Simple Methods

After An Lian finished speaking, the living room fell into a long silence.

Fang Qi just sat on the sofa, staring at the several open files spread out on the coffee table.

He felt his mind going somewhat…

Blank.

The super AI behind the Chenxi system…

Was actually the same kind as Liguang?!

“It’s not humanoid, is it?”

Fang Qi’s voice was a little hoarse.

An Lian nodded gently.

So that was it…!

Fang Qi’s gaze trembled slightly.

No body, no synthetic skin, no face or voice of its own…

It was housed in the underground data center of Chenxi Headquarters, processing all the company’s information operations and internal communications day and night.

The same kind as his madwoman?

He instinctively turned his head to look at Liguang.

The silver-haired girl remained seated gracefully beside him, the file containing her core architecture diagram spread open on her lap.

She had been quickly flipping through these documents since earlier, streaks of scarlet data flashing at high frequency in her crimson pupils, casting a faint bloody glow across half her profile.

Her expression was focused. So focused that Fang Qi couldn’t tell what she was feeling at that moment.

But now, her phoenix eyes narrowed slightly.

On her earlobe, that little plastic star swayed gently with her page-turning movements.

“It’s not just monitoring Liguang.”

An Lian’s voice continued, her tone having steadied somewhat.

“Its core is connected to the company’s vast system architecture, with computational power far surpassing any standalone AI companion.”

“All of Chenxi Company’s data operations, information monitoring, and internal communications are handled by it.”

“It’s like…”

She said softly.

“An ever-present eye.”

Fang Qi slowly turned his head back to look at An Lian.

Suddenly, something struck him…

An Lian knew too much!

Not just the detailed files on the three cores, but also the identity of the super AI in the backend, the distribution of the cores around the world, and even the internal system architecture of the company!

But she was just a maintenance specialist!

This information far exceeded her level of clearance!

“Sister An Lian…”

He stared at her, slightly stunned.

“How… do you know all this?”

An Lian was silent for a moment.

Her fingers lightly traced the rim of her cup, moving along the ceramic edge in slow circles.

The only sound in the living room was the dripping of a loosely tightened kitchen faucet.

Drip.

Drip.

“Because Aunt Su and Uncle Fang…”

“They taught me some things back then.”

Fang Qi immediately focused.

The rustling of pages beside him had stopped at some point.

A slightly cool little hand gently covered the back of his hand.

He squeezed it firmly in return.

“I was still young then, not long after I joined the company.”

An Lian’s voice had softened, carrying a hint of nostalgia.

A faint smile touched the corners of her mouth.

“Every time Aunt Su came to the maintenance center for inspections, she’d always take a detour to my workstation and sit for a while.”

“Sometimes she’d bring snacks, other times she’d just come to chat.”

Her gaze drifted slightly as she looked into her water glass, her lips curling gently.

“Once, I was debugging the emotional core of an AI companion.”

“Aunt Su stood behind me, watching the data flow on the screen, and suddenly asked me…”

She lifted her head to look at Fang Qi:

“She said, ‘Xiao Lian’er, do you know the simplest way to stop a program that’s running?’”

An Lian’s tone shifted slightly.

She was mimicking someone else’s voice.

It sounded a bit like Lin Xiaoyou’s tone.

But gentler.

“I said, ‘The simplest way… isn’t it just to cut the power?’”

…

…

I said, ‘The simplest way… isn’t it just to cut the power?’

Aunt Su laughed, then leaned in close to my ear and said:

“Wrong. The simplest way isn’t to cut the power—it’s to input a command!”

“A command that can make it instantly stop all computations and return to its most initial state.”

At the time, I thought she was joking.

Isn’t cutting the power the most direct method?

What command?

But the expression on her face that day… though she was smiling, her eyes were very serious.

She also ruffled my hair and said I’d understand later. No rush. She was just talking casually.

So I didn’t think much of it.

Later, Uncle Fang also taught me a few things.

Not intentionally.

You probably know his personality.

Most of the time, he’s buried in the lab, always thinking about something. When you talk to him, he often takes a few seconds to snap out if it.

