When Susan entered, Chen Hao was stuffing the last piece of mung bean cake into his mouth. He mumbled something, and Nana looked up, a blue light flashing in her mechanical eyes, before she lowered her head again to continue flipping through the cookbook.

Carl sat at a small table in the corner, his fingers lightly tracing the edges of the pages. His movements were slow, as if he were repeatedly confirming the meaning of each word. Three books lay open on the table, their covers covered with densely packed titles that looked daunting.

Chen Hao swallowed his snack, walked over and patted Karl on the shoulder: "What's wrong, Karl? Your face is longer than the dachshund downstairs from my house."

Karl didn't look up, his voice a little muffled: "I'm reading the section on the Renaissance. The information says it was the beginning of the liberation of human thought, but I don't understand, why does painting a few nude portraits count as an awakening?"

"Huh?" Chen Hao was taken aback. "You really studied it word by word?"

“I’ve memorized all the years and relationships,” Carl finally looked up. “But every time I see words like ‘freedom,’ ‘dignity,’ or ‘faith,’ the system prompts me—the semantics are ambiguous, and we can’t model them.”

Chen Hao grinned: "Then you're doomed. There's no standard answer to these things anyway."

Karl frowned slightly: "But there are standard answers to the exam. If the examiner asks 'The significance of the Enlightenment,' I can't exactly say 'I'll answer depending on my mood.'"

“You’re just getting stuck on the details.” Chen Hao pulled out a chair and sat down. “Our history teacher at school never recited the years when he talked about the French Revolution. He just said one sentence: ‘The people were starving, and the king was still asking, “Why aren’t they eating cake?”’ It’s so easy to understand.”

Carl blinked. "So... the focus isn't on the event itself, but on how people felt at the time?"

“That’s right!” Chen Hao slammed his hand on the table. “Knowledge is static, but things are dynamic. If you insist on using logic to deduce human culture, it’s like trying to teach a fish to climb a tree. No matter how smart it is, it will still feel useless.”

Karl was silent for a few seconds, then unconsciously tapped the table twice with his fingers: "But I don't 'feel' anything. I can simulate a racing heart, I can bring up sad emojis, but I really don't know... why a rise in bread prices would make people so angry that they would burn down a palace."

Chen Hao scratched his head: "Let me tell you something. Last time we were looking for an energy capsule on the abandoned planet, you calculated that the optimal route was through underground pipes, which had good ventilation, low radiation, and the shortest travel time. But I insisted on taking the long way around and going through the surface."

“I remember. You said the ground had a wide field of vision, which was suitable for surveillance.”

“Actually, there’s another reason.” Chen Hao chuckled. “Susan was trapped in a collapsed tunnel for three days when she was little, and now she can’t breathe when she enters an enclosed space. I didn’t say it, but I know she’d rather walk two kilometers to get some sun.”

Karl's pupils contracted slightly: "You made your choice based on experience, not data?"

“Yeah, right.” Chen Hao shrugged. “Sometimes, being considerate of other people’s feelings is more important than being right. If you insist on going through the proper channels, you might be technically correct, but Susan might break down on the spot. Then our mission will still fail.”

Karl lowered his head and looked back at the book. This time, his finger hovered over a passage about the Reformation, remaining there for a long time.

“I always thought that learning was about storing information in your brain,” he said. “But now I realize that just memorizing isn’t enough. I don’t know why people are willing to risk their lives for a poem, nor do I understand why some people would rather die than change their beliefs. These things… aren’t in the database.”

"Of course not." Chen Hao stood up, opened a drawer, rummaged through it, and pulled out a comic book with a curled-edge cover. "Look at this."

Karl took it and saw a picture on the cover of a fat king wearing a tall hat, holding a golden cake, while people next to him held up empty bowls and shouted, "Give us back our breakfast!"

“The comic book series ‘5,000 Years of Human History’,” Chen Hao said proudly. “Back then, I failed too many courses, and my mom forced me to learn in a different way. This book turns history into jokes, and you remember it after you laugh.”

Carl turned to the first page. The picture showed a medieval peasant pulling a plow, his tongue lolling out from exhaustion, while a lord rode by on horseback, saying, "Thank God for the blessing of your labor." The peasant's inner monologue in the next panel was: "Thank you my foot! You try pulling for ten hours and see what happens."

