Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Forty days after leaving Star Dome, I joined Critical Point.

The company was so dilapidated it looked like it was on the verge of bankruptcy. The office was located on the third floor of an old industrial park; the receptionist and the administrator were the same person, and the meeting room blinds were missing two slats.

Yet, Shen Jibai came to receive me personally.

He got straight to the point. “I know you wrote the underlying architecture for Muse. I don’t want you to be my employee; I want you to be the person who topples Star Dome.”

I looked up at him. “What do you have that makes you worth trusting?”

He pushed server permissions, an equity agreement, and a project budget sheet toward me all at once.

“Everything is yours.”

“Lin Yan, I’m not like He Linchuan. I’m not afraid of you being too strong; I’m only afraid of you refusing to take action.”

In that moment, for the first time, I realized that some people don’t start a partnership by guarding against you, but by handing you the hilt of the blade first.

I signed the papers.

The project code name consisted of only four letters.

NOVA.

Shen Jibai looked at me. “Is three months enough?”

I said, “It’s enough.”

“Enough for me to build a system that will send Muse to its grave.”

After taking over NOVA, the first thing I did was scrap all the flashy, superficial directions Critical Point had been pursuing.

No romantic companionship, no cutesy voice acting, no digital emotional support.

What I wanted was a true intelligent agent that could see through lies, understand objectives, and provide decisions.

Qiao Heng initially opposed me, feeling that the market had already been spoiled by Muse and that users only wanted to buy toys that whispered sweet nothings.

I pulled him into a test on the spot.

When faced with a business owner whose company was on the brink of collapse, Muse’s response was: “Don’t be afraid, I will always be here for you.”

NOVA’s response was: “Shut down three loss-making lines, freeze two expansion budgets, cut ineffective channels. You can still be saved within seven days.”

Only at the end did it add one more line.

“You don’t need comfort right now. You need to win.”

Qiao Heng stared at the screen for five seconds before pushing his chair back.

“Fine,” he said. “From now on, you call the shots.”

For the next three months, the lights at Critical Point never went out before midnight.

During the day, I led the team in training the model; at night, I rewrote the kernel myself. Shen Jibai handled fundraising, signed pilot programs, and guarded the budget, while occasionally placing a hot sandwich and cold medicine on my desk at one in the morning.

It was also during those three months that I reopened the offline backup of the Muse Core.

Author signature, permission fuses, root verification.

They were all still there.

He Linchuan hadn’t deleted them-not out of a change of heart, but because he simply didn’t understand them.

I looked at those lines of code that had been dormant for three years and whispered,

“It’s time to wake up.”