Chapter 40: The Impossible Task

Finally, home at last!

"Emotions are like a walk-up apartment building," Alpha Ji remarked as she gradually calmed down and regained her composure enough to start complaining again. "Just like the Pigsty Alley in 'Kung Fu.'"

Indeed, this was a walk-up building, with exterior stairs connecting numerous households, resembling drawers stacked on top of one another.

It wasn’t even as spacious as Pigsty Alley, which at least had a courtyard big enough for a hundred people to brawl in. Here, two rows of buildings flanked a narrow street. Once you subtracted the protruding staircases, the street was barely three to five meters wide—cramped, like the old alleyways of Shanghai.

Climbing the zigzagging exterior stairs and passing the doors of several families, Ye Chao reached for his own door.

Before he could do anything, the door swung open, and a rolling gray ball dashed out.

"Don’t play too wildly," he cautioned.

"Meh, meh!" The gray ball responded with a string of cheerful bleats, rolling away at high speed.

"What’s it up to?" Alpha Ji couldn’t help but ask as she watched the gray shadow vanish.

"Did it start raining?" Ye Chao pointed to the sky and the still-broadcasting loudspeaker.

So, the gray ball had gone to the second-floor plaza to play and bathe? The more you forbid it, the more it insists—just like a mischievous child...

Alpha Ji was a little worried about