Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
The room was not large, and the white light from within was as bright as day, with only a single clear glass cabinet placed right in the middle of the room.
Xia Fei walked over and looked into the cabinet through the high-tempered glass.
There was only a book in the cabinet, and the book was bound in a thick leatherback, roughly several centimeters in thickness.
The dark-red leather had already suffered wear and tear to the point that it was unseemingly, tattered in many areas, though the paperbound within was still perfectly preserved.
The moment Xia Fei could make out the title of that old tome clearly, his mouth hung agape from shock, feeling dumbfounded.
Phantom just so happened to appear while Xia Fei was in this room. Usually, Phantom would be hiding in his Moore Stone for whatever reason, but the moment something new was about to happen, or if a discovery was to be made, Phantom would always appear in a very timely fashion.
“An Introduction to Coding Robots.” Phantom read the title aloud, word by word.
Like Xia Fei, Phantom was so startled that he could not utter another word out. The two of them stared at this tome for a really long time.
“Oh, heavens. This is an ancient civilization tome that details the process of coding robots,” excitedly said Phantom.
It had been a very long time since the ancient civilization was wiped out, and every item that they left behind was exceedingly precious, and this tome in front of them, it was immensely precious, for it was a book related to coding robots.
Given the current technological standards, humans were actually capable of creating robots, but what they could not replicate was the sophisticated AI that the ancient civilization possessed.
Presently, there were some uses of AI within the Alliance, such as the AI computer and the automated navigation found in spaceships, but these were all done with the aid of AI itself.
Nonetheless, those were just rudimentary AIs and were far from the standards of AIs the ancient civilization had achieved.
There was a stark contrast between the ancient civilization’s AI and the present-day AI, and it was the fact that the former had emotions.
Just like humans, robots that had AI would not only feel sadness and happiness, they would even be capable of forming their beliefs, living like real people. Aside from their mechanical bodies, they were no different from humans; in fact, these robots were even better than humans in various aspects, such as their intelligence, bravery, et cetera.
The tome detailed how to code robots, and it might very well contain the legendary knowledge of creating AI.
AI was the most advanced technology that humans had invented through the eons of history, and there was simply no way to measure its worth.
“Why would such a valuable tome be stashed in the basement of this library? Could this library be hiding away some secret? If it’s such a huge secret, why would Qin Mang send me to this room?” Xia Fei pondered.
Collecting his thoughts, Xia Fei spotted a bag of cat food inside a cupboard in the corner, closing the door behind him upon leaving.
Taking a deep breath, Xia Fei suppressed the uneasiness and excitement he was feeling inside himself and left the basement with the bag of cat food.
After idly chatting with Qin Mang for awhile, Xia Fei found an excuse to get up and leave the library.
Before leaving, Xia Fei saw a poster regarding the recruitment of a librarian.
Phantom knitted his brows and said, “Xia Fei, do you really intend to be a librarian? After all that hard work you’ve put into getting to Heaven Execution Training Camp, it isn’t too bad if you end up in some branch division, and even that will be better than the library.”
Xia Fei did not answer Phantom as he quietly made his way back to the dormitories.
He reached the main road in the training camp, where cadets were thronging in groups of twos or threes or riding along in their hover discs.
Xia Fei came to a stop and pointed to the cadets around him. “Phantom, what do you see?”
Phantom turned in the direction where Xia Fei was pointing and asked, “What? Aren’t they just cadets in the training camp?”
Xia Fei shook his head. “Take a closer look.”
Phantom was a little impatient. “What I see is just a handful full of cadets, men and women alike, no matter their sizes are.”
“Don’t you think they all look similar?” Xia Fei asked. “There are almost 50,000 cadets here. If I were to end up joining them here and now, it would be equivalent to walking on this path with all of them.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Xia Fei asked even as he thought about it. “Did I come here to the training camp just so I could repeat that route someone had already walked?”
Xia Fei lowered his head and kicked a white stone along the road. This stone flew through the air and landed in a pile of similar rocks, impossible to distinguish which it was that Xia Fei kicked.
“I don’t like following the path someone else has set for me. This time, I want to choose a side road that no one has ever walked before, no matter where it leads,” Xia Fei said solemnly.
News always traveled fast, especially the bad and schadenfreude-inducing sort.
There were many locations in the training camp that was convenient for people to spread rumors and exchange information.
One of the top places for this was the dining hall. Among the purposes of this dining hall was for people to be able to exchange all sorts of gossip and rumors while they filled their stomachs with food.
“I heard that the specially-enrolled student this year, Xia Fei, went off to be a librarian in the library.” A cadet of the training camp set down his cutlery and told his friend this.
“You mean Crazy Xia?”
“That’s the one.”