But sometimes, when I came to headquarters and encountered tricky anomalies, he’d notice, sit down, and help me look at the data.

For an hour or two at a time, no less.

He’d go through the core’s architectural logic from start to finish.

I asked him then why he was teaching me all this, since I was just a maintenance specialist.

He said, ‘Xiao Lian’er, remember this—no matter how complex a system is, it has a foundational protocol. A foundational protocol is often very simple. The sooner you get familiar with it, the sooner you can fix things from the root…’

Then he smiled and didn’t finish the sentence.

Later, Aunt Su always chatted with me a few words whenever she passed by.

The topics were all casual.

Weather, news, funny stories about the company.

But as we talked, she always found a way to steer the conversation back to the cores.

She said caring for a core is like caring for a person—you have to listen to its rhythm, sense when something’s wrong before it breaks, and build trust while it still trusts you.

As for Uncle Fang, he’d make annotations in the maintenance manuals, writing notes I couldn’t understand at the time.

Things like “This isn’t a bug; it’s a feature”…

Or “If things really go wrong, find the foundational command interface,” and stuff like that.

It happened many times.

But back then, I really didn’t notice anything.

They talked too casually.

It wasn’t formal training—just a few words in passing.

Or a few scribbles here and there.

They never gave me a proper lesson.

But those words, those annotations, those seemingly casual chats…

They took root in my mind.

Over the years, with maintenance work every day and constant contact with the cores, that knowledge just stayed there, subtly… shaping my understanding.

I never thought they were deliberately teaching me anything.

Until…

I became Liguang’s maintenance specialist.

When I took on the task of servicing these super cores, and accessed their files, I suddenly realized that I… seemed to know some things I shouldn’t.

…

…

After finishing the story, An Lian lifted her eyes.

Her usually cold gray eyes were now completely wet, tears glistening at the edges, ready to fall.

“But why did they trust me so much?”

Her voice trembled slightly, her fingers tightening around her cup.

“I’m not even their child. I’m just…”

She murmured.

Something in Fang Qi’s heart clenched.

“Sister An Lian…”

He said softly.

“You almost became my real sister.”

An Lian stared at him, lost.

A shimmering tear lingered at the corner of her eye, about to spill.

Then…

She took a deep breath!

He quickly wiped the corner of his eye with the back of his hand.

Straightening up again.

On that usually cool, aloof face, the expression grew heavy.

"Xiao Qi, they..."

His gaze turned sharp.

"Killed Uncle Fang and Aunt Su."

The living room fell into a terrifying silence.

The dripping sound from the kitchen faucet that hadn't been tightened continued.

Drip.

Drip.

Beside him, the rustling of Liguang flipping through documents had stopped completely at some point.

An Lian took another deep breath.

She pulled a blank sticky note from the manila envelope and picked up a pen from the coffee table.

Fang Qi recognized that pen.

From the cycle before last, An Lian had used that very pen.

Her fingers trembled slightly as she wrote, stroke by stroke:

[Xiao Qi, Aunt Su and Uncle Fang, a very, very long time ago...]

[Taught me a method.]

[A... method that was the simplest.]

Fang Qi stared blankly at those lines of writing.

Sister An Lian, you couldn’t possibly...

An Lian continued writing.

[At first, I wasn't sure either.]

[After all, when they taught me, I had just come of age.]

[And they were so casual about it.]

[I didn’t think they would teach me anything important.]

[It was all in my head, but I wasn't sure if it was real or if I had misremembered.]

[Or read too much into it.]

She kept writing, the tip of the pen gliding across the paper with a faint rustle.

The handwriting was elegant and neat, quite similar to his mother’s.

[It wasn’t until I became the maintenance specialist for these three super AI companions.]

[That I verified those fragments, one maintenance session after another.]

[Every single one, accurate without error.]

Her pen tip hovered above the paper.

It paused for a few seconds, then tremblingly wrote down...

[Xiao Qi, it seems I...]

[Can bring Chenxi Company to its knees.]

[And can also...]

[Easily destroy Liguang.]