Chapter 1 Invitation Letter_1

A dilapidated residential building about thirty meters tall faced south, with a corridor stretching 20 meters long, adorned with an assortment of hanging garments.

In a cramped, thirty-square-meter room on the 10th floor near the center, a young man who appeared no more than twenty-five years old sat at a desk by the window, staring intently at the screen while tapping away at the keyboard with a rapid "pitter-patter."

The man's hair was unkempt, with severe dark circles under his eyes. He was dressed in a white tank top, black shorts, and a pair of gray, worn-out slippers, sitting on a swivel chair that constantly wobbled. Aside from the keyboard and mouse on the black desk, there were cans of energy drinks and stacks of empty instant noodle containers.

The man was named Cao Ge, an orphan with no parents, having grown up in Qidian Orphanage. After turning 18, he was forced to leave the orphanage, but through sheer effort, he managed to obtain a college degree. He had just graduated from a local three-tier university in the Capital with a major in Computer Science.

However, that was the history of this body. Cao Ge himself was not from this world; he hailed from another world, the year 2023, where he was a computer engineer for a Fortune 500 company.

He had traversed into this world a month ago, just as this body was graduating.

How the original owner of the body had passed was unknown, but from that point forward, this body was his.

During the early days after his arrival, Cao Ge experienced a period of confusion, but his confusion turned to madness once he realized he had traveled back to the year 2007.

A prowess of 38 years old encapsulated within a 23-year-old body, plus prophetic knowledge of the next decade or so, drove him insane.

After his frenzy, Cao Ge started to plan his future. In 2007, smartphones had yet to enter their golden age; it was still the era of feature phones.

But Cao Ge knew that in the near future, specifically on June 10th of the following year, Apple Inc. would release a groundbreaking smartphone, the iPhone 3G. This device would instantly capture widespread attention within the industry and catapult the development of smartphones into a new era.

And speaking of Apple, one could not overlook its voice recognition assistant Siri, which, if his memory served him correctly, had just been established this year. It would be another three years before Apple acquired it for a whopping 200 million US Dollars.

Meaning that the phone Apple was set to release the next year did not come equipped with a voice recognition feature. Fortuitously, Cao Ge had been an engineer working on voice assistants in his previous life.

Unfortunately, in the current domestic market dominated by feature phones, his voice technology had no market, meaning he had no other choice but to cooperate with Apple Inc.

That was unavoidable, for in this era, time was as precious as gold. He had to amass a substantial sum of money in a short period; otherwise, opportunities would diminish as time went on. He hadn't come back to this world to live the life of a coding drone like he once did.

He now aspired to reach the heights of South Korea's financial tycoons.

So he stayed in his rented room day and night, typing code for over a month, until today, when his voice assistant was finally ready to launch.

The voice assistant featured voice recognition capabilities. In terms of primary functions, Cao Ge had completely copied the early version of Siri, focusing on text chat services.

For some reason, since his soul had traversed to this new world, he noticed an enhancement in his memory and a considerable boost in his technical abilities. Thanks to this significant leap in technology, Cao Ge managed to create a rudimentary version of the product within a month.

"Snap!"

Cao Ge hit the final letter and then pressed the enter key. The screen went black for a few seconds before displaying the program, which began compiling and running.

A tired smile appeared on Cao Ge's face. He slowly leaned back in his chair and started to fantasize, imagining a future life surrounded by beautiful women and indulging in wealth and luxury.

As time ticked away, Cao Ge watched the compiling screen with anxiety, dreading any potential error messages.

In the thirty-square-meter room, one could hear a pin drop; he was the only person on the entire 10th floor.

Renting this room had nearly exhausted all of Cao Ge's savings. If the compilation failed, he might not have the funds to continue; he would have to find a job to support himself.

The program was extensive and took some time to compile. Cao Ge lifted his right hand to check the time.

"13:00, I'll take an hour break," he muttered to himself.

After speaking, he got up from the chair and almost immediately lost his balance and sat back down.

"Ah!" A sudden wave of dizziness hit him, followed by a sharp pain in his head. Cao Ge pressed his hands to his temple and sat on the chair for a long time before he started to feel better.

Once he recovered, Cao Ge knew his body was at its limit and that he needed a good rest.

Without giving it another thought, he let the computer run and went straight to bed, quickly falling asleep. Soft snores, sometimes quick and sometimes slow, filled the quiet room.

"Hoo hoo hoo~hoo hoo~"

............

About two hours passed, around three o'clock, when the computer suddenly made a "ding!" sound. The program vanished from the screen, and the only difference was a new icon on the desktop called "Xiao An Assistant." But Cao Ge, deep in his sleep, was none the wiser.

At the same moment he successfully compiled the program, in a luxurious quadrangle twenty kilometers away,

a computer screen lit up in an elegantly decorated room, where a charismatic woman in a white suit was presented with a person's information.

Name: Cao Ge

Age: 23

School: Capital University Bow Wen Management College

Major: Computer Science

Status: Unemployed

Threat Level: Ten seconds ago, the scholar created a highly prospective intelligent voice assistant "Xiao An." Some segments of the software are forward-looking toward AI, and continued research in this direction could very well result in the creation of artificial intelligence. Therefore, it has been decreed that his research must be restricted.

Personality Analysis: Fond of women and money, his reason for developing "Xiao An Assistant" was simply to become wealthy and make a large sum of money.

The woman's normally stoic face showed a trace of surprise.

"Artificial intelligence, huh? Interesting," Shen Yufei suddenly said with a smile.

With that, she reached for her email inbox and started typing on the keyboard. About five minutes later, she had composed the email and hit the enter key.

"Ding dong!"

With the sound of a "ding dong" from the speaker, the email filled with text transformed into a letter and flew into the vast cyber ocean of the internet.