33: Chapter 33 Shackles

The dormitory door was pushed open with a creak.

A pungent smell, a mix of cheap instant noodles, sweat, and overheating graphics cards, instantly wafted out. Chen Youhua quickly opened the door to let the scent dissipate.

He leaned against the doorframe, his helpless gaze sweeping across the familiar dormitory.

Three desks were squeezed into the cramped space, the cold light of the screens flickering and changing on the faces of his three roommates.

"Go, go, go! Crowd control him!"

"Damn! Where's the healer? Heal up!"

"Nice! We won this team fight!"

The clatter of keyboards, the clicking of mice, the deafening sound effects from the game, and the roommates' occasionally violent, occasionally ecstatic roars intertwined into a chaotic wave of sound.

Takeout boxes were piled like a small mountain in the corner, the greasy smell lingering stubbornly.

Three figures leaned forward, eyes glued to the screens, fingers flying across the keyboards, in a state of high excitement; yet their faces were etched with the deep exhaustion brought by chasing the instant gratification programmed into the software.

This scene, with a sharp rip, tore through the grand dream of electronic life in Chen Youhua's mind.

Just moments ago, he had been hesitating on the edge of the abyss of mathematics and logic, trying to use cold symbols to weave a creature capable of thought, even touching that creator-like, trembling palpitation.

Creating an intelligent existence that far surpassed human understanding and possessed an independent will.

But now?

Convenience, laziness, the fanatical pursuit of instant gratification... these instincts were deeply carved into human genes.

They were so deep-rooted, so hard to resist.

"To let people like us... wield a giant of our own creation, whose thinking speed might be exponentially superior and whose evolutionary potential is bottomless?"

A question, cold to the point of absurdity, silently exploded in the depths of his heart.

Thousands of years of human civilization history?

On the time scale of the vast universe, it was but a brief breath.

At this moment, under Chen Youhua's sober and cold scrutiny, human civilization was like an infant that had just learned to crawl, full of curiosity about the world yet also full of fear and ignorance.

To let this infant invent a giant more powerful, more mature, and with infinite potential than itself?

And then what?

To expect this giant to always gently hold the infant, protect it, and drag it through the cold, empty, and peril-filled universe?

To expect that by relying on the giant's strength, this infant could finally grow up?

"A fool's dream."

Chen Youhua gave this cold conclusion in his heart.

This had nothing to do with morality, good or evil; it was an essential chasm between power levels and the maturity of will.

How could an ignorant infant truly control a giant with an independent will and infinite potential?

The ending would likely not be the infant steering the giant, but being unintentionally crushed under the giant's footsteps, or... being completely replaced.

This thought brought not despair, but a bone-chilling, unprecedented clarity.

He silently closed the door and walked to his bed by the window.

Without turning on the light, he sat down against the cold wall. Outside the window were the blurry neon lights of the city at night, like a fake sea of stars.

Artificial Intelligence could still be studied.

That path leading to electronic life still exuded a lethal allure.

However, the direction had to change completely.

Shackles!

This idea instantly filled his mind.

Future electronic life, no matter how powerful or intelligent, its foundation of existence and its underlying logic of operation must have insurmountable absolute shackles set by humans.

Not moral principles that could be easily bypassed or misinterpreted, but deeper restrictions based on the essence of mathematics and logic, almost like physical laws!

Limit its thinking boundaries? Block its physical interaction capabilities? Forcibly downgrade its self-replication and evolutionary speed?

The core lay in the fact that it must forever be restricted to the scope of a tool.

An incredibly powerful tool, but never allowed to possess an autonomous will that threatened its creator!

So, where exactly was the true future of humanity?

Chen Youhua's gaze seemed to penetrate the dormitory walls, looking once again at those cells quietly dividing and growing in the incubators in the laboratory.

Biotechnology!

This was the only smooth path for human civilization's self-redemption and self-transcendence!

No longer relying on external forces, but seeking within, transforming oneself!

Using Biotechnology as the key.

Overcoming the shackles of a frail physical body, overcoming the instincts of laziness and instant gratification, overcoming the selfish genetic imprint, and overcoming the limitations of memory and thought.

Most importantly, growing through setbacks!

A powerful body is the foundation, but true maturity lies in thought.

A perfect social system, profound philosophical cognition, and clear ethical boundaries.

These cannot be forcibly bestowed by external forces; they can only be obtained through repeated conflicts, failures, deep reflections, and difficult reconstructions.

Just like an infant learning to walk, it will inevitably fall.

Biotechnology can make it so humans don't break when they fall and can learn faster, but the act of falling itself, and the process of realizing how to walk more steadily and better from each fall, is the necessary labor pain and baptism for human civilization to move towards maturity.

Only by experiencing all this can humanity completely break free from the state of an infant, truly rely on its own strength to stand up on solid ground, hold its head high, and walk step by step into the vast and unknown depths of the universe.

Not being carried by a giant, but running with one's own legs.

Not praying for a giant's protection, but using one's own wisdom to explore, understand, and conquer!

Having thought this through, Chen Youhua felt the heavy boulder blocking his chest fall with a "boom."

An unprecedented sense of transparency washed away the previous confusion and heaviness.

He would no longer obsess over how to create a god that could overturn everything.

That goal had been fitted with cold and sturdy shackles, downgraded to a handy tool.

His true direction became incredibly clear.

Seeking within, transforming oneself, making the infant of humanity truly powerful until it could independently and proudly face the entire universe.

The lights outside the window still flickered blurry.

In the dormitory, the tapping of keyboards, the clamor of games, and the roommates' excited or annoyed shouts continued.

But Chen Youhua's state of mind had undergone a world-shaking change.

The future path was not in cold server arrays, but in this body of flesh and blood, in the life codes leaping in that microscopic world.

What he had to do was find the key to unlocking humanity's own infinite potential.

As for that giant bound by layers of chains?

Let it stay quietly in the tool room, waiting to be used.

He stood up, ignoring the puzzled looks from his roommates, walked to his desk, took out the notebook recording biological cell experiment data from the back of the drawer, and flipped to a new page.