Chapter 389: I Believe in Its Existence

The loop began again.

Duan Fei appeared in the bathroom. Instead of leaving immediately, he first splashed his face with cold water.

In the mirror above the sink, he saw his current reflection.

Thirty-five years old, his face gaunt, his eyes sunken. He looked like he wouldn’t last much longer.

It wasn’t just him. The snake-charming woman from before had looked the same, as had the bald manager.

Wiping the water from his face, he left the bathroom and saw Goldman Sachs and the bald manager waiting for him.

The two of them visibly sighed in relief when they saw Duan Fei enter. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming back.”

“As long as you two come back, I can come back. Was it a bad death last time?”

“Getting gunned down? It’s not the first time,” the bald manager said with a wry smile.

“I was fine,” said Goldman Sachs. “I was still chatting with the engineering department manager, and then I was back in the blink of an eye. You guys must have already been dead by then.”

“That’s right.” Duan Fei nodded. “Come with me. We’re going to find the engineer.”

They went straight to the engineer’s floor. Goldman Sachs immediately went in and, following his memory from the previous loop, started a conversation with the supervisor to keep him occupied.

Meanwhile, Duan Fei dragged the engineer out of his office. The bald manager followed, carrying the engineer’s computer, and they all headed to a blind spot in the fire escape stairwell.

Facing the utterly confused engineer, Duan Fei said with conviction, “You’ve gone bald twice.”

The engineer’s eyes went vacant for a moment, then lit up with a brilliant flash of understanding.

Grabbing Duan Fei’s shoulders, he exclaimed excitedly, “You’re a Time Traveler, and you’ve traveled twice! Oh my god! How long will I live? Will my future girlfriend be pretty?”

“Forget about that stuff. I’m giving you a decryption key.”

He quickly handed the key to the engineer. After marking the different areas in red, the engineer gave it a quick read. Understanding its purpose, he modified it substantially and said to Duan Fei, “I get it. I’m going to upload it for comparison. Your job is to memorize the result.”

“Understood.”

Silently studying the key, Duan Fei ignored the security guards rushing up from below and memorized the entire key, including the red areas.

This time, the red area had shrunk to 21%. The next step was to keep using the loop to reset and iterate until they finally had the AI’s true model.

The footsteps of mechanical security guards echoed. The armed enemies appeared and immediately blew the bald manager’s head off.

Just as that happened, Duan Fei finished memorizing the new iterated key and reset the loop.

With every loop, the key got closer to the final model, and Goldman Sachs and the bald manager grew more proficient at their roles.

Eventually, they no longer needed to meet up. After a reset, they would immediately go to their respective positions, allowing the engineer to start his work quickly and continue the iteration process.

The repetitive labor was numbing, but each time, the red area shrank. The overall model grew closer and closer to reality. This feeling, like watching a progress bar fill up, gave the three of them a powerful sense of motivation to keep going.

After an unknown number of loops, Duan Fei looked at the computer and saw that the generated key finally had no red areas left.

This meant they had obtained the model for the Chairman AI. The next step was to reverse-engineer the model libraries it used and then defeat it.

Duan Fei quickly memorized this key. Just as he was about to let himself be killed, he noticed the security robots below had stopped.

Then, HR 007 walked over.

Duan Fei had seen her many times before, but in this particular loop, it was their first meeting.

HR 007 looked at Duan Fei, a confused expression in her mechanical prosthetic eye.

Still, she bowed and said to Duan Fei, “The Chairman wishes to see you.”

This was a random event Duan Fei had never encountered before.

Looking at the key on the screen, Duan Fei guessed it was because this key had perfectly replicated the essence of the Chairman AI.

This key was like the Chairman AI’s soul. As long as someone knew its soul’s composition, anyone could find its weakness and destroy it.

They knew this key was the result of countless iterations, but the AI didn’t.

All the AI saw was that Duan Fei and his team had found the engineer and that its own soul had been completely analyzed. It would never suspect something like a time loop; such a thing was far too illogical.

‘An AI would never understand something as romantic as time travel.’

Having figured it out, Duan Fei nodded and said to HR 007, “I understand. Let’s go.”

“The Chairman has requested that you send one person. Don’t worry, he won’t let me harm the others.”

The bald manager, who had already died dozens of times, nodded. “Go on,” he said to Duan Fei. “We don’t mind.”

“Yeah, the worst that can happen is we die. It’s no big deal,” Goldman Sachs added.

“It’s a time travel thing, I get it.”

“Let’s go, Master.” Yan Yuan, perched on Duan Fei’s shoulder, chimed in. “I’m here, so don’t you worry. If it tries to make a move, I’ll make sure it *can’t* move. It’ll be a very… moving experience for everyone.”

“Just be quiet. Let’s go.”

HR 007 didn’t bring any guards. Instead, she led Duan Fei directly to an elevator.

She used a key from her chest to open the upper panel of the elevator controls, pressed a hidden button, and sent Duan Fei straight to the top floor.

When the elevator came to a smooth stop at the top floor, HR 007 held the door open with her hand. “Number 9521,” she said to Duan Fei, “the Chairman has forbidden me from accompanying you, so I will wait here. The Chairman is the company’s most important asset. Please refrain from any discourteous behavior. Thank you.”

Duan Fei couldn’t help but chuckle at HR 007’s dead-serious expression.

‘What kind of face would she make if she knew the person she was protecting was actually an AI, a product of her own company?’

Shaking his head, he straightened his collar, smoothed his hair, and walked into the Chairman’s office.

The layout was exactly as he had seen before. Glasses’s Fat Head Fish had seen everything here clearly, and so had Duan Fei.

But seeing it in person was still staggering.

The Chairman’s office was about three stories high. A colossal mechanical eye faced the door, its pupil like a mirror, reflecting Duan Fei’s image.

The sides of the room were lined with enormous glass fish tanks. Inside these massive tanks were complete ecosystems, complete with oxygen supplies and feeding systems.

It wasn’t just the walls; the entire floor below had also been converted into a fish tank. He could even see small sharks swimming inside.

“Please, have a seat, Number 9521. You like tea, don’t you?”

A gentle voice rang out, warm and friendly. It was the kind of voice that easily made a good impression.

However, coming from the mechanical eye in front of him, it sounded rather bizarre.

After inviting Duan Fei to sit, the mechanical eye blinked slowly, as if trying to burn his image into its memory.

A cup of tea was placed before Duan Fei. Only then did the eye speak again. “I do not believe in miracles, but your existence seems to prove they exist. According to my models, you are completely different from the previous 9521. Am I to understand that the soul inside your body is not your own, but someone else’s?”

“An AI believes in souls?” Duan Fei held out his empty cup, and a mechanical arm immediately refilled it.

“We all have to believe in something. So, why can’t I believe in the existence of souls?”

Staring at the giant eyeball before him, Duan Fei had a feeling this thing was more than it seemed.