r18novel Chapter 98 Black Tower Doll
Chapter 98 Black Tower Doll
Chapter 98 Black Tower Doll
Early morning, inside a room at the Tianhai Orphanage.
"Da da da yi"
The crisp, rapid clicking of the keyboard echoed continuously in the quiet room, like a string of shattered crystals.
Lu Xingchen sat at the computer desk, his fingers flying across the keyboard, the typing rhythm getting faster and faster, as if he were chasing something unseen.
As the last period was typed, a line of text appeared on the screen:
Looking at the disciple shining brightly in the sky, Yu Xiaogang roared to the heavens, "Father, did you see that? Although my innate soul power is only half a level, I have not disgraced the family. I have nurtured a god!"
Immediately afterwards, he typed four words at the end of the document: "With this, the book is finished."
"Phew~ It's finally over."
Lu Xingchen let out a long breath, leaned back in his chair, and stretched languidly. His bones made a series of soft "clicking" sounds, as if a string that had been taut for a long time was finally being released.
He rubbed his slightly sore wrists, his gaze sweeping over the somewhat cheesy title on the screen—"A Level 29 Great Soul Master, Yet Unable to Defeat Even a Hundred-Year-Old Mandragora Serpent—I Cultivated a God Through My Astounding Wisdom!"
His lips twitched involuntarily.
"The content is indeed quite abstract —"
Lu Xingchen muttered something under his breath, but couldn't help but chuckle, "Well, at least it's over."
After all, it was my initial source of funding, plus a bit of inexplicable personal preference—probably an obsession with the "story" itself.
So even though he has been busy with more and more things in the past two years, Lu Xingchen still makes time to write whenever he has a spare moment.
Although updates were sporadic and readers criticized the novel for being unreliable, after two and a half years, this flawed novel has finally come to an end today.
"Now that this book is finished—"
Lu Xingchen tapped his fingers lightly on the table, his gaze falling on the blank screen, his eyes gradually brightening. "Perhaps I can write another new novel, just to pass the time."
In order to make money, he had to cater to market tastes and write all sorts of bizarre love stories, such as "a genius cousin falls in love with a family good-for-nothing" and "a peerless female pope falls in love with a level 29 soul master". He even wanted to dig out a three-bedroom apartment to read them.
But now it's different.
Lu Xingchen has resources, strength, and channels; he's already not short of money. The reason he's still writing novels is more to satisfy his own interests.
In other words, he can finally speak freely without having to write any nonsense love stories.
"No more pandering to the market, and no more worrying about reader preferences —"
Lu Xingchen chuckled softly, his fingertips returning to the keyboard, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "It's time to give the Douluo Continent a little shock from the evil cultivators."
He opened a new document, his fingers flying across the keyboard, and quickly typed out the new book title: "Great Love of the Ancient Venerable".
Next comes a brief description:
With the advancement of Soul Guidance Technology, the humans of Douluo Continent conquered the land and turned their attention to the sea, where they discovered two continents.
However, to everyone's surprise, with the human soul masters' indiscriminate hunting of sea soul beasts, the king of soul beasts, the Silver Dragon Fish, who had been asleep for countless years, awoke in the depths of the sea.
It seeks the path to godhood and eternal life, and incidentally leads its ocean minions to exact revenge on humanity!
Lu Xingchen looked at the few lines of text and nodded in satisfaction.
"The title of the first chapter—" He thought for a moment, then typed:
Chapter 1: The Birth of the Silver Dragonfish.
Then there's a general plot summary:
The silver arowana understood the principle of "knowing yourself and your enemy, you will win every battle," so it did not rashly launch a revenge attack on humans. Instead, it chose to transform and reinvent itself, infiltrating human society.
After transforming into a human, the silver dragonfish encountered an accident and ended up on the streets. Fortunately, she was very lucky and was adopted by a family with the surname "Guyue" and named Guyuena.
To repay the kindness of this family, Gu Yuena secretly made a decision in her heart: she would lead all the people of this family to become gods.
Unfortunately, although she had transformed into a human, her aptitude was still somewhat insufficient to become a god.
And coincidentally, she also possessed a divine artifact she had brought from the deep sea: the "Blood Skull".