“Is he okay in the head? Why would he actually go be a librarian after working so hard to get into training camp?”
“Right? Why else would he be called a madman.”
“Crazy be as crazy; not choosing any of these so many exceptional divisions, only to run off to some library that not even birds go to leave droppings in and be its librarian, only a madman would do what he’s doing.”
“That’s right. That’s why I’m saying, especially enrolling someone like him is such a waste… I wonder what the battalion commander thinks about this.”
It might not be the intention of the one speaking, but Moon Song happened to have been drinking a beverage on the side. She abruptly slapped the table in a rage and stood up, ready to teach those two a lesson.
Chen Dong held her back. “There’s no reason to get angry at those people. Spare yourself the hassle.”
Moon Song suppressed the rage she was feeling inside her, though her expression remained nasty.
“Xia Fei’s really too disappointing… His action has caused us to lose face alongside him.” Moon Song gnashed her teeth viciously.
Chen Dong took a big bite of beef. “I don’t really care. It’s fine as long as he likes it.”
Moon Song rolled her eyes at him. “What do you know? Men ought to have an indomitable spirit; what good would be a librarian be? To think I—”
“To think, you what?” Manjun very blankly asked.
“Eat your food. I’m tired of talking to you,” Moon Song testily berated Manjun.
Manjun innocently muttered under his breath, aggrieved, “I didn’t even say anything…”
The days of being a librarian were hardly easy. He had to clean the huge library every day, mop the floor, and wipe down the bookshelves and windows. He had to use a feather duster to dust every book, and just all this busywork would take an entire morning.
Come afternoon, Xia Fei was still busy repairing some of the damaged doors and windows. After all, it had been a long time since anyone made the effort to clean the library, so plenty of its facilities had been damaged over time.
Old Qin Mang was around every day, though all he did was drink tea, feed that extremely lazy black cat, and leave all the work to Xia Fei.
He spent a simple yet fulfilling time in such a manner. As for the two mysterious rooms in the basement, Xia Fei never got a chance to head down again. Every time Xia Fei asked Qin Mang if there was a need to clean the place up, the old man simply said he would do the cleaning, though Xia Fei had never once seen him do it.
After being busy the entire day, Xia Fei would drag his tired self back to the dormitories with an old tome tucked under his arm.
This was probably the only benefit of being a librarian, and it was that he could take a book from the library back to his room to read.
Xia Fei had already made it a habit, lying in bed reading every night until he fell asleep. Not being able to read a book a night would make him feel completely uneasy like he was missing something.
He started from the very basics, stuffing everything into his brain, be it mineral smelting or the history of the Alliance, and even leaders’ secrets.
What he read the most were the books pertaining to warships and machinery, though Xia Fei was unable to read anything from the second floor regarding those tomes detailing the ancient civilization.
The information covered by those tomes on the second floor was very broad, and what Xia Fei had learned during his school days had all but been returned to his teacher. Given the structure of knowledge that Xia Fei currently possessed, there was no way he could read or understand any of the profound knowledge contained within those books.
It was strange. When Xia Fei was in school, his grades were all a mess, but now that he had begun learning this advanced civilization technology, he never did find it strenuous. He was able to digest a book’s content fully after reading it once, and those profound mechanical structures and mathematical equations had also become easy to grasp.
Tossing the book to the table, Xia Fei turned on his AI computer and began to search for news about Amberice Crystals carefully.
If everything were to progress smoothly, the medicinal residue in his body should all be completely absorbed over the next few days. By then, it would be time for him to consume the next round of medicinal drugs, but he had yet to locate the important ingredient, Amberice Crystal, which complemented well what he got.
Only
Xia Fei used the AI search function on the interplanetary internet and did a twenty-four-hour search of all the auction inventory and merchandise that covered the three nearby star regions, but nothing had turned up yet as of now.
Logging off the interplanetary internet despondently, Xia Fei entered the training camp’s intraweb, hoping that he could get wind of it in the cadet exchange or that it would be available for redemption through the medicinal ingredients the training camp provided.
The training camp provided plenty of ingredients for the masses, and as long as enough points were spent, cadets were allowed to exchange for them freely. In the list, there were many ingredients that were valued in the billions, but there was no sign of that Amberice Crystal that Xia Fei needed the most.
Heaving a deep sigh, Xia Fei began to search through the internal listing of items, which were for exchange. If there were still no signs of the ingredient, Xia Fei could only call it a night, do his reading, and go to sleep.
All of a sudden, Xia Fei perked up. There was a notice several minutes ago that caught his eye. “Urgently selling eighty grams of Amberice Crystal.”
He glanced at the poster of this notice and saw that it was a cadet from the internal division called Davis.
Without a moment of hesitation, Xia Fei clicked on the screen and sent a video-call request.
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