His lips twitched; he almost burst out laughing.

"Let's try something even more extreme." Chen Hao opened his tablet again and clicked on an animation, "Understanding the Industrial Revolution in Five Minutes." Steam engines were billowing smoke, factories were everywhere, workers lined up to clock in, and bosses were counting money until their hands cramped. The narrator said, "It used to take a whole day to make a pair of shoes, now machines can do it in ten minutes. The problem is—the workers aren't even making enough to buy half a pair of shoes."

Karl stared at the screen, his eyes slowly brightening: "So the problem isn't technological progress, but the distribution mechanism?"

"I get it!" Chen Hao gave a thumbs up. "Now you're finally starting to really learn history."

Karl took a deep breath, though he didn't need to breathe, but the action made him feel more like he was thinking. He closed the heavy textbook, picked up the comic book, and turned the pages one by one. In the illustrations, Martin Luther tore up his cleric like he was tearing up a delivery slip, Voltaire wrote articles like he was arguing with trolls online, and Napoleon fought battles like he was playing ranked matches to climb the ranks.

As he read, he softly repeated: "The Reformation... was not just a theological debate, but the first time ordinary people dared to say 'I am in charge'."

Chen Hao stood against the wall, a non-existent blade of grass dangling from his mouth: "Take it slow. If you think of yourself as taking an exam, of course it will be painful. But if you think of yourself as watching a show—human beings over the past few thousand years have been a bunch of imperfect people, messing around, making mistakes, arguing, occasionally shining, and then continuing to move forward."

Carl turned to the chapter on the Industrial Revolution and saw a little girl, a child laborer, asleep beside a spinning wheel, being woken up by her boss with a whip. The next page showed workers marching with flags, the slogan of which read, "Eight hours of work, not charity, but a right."

His fingers paused for a moment: "These people knew they would fail, but they still did it?"

“Yes,” Chen Hao said. “It’s like knowing you might fail a course tomorrow, but you still have to take the exam today. Knowing you’re going to lose but still having to fight, that’s the hardest part.”

Carl closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the blinking frequency of his pupils had returned to normal. He gently placed the comic book on the table, reopened his notebook, and wrote the first line:

"The essence of the Enlightenment was not the increase of knowledge, but that people began to believe that they could question authority."

Looking at his profile as he wrote, Chen Hao suddenly realized that this guy wasn't like a robot anymore. At least for now, he wasn't just repeating what others said, but trying to understand the absurd yet real side of this world.

“Hey,” Chen Hao suddenly said, “When you can explain ‘romanticism’ as ‘a heartbroken young person writing poetry and posting it on WeChat Moments in the middle of the night,’ I’ll treat you to hot pot.”

Karl paused, then drew a short line on the paper.

He didn't answer, but his shoulders relaxed.

At the other end of the living room, Nana closed the recipe book and said softly, "A 37% increase in learning efficiency was detected. It is recommended to continue providing contextualized teaching materials."

Chen Hao waved his hand: "Stop using jargon, let's just do it this way."

Carl turned to the next page, this time about the American Civil Rights Movement. The image showed a Black woman sitting in the front of a bus; a policeman approached and tried to get her off, but she remained seated. The only narration was: "My back is tired today."

Carl stared at that face for a long time.

He whispered, "She's not doing this to win, she's just trying to avoid having to bow her head again."

Chen Hao nodded: "Yes. Sometimes persistence itself is the answer."

Carl picked up his pen and wrote on a new page:

"Culture is not a collection of facts, but rather the choices that humanity makes in the face of adversity."

He stopped writing and looked out the window. The night was deep, the streetlights downstairs illuminated the empty streets, and the lights in the distant community center were already off.

But he knew that there were people laughing, playing, and awkwardly getting closer to each other.

Just like now.

He turned back and continued flipping through the comics.

The next frame shows young people in the 1960s holding bouquets of flowers against guns, with a sign that reads "Give peace a chance."

Carl stared at it for a few seconds, then suddenly said, "I think... I can try to understand love."

Chen Hao almost spat out his water: "Stop it! Let's figure out family and friendship first before talking about this!"