842: Chapter 837 Going to Pick Up a Treasure

He gently stroked the metal box.

The texture was icy cold.

Who could have imagined?

This small box contained the technological hegemony for the next decade.

One million Euros?

Even ten billion couldn't buy the admission ticket to this era.

"Send a message to Wu Ya."

Shen Yan put away the box, his gaze gradually sharpening.

"Have her prepare a new laboratory."

"We're going to build something huge."

Chen Guangke looked at Shen Yan's profile.

For some reason, he felt that the current Shen Yan was even more terrifying than he had been at the auction.

It was an ambition that sought to overturn the entire world.

"Got it."

Chen Guangke took out his phone and typed rapidly.

Although he didn't know what the "huge thing" was.

He knew one thing.

The world was about to change again.

The car merged onto the highway, speeding toward the airport.

And behind them.

The night rain in Marseille had finally stopped.

Only the empty shipping container lay silently in the yard.

Like a shell whose soul had been hollowed out.

Mocking the fools still fighting tooth and nail over it.

This time.

Shen Yan had won completely.

When the plane landed at Jinghai International Airport, the sky was just beginning to show the pale white of dawn.

Shen Yan did not go home.

The black mercedes-benz S-Class, like a shark swimming into the deep sea, plunged directly into the abandoned workshop of 'No. 44 Institute' in the western suburbs.

This place had already been converted by Chen Guangke and his men into a temporary, top-secret laboratory.

Several shadowless lamps illuminated the workbench brilliantly.

The black metal box brought back from Marseille lay quietly on the anti-static mat.

The lid was already open.

Inside was a chip no larger than a fingernail.

It didn't possess the metallic luster of current silicon-based chips.

It was deep blue.

Semi-transparent.

Like a piece of solidified seawater, or perhaps a profound eye.

It was the nascent form of a graphene stacked architecture; in this era, it was an anomaly.

Old Feng Quji wore three layers of magnifying glasses, his tweezers hovering in mid-air, motionless for ten minutes.

This old expert, who held sway in the field of metal smelting, had a fine layer of sweat beading on his forehead.

"Boss."

Feng Quji put down the tweezers and let out a long sigh.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his reddened eyes.

"I can't handle this thing."

His voice carried a deep sense of powerlessness.

"I can try to replicate its casing encapsulation technology using the current Grade 7 aluminum alloy."

"But the architecture inside... it's too bizarre."

Feng Quji pointed at the deep blue chip.

"This isn't circuitry."

"It's a labyrinth."

"It's a neural network built with a logic I completely fail to comprehend."

"If it were about smelting iron and steel, I, Feng Quji, dare say no one is second."

"But if you ask me to power up this 'brain,' it's like Zhang Fei embroidering—I wouldn't even know how to look at it."

Shen Yan stood beside the workbench, his fingers tapping lightly on the table.

As expected.

Expertise is specialized.

Turing's manuscript and this prototype represented a branch on a different technological tree.

Current computer experts were still researching how to miniaturize transistors.

But this chip was researching how to make machines 'think.'

These were things on two different dimensions.

Asking current experts to look at it was like asking a bicycle mechanic to repair a nuclear submarine.

"Old Feng, please rest first."

Shen Yan poured Feng Quji a cup of tea.

"Thank you for your effort on the casing. As for how to power it up..."

Shen Yan's gaze settled on the void.

"I will go find someone who can read the labyrinth."

Chen Guangke stood at the doorway, extinguishing the cigarette in his hand.

"Brother Yan, where are we going to find someone like that?"

"Liang Zexu and those returned Ph.D.s? Or the old scholars at the Chinese Academy of Sciences?"

"They aren't even as good as Old Feng."

Shen Yan shook his head.

People who came up through the orthodox path were full of rigid rules.

Those like Liang Zexu only knew how to copy and improve.

But this 'deep blue heart' required subversion.

It needed a madman.

A madman abandoned by mainstream science, yet one who grasped the truth.

Shen Yan closed his eyes.

His consciousness sank into his mind.

That golden roulette wheel reappeared.

[Current available wealth intelligence: Two instances of advanced wealth intelligence, fifteen instances of intermediate wealth intelligence, several instances of ordinary wealth intelligence.]

The lavish spending of one million Euros in Marseille, plus the prestige converted from humiliating Liang Zexu earlier, had significantly replenished the system's wealth value.

"System."

Shen Yan murmured in his heart.

"I need to find a person."

"Someone who can understand Alan Turing's CN-779 manuscript and can independently construct a graphene computing architecture."

The system was silent for two seconds.

It seemed the difficulty of this request was somewhat high.

[Target search belongs to 'Rare Grade' talent.]

[Requires consumption of one instance of advanced wealth intelligence and three instances of intermediate wealth intelligence to exchange for intelligence.]

[Proceed with exchange?]

So expensive.

But Shen Yan didn't hesitate.

"Pay."

A golden light flashed.

A detailed profile card slowly appeared in Shen Yan's mind.

It had no glamorous titles.

Nor did it have that long list of awards.

The person in the photo had a messy bird's nest of hair, dark circles under his eyes as if he had been punched twice, and a dull gaze, yet it held a stubbornness.

[Target: Xu Mo]

[Age: 26]

[Identity: Janitor at the Computer Science Department of Jinghai University of Technology (Formerly a lecturer in the university's gifted class, later dismissed)]

[Current Status: Labeled 'pseudoscience' by the academic community for publishing the paper 'Carbon-Based Biological Logic vs. Silicon-Based Computational Paradox'; his thesis was plagiarized by his supervisor who then slandered him; stripped of his Ph.D., currently responsible for cleaning the No. 3 lab building.]

[Location: Jinghai University of Technology, first floor of the lecture hall, supply room.]

Shen Yan opened his eyes.

There was no cold curve to his lips.

He just calmly adjusted his cuff links.

"Guang Ke, prepare the car."

"Where to?" Chen Guangke was momentarily stunned.

"Jinghai University of Technology.", Shen Yan walked toward the exit.

"Going to pick up a treasure."

Jinghai University of Technology.

As a top engineering institution in the country, the air on campus was permeated with an arrogant academic atmosphere.

It was the start of the autumn semester, and red banners were hung across the campus.

"Warmly welcome Mr. Zhang Daolin, Silicon Valley Artificial Intelligence Expert and Honorary Professor, to give lectures!"

Chen Guangke parked the car by the roadside and curled his lip at the banner.

"Zhang Daolin? That name sounds like a fortune teller."

"Brother Yan, the person we're looking for is also a professor?"

"No."

Shen Yan watched the students hurrying past with books outside the window.

"He's a cleaner."

The two got out of the car.

Shen Yan was dressed casually today, a dark gray trench coat over a white shirt, looking like a young lecturer.

Chen Guangke, however, was in a black suit and sunglasses, looking like someone who had come to collect protection money.

"Take off the sunglasses."

Shen Yan said lightly.

"Don't scare the students."