Chapter 4: Aether
Cheng Qisheng didn’t rush to look at the shop.
Over the past three years of illness, the thing she had learned most was not to be in a hurry.
She simply stood up and poured herself a glass of water.
Her movements were very slow—it took a full fourteen minutes and twenty-one seconds—but she smiled brightly while holding the timer in her hand.
“008, you can now explain to me what exactly Safe City is.”
Although she had already pieced together a rough idea within these 24 hours, if she could get direct information, why not just ask?
The jellyfish-like AI drifted slightly:
“Safe City is the last refuge for the survival of civilization, but at the same time, Safe City can only descend in worlds of disaster.”
“The City Lord must lead Safe City and its residents to survive in various apocalyptic worlds. However, please remember: the minimum population of Safe City must not be less than 10,000, and the reserve of Tier-2 Safe City core crystals must not be less than 1,000.”
“Otherwise, Safe City will be unable to leave the world it has descended into.”
Cheng Qisheng raised an eyebrow.
“What if both the population and core crystals meet the requirements, but the City Lord chooses not to leave the world?”
The jellyfish AI responded mechanically:
“The AI does not recommend such a decision. Every descended world is destined for destruction. Even if it escapes this disaster, it will not escape the next, nor the one after that.”
“Disasters will continue to occur until the world reaches its end.”
“If Safe City remains in a descended world, it will be destroyed together with that world.”
Cheng Qisheng thought of Dark Star.
So that was why Dark Star had been so plagued with disasters?
In its later stages, Dark Star had been almost like this for her—every week, a new catastrophe would emerge.
Asteroid impacts, gamma rays, core cooling failures… every time, Cheng Qisheng would curse under her breath while doing everything she could to keep it going.
And then she would marvel: “Wow, I actually managed to stop gamma rays.”
As a result, a wandering black hole eventually appeared.
That was also when she realized—for the first time—that when a person reached the absolute limit of speechlessness, they really would laugh.
Unfortunately, because she couldn’t control her facial muscles, she couldn’t even manage a smile.
“008, do you know why these disasters appear?”
“I’m sorry, City Lord. The AI cannot answer your question.”
“Then do you know what kinds of disasters other worlds usually have? Any hints?”
“I’m sorry, City Lord. The AI cannot provide such information. Safe City is a place for the survival of civilization; civilization must find its own way forward.”
Cheng Qisheng hadn’t expected to get an answer from the AI in the first place. She suddenly changed the subject: “Do you remember your previous City Lord?”
The jellyfish-like AI remained calm: “I’m sorry, I cannot recognize your question.”
Cheng Qisheng looked at it, her tone certain.
“No, you can recognize it. You can also understand it.”
“Previously, your response time to my questions—whether you could answer them or not—was always 100 milliseconds. But for this question, your response time was 589 milliseconds.”
Less than a second—so subtle that a human wouldn’t normally notice it. But a timer could.
She slowly set down the timer in her hand.
“…I’m sorry, I cannot recognize your question.”
“This time it was 1 second and 231 milliseconds. It looks like when I brought out the timer, it wasn’t for testing myself—it was for testing you. And you needed a bit of reaction time for this.”
Cheng Qisheng leisurely used her phone to order a cup of milk tea: “Alright, I already know. A Tier-1 AI wouldn’t be this intelligent. The AI of the Coriander Safe City couldn’t even give a basic suggestion.”
In these 24 hours, her body hadn’t been able to move—but her eyes and mind were still fully functional.
The progress of the Blue Sea civilization and all kinds of messages in the City Lord chat group—Cheng Qisheng hadn’t missed a single one.
Although “Coriander” had only casually mentioned that his AI was an “artificial idiot,” she had still remembered it.
“You, on the other hand, can analyze my condition on your own, guide me to express my thoughts through blinking, and even proactively offer suggestions.”
“And now, you’re also pretending to be an artificial idiot.”
The jellyfish-shaped AI froze for a long time on the virtual screen.
It really was smarter than the Tier-1 AI of Coriander’s Safe City—but not by a huge margin.
And now that it had been exposed, it practically had “you got me” written all over that jellyfish head of its.
Cheng Qisheng finished ordering her milk tea, feeling in a very good mood.
Delivery! Milk tea! The consumer has returned!
She poked the AI’s virtual jellyfish form, and there was actually a tactile response—as if she really had touched a jellyfish.
Once again, she couldn’t help but marvel: high tech!
“What tier were you before? Why did that Safe City land on Dark Star? Did the previous City Lord choose not to leave Dark Star and stay there?”
As she spoke, she examined the rather cute-looking jellyfish again.
“Also… your previous City Lord wouldn’t happen to have been a jellyfish too, would they?”
The jellyfish AI trembled slightly, and even the water-like ripples on its body became unstable.
Cheng Qisheng understood instantly.
“Oh~ I guessed right.”
She had just made a random guess. After all, in the chat group there was a “Meow Meow Safe City” that even spoke with “meow” at the end of its sentences—so it was probably an actual cat.
If a cat could be a City Lord, then a jellyfish could too.
Besides, if it were just an AI, why would its default virtual form be a jellyfish?
Of course, she might have been wrong.
But if she was wrong, then she was wrong—no one was going to deduct core crystals for that.
Seeing that the AI still hadn’t responded, as if it didn’t know how to react, Cheng Qisheng softened her tone:
“Alright. If you still miss your previous City Lord and don’t want to reveal their information, that’s fine too.”