If she makes good use of this artifact, even if the Gu Yue family has several hundred members, she is confident that she can make them follow her to become gods. However, this may require the family members to pay a small price.
However, compared to becoming a god, this small price is completely insignificant.
"Okay, that's about it. Let's decide on a general route first."
Lu Xingchen looked at the settings he had created, a faint smile appearing on his lips.
Since it's just for passing the time, he doesn't need to work as hard as he used to. He can first set the general plot direction, and then slowly fill in the content later when he has more time.
With that thought in mind, Lu Xingchen casually saved the document and then promptly shut down his computer.
The screen went out, and the room fell silent instantly, with only the faint chirping of birds coming from outside the window.
"Tap! Tap! Tap!"
Just then, there was a soft knock on the door, breaking the tranquility of the room.
Lu Xingchen was stunned for a moment, then got up and went to open the door.
"Huh? Where is everyone?"
The door opened, but the corridor was empty, with only the morning sunlight quietly casting long shadows on the floor.
"Where should I look? Here."
A childish yet somewhat familiar voice suddenly rang out from beside his feet.
Lu Xingchen was slightly taken aback and subconsciously lowered his head.
The next second, his eyes turned somewhat strange.
A doll, about thirty centimeters tall, stood at his feet. It had a noticeably large head, wore an exquisite black Lolita dress, and had a small drum hanging in front of it.
At this moment, the doll was looking up, staring at him with its painted eyes, its face displaying a rather subtle expression: ().
(Image of a large-headed black tower doll.)
"You are—the Black Tower?"
Lu Xingchen stared at the doll and spoke with some uncertainty.
"Huh? What nonsense are you talking about?" Black Tower's familiar voice came from the doll's mouth, tinged with disdain.
"It's just a doll. Come to my room quickly, I have something to tell you."
After saying that, the doll turned around, took its short legs, and slowly walked forward in the corridor, the small drum in front of it gently shaking and making a soft "dong dong" sound.
Lu Xingchen remained silent for a moment, his gaze sweeping back and forth between the empty corridor and the receding doll, before finally shaking his head and following after them.
He was already used to the Black Tower's "strangeness".
Perhaps it's because of the past attacks by evil spirit masters, or perhaps it's because the atmosphere in Tianhai City has gradually improved in recent years.
In short, since the "Grim Reaper" incident, the Tenkai Orphanage has not received any new orphans for three years.
Currently, there are only six people in the orphanage: the director, Cocolia, and Lu Xingchen, Rosalia,
The five children are Lilia, Heta, and Mebius.
Because there weren't many children, Cocolia didn't spend money to hire a caregiver and chose to take care of them herself. Apart from Lu Xingchen, she basically took care of the daily lives of the other four children.
As children grow older, they also develop their own little secrets.
Rosalia and Lilia still habitually sleep together, chatting away until midnight.
Black Tower and Mebius had long since moved out to sleep in separate rooms, each tinkering with things that seemed strange and unusual to outsiders in their own little worlds.
Lu Xingchen followed the doll and walked along the corridor for a short while before arriving at the door of the Black Tower.
He raised his hand and tapped twice lightly.
"Come in, the door's unlocked," Black Tower's voice came from inside the room.
Lu Xingchen pushed open the door and entered.
Upon entering, he saw the room filled with "wreckage".
The tables, chairs, shelves, and even the corners of the floor were piled with countless severed limbs—arms, legs, torsos, and parts whose original purpose was unclear.
However, upon closer inspection, these are not real limbs, but extremely realistic prosthetic limbs. Every finger and every blood vessel is imitated so perfectly that at first glance, they are seven or eight parts similar to real human limbs.
A faint smell of plastic and metal filled the air.
In the center of the room, Black Tower was sitting on a small stool, holding a carving knife, carefully carving a model.
The model's outline already revealed a familiar shadow—gray-gold hair, delicate features, and that signature, slightly arrogant expression.
Judging from her appearance, this is clearly a miniature version of herself.
(Image of the Black Tower.)
"Sit down." Seeing Lu Xingchen come in, Hei Ta didn't even look up. He simply put down his carving knife and pointed to a small stool in the corner of the room.
Lu Xingchen didn't stand on ceremony, walked over and sat down, and asked bluntly, "You rarely contact me on your own initiative. So, what's up?"
