Chapter 153: Dragons beget dragons, phoenixes beget phoenixes, and Ye Chao has a fine sister
Actually, not really.
After securing eight hundred points, Ye Chao immediately started his lecture hall, acting cool to discipline students, secretly gathering experience to level up, and preparing for his duel with Xu Tiange;
Xu Tiange was much the same. Once she reached eight hundred points, she stopped, found a place to rest, and reserved her stamina for the duel... After all, the exam was far from over.
One could only say that the eight-hundred-point safety lines established by these two individuals coincidentally overlapped.
Well, it was indeed a display of romantic affection.
However, eight hundred points did not secure first place, only a tied fourth.
After all, not everyone was like them, or Jing Xin, Qu Shitu, Jiong Xiaoyi, Song Baojian, Tang Lin, or the twin sisters...
They submitted their papers four hours early, then took turns acting cool, resting, plotting in secret, or being treated with passionate flair...
Although Xu Tiange's four-star strength surpassed everyone else, and although Ye Chao could use live broadcasts and micro-drones to map the battlefield, constantly optimizing his path based on intelligence for maximum efficiency, this was still just the first stage of the competition. Aside from the scheming between participants, the difficulty was relatively low.
One-star and two-star students found it strenuous, but for three-stars, it was like high school students taking an elementary school test... It was far from a guarantee... Just like high schoolers taking an elementary school physical education exam.
With a total score of only one hundred, everyone had a chance at a hundred. Aside from avoiding dragging others down, it all depended on how serious and meticulous one was during the exam.
In the end, first place achieved an astonishing 1020 points! Ranked fourth on the overall leaderboard was Lei Zhenjun from First High.
Staring at the small, dark figure on the giant screen that resembled a demon squirrel, Grand Elder Lei's mouth split open like a cracked watermelon.
Second place scored over nine hundred points, ranked eighth overall: Fang Shangcheng from Second High.
Looking at the majestic figure holding a long whip... Chief Elder Fang Nian's pride was relatively restrained, since it wasn't first place after all, meaning they still needed to press on and work harder!
Third place, 809, could be considered a narrow victory. Ranked sixth overall was Li Zhistui from Fourth High, a refined and standard pretty boy.
General Affairs Elder Li Jingao showed neither joy nor sorrow, clapping his hands with a placid heart like still water!
Even Alpha Ji, whose emotional intelligence was a total zero, couldn't tell whether this guy was happy or sad; she could only be certain that he was plotting something!
In short, yes—the top three spots of the final general combat preliminary round were taken by the Third Young Master of the Grand Elder's family, the Second Young Master of the Chief Elder's family, and the Sixth Young Master of the General Affairs Elder's family, respectively.
Absolute backstage rigging! There was definitely something fishy going on!
Before the Apocalypse, various media outlets would have definitely written grand exposés about this! It would have dominated the headlines for days.
However, among the more than twenty thousand viewers, very few were surprised, dissatisfied, or upset.
School education in Jiangcheng had been striving for equality. To demonstrate the balanced distribution of teaching staff, the children of the Three Elders were even deliberately placed in different schools.
However, dragons beget dragons, and phoenixes beget phoenixes. In the apocalyptic era, one had to acknowledge family heritage and the power of genetics! The stronger the parents, the smoother the children's cultivation and the easier their advancement... This had already become consensus.
Compared to the somewhat impetuous and impulsive Jing Xin, Qu Shitu, and Jiong Xiaoyi, the three powerful second-generation heirs were veteran three-stars who had advanced early just like Xu Tiange, long before the holographic helmets ever appeared.
Although the holographic helmets had shaken up the rankings, the influence accumulated over the previous few years was not so easily faded.
This was a reflection of true strength.
New three-stars like Jing Xin and Qu Shitu were still somewhat immature in certain aspects.
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Imaginary Space.
Ye Chao's Laboratory.
The competition had ended, and Alpha Ji finally had time to sneak in and take a look.
She hadn't been here for a long time because it was too dry! Dull! Uninteresting! Boring!
The decor consisted of bookshelves, USB flash drives, monitors, and all sorts of dazzling tools; entertainment consisted of an endless cycle of studying, manufacturing, and research; oh, and the parents on the mentally disabled assembly line bustling back and forth, whom he never seemed to find annoying.
As a result, stepping inside abruptly this time gave her a fright.
The workshop was still the same workshop, the laboratory was still the same laboratory, except that...
"Welcome!" o((*^▽^*))o
There were over a thousand monitors here, corresponding respectively to different mobile phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and gaming consoles.
The moment Alpha Ji entered, the exact same greeting and emoticons flashed across every single screen, accompanied by the same cheerful welcome message.
Alpha Ji: Sigma(°△°|||)︴
Ye Chao, you actually went behind my back and secretly developed an intelligent program! I knew you couldn't possibly drive or operate that Golden Wheel Dharma King armor all by yourself!
So, am I really going to be replaced? Am I going to lose my job?
Throughout history and across time, has any companion elder ever lived as miserably as me?
Alpha Ji stuttered for a moment, putting up a fierce front: "You, you, you—are you the new artificial intelligence Ye Chao picked up... behind my back?" Halfway through her sentence, she realized she had unconsciously used the tone of a principal wife catching a mistress.
The trouble was she wasn't the principal wife, so her stance lacked conviction...
"0022 does not understand your meaning, please input again?"
"Artificial intelligence? How can a robot be as cute as 0045?"
"0088 is searching for 'are you the new artificial intelligence Ye Chao picked up'?"
"0177 asks, do you want to open WeChat, log into QQ, or browse Weibo?"
"Double Eleven is coming soon! As long as you say 'I want a red envelope', 0222 will immediately help you grab one!"
Swish, swish, swish...
In an instant, hundreds of screens stood neatly like a queue, giving all sorts of diverse, dazzling answers.
Alpha Ji: (￣┰￣*)
Little Ye Chao, exactly how many good little sisters have you secretly cultivated behind my back?
Forcibly swallowing a mouthful of old blood, Alpha Ji chatted with these "good little sisters" of Ye Chao for a while before finally realizing the situation.
Names like 0022, 0045, and 0088 were actually pre-apocalypse well-known artificial intelligences like Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Microsoft's Xiaoice, Google Assistant, and Xiao Ai—found in almost every smart device, impossible to uninstall.
However, due to the lack of internet and massive databases, these AIs had lost most of their pre-death functions, leaving only certain program interfaces intact.
Thus, Ye Chao had borrowed a chicken to lay an egg, wrapped them in their old shells, stuffed them with his own private modifications, and put on the spectacle before her.
Even though Ye Chao had renamed them and altered their appearances, Alpha Ji's own birth had drawn heavily from these AIs, so how could she possibly fail to recognize them?
Truthfully, these AIs could be considered Alpha Ji's elder sisters.
Of course, that referred to their core essences, absolutely not these bodies that looked vivid and amusing, yet failed the Winograd Schema Test.
Forget the Winograd Schema Test; they couldn't even pass the Turing Test...
They were simply a bunch of soul-less macro-instructions!