Germination

Within a week,

Three more top-tier scientists from Xia Country, each a leader in their respective fields, announced their return home.

Their destination was singular—Hanqing Technologies.

The geese were beginning to return to their nest.

Meanwhile, another force was quietly shifting the landscape of the battle.

Hanqing Technologies announced the mass production of its GPU chips.

Xia Country’s largest telecommunications equipment provider declared that the core RF chips in its latest 5G base stations had achieved complete domestic substitution.

Among its supplier list appeared an unfamiliar name: "Beidou Xinchen."

No one knew that the founder of this company was among the first graduates of Yuanlong Vocational School of Technology.

In his hands was the seed funding Lu Chenyuan had invested in years ago.

Shortly after, the Mo Group announced a major breakthrough in its battery management system.

...

One after another, Xia Country’s tech companies declared they had found alternatives in critical fields.

Though there was still a gap in performance,

the fundamental problem of "having" versus "not having" had been solved.

A single spark had begun to ignite a prairie fire.

The seeds Lu Chenyuan had planted three years ago

were now breaking through the frozen soil in the coldest winter, taking root and sprouting.

Together, they formed a dam—

a sturdy dam capable of withstanding towering waves.

At the same moment,

inside the Artificial Intelligence Lab of Yuanlong Research Institute,

now renamed the core zone of the "Pangu Project,"

the air was thick with the odd mix of energy drinks and coffee.

Whiteboards were covered in dense formulas and lines of code.

Su Yang’s eyes were bloodshot like a rabbit’s.

The screen before him was a sea of red error messages.

"No... it still won’t work," he muttered hoarsely.

"This architecture is fundamentally flawed at the logical level. The computational cost is exponential."

"We might be going in the wrong direction," a researcher said despairingly.

The entire team had been working for a month straight, sleeping less than six hours a day.

Everyone was on the verge of collapse.

Lu Ruoxi stood motionless in front of a whiteboard, like a statue.

Her hair was disheveled, her face pale,

but her eyes still shone with clarity.

She was thinking, conducting a storm of mental calculations only she could comprehend.

What she was challenging were the foundational axioms of the field—

like trying to overturn Newton’s laws.

"Su Yang," she suddenly spoke.

Su Yang lifted his exhausted head.

"Come here."

He walked over.

Lu Ruoxi picked up a marker and drew a circle on the whiteboard.

"We’ve always been thinking about how to make machines imitate the human brain."

"Right."

"But why must we imitate?" Lu Ruoxi asked.

Su Yang froze.

Her voice was soft, but it struck like lightning, cutting through the fog in his mind.

She was right.

Why?

This had been an unspoken assumption,

yet no one had ever questioned whether it was correct.

"We don’t need to imitate."

Lu Ruoxi’s marker danced across the whiteboard.

She wrote out a series of entirely new, revolutionary mathematical models.

"We need to create a completely new paradigm of intelligence—one that belongs solely to machines."

"It won’t be based on imitation, but on pure mathematical logic."

"It won’t 'think like a human.'"

"It will think like a god."

Su Yang stared at the formulas.

They were unlike anything he had ever seen—simple, elegant, yet brimming with boundless power.

He understood. In an instant, everything clicked.

His blood surged with excitement.

"I see..." he said, voice trembling. "I see!"

He rushed back to his computer, fingers flying across the keyboard.

This time, there was no hesitation.

Code poured from his fingertips like a waterfall.

This wasn’t patching an old framework—

it was building an entirely new world with a new language.

The entire lab gathered around.

They watched the code scroll rapidly across the screen.

They studied the divine theory Lu Ruoxi had constructed on the whiteboard.

Everyone held their breath.

An hour later,

Su Yang stopped typing.

He pressed Enter.

"First compilation of the 'Pangu' model—beginning."

Every heart leaped into throats.

The progress bar appeared.

Unlike countless times before, it didn’t freeze at 5% before flooding the screen with red.

It moved.

10%...

30%...

70%...

100%.

Compilation successful.

A green prompt appeared at the center of the screen.

The world fell silent for three seconds.

Then, deafening cheers erupted.

People embraced, weeping with joy.

Su Yang collapsed into his chair, staring at the green text, and laughed.

Then the laughter turned to tears.

Lu Ruoxi leaned against the whiteboard, exhaling deeply.

Outside the window, the eastern sky had begun to lighten with the first hints of dawn.

A new day was coming.

She took out her phone and sent Lu Chenyuan a message.

Just one sentence.

"Brother, the sky is breaking."

...

Late at night, in the Cloud Peak Residences,

Lu Chenyuan’s apartment was lit only by a warm floor lamp.

He had just finished his last email.

Stepping out of the study, he saw Mo Qingli sitting on the carpet.

Before her was an unremarkable wooden box—one Lu Chenyuan had nearly forgotten, used to store miscellaneous items.

In Mo Qingli’s hand was a small, clumsily made pewter embroidery ornament, clearly an amateur’s failed attempt.

"What are you looking at?" Lu Chenyuan walked over and sat beside her.

Mo Qingli lifted her head. The lamplight, soft as moonlight, shimmered in her eyes, carrying a tender warmth.

"Your 'dark history,'" she said, holding up the ornament.

"I remember you gave me the best one. Why keep these failures?"

Lu Chenyuan’s gaze lingered on the ornament, his expression pausing briefly.

He didn’t answer, only took it from her hand, his fingers brushing the rough edges—traces of his past inexperience.

Mo Qingli’s attention returned to the box.

From it, she retrieved a carefully preserved slip of paper, now slightly yellowed but still bearing bold, strong handwriting:

"Reduce capacity by 15% at 37°C. Lifesaving use."

"And this... I thought I lost it when I moved in," she murmured.

"So you kept it."

This slip of paper was where their story truly began.

A silent test of wills, a crossing of fates.

Lu Chenyuan looked at the note, then at the ornament in his hand.

This was just like him.

Never saying much, only acting quietly.

From an ambiguous slip of paper,

to the cold moonlight on the western hill and two silhouettes merging into one,

to this awkward little pewter ornament.

The details no one else would notice—only she understood.

Mo Qingli looked at his silent profile and spoke softly, her voice gentle yet crystal clear:

"Chenyuan, it seems you’re always trying to tell me things in your own way."

"Telling me you’ll protect me. Telling me you care. Telling me you’re right here."

Lu Chenyuan’s heart was lightly stirred by her words.

He carefully placed the trinket and note back into the box, then closed the lid.

Those traces of the past no longer needed constant revisiting—they had long become the foundation shaping who they were now.

"It’s all in the past," he said.

"Yes, all in the past," Mo Qingli replied with a smile, leaning naturally against his shoulder.

The gesture had become second nature.

"The battles outside are hard enough," she murmured.

"But here, I feel safe."

"This home is our fortress."

Lu Chenyuan’s heart softened completely.

He turned and kissed her deeply.

The kiss carried endless tenderness and the quiet certainty of a storm settled.

Outside the window, the city lights of Jingzhou glittered like scattered stars.

Inside, their world belonged only to them.

In this turbulent world, they were each other’s unwavering anchor.