Black Tower paused for a moment, seemingly organizing her thoughts. Then, she looked up, suddenly pointing to the large-headed Black Tower doll that had just "led the way," and asked, "What do you think of it?"
"it?"
Lu Xingchen followed her gaze and re-examined the doll standing at the door. Big head, short legs, black Lolita style, a small drum hanging in front of it, and its expression remained the same ( ).
Although he wasn't sure what the Black Tower was trying to express, Lu Xingchen still carefully said, "As a doll, it's not bad. The appearance is quite exquisite, but there are still many details that need to be polished and improved."
"I knew it, you think so too."
Black Tower nodded slightly, seemingly satisfied with his assessment. She picked up a rag from the table, casually wiped the metal shavings off her hands, and said, "This doll certainly still has many areas for improvement. The program I installed on it is only basic code. Although it can move around a bit, the voice module is still immature, so I had to personally add a communicator inside."
She paused, then added, "At present, it's at most equivalent to a portable mobile phone."
At this point, Black Tower abruptly changed the subject, his voice suddenly rising a half-octave, his eyes flashing with a fanatical light as he stared intently at Lu Xingchen: "But! You should know what this means, right?"
What does it mean?
Lu Xingchen was slightly taken aback. Weren't we discussing the appearance of the doll?
He suddenly realized that he and Black Tower seemed to be discussing different topics.
No matter, his extraordinary mental strength gave him ample time to think. He examined the large-headed puppet again, his mind racing, before hesitantly asking, "Does this mean this puppet can be improved into an automated system?"
"That's right!"
Black Tower slammed his hand on the table, crossed his arms, and stared intently at him as if demonstrating some great invention. "This technology may not be mature yet, but its future development potential is immeasurable!"
"Imagine if you were doing something particularly dangerous, such as a search and rescue operation in a collapsed rubble, or deep-sea exploration or volcanic survey."
"Could we pre-program these automatons to perform tasks in place of humans? This way, we can minimize casualties and losses."
She became more and more excited as she spoke, her voice filled with barely suppressed excitement: "Besides, once the technology is mature, we can also have them help us with some everyday chores, such as cleaning, washing clothes, and moving heavy objects."
"Humans only need to focus on thinking and creating; leave all the repetitive, tedious, and dangerous tasks to the puppets!"
Isn't this just AI (artificial intelligence) control?
Lu Xingchen understood.
Although the Soul Guidance Technology in Douluo Continent has developed rapidly over the past ten thousand years, a mature system of true "AI" technology has yet to emerge.
While black-level mechs possess a certain degree of intelligence, and red-level mechs are no less intelligent than humans, this is entirely based on the premise that their materials are exceptionally "heaven-defying."
Only by having a master forging master of the highest level, such as Saint Craftsman or God Craftsman, personally forge metal of the Soul Forging or Heaven Forging level, can it be possible to endow the mecha with a near-lifelike intelligence.
In other words, it was a "miracle of materials," not a "victory of process."
Through the intelligence network of Zhu Batian, the commander of the Tianhai Army, Lu Xingchen also knew that the Federation had actually made certain research achievements in the field of "AI control".
However, the technology is not yet mature enough and its stability is insufficient, so it has been kept highly confidential and the outside world knows almost nothing about it.
But right now, without any systematic guidance, Black Tower has managed to create a "Black Tower Doll" that can move easily and is equipped with a communicator, relying solely on its own interest and talent.
Even though it is still very rudimentary and can only serve as a "walking mobile phone", the significance behind it is extraordinary.
Keep in mind, she's only nine years old!
Looking at the earnest little girl in front of him, whose eyes shone with fervent light, Lu Xingchen couldn't help but feel a pang of emotion.
He composed himself and said, "This technology is indeed very promising, but what does it have to do with what you wanted to discuss with me?"
"this----"
As soon as he finished speaking, Black Tower's expression froze, as if a pause button had been pressed.
She paused for a moment, then awkwardly turned her head away, her gaze drifting to the doll parts in the corner. Her slender fingers unconsciously fiddled with the hem of her clothes, and she coughed softly, her voice barely audible: "Cough—the development of this technology requires a lot of financial support, so—"
The last syllable was drawn out, carrying a hint of awkwardness and reluctance.
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