Qiming Chapter 66

Chapter 66

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"AI chips?"

Gu Yunfeng nodded. "But I don't know what's in his head."

"Wait, slow down..." Ying Xizi leaned back on the sofa, covering her face, not wanting to say anything.

"Actually, none of us really understand this cutting-edge technology." He sighed. "The best way is to go directly to your father."

"I've tried several times, but he won't talk." She held her head with her hands and curled up on the sofa with her legs. Gu Yunfeng saw her gloomy face and her relatively short skirt, so he sat beside her and covered her legs with a piece of clothing.

"Maybe try looking for his work documents?"

"You want me to steal?"

"Well... it wouldn't be stealing... exactly..." he replied guiltily, thinking it wasn't really stealing, it was an investigative operation to uncover the truth.

It was clearly assisting an investigation.

As soon as he finished speaking, Ying Xizi glared at him with wide eyes. "No! Way!"

She quickly recalled the blind date she was forced into a few days ago and got even angrier. "Last time, you told me to talk to him about some doctor I fancied, and it was a disaster for me!"

A disaster? He thought back on the whole thing, it wasn't that disastrous, just a... blind date?

"Speaking of which, I had forgotten about it. How was the blind date? Were you satisfied with that guy?" His concerned look reignited Ying Xizi's anger, and despite his repeated pleas not to hit his left hand, she hit him all over with a pillow.

Luckily, she didn't hit his injured left hand.

"So you sent me a recording that day..." He checked his chat history with Ying Xizi and found the last message was an encrypted recording.

"You didn't see it?" Ying Xizi raised her voice, barely containing her anger. "I endured chatting with that underage guy for a long time for that information!"

"Sorry about that." He opened the recording. "Send me the password."

"Chengyue's birthday."

"Oh, 0206." He entered the numbers and quickly tried to calm the angry girl. "Don't be mad, think of something happy."

He quickly listened to the recording amidst her anger and gave her a thumbs-up, saying that she was truly a remarkable friend, Xu Chengyue was truly blessed by fortune accumulated from several past lifetimes to have such a close friend like her.

"So now we have our first suspect in Chengyue's case, Lu Yong." He said jokingly. At this moment, he and Ying Xizi were both convinced that Xu Chengyue's fall last year was not an accident. When he was at death's door, he was handed over to Ying Han, and during the surgery, someone secretly placed an unknown object in his severely injured brain, like a ticking time bomb.

"I'm afraid there's a second suspect too." Ying Xizi sighed deeply, hugging the pillow and feeling very down. She couldn't figure out what her father was thinking when he performed that surgery. Was it to save a life? Driven by profit? Political connections?

If Ying Han really knew something, if he was completely innocent, why hadn't he told her anything from start to finish? Why had he altered Xu Chengyue's medical report?

"You don't trust him?" Gu Yunfeng asked Ying Xizi.

"Do you?"

"No." Gu Yunfeng shook his head. "But don't worry, he definitely isn't the mastermind."

Hearing this false comfort, Ying Xizi glared at him angrily again.

They didn't know what the foreign object in Xu Chengyue's brain was at the moment, only that some people were desperately trying to cover it up. To hide the rotten roots of a tree under the sunlight, they could disregard laws, take lives, and trample the rules of the world.

"You're really not interested in that blind date?"

Ying Xizi shook her head vigorously. "Not at all."

"What company does he work for? What does he do?"

"He's an IT engineer at Zhiyin Technology, why are you asking?" Gu Yunfeng's sudden inquiry surprised her, but seeing how serious he looked, it didn't seem like he was teasing her.

"Why do all the recent cases seem to be connected to this company..." He warily looked up at the ceiling, then bent down and walked along the skirting board around the room.

For now, the ward seemed safe.

If his guess was correct and the thing in Xu Chengyue's brain was indeed an AI chip, what was its purpose?

To control thoughts? To reshape memories?

If it reshaped memories, it wouldn't be hard to understand why Xu Chengyue insisted he had drunk too much and fell from the laboratory roof on a windy night.

On the bright side, placing this unknown object in his brain might have been the only way for him to survive the brain death crisis. But then, why did the Ruihe Hospital conceal its existence, what was their motive?

He couldn't stop seeing Xu Chengyue's dim eyes under the lights last night, helpless yet hopeful as he asked, "What if I'm not a normal person?"

Even if he wasn't normal, what difference would it make? He would still eat and sleep as usual, study what he liked, and follow him to crime scenes when there was a case. Besides, what even defines a normal person? No one could give an exact definition, right?

Gu Yunfeng frowned subconsciously, closed the window, and drew the curtains. It wasn't a sunny day, the sky was low, and the clouds were heavy. It might rain soon.

