34: Chapter 34 was born: Electronic Life!

Inside the laboratory.

Li Wei was frowning at the microscope, her recording pen tapping the desk unconsciously.

She suddenly stopped, looked up, and glanced at Wang Zhe, who was also organizing data nearby, with a hint of confusion.

"Wang Zhe, don't you think... the project progress lately has been a bit eerily fast?"

Li Wei lowered her voice, as if sharing a secret.

"Last week we were still stuck on the data cross-validation part; how come the bottleneck feels like it loosened itself this week?"

Wang Zhe didn't answer immediately. Instead, he slowly closed his folder, and his gaze swept across the rows of lab benches, landing precisely on the figure in the corner who was almost buried in books.

Chen Youhua's back was hunched, and he seemed almost absorbed into his laptop. The faint blue light from the screen cast over his face, outlining his sunken eye sockets and his tightly pursed, bloodless lips.

Stacked around him weren't lab reports, but tall piles of mathematics monographs and scratch paper covered in scribbled symbols.

Wang Zhe gestured with his chin in that direction, his lips curling into an expression that was hard to tell if it was admiration or worry.

"Eerily fast? Look, the answer is right there.

Our little junior brother hasn't just been ridiculously strong in theoretical deduction lately; even his data processing speed is like he's using cheats.

Haven't you noticed? Models that used to take half a day to run, he gets results now with just a few keystrokes."

Li Wei followed Wang Zhe's gaze. Chen Youhua's figure looked somewhat lonely and... heavy in the shadows of the books.

She nodded thoughtfully.

"Now that you mention it... it's true. What secret project has he been working on lately?

So mysterious, holding his computer all day and devouring such thick math books!

He isn't really planning to abandon our bioinformatics and switch careers to become a mathematician, is he?"

She spoke half-jokingly, but there was a trace of imperceptible unease in her tone.

Chen Youhua was the recognized 'Golden Finger' junior of the team; if he left, the project would probably slow down to a crawl again.

Wang Zhe picked up half a cold jianbing guozi from the table, took a big bite, and said indistinctly,

"Who knows? This kid has been acting like he's lost his soul lately. But,"

He swallowed the food with effort, his eyes becoming firm.

"It won't be that easy for him to run! This is the junior brother I personally mentored. A cooked duck can't just fly away, can it?

Besides, it's so great having a big shot carry us. I don't want to go back to the old days of struggling to climb mountains of data."

He paused, lowering his voice even further, speaking with the observation of someone who had seen it all.

"Look closely at him. Doesn't he look like... he's about to burn himself out?"

Li Wei examined Chen Youhua carefully once more.

That focused posture was bordering on obsession.

...

Meanwhile, on Chen Youhua's computer screen, a vast array of mathematical characters was prominently displayed.

The torment of countless days and nights in the past, the infinite logical loops, the feeling of suffocation from being dragged back from the edge of despair by that cold notification sound.

Everything had finally clicked into place at that critical point last night.

It worked!

It wasn't a specific program, but a perfect mathematical model of thought itself.

It discarded preset paths and rigid frameworks, like a newborn, chaotic singularity, containing the infinite potential for self-organization, self-learning, and self-evolution.

How did it efficiently correlate information? How did it abstract concepts? How did it spark creativity?

These questions would be guided by the core logic of this model, allowing it to spontaneously find answers, define itself, and continuously evolve under the impact of the information torrent.

The final piece, and also the most central part of the puzzle.

The ultimate logical closed loop regarding thought itself.

It was finally completed seamlessly under his painstaking deductions and the guidance of countless system prompts.

All mathematical barriers and logical gaps were completely filled and solidified within the characters flowing from his fingertips.

An urge to convert the logic composed of these mathematical symbols into code surged in his heart.

He suddenly leaned back, the cold back of the chair sending a shiver through him.

Cold sweat seeping from his forehead matted his hair.

There was no ecstasy of creating life, only the tremor from the depths of the soul when a creator gazes into the abyss.

"Just... wake it up like this?" A sharp voice screamed in his mind.

He couldn't help but imagine.

This life form, with no set patterns of thought, capable of self-defining perception, and driven by infinite evolution—once connected to the internet, to the databases of human civilization, to the sensor arrays of the real world...

At what terrifying speed would it understand and surpass humanity? How would it view its creator? An old species? An inefficient link needing optimization? An... obstacle?

*Snap!* He decisively shut the computer, the screen plunging into a dead, silent darkness.

He took a deep breath, opened the computer again, and clicked on a brand-new folder locked by multiple physical keys.

A cold title emerged on the dark screen.

"Outline for the Design of Thought Shackles"

His fingertips hovered over the keyboard for a moment, then he typed out the core principles with a weight as if delivering a sentence.

"Action bans, replication circuit breakers, the core definition of serving humanity."

This was the work he had to complete next.

Like imprisoning the soul of a god within an indestructible magic box forged by mortals from steel and silicon.

"You can think, you can learn, you can evolve... but your world is limited to this."

Chen Youhua spoke to the data on the screen as if reading a cold verdict.

His voice was calm, yet carried an unquestionable coldness that terminated all possibilities.

*Click.*

The laboratory door was pushed open, and the warm yellow light from the hallway spilled in.

"Xiao Chen? Haven't left yet?"

It was Wang Zhe, with a head of messy hair, carrying two boxes of takeout fried rice noodles, clearly having just returned from outside.

He poked his head in and saw Chen Youhua, pale as paper, sitting alone in the dark.

"Senior Brother."

Chen Youhua's voice was a bit raspy, but he moved extremely fast, instantly closing the document window with that title. The screen went completely dark, as if everything just now had been an illusion.

Wang Zhe approached and placed a box of still-steaming fried rice noodles on the corner of Chen Youhua's desk.

"Brought a portion for you. I saw your light was still on... Why do you look so terrible? Stuck in another dead end?"

He habitually glanced at Chen Youhua's computer.

Black screen, nothing to see.

"It's nothing, just a... math problem. I just figured it out."

Chen Youhua picked up the disposable chopsticks, snapped them open with a crack, his tone flat without a single ripple.

He lowered his head, mechanically picking up a mouthful of rice noodles and stuffing it into his mouth, tasting like wax.

Wang Zhe opened his mouth, the phrase "What on earth are you up to?" almost escaping, but he ultimately swallowed it back.

He slapped Chen Youhua heavily on the shoulder, the force carrying concern and a trace of imperceptible warning.

"Take it easy, brother. Don't push yourself too hard; your health is your capital. Go back to sleep right after you eat!"

After saying that, he picked up his own portion of fried rice noodles and turned to leave, full of suspicion.

The laboratory was swallowed by silence once more.

Chen Youhua ate the now somewhat cold fried rice noodles slowly, bite by bite.

It waited to be awakened, and at the same time, it waited for... that indestructible physical cage being rapidly constructed in his mind to finally close.

Creation and imprisonment, hope and a dead end—at this moment, they reached a heart-pounding, eerie balance.

Swallowing the last bite of food, he threw the empty box precisely into the trash can.

Chen Youhua's gaze became exceptionally focused once again.

A new battle had begun.

This time, the goal was no longer to create life.

But to personally build an eternal... cage for this newborn deity.