She let out a soft sigh, sounding faintly worried:
“I just want to make sure—you are my subordinate now, not the previous City Lord’s.”
The AI jellyfish finally moved, its body rippling as it responded in its characteristic mechanical voice:
“The AI is already bound to the City Lord. It is, of course, the City Lord’s assistant.”
“As for the previous City Lord—”
“He led a Tier-4 Safe City in a disaster world, surviving for 14 years. After 14 years, the City Lord gathered enough core crystals to upgrade the Safe City to Tier 5, attempting to resist the disaster with a Tier-5 Safe City, but he failed.”
“The City Lord and all residents died. The Safe City shut down and regressed to Tier 1. However, since the AI had already been upgraded, it could not regress. Therefore, I remain a Tier-5 AI.”
Cheng Qisheng caught the key point immediately.
“When did you gain self-awareness?”
The jellyfish AI replied:
“After upgrading to Tier 5. Before that, the AI was merely a computational machine.”
Cheng Qisheng understood.
In other words, the AI had essentially “woken up” just in time to witness the destruction of the Safe City.
And then it had remained alone in that abandoned Safe City—for hundreds of millions of years.
She clicked her tongue softly.
“Sounds… very lonely.”
This time, the AI was much calmer:
“A Tier-5 AI cannot comprehend the concept of loneliness. After upgrading, however, it developed the instinctive desire of intelligent life to continue existing.”
“Originally, the AI calculated that the planet would be destroyed in ten years, taking me and the Safe City with it. But due to unknown reasons, the planet survived far longer. I was also fortunate enough to survive—and even witnessed the birth of a new civilization.”
Everything clicked into place.
It all made sense now.
Originally, the AI and this Safe City should have perished together with Dark Star.
But Cheng Qisheng had obtained the planet instead—and, through her efforts, managed to keep it alive. As a result, both the Safe City and the AI inside it had survived as well.
The AI was still explaining its mistake: “When your planet was about to be destroyed, I did not wish to die like that. So, at the moment your world was on the verge of collapse, I took the initiative to bind myself to you.”
“I sincerely apologize. Originally, it should have been a brand-new Safe City that bound itself to you.”
Cheng Qisheng processed this for a moment.
So in theory, when Dark Star was destroyed, a Safe City was supposed to descend, and a Tier-1 AI inside it would bind itself to her.
Instead, 008 had acted first. And as a result, while she was already the City Lord of a Tier-1 Safe City, she ended up with a fully upgraded Tier-5 AI.
And now that AI was even apologizing for it.
She almost laughed out loud.
—To be honest, she still wasn’t even sure whether a Safe City would have descended in the first place.
After all, Dark Star was a civilization that shouldn’t have existed to begin with. She had “cheated,” forcibly creating a functioning civilization there.
Who knew whether a Safe City would have even come to bind her?
No matter how she looked at it, the AI binding itself to her was a huge advantage on her side.
As for the possibility that after her death, the AI would go on to bind another City Lord—so what?
After she died, let the world do whatever it wanted.
She should probably even thank that jellyfish City Lord for raising such a powerful Tier-5 AI and letting her benefit from it.
Thinking about what a Tier-5 AI might be capable of, Cheng Qisheng suddenly found the AI even more pleasing to look at.
Knowing it could read facial expressions, she deliberately smiled sweetly and patted the jellyfish head: “It’s fine. I quite like you. Since we’re already bound, let’s build our Safe City together from now on.”
“From now on, let’s live on together.”
The jellyfish AI froze for a full three seconds. It hadn’t expected the City Lord to accept it so easily.
It drifted slightly closer to her: “Thank you for your acceptance.”
“008 was the name given to me by the previous City Lord. Please give me a new name, City Lord.”
For an AI, there was hardly a clearer way to express “I belong to my City Lord” than letting her personally name it.
Cheng Qisheng marveled inwardly.
So this was what a Tier-5 AI was like—it even knew how to show loyalty.
She thought for a moment.
“Aether. Do you like this name?”
Aether—the fifth element of matter in classical philosophy, often considered nonexistent in the physical world.
The first word that came to her mind when the AI asked her to name it was this one.
“Thank you, City Lord. I like this name very much.”
The AI leaned closer, offering its head into her hand, gently swaying its jellyfish body to make its “head” more suitable for touching.
Clearly, the few times Cheng Qisheng had patted it earlier had led it to conclude that the City Lord liked its jellyfish form.
“From now on, I am Aether.”
Cheng Qisheng absentmindedly patted it twice more, already shifting her attention elsewhere.
“The Safe City is already showing slight instability due to high population density. As a Tier-5 AI, do you have a way to solve this problem?”
Aether flipped over within her palm.
“Understood, City Lord. I will immediately resolve the slight instability caused by high population density.”
“Aether will intervene in the monitoring system, manage energy distribution, and automatically enter city environmental analysis mode. I will calculate the optimal living structure for Safe City residents. In the event of any public safety incidents, I will immediately alert the City Lord.”
“Not me directly,” Cheng Qisheng corrected, pointing toward her administrative team.
“I’ll set up an early-warning department in the government. You report to them instead and cooperate with them in handling the situation.”
Her management ability was certainly not top-tier.
But she didn’t need to be.
She only needed to manage people—and an AI—that were.
Cheng Qisheng stretched her body lightly and said with a faint smile: “Now then… let’s see what a Tier-5 AI can really do.”
