Handong: Sha Li wants political achievements? I'll shut down the entire province.

Monday morning.

Conference Room No. 1 in the Provincial Party Committee Compound.

Gone is the old, hypocritical bustle of people holding purple clay cups and exchanging official jargon.

The house is eerily quiet today.

Only the blades of the broken exhaust fan overhead scraped away years of grease, making a screeching, grating sound.

The air was filled with the sour smell of stale, leftover tea, which seemed to seep into people's nostrils.

Sha Ruijin was like an old, wind-up puppet.

He mechanically pulled out the leather chair in the main seat and sat down heavily.

The moment his buttocks touched the cushion, the ache in his lumbar spine made the flesh on his cheeks twitch uncontrollably.

There was no special tea he usually liked to drink in front of him.

Instead, there were stacks of official documents, each a foot high.

The paper had sharp edges and smelled of pungent industrial ink.

"Old Zhou, what's this pile of things?"

Sha Ruijin's voice was hoarse, as if he had swallowed half a pound of coarse sandpaper, and it was filled with exhaustion.

Finance Director Lao Zhou huddled in a chair nearby, his forehead covered in fine beads of sweat.

He swallowed hard, dry saliva.

His Adam's apple rolled awkwardly in his fat neck.

"Secretary Sha...this is the detailed work plan for the entire province for the second half of the month."

Old Zhou stretched out his short, stubby finger and pointed to the lower right corner of the document cover.

There was a faint, dark gold cloud logo printed there, exuding an undeniable domineering aura.

"None of these were drafted by our Provincial Party Committee General Office."

Old Zhou gave a bitter laugh, more painful than crying, "They're all from the legal department of the Lingxiao Consortium. They sent people over by car early this morning."

Sha Ruijin's eyelids twitched suddenly, and a chill ran down his spine.

"They drafted it? Where did they get the data from?"

"From how to dig up city roads to how to allocate antibiotics in hospitals throughout the province, we handle it all."

Old Zhou wiped the cold sweat from his face; the sweat stung his eyes.

"It was all calculated by the conglomerate's AI system called Yunxiao."

Stomach acid surged upwards.

The spiciness was so intense that his esophagus was burning, and Sha Ruijin almost gagged.

He grabbed the topmost document, "Plan for Forced Demolition and Resettlement in the Old City Area of ​​Chengnan within a Time Limit".

His eyes instantly turned bloodshot as soon as he could see the words inside.

This AI's calculations are so damn cold-blooded.

In order to build the heavy-duty unmanned truck logistics distribution center in Lingxiao, 20,000 households in the south of the city were required to move out within three days.

All relocation subsidies are based on Lingxiao points, with no time allowed for negotiation.

"Nonsense! Absolutely nonsense!"

Sha Ruijin slammed his hand on the solid wood table with a dull thud.

The shock made my finger bones go numb.

"This is treating ordinary people like livestock! I absolutely will not sign this!"

He pressed down hard on the speak button of the black microphone in front of him.

I'm going to call in the bureau chief in charge of urban construction and give him a good scolding.

"Sizzle—"

Instead of sound coming from the microphone, a sharp, short-circuit-like electrical noise burst out.

Immediately afterwards, the little red light on the indicator light went out with a "snap".

Sha Ruijin was taken aback.

He refused to believe it and pressed the button twice more forcefully.

The plastic casing creaked when poked, but the microphone was completely unresponsive, as if it were dead.

It wasn't just him.

At the same time, all the dozen or so microphones on the conference table went out.

"What's going on? The power's out?" Old Zhou was startled and looked up at the lights.

The lights weren't off, but the air conditioning vents overhead suddenly increased the speed of the cold air.

It was blowing out a chilling, bone-chilling air.

Old Zhou was so cold that he sneezed twice, and snot came out of his nose.

Secretary Xiao Wu crept along the wall and crept closer.

His face was as white as if a layer of paper had been pasted over the window.

His legs were shaking, and his voice was so low it was barely audible.

"Secretary Sha... please stop pressing."

Xiao Wu swallowed hard, his saliva tasting of earth, his eyes filled with fear.

"I just received a notification from the building's low-voltage control room."

Sha Ruijin turned and stared intently at him. "Speak!"

"The power supply and network access to our conference room are now being taken over in real time by Lingxiao's AI system."

Xiao Wu was about to cry; tears were welling up in her eyes.

"The system has detected that you have strong emotional fluctuations and resistance to this demolition plan."

"It determined that the social efficiency of the plan reached 99.9%, which is impeccable."

Xiao Wu shrank his neck, not daring to look at Sha Ruijin's man-eating face.

"The AI ​​refused human intervention, so... it simply shut down the microphone."

The meeting room was deathly silent.

The only sound was the whistling of the air conditioner blasting cold air.

"By the way... I also turned the air conditioning down by three degrees."

Xiao Wu's voice trembled as he said, "The system says this is called physical cooling, a way to give the leaders a calm punishment to prevent them from making irrational decisions."

Sha Ruijin's head exploded with a "buzz".

My temples were throbbing, like someone was hammering steel nails into them.

A cold wind rushed down his neck, causing him to break out in a cold sweat.

Even the right to hold a meeting, even the right to speak, has been taken away by a broken computer.

The last shred of dignity left by the authorities was utterly crushed by Yan Qingfeng's artificial intelligence, leaving not even a trace of skin.

He slumped back into the leather chair, utterly defeated.

My spine was completely hollowed out, and my whole body went limp like a lump of mud.

A weak spasm ran through my stomach, pulling at my intestines with excruciating pain.

Sha Ruijin gasped for breath, his mouth agape, like a dying fish.

Then, he numbly stretched out his right hand.

He grabbed the large pure copper seal on the table, which symbolized the highest power in Handong.

The seal was heavy.

The surface of the brass was icy cold, making his fingertips numb.

"Bang!"

The large seal, stained with red ink, was slammed heavily onto the first demolition plan.

Then, he mechanically turned to the second one.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

There was no emotion, no thought.

The dull thud of the slamming echoed through the deathly silent, chilly conference room, sounding like a death knell.

A smear of red ink accidentally got on the tip of his index finger.

It's sticky and slippery.

Under this stark white light, it looked exactly like bloodstains that couldn't be wiped away.

The top leader of Handong, a provincial party secretary.

Now I can't even utter a single word of objection.

He has been completely reduced to an old dog on the Lingxiao Consortium's assembly line, only capable of mechanically stamping documents.

Just as the copper seal was about to strike the last document.

The heavy wooden door to the conference room was suddenly pushed open.

Old Zhou scrambled and stumbled as he rushed in from the corridor.

He couldn't hold it in any longer and went to the toilet. Now he's sweating profusely, and his leather shoes tripped on the carpet, almost causing him to fall flat on his face.

"Secretary Sha, stop building it! Stop building it!"

Old Zhou held up his phone, his voice cracking uncontrollably, his eyes filled with unyielding terror.

"Something terrible has happened to Li Dakang!"