Chapter 2: The "Brick-Moving" Artificial Intelligence

Perhaps it was the will of his departed parents, aware of the hardships he and his sister endured, that bestowed upon him this wondrous opportunity.

Li Ping’an set down his laptop backpack and, surveying the thick dust covering every inch of the house, walked straight toward the kitchen.

He understood well that nothing could be rushed. He would tell no one, not even his sister, about the learning device. A secret is only safe when known by oneself alone.

For now, the most pressing matter was to clean the house.

Upon entering the spacious kitchen, he was immediately assaulted by a pungent, acrid stench—the revolting odor of something long since decayed.

Frowning, he searched the kitchen and finally fixed his gaze on the rice cooker sitting on the countertop.

The moment he opened it, the foul smell surged forth, so intense he nearly retched. Inside, a thick layer of black mold covered the rice, which had long since changed color. Li Ping’an’s mouth twitched involuntarily at the sight.

“That girl,” he muttered helplessly, “she can’t even remember to throw out leftovers from the rice cooker.”

But as soon as those words left his lips, his nose burned with emotion. Since the death of their parents, he too had often been absentminded, forgetting many things.

His sister was still young, only rarely coming home by herself. In this empty house, she had to fend for herself—simply managing to fill her stomach was already no small feat.

Li Ping’an dumped the moldy rice into the faded green trash bin outside, then meticulously washed the rice cooker clean.

As he looked at the corroded, ruined pot, he fell into contemplation.

A moment later, he sighed, pulled out his phone, and searched for a replacement cooker body of the same model online.

“Only nine yuan ninety for home delivery, and a cashback of 1.5 for a positive review?”

Seeing that it had over seven hundred reviews, Li Ping’an placed an order without hesitation.

As for the old rice cooker, he tossed it onto the pile of scrap behind the kitchen.

The back kitchen was dim and cluttered with all sorts of discarded items, some dating back to when his parents were still alive.

Cleaning a two-story house was no easy task. Li Ping’an worked all afternoon, so tired that his back ached and his waist felt stiff.

Looking at the barely passable state of the home, he rubbed his aching back and collapsed onto the sofa, determined not to move another inch.

He was utterly exhausted, as if every ounce of strength had been drained from his body.

Winter days were especially short; though it was only five in the afternoon, night was already falling.

As Li Ping’an rested on the sofa, Second Uncle came in through the main gate, leaning on a bamboo cane, wobbling as he walked.

“Not bad, the place is looking pretty clean,” Second Uncle remarked.

“Second Uncle,” Li Ping’an greeted, quickly getting to his feet.

Second Uncle nodded. “I called for you in the yard earlier, but I guess you didn’t hear. Come on, dinner’s ready. Let’s grab a bite.”

Li Ping’an didn’t stand on ceremony—he dusted himself off, grabbed his phone, locked the door, and followed after Second Uncle.

Despite having only a single front tooth left and walking with a cane, Second Uncle’s pace was surprisingly brisk.

When they reached his uncle’s house, Li Ping’an was deeply moved by the table laden with dishes and the warm welcome from his aunt.

This was no simple meal—it was a feast.

He knew that, in the countryside, families rarely ate this well or prepared so many dishes. It wasn’t for lack of means, but because it was so time-consuming.

After a long day’s work, most people just made do with whatever was at hand—after all, to them, a good meal hardly compared to the comfort of getting into bed early.

The winter night was bitterly cold, the wind cutting like knives and seeping into one’s very bones, making Li Ping’an shiver uncontrollably.

Fresh from warming himself by the fire at his uncle’s, Li Ping’an huddled against the icy wind and hurried home.

The second floor of the house held separate bedrooms for Li Ping’an and his sister.

His own room was spacious, but bare—just a bed and a desk, giving it the air of a wartime barracks.

As his mother once put it, “We’ll decorate your room when you get married.”

His sister’s room, by contrast, was the picture of warmth and comfort, furnished with the latest styles and boasting the only air conditioner in the house.

Though the rest of the house had been thick with dust when he returned, her room was relatively clean—even the bed was covered with an old sheet to keep the dust at bay.

Back in his room, Li Ping’an switched on the electric heater and took from his backpack the gaming laptop his mother had bought him with a generous ten thousand in cash right after he completed his college entrance exam.

Three years had passed, yet the laptop still met all the needs of a computer science student: daily study, software development, and running multiple development programs simultaneously, all without strain.

After completing the language update, the elementary-level learning device in his mind had also converted its artificial intelligence code to C++, a language Li Ping’an was intimately familiar with.

He wasn’t surprised by this. The most efficient programs are typically written in C or C++, as they compile directly to machine code with virtually no runtime overhead, achieving near-hardware-level performance.

Though C++ and C excel in execution speed, they lag behind other high-level languages such as Python or JavaScript in terms of development efficiency and code readability.

But Li Ping’an had no need to worry about these drawbacks—after all, the learning device guided him step by step, providing ready-made code for him to copy. Efficiency wasn’t an issue.

To prevent any leak of source code, Li Ping’an kept his laptop offline and avoided using commercial development software, opting instead for the humble TXT file that every rookie programmer starts out with.

Bathed in bright lamplight, the heater dispelled the winter chill, filling the room with warmth.

Immersed in the joy of coding, Li Ping’an lost all track of time.

It was only when he stretched that he realized how late it was.

“One in the morning already?” he exclaimed in surprise.

Remembering he needed to visit his sister at school and glancing at the unfinished data collection and preprocessing module for the AI project, Li Ping’an decided to call it a night.

That evening’s work had revealed to him that the elementary learning device in his mind was thoroughly rigid, devoid of any true intelligence—a mere database.

This realization put him at ease; there was no need to fear an AI running amok inside his own head.

After boiling some water and soaking his feet, Li Ping’an lay down in bed.

Perhaps it was the comfort of being home, or simply the exhaustion from an afternoon of cleaning, but he fell into a deep sleep almost at once.