Turning around, he saw Ying Xizi blinking at a reflective glass. He couldn't help but laugh and then asked her, "What is the relationship between Lu Yong, the lab at Chengyue's school, and Zhiyin Technology?"

"Zhiyin Technology funds them, they're a major benefactor." Ying Xizi said confidently. "Everyone at the school knows that."

"So now, Zhiyin Technology is the largest investor in Nanpu University's AI lab. Zhiyin Biotech is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zhiyin Technology, and Zhiyin Biotech is the largest shareholder in Ruihe Hospital, owning over 50%. After Chengyue's fall, his surgery was done at Ruihe Hospital."

He grabbed a marker and drew a circle on the back of a photocopied medical record, circling Zhiyin Technology, currently the highest-valued tech company in the country. He pointed left to Zhiyin Biotech and right to the AI laboratory, with a dashed line from Zhiyin Biotech to Ruihe Hospital, finally linking Xu Chengyue back to Ruihe Hospital.

"This forms a closed circle." He nodded, biting his pen, satisfied with the diagram he had drawn.

"And there's an undeniable fact," Ying Xizi sighed. "Zhiyin Technology is vigorously developing AI chips right now."

Indeed, recent tech news had been dominated by them.

"Maybe they're planning to take over the Earth and head to the universe?" Gu Yunfeng mocked. "It's already odd that they split their original department into a separate company that went public. Could there be shady dealings behind this?"

"There's definitely something fishy, my instincts are telling me." Ying Xizi said through gritted teeth. Although she didn't understand the intricacies of these tech company operations, when all the strange events pointed in the same direction and converged into the same stream, there had to be a powerful, radiant force at the centre of it all.

It was as if a mirror separated the magnetic field, they could only see their own world, ignoring the reality on the other side of the mirror.

"To solve this, should we start with you?" Gu Yunfeng looked at her expectantly.

"Me? Or my father?"

"Your father. You need to play the family card, get him talking, and then look for some documents."

"I can't do it, and I don't even know what information you need." She rejected him decisively. After the last incident, she decided to refuse all of Gu Yunfeng's orders, resolutely disobeying and even going against him.

"However, I do have a suggestion." She smiled brightly, looking at him mischievously. "Recently, my dad has been most worried about my marriage prospects. I don't know why he's suddenly obsessed with it."

"Oh... what do you want to do?"

"You should come to my house for dinner."

Seeing Gu Yunfeng cough violently and almost fall off the hospital bed, she quickly explained, "Aiya, it doesn't matter what role you play at dinner. You want to steal something, right? I'll create the opportunity for you to sneak into my house."

"Are you really his daughter?" It took him half a minute to calm down, still in disbelief.

"Yes." She replied, then lowered her head, laughing self-mockingly. After a few seconds, she lifted her head and resolutely told him, "He always taught me to be honest and upright, I hope he is the same."

—————

Xu Chengyue's eyelids had been twitching all day.

At night, he slept with Gu Yunfeng, clinging to his arm. These days, he slept very lightly, finding it hard to fall asleep at night and waking up early in the morning. When he opened his eyes, it was barely light outside, and the time showed it wasn't even six o'clock.

He suddenly craved rice noodles and went out early to find a breakfast place selling soup noodles. After hesitating for a long time, he ordered a bowl of hot and sour noodles without chilli.

It could probably only be called sour noodles.

Recently, his biological clock had been increasingly off. Even more off were his increasingly unbelievable dreams.

When did he start dreaming? It seemed to be shortly after meeting Gu Yunfeng. Before that, he had never dreamt, but later, he had many dreams that felt more like real events, like lost fragments of his memory. He had seen the view from the rooftop of the laboratory, witnessed the light pollution that filled the sky, and heard the sound of his laptop shattering on the hard pavement below after being thrown down.

At that moment, it felt like something inside him shattered too.

He had also dreamed of a red velvet gift box with a bow, clearly the kind of packaging women liked.

In this dream, he again saw the same scene, the wind crossing mountains and rivers, carrying a metallic scent. He stood on the laboratory roof, holding a laptop, taking steps backwards.

In the dark shadows, there were several blurry figures, approaching step by step, exuding a sense of danger.

In that day's dream, he finally saw the person emerging from the darkness, someone he knew intimately, someone he revered as a teacher and loved like a father.

He watched as Lu Yong approached him, his face filled with cold indifference and pity.

His hands, holding a dagger, trembled, just as they did now as he tried to eat peacefully with chopsticks.

Xu Chengyue finally felt the weight of his past cowardice and incompetence. At that moment, he was just a single-minded scientific researcher, and amid the raging waves behind him and the undercurrents before him, he had frantically chosen the worst possible outcome.

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: August 20, 2024 by Angel

Edited: November 6, 2024 by Angel