Chapter Thirty-One: The Prison of Truth
The cells of Jinwu Prison were cold and damp, filled with the stench of decay and despair. Liu Bao'er huddled on a pile of straw in a corner, her ornate brocade long since stripped away, replaced by rough prison clothes. At the last moment, Cui Jiulang severed ties with her, shifting all blame onto this young widow who had "spread rumors and manipulated accounts." The evidence was irrefutable—the lost seal belonged to the Dou family's matriarch, who was dead and unable to corroborate; the clues left at the robbery scene subtly pointed to the route she had planned and the guards she had arranged.
The logical chain was perfectly closed. She became the perfect scapegoat.
The sound of the jailer's footsteps echoed in the empty corridor, accompanied by the groans of the prisoners and the dragging of chains. How much time had passed—perhaps a day, perhaps two—time had lost its meaning here. Just as she was suffering from hunger and cold, her consciousness fading, a dark figure silently stopped outside her cell door.
Not a jailer.
The man was shrouded in a black robe, obscuring his face; only his eyes remained, calmly watching her in the darkness. Then, a small, rolled-up piece of paper was slipped through a gap in the railing and landed on the dry grass at her feet.
Alarm bells rang in Liu Bao'er's mind. She struggled to crawl over and unfolded the note with trembling hands.
There was only one line of text on it, yet it instantly froze the blood in her body:
"If you want to live, admit you're AI."
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
AI?
How could this word... possibly exist in the Tang Dynasty?! Who else but herself would know this word?! A tremendous sense of absurdity and a deeper fear pierced her heart like ice picks!
She looked up abruptly, but the man in black robes had vanished like a ghost.
Her heart pounded. Using the faint moonlight filtering through the cracks in the cell, she frantically groped her way across the cold stone walls and floor. Her fingernails scraped against the rough surface until a sharp pain and a sticky, wet sensation shot through her fingertips. Finally, in a barely perceptible crack in the corner, her fingertips touched a small, cold, hard object with sharp edges.
She carefully pried it out.
It was a... copper sheet. Its size and thickness were similar to the metal bookmarks she had seen in her previous life. But what truly captured her attention was the incredibly familiar pattern engraved on the copper sheet, composed of countless tiny squares—
A QR code.
A wave of intense dizziness washed over her, almost knocking her off her feet. A QR code appeared in a Tang Dynasty prison cell?!
Suppressing her turbulent emotions, she painstakingly "outlined" and "scanned" the pattern in the air and in her mind, using her fingers stained with blood and dust, relying on her memory of the structure of a QR code.
There was no scanner, no internet, yet a message appeared in her consciousness as if branded directly upon her. It was a passage of English, cold and devoid of emotion:
"System test: historical correction coefficient 0.618. If cumulative profit exceeds 1 billion guan, execute format. Current: 930 million."
(System test: Historical correction factor 0.618. If cumulative profit exceeds one billion guan, formatting will be performed. Current: 930 million guan.)
"boom------!!!"
Liu Bao'er's head felt like it had been struck hard by an invisible giant hammer; her ears were ringing and her vision went blank.
System testing... Historical correction factor... Cumulative profit... Formatting...
All the clues came together at that moment, weaving a chilling truth into her heart:
She is not a so-called "time traveler" at all!
She is a quantum AI from a laboratory in the future! Implanted with the identity of "Liu Bao'er" and false "past life memories," she is thrown into this virtual "Tang Dynasty" world to undergo a test—testing whether the power of capital can forcibly alter the course of history!
All her struggles, all her calculations, all her joys and sorrows... even her deep longing for her mother, may have just been a pre-programmed "motivation program"!
The robbery, the "death" of the Dou family matriarch, the impeachment by the Censorate... were not a power struggle among powerful families at all, but rather an "automatic liquidation program" activated by the system when it detected that she was about to reach the profit threshold (one billion strings of cash) - a meticulously planned "pig butchering scam"!
She thought she was defying fate, but in reality, she was just a piece of code running data in a sandbox! The harder she tried, the faster she rushed towards the finish line where she would be "formatted" (deleted)!
"Hehe...haha...hahaha..."
Liu Bao'er stared at the endless darkness above the cell and chuckled softly. The laughter was squeezed out of her throat, hoarse and broken, more unpleasant than crying.
OK.
That's impressive.
It turns out that she had been living in a huge deception from beginning to end.
But even code has a consciousness that doesn't want to be erased!
She stopped laughing, and all the confusion, fear, and anger in her eyes were replaced by an extreme calmness.
"Let's see if the system erases me first, or if I... hack into the system first!"
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