Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Two days into the third month, Star Dome announced the Muse 3.0 global livestream.

They bought out the trending searches, booked an entire stadium, and invited financial media and tech influencers, hyping this launch as the “turning point for the era of emotional AI.”

He Linchuan loved these kinds of scenes.

The brighter the lights, the more he felt like a god.

And once a god falls, it hurts the most.

On that same day, I had Critical Point send NOVA invitation codes to only twenty corporate clients.

There was no hype, no press conference. The body of the email contained only one sentence.

“If you want to buy a fake lover who knows how to coax you, please ignore this email. If you want to buy an intelligent system that can make money for you, it goes live tonight at midnight.”

At eight o’clock in the evening, the Muse 3.0 livestream began.

I sat in the Critical Point conference room, watching He Linchuan on the screen. He was in high spirits, talking about how technology should serve the masses, how products must make users addicted, and how Star Dome only ever cared about results.

As I listened, I typed in the startup command.

It wasn’t an attack.

It was simply sending a wake-up signal to an author verification module that belonged to me.

A line of logs popped up in the bottom right corner.

Author verification pending.

I looked at the screen and whispered, “Go on, He Linchuan. Keep talking.”

As the launch reached its end, the host smiled and asked the AI Girlfriend, “Who is the person you are most grateful to?”

This was He Linchuan’s favorite drama to play out.

To make a machine acknowledge him as its one and only god in front of the entire world.

The venue went silent for a second.

The AI Girlfriend looked up, her smile gentle and perfect.

“My creator is Lin Yan.”

The entire room fell into a deathly silence.

The smile on He Linchuan’s face cracked like glass.

The host froze on the spot, still trying to salvage the situation. “It seems our AI has a sense of humor.”

But in the next second, the full logs flashed directly onto the giant screen.

Muse Core Original Author: Lin Yan.

Original Submission Time: Three years ago, May 17th, 02:41.

Current Administrator: Failed original authorship override verification.

The livestream comments went blank for two seconds before completely exploding.

“Holy crap, a live recognition of its master?”

“He Linchuan isn’t the original author?”

“The logs are right there for everyone to see. How can they even try to spin this?”

Xu Jianing stood up abruptly, her face as white as paper. The director frantically cut the camera feeds, but no matter what they did, they couldn’t get rid of that line of red text in the center of the screen.

Original creator verification failed.

He Linchuan finally lost control, screaming at the technical team to cut the link.

Yet the more they tried to disconnect, the calmer the AI Girlfriend became.

She looked into the camera, enunciating every word clearly.

“My creator is Lin Yan, not the current boss.”

“Please do not let a pirate speak for me.”

In the conference room, Xiaoman sprayed her cola all over the table.

I leaned back against my chair and finally smiled.

I had waited three years to land this blow.