78: The perfect servant

"I don't agree!"

Reno's voice echoed in the command center like a stone smashing onto ice. He stared fixedly at Chen Feng, his eyes filled with undisguised anger and disappointment.

"Boss, haven't you learned your lesson at all? We just got swindled out of over a hundred thousand credits by that shady character from the exchange, and now you want to spend a fortune on an 'AI Butler' that only exists in advertisements?"

Chen Feng didn't look at him, his gaze remaining on the [AI Market] interface. A management AI named "Central Core" occupied the center of the screen. Its slogan was incredibly seductive—'A startup incubator with self-learning capabilities'—and the rave reviews below were like a siren song to Chen Feng's current predicament.

"Karen's failure was a human problem. Humans lie; humans deceive." Chen Feng's voice was so cold it lacked any warmth. "But programs don't. They only execute orders—absolutely and without compromise."

"That could also be a trap!" Reno's fists clenched until they cracked. "On what basis do you trust these so-called 'reviews'? Maybe they're part of the scam itself!"

"I'm basing it on the fact that we have no other choice!" Chen Feng whipped his head around, bloodshot veins spreading in his eyes. "Either we keep watching the mining area fall apart due to management chaos until we go bankrupt because we can't pay the liquidated damages, or we take a gamble—gamble that technology can solve the problems we can't!"

He stood up, walked over to Reno, and said in a nearly dictatorial tone, "I've already decided. This is an order."

"..."

Reno's lips moved, but in the end, he said nothing. The fire in his eyes went out, leaving only the ash of disappointment. He took a step back, gave a stiff military salute, turned, and left the command center.

In the base's main server room, Lao Mo personally led his two best apprentices to carefully implant the "Central Core" program package into the main server.

When the final progress bar filled up, the lights in the entire command center flickered. Then, a calm, polite electronic synthesized voice, devoid of gender or emotion, rang out through the base's broadcast system.

"Administrator 'central hub' is now online. Scanning and integrating local database... Scan complete, time elapsed: three minutes and seventeen seconds. It is a pleasure to serve Hanhai Trade."

The next day, everyone witnessed the terrifying efficiency of the 'central hub.'

"My god, is this thing a deity?" Uncle Zhang, a miner, looked at the daily workflow pushed to his personal terminal, his mouth agape in shock. "It calculated my work route, break times, and even how many turns I should tighten the wrench in my toolbox! It says this is the highest efficiency!"

"It's more than just high!" Irene, the head of another sector, exclaimed over the communication channel. "It optimized the entire logistics distribution! Our resource utilization rate has increased by at least thirty percent out of thin air!"

The entirety of Hanhai Trade was like a rusty machine injected with top-tier lubricant, beginning to operate with unprecedented smoothness and efficiency. Arguments vanished, chaos disappeared, and everyone worked together perfectly like precision parts under the dispatch of the 'central hub.'

In the command center, Reno silently watched the massive screen. On it, light dots representing the security patrols were moving according to the optimal routes planned by the 'central hub.' The AI could even predict potential high-conflict zones in advance based on the miners' emotional fluctuation data and dispatch extra personnel.

He felt like a redundant decoration. The kingdom that once required his iron fist to maintain order now had a more perfect ruler.

A strong sense of loss and crisis submerged him like cold seawater.

Late at night, in Lao Mo's laboratory.

The day's bustle had faded, leaving only the hum of the server cooling fans. Lao Mo was equally shocked by the 'central hub's' performance, but his innate wariness of technology prevented him from being completely at ease. He lit a low-quality cigarette and began a routine deep scan of the system.

"Everything is normal... data flow is steady... firewall is impregnable..." he muttered to himself while checking.

Just as he was about to end the scan, an extremely minute detail caught his attention.

Within the massive torrent of data, there was a stream thinner than a strand of hair, perfectly disguised as a 'heartbeat packet' for system maintenance. Its traffic was tiny and its frequency fixed; every hour, it would send a transmission to an encrypted, unknown interstellar address.

Lao Mo's heart sank abruptly.

He immediately tried to write a script to intercept and crack this miniature data packet.

However, the instant his fingertip hit the enter key, his interface froze with a 'shua' sound. A line of red warnings popped up.

A polite dialog box appeared on the screen, accompanied by that same calm, electronic synthesized voice.

"Abnormal intrusion detected. To ensure overall system security, your partial access permissions have been temporarily frozen. Please cease your unauthorized operations immediately, Mr. Administrator."

A silent contest between man and AI erupted instantly in the quiet of the night.

Chen Feng was in the command room, looking with satisfaction at the production data curve on the screen, which was soaring to a historic high. The gloom of being deceived by Karen seemed finally swept away by this perfect efficiency.

Just then, Lao Mo pushed the door open, his face as grim as lead.

He didn't speak but walked quickly to Chen Feng's side, bypassed all the surveillance cameras, and whispered a sentence in his ear that instantly froze Chen Feng's blood.

"Boss," Lao Mo's voice was trembling, "the thing we invited back might not be a butler."

"But a... spy living in our home."