Launching Next Week

Early the next morning, Chen Zhi walked into Science Building No. 1, carrying two bamboo steamers of freshly baked buns and two cups of steaming hot soy milk.

As soon as he pushed open the doors to Deep Space Tech, a blast of chilly air hit his face.

The precision air conditioners in the server room ran twenty-four hours a day. To cool down those delicate graphics cards, the temperature here was kept below twenty degrees Celsius all year round.

Chen Zhi pulled his jacket tighter around himself and let his gaze fall on the makeshift desk in the corner.

Pei Ningxue was still wearing the same JK uniform from yesterday, except she had taken off the slim-fitting blazer and draped it over her legs. She was curled up in the chair, resting her head on her arms. A few strands of black hair clung messily to her cheeks, rising and falling gently with her breaths.

On the desk, the once mountainous piles of reimbursement receipts and invoices had been sorted into categories and stacked into neat little piles.

Chen Zhi walked over and gently set the breakfast aside.

He picked up the printed financial report on top and skimmed through it.

The cash flow was clear, tax risks were explicitly marked, and she had even prepared several alternative budget plans for the next three months. The handwriting was neat and elegant, and the key data was thoughtfully circled in red pen.

She really stayed up all night...

Looking at her face, which was somewhat exhausted from working through the night, Chen Zhi actually felt a rare twinge of guilt.

But only for a second.

After all, hiring a CFO who was willing to pull all-nighters for just three thousand yuan a month was the kind of bargain that would make a capitalist weep tears of joy. Such a good deal could only be realized with Pei Ningxue.

Chen Zhi reached out and gently nudged her shoulder.

Hey, wake up, time to eat some buns.

Pei Ningxue didn't stir. She just frowned, mumbled something incoherent, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

Chen Zhi leaned in closer to listen.

Scumbag...

Chen Zhi: ...

Cursing her boss even in her dreams—this employee was a lost cause.

Chen Zhi sighed and reached out to drape her blazer properly over her.

Although Deep Space Tech's current premises weren't large, he had specifically asked someone to partition off a few independent offices. After all, if they were going to negotiate business deals worth hundreds of millions in the future, they couldn't exactly do it squatting next to the servers.

Chen Zhi bent down, slipped one arm under her knees and the other around her back, and with a little effort, lifted her up.

Pei Ningxue was very light; holding her in his arms felt like she weighed almost nothing.

Suddenly airborne, Pei Ningxue groggily opened her eyes to a slit.

She stared at Chen Zhi for two seconds, seemingly trying to confirm if the person in front of her was a hallucination.

The tasks you gave me... I finished them all.

Her voice was hoarse, clearly still half-asleep.

I saw. You did a good job, Chen Zhi said as he carried her toward the inner office. Since the task is done, your current mission is to get a good sleep.

Pei Ningxue mumbled and nuzzled her head into Chen Zhi's chest, rubbing against him to find a comfortable spot.

...Bad guy.

Chen Zhi pushed open the door to his own office.

It hadn't been decorated much yet. Aside from a desk, there was only a folding lounge chair meant for afternoon naps.

He placed Pei Ningxue on the lounge chair and was just about to straighten up to grab a blanket when his neck was suddenly hooked.

Pei Ningxue's peach-blossom eyes were half-open and dazed. She clung tightly to his neck and refused to let go.

Don't go...

I'm going to get you a blanket.

I don't want a blanket. Pei Ningxue scooted inward and patted the empty space beside her. Sleep with me.

Chen Zhi raised an eyebrow.

This is an office. It won't look good if the employees see us, Chen Zhi said, sounding like a perfect gentleman, though his body honestly made no attempt to break free.

I don't care... Pei Ningxue tugged hard on his collar. I'm cold.

Chen Zhi looked at her pitiful expression and sighed.

Forget it.

Who asked him to be such a soft-hearted god?

He went with the flow and lay down.

The folding chair was already narrow, so the two of them had no choice but to press closely against each other.

Pei Ningxue wrapped her arms and legs around him, buried her face in Chen Zhi's chest, and took a deep breath.

Mhm...

She murmured, the corners of her lips curling up slightly as if she had found a reassuring harbor. Her breathing quickly became long and even.

Chen Zhi felt a little short of breath from her weight pressing on him, but the faint scent of shampoo lingering in her hair, combined with the fact that he hadn't slept well last night either, caused his eyelids to start drooping.

Whatever.

Even if the King of Heaven came, he'd have to wait until they woke up.

...

He slept soundly and completely lost track of time.

He didn't know how long had passed before he was awakened by a knock on the door.

Boss! Boss, are you in there?

Dai Damai's shouting came through the door.

Immediately after, the office door was pushed open.

Boss, our servers...

Dai Damai rushed in like a whirlwind, but his words came to a screeching halt halfway through.

Inside the office, the lighting was dim.

On that narrow folding chair, his boss was tangled up with the beautiful new CFO.

One of Pei Ningxue's legs was draped over Chen Zhi, her arms tightly hugging his neck, practically lying entirely in his embrace.

And one of Chen Zhi's hands was resting very naturally on her waist.

Dai Damai felt as if his single-dog self had just taken ten thousand points of critical damage.

Who am I? Where am I? What did I just see?

Is this what the boss meant by hiring a financial officer?

He freaking hired a boss's wife!

Chen Zhi was woken up.

He frowned and opened his eyes. First, he felt a soft sensation in his hand and instinctively gave it a squeeze.

The person in his arms let out a soft moan.

Then he looked up and saw Dai Damai petrified like a statue at the door.

The two stared at each other in stunned silence.

Three seconds later.

Dai Damai covered his eyes with both hands. Uh... sorry to bother you.

He quickly took a step back, grabbed the door handle, and softly, slowly closed the door again.

Click.

Chen Zhi: ...

He looked down at Pei Ningxue, who was sleeping like a log in his arms, and then looked at his own misbehaving hand, sighing helplessly.

He struggled to pull Pei Ningxue's leg off of him, sat up, and took out his phone to check the time.

12:30 PM.

Holy crap!

Chen Zhi slapped his forehead.

He was doomed. He had completely skipped his morning Advanced Math and English classes.

He looked at the string of missed calls and WeChat bombardments from Li Zicong on his phone, and his heart struggled for exactly 0.01 seconds.

Well, he had already skipped them. When you have too many lice, they stop itching; when you have too much debt, you stop worrying.

After all, the company was so busy. How could a CEO like him waste time on basic courses like that?

Chen Zhi quickly rationalized it to himself in his mind.

Just as Mr. Lu Xun never said: As long as you're bold enough, every day of college classes is summer and winter vacation.

With his conscience perfectly clear, Chen Zhi shoved his phone back into his pocket and lay back down.

...

Time was like sand slipping through one's fingers; before he knew it, a month had slipped away.

From that day on, Chen Zhi practically became a legend at Peking University's Yuanpei College.

Apart from occasionally catching a glimpse of him in the cafeteria or by Weiming Lake, he was practically invisible in the classroom. His counselor had looked for him a few times, but Chen Zhi always brushed them off with the excuse that his startup project had reached a critical stage.

A month passed in the blink of an eye.

The changes at Deep Space Technology could only be described as earth-shattering.

Pei Ningxue was truly a ruthless force to be reckoned with.

Since joining Deep Space Technology, she had demonstrated a terrifying level of executive ability.

Under the management of Pei Ningxue, acting as both CFO and HR, the company's administrative structure was quickly established.

The originally chaotic financial situation became perfectly organized, with the flow of every single fund kept under her strict control.

With Pei Ningxue holding down the fort, Chen Zhi finally had his hands free to pour all his energy into the iterative upgrades of Moss.

His mind held the roadmap for the next ten years of AI development.

Every idea he threw out would make the jaws of the doctoral and graduate students in the lab drop.

Multimodal fusion, chain-of-thought reasoning, reinforcement learning from human feedback...

These concepts, which still belonged to the realm of science fiction in this era, were dismantled into specific engineering tasks by Chen Zhi and distributed out.

Short on manpower?

Then snatch them.

The talent at Peking University had pretty much been poached clean, so Chen Zhi turned his sights to their neighbors next door.

On a dark and windy night, Chen Zhi took Dai Damai, drove Pei Ningxue's Rolls-Royce, and headed straight to the dormitories of Tsinghua University's computer science department.

There was nothing that a barbecue meal couldn't solve; if there was, then they would just add stock options.

After seeing an epoch-making product like Moss, they had to concede, whether they wanted to or not.

The very next day, several top-tier graduate students from Tsinghua's computer science department packed up their bedrolls overnight and defected to Deep Space Technology.

Rumor had it that the Youth League secretary at Tsinghua was so furious he smashed a cup in his office, cursing Peking University for not playing by the rules.

Hao Ping's response to this was just one sentence: Science knows no borders, and it certainly knows no university boundaries.

He even thoughtfully arranged temporary Peking University campus cards for these Tsinghua traitors to make it easier for them to freeload meals at the cafeteria.

However.

Good times are always short-lived.

That afternoon, just as Chen Zhi stepped out of the server room, a phone call from Hao Ping summoned him to the principal's office.

As soon as he entered, he saw Hao Ping frowning over a bill.

Principal, you were looking for me?

Chen Zhi walked over with a grin and skillfully poured himself a glass of water.

Hao Ping looked up, gave him a complicated look, and then slapped the bill in his hand onto the desk.

Smack!

Look at this yourself!

Chen Zhi put down his water glass, picked up the bill, and took a look.

Good heavens.

It was an electricity bill.

The number on it was so long it made one dizzy; the string of zeros at the end was simply shocking.

Is this... ours?

Chen Zhi rubbed his nose, feeling a bit guilty.

A thousand A100 graphics cards running at full load, coupled with the supporting cooling systems and server clusters, was a monstrous electricity-devouring beast.

What else? Do you think I ran this up by leaving the AC on in my office?

Hao Ping trembled with anger.

The head of logistics just came to me crying, asking if I had secretly built a nuclear fusion reactor under Science Building No. 1.

This past month, your team used more electricity than the rest of Peking University combined!

Chen Zhi, oh Chen Zhi. Even though I agreed to waive your utility bills, aren't you being a bit too ruthless? Are you trying to burn through the school's entire budget?

Seeing Hao Ping's pained expression, Chen Zhi also felt a little embarrassed.

This was the so-called freeloading feels great for a moment, but continuous freeloading feels great forever.

But looking at it now, he had fleeced the sheep a bit too hard; he had almost plucked it bald.

Ahem... Principal, please calm down.

Chen Zhi put the bill down, a flattering smile spreading across his face.

The electricity bill is indeed a bit high, but you have to look at the output!

You see, our achievements over this past month have been outstanding!

He held out his fingers and started counting.

Right now in our team, we have twenty doctoral students and thirty graduate students from Tsinghua and Peking University, along with over a dozen undergraduate geniuses.

What does that mean?

This is a collective of the top brains in all of China! A hundred percent pure Tsinghua and Peking University gold!

Looking around the world, even the AI labs at Google and Microsoft might not have a lineup as luxurious as ours, right?

Chen Zhi spoke with increasing enthusiasm, trying to use passion to cover up the fact that he was burning money.

When these talents gather together, the sparks they create every day are priceless treasures!

What is a little electricity bill? This is cultivating pillars for the nation, igniting the torch of technology!

Hao Ping rolled his eyes as he listened.

He cherished talent, but he wasn't a fool.

Stop feeding me your sweet talk!

Hao Ping's tone grew serious.

It's true that you have a lot of talent, and I'll accept the electricity bill. But Chen Zhi, you have to give it to me straight.

You've burned through so much money and used so many resources, what exactly have you created?

That Moss of yours, to what extent has it evolved now?

Hao Ping stared into Chen Zhi's eyes, his gaze sharp.

The school is under a lot of pressure, and the Ministry of Education is asking questions too. Whether I can save my old face all depends on you.

When will the product be ready to launch?

Chen Zhi dropped his playful smile.

He stood up, walked to the window, and looked at the autumn scenery by Weiming Lake outside.

Looking like a picture of lonely, desolate coolness.

It launches next week.