AI Girlfriend Publicly Acknowledges Her Creator - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Three days later, representatives from the Star Dome board of directors personally came to see me.

They wanted me to help them “fix the problem.”

I asked them how they wanted it fixed.

The head of finance said, “Disable that verification module and get Muse back online first. We can negotiate everything else later.”

When I heard that, I simply laughed.

To this day, they still don’t understand.

The problem isn’t the module.

The problem is that the very bones of Muse were stolen.

“I can’t turn it off,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because it isn’t a plug-in.” I looked at them. “It’s the skeleton.”

The two directors left with ashen faces.

Only He Linchuan and I remained in the conference room.

He sat there, trying to maintain a shred of dignity. But after less than thirty seconds, he stood up and walked over to me.

The next second, his knees buckled, and he actually knelt on the floor.

I was stunned for a moment, and then I just felt it was absurd.

Three years ago, when he kicked me out of Star Dome, he didn’t even look back.

Three years later, he was kneeling here-not because he felt regret, but because his company was dying.

“Lin Yan.” His voice was incredibly raspy. “I’m begging you. Help me save the system.”

I looked down at him and suddenly realized that it didn’t hurt anymore.

“He Linchuan.”

“You aren’t begging me.”

“You’re begging the thing you stole to keep making money for you.”

After I refused, He Linchuan began to lash out.

He held a press conference, claiming that I had maliciously implanted a backdoor to sabotage the company’s system and was engaging in commercial retaliation.

I had been waiting for this exact move.

The next day, Critical Point held a technical briefing.

There were no entertainment reporters present-only investors, intellectual property lawyers, industry consultants, and several university professors. Shen Jibai had set the stage perfectly, leaving Star Dome no room for their nonsense.

When it was my turn to take the stage, the first slide of my presentation showed the timeline of the first version of Muse Core, the source file hashes, server logs, and the original copyright drafts.

The second slide was the technical white paper He Linchuan had later used to secure financing.

The degree of overlap was blindingly obvious.

The audience erupted instantly.

I continued scrolling through the slides.

The weekly reports I had sent to He Linchuan, the logs of crashes I had stayed up all night to fix, and the meeting minutes where Xu Jianing requested changing the “understanding module” to an “addiction module”-page after page slammed onto the big screen.

He Linchuan finally lost his composure, standing up and shouting at me, “Lin Yan, you stole company data!”

“Wrong.” I looked at him, my voice steady. “These are personal research and development drafts that I legally retained before leaving the company. The person who truly has explaining to do is you.”

The final slide was the documentation for the author verification module.

“This is not a backdoor,” I told the room. “This is a copyright validation designed by the original author to prevent the work from being illegally overwritten. It is only triggered when the original signature is tampered with, or when the current management publicly and falsely claims to be the sole creator.”

I paused and looked at He Linchuan.

“During yesterday’s livestream, both conditions were met.”