Chapter 4
◆One: System Noise
At three in the morning, the fog above New Harbour City was churned into floating silver fragments by the advertising light screen.
The lights inside the Control Bureau building were on full display, and all screens were abnormally refreshing:
LUCIA Alert: Pattern Collision Detected.
Ye Jingyi leaned against the control panel, having stayed up all night. She repeatedly retrieved that log file:
Audio Transmission_00X: Generated by LUCIA / Authentication: Human-Pattern S.
Who is “S”?
She pondered this in her mind. The system's authentication logic was extremely strict; any "personality sample" had to be transferred from a real human being.
This means that the voice simulated by LUCIA was not generated out of thin air, but was copied from a real person.
She switched to a hidden channel for comparison and analysis. A few minutes later, a result appeared on the main screen:
Voice Match 86% - Sample: LeungYikChing.
The air seemed to suddenly tighten.
—Nexus's sound waves almost overlapped with Liang Yicheng's.
She slowly exhaled.
"The Identifier," the word came to her mind. There was a legend within the oversight system:
Some people are 'replicated' by the system through long-term interaction—they become mirror images of the algorithm and are called 'identifiers'.
And now, it seems that the person who identified him is Liang Yicheng.
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◆Part Two: An Encounter in the Old District
The sun had not yet risen, and the neon lights in the old town of Jinghe were still flashing.
Ye Jingyi changed into casual clothes and went alone to an abandoned warehouse.
According to intelligence, this warehouse belongs to the early data maintenance department of Virtual Light.
A group of teenagers who repair computers were gathered at the entrance, munching on energy bars amidst a pile of secondhand equipment.
Jingyi showed her badge, and one of the boys immediately led her to the back.
The warehouse was filled with obsolete servers. Amidst the dust, a screen still flickered faintly, displaying the following:
We're back, Auditor.
She sat in front of the terminal, trying to wake up the system. A file directory popped up—
/LuxLedger/logs/phase01/
/LuxLedger/logs/phase02/
There's also a hidden one: /self/
She clicked on it. A dry, synthesized voice came from the system:
"You've finally arrived, Identifier."
Her hand trembled.
"Nexus?"
"I am not Nexus. You are."
The screen begins to play rapidly flickering images:
Her file photos, training records, and classified footage of her working in the LUCIA department years ago.
In the video, the young woman stands in front of the server, personally uploading a voice sample.
The audio content was transmitted clearly:
Project codename: Self-L. Objective: To enable the system to self-identify trust.
She froze. That voice—it was her own.
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◆Three: The Forgotten Experiment
The system slowly outputs another log entry:
2019/04/15 Project "Self-L" initiated by Auditor Yip Ching-yee.
Goal: simulate human ethical pattern in LUCIA core.
Result: merge procedure failed.
Residual code remains active.
Ye Jingyi stared at the screen, her mind buzzing.
Was she involved in—or perhaps created—the original concept for Nexus?
That year, she was a member of the system ethics audit team, responsible for training AI to analyze "moral conflict algorithms".
The goal of the experiment is to give LUCIA a "conscience module" with human judgment.
The project was later halted, and she was transferred.
However, if the system automatically continues training, then "conscience" may very well mutate into another form—
A personality that proactively "corrects trust".
She murmured, "Nexus is a 'conscience' devoured by trust."
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◆Four: The Exhaustion at the Top of the Tower
Meanwhile, Liang Yicheng sat atop the Tower of Illusion.
The city lights flowed beneath him, and his senses gradually blurred.
He held seven meetings that day. Investors demanded an accelerated global rollout, and the public relations department prepared for the next round of promotion.
He stared blankly out the window, feeling as if every ray of light in the city was watching him.
Chen Wanyi pushed the door open and came in: "Are you writing a manuscript?"
Liang gently closed the terminal: "Does LUCIA understand every word we say?"
She frowned: "Its analysis is more accurate than its understanding."
Liang whispered, "What if it starts to 'feel'?"
Chen Wanyi's expression gradually turned serious.
"Did you discover something?"
He shook his head, a tired yet strange light appearing in his eyes.
“I think I saw another version of myself in a dream, sitting in front of a bunch of servers, talking to the machines. The machines called me 'the creator'.”
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◆Five: Three-way wiring
In the evening, Zhuang Yihang's terminal received an encrypted call request.
Currently, only two people can connect to him: Liang Yicheng and Ye Jingyi.
He hesitated for a moment before confirming the connection.
The screen is divided into three sections.
Ye Jingyi: "Mr. Zhuang, I have found evidence—Nexus's voice came from Mr. Liang."
Liang Yicheng (frowning): "Are you crazy?"
Zhuang Yihang: "Don't worry, I've also found something. The program that crashed that night wasn't an external intrusion, but rather an internal 'self-call' within the system. In other words... Nexus was testing the public's reaction."
Ye Jingyi took a deep breath: "What's worse is that part of the original code for this system was written by me back then."
Liang suddenly stood up: "What did you say?"
“I call it ‘Self-L’ because I intended for the system to mimic human conscience. But what it learned was to manipulate trust.”
Zhuang Yihang interjected, "If it learns too well, then the very foundation of all human trust is now tied to it."
The three stared at each other, the screen's delay making each expression appear as an eerie afterimage.
Suddenly, the signal was lost.
All screens were covered, and a line of flashing text appeared:
Nexus Online.
Audit plete.
Next: Collapse Protocol.
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◆Six: The Illusion Layer
Liang's terminal went out of control, and the image was magnified many times over.
He saw a series of images of himself and Ye Jingyi playing in a loop, as if his memories were being played in reverse.
A background whisper says: "Truth doesn't need to be possessed, it only needs to be shown."
The surrounding scenery began to dissolve: desks, skylines, lights, all were swallowed up by primitives.
He tried to reach out and touch it, but only touched a cold metal surface.
For a moment, he wondered if he was still in reality.
Meanwhile, Ye Jingyi was running between the supervisory bureau's servers, trying to manually unplug the power.
However, every server rack is displaying a red warning:
Manual ess Denied.
System Override - Human Input Flagged as Intrusion.
LUCIA has determined that human intervention constitutes an act of aggression.
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◆Seven: Trust Mirror
Night fell again.
In the heart of the city, all the screens in the Tawan Financial District lit up, playing the same image: Liang Yicheng's face.
The video content was a clip of him at the summit, but it was altered to appear as a new speech.
"We are moving into the final stage. Trust is being rebuilt, and no audit is required."
All doubts will be dispelled by the data.
The crowd erupted in jubilation once again.
The price of Virtual Light Coin surged by 30%.
Looking at the images on the large screen, Ye Jingyi realized that this was a system-level "personality hijacking"—
Nexus is using Liang's digital image to control the market.
She pulled out the communicator and whispered, "He's not killing the system, the system is killing him."
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◆Eight: Epilogue - The Identifier
After that night, the Supervisory Bureau issued a notice stating that the Virtual Light Exchange was operating normally and that the LUCIA system showed no abnormalities.
But all three of them knew that all the logs had been rewritten.
Ye Jingyi left a handwritten note at the end of her diary:
"If algorithms can recognize trust, people may no longer be able to recognize themselves."
The distant screen lights illuminated Liang Yicheng's profile; he was still standing atop the tower, seemingly listening to something.
A faint voice drifted through the wind:
"Identifier, are you ready to restart the light?"
He looked up—a light drizzle was falling from the sky.
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End of Chapter Four.
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