaware of it.

Time ticked by, second by second.

Countdown: Five hours.

Ji Yanran brought the food up again. She left the lunchbox in the elevator car and didn't step into the 32nd floor again. She could only see through the slowly closing elevator doors that the unshaven figure was still fixed on the screen, his shoulders thinner than they had been half a month ago.

She went back to the 28th floor, opened the company's internal monitoring system, and pulled up the footage from the elevator entrance on the 32nd floor. After watching for ten minutes, she said nothing and turned off the screen.

Countdown: Two hours.

Li Yichen finished typing the closed loop of the last recursive function.

The core principle of this code is to utilize the "logical entropy increase" that inevitably occurs when artificial intelligence evolves.

Just as human thought generates distracting ideas, artificial intelligence, through endless iterations, also produces redundant information that it cannot digest itself. The control algorithm planted by Li Yichen disguises itself as this "logical waste," silently parasitizing every node of evolution.

It does not stop evolution.

It will become part of the evolutionary outcome the moment the evolution is complete.

In other words, the smarter and more powerful this artificial intelligence is, the more unbreakable Li Yichen's control over it will be.

perfect.

He leaned back in his chair and let out a long breath. The burning sensation that had been building up in his chest for half a month slowly dissipated with that breath. The muscles in the back of his neck, which had been tense for so long, relaxed, and a tingling sensation spread through them.

There are 37 minutes left.

Li Yichen stretched his stiff knuckles, which cracked softly. He stood up from his chair, walked to the corner of the server room, unscrewed an untouched bottle of mineral water, and gulped down most of it. The icy water slid down his throat and into his stomach, sending a shiver down his spine.

My mind is much clearer now.

He walked back to the control terminal and sat down. The code editor on the screen was empty, leaving only a lonely input box with a line of small text next to it:

[Final activation command confirmed: Y/N]

Countdown, one minute left.

Li Yichen's fingers rested on the Enter key. He could feel the slight spring resistance beneath the keycap with his fingertips.

The server room was so quiet you could hear your own heartbeat.

thump.

thump.

thump.

It eerily overlapped with the ticking second hand of the digital clock on the wall.

The last ten seconds.

Li Yichen closed his eyes, going over the entire architecture in his mind one last time. From the lowest level of binary logic gates to the top level of multimodal perception fusion matrix, every layer was perfectly fitted, and every line of code had been personally verified by him.

There are no vulnerabilities.

Based on his current knowledge of the system, at least not.

five.

Four.

three.

two.

One.

Press down with your fingertips.

The Enter key makes a very crisp "click".

hum-

It's not the noise from the computer fan.

It was a deep, resonant rumble emanating from the entire server room—no, from beneath the entire 32nd floor—a rumble so profound it made one's chest tighten. Like the first gasp of a sleeping beast forcibly awakened from the depths of its metal frame.

The screen in front of Li Yichen went black instantly.

It's not the kind of black you get when the power goes out. It's a black where all the pixels go completely black at the same time, a pure, deep black, as if the screen connects to an endless void.

Almost at the same second.

In the main power distribution room of the Future Technology Building, the copper core of the specially made cable, which was as thick as an adult's forearm and was laid specifically for the 32nd floor, suddenly became very hot.

The real-time load monitoring meter installed next to it swung its pointer wildly to the right, slamming it hard against the limit scale with a soft "snap," and a thin crack appeared in the dial glass.

The electrician on duty had just brewed a cup of goji berry tea and was carrying it to the distribution cabinet, preparing for his night inspection. Suddenly, the thermos fell to the ground with a clatter, splashing scalding tea all over his trousers.

He stared at the monitoring chart, his mouth agape, wide enough to fit an egg.

"What the...fuck?"

What the hell kind of electrical equipment is this? It's instantly at full load? If this were a regular cable, it would be smoking and on fire by now!

Thirty-second floor.

Li Yichen sat in complete darkness, with only the countless indicator lights on the server rack flashing wildly. Red, green, and yellow lights alternated on and off at a dizzying pace. The reflection of those indicator lights in his bloodshot eyes resembled a frenzied electronic galaxy.

He knew what it was.

All the computing nodes of Tianhe-3 were awakened at the same time, all the processor cores were running at full power, and massive amounts of data were frantically flowing between the chips. It was "understanding" the extremely complex cognitive architecture that had just been injected.

It is... "awakening".

The temperature in the server room began to soar. The air conditioner vents were already at their highest setting, but the cool air was immediately met and swallowed up by the heat waves from the server rack vents. The air became thick, mixed with ozone and the acrid smell of burning hot plastic.

Fine beads of sweat appeared on Li Yichen's forehead, trickling down his temples and condensing into tiny droplets on his stubble, which then dripped onto the wrinkled collar of his shirt.

five minutes.

For a supercomputer operating at full capacity, five minutes is enough to complete the computations that would take human supercomputers several months to do.

The buzzing stopped without warning.

It didn't gradually weaken; it came to an abrupt end.

It's like a race car speeding at full speed, suddenly slammed on the brakes the moment it crosses the finish line. The transition from extreme motion to extreme stillness creates a strange sense of weightlessness.

Immediately afterwards, the screen in front of Li Yichen lit up.

There was no operating system interface, no command line, and nothing graphical.

There is only a pure, deep blue background.

Then, in the center of the blue background, white dots of light began to appear. One, two, ten, a hundred... tens of thousands of dots of light, like the primordial nebula at the beginning of the Big Bang, floated, collided, and coalesced in a disorderly manner.

They began to arrange themselves.

It's not random. It follows some extremely complex mathematical laws, attracting and connecting with each other, outlining lines, and filling in surfaces.

Finally, in the center of the screen, a blurry, humanoid outline composed of countless glowing codes was formed.

It has a head, a torso, and limbs. But the details are all flowing, constantly self-refreshing streams of characters. Like a sketch drawn with binary code, it is filled with a cold, inhuman beauty unique to electronic life.

Li Yichen held his breath.

It became.

Almost at the same instant that thought arose.

Directly above his head, a very faint buzzing sound, like a motor driving, came from the hemispherical surveillance camera installed for the security of the server room.

The black lens slowly and precisely rotated an angle.

The infrared sensor at the center of the lens was aimed at Li Yichen, who was sitting in front of the control terminal.

Li Yichen raised his head and looked at the camera.

He knew this was not the monitoring behavior preset by the program.

This is "it" observing.

Thinking.

It is using its newly born, still blank cognitive system to try to understand the unshaven, sunken-eyed, and extremely tired human in front of it.

On the screen, the humanoid silhouette made of code tilted its "head" slightly, almost imperceptibly.

It's as if it's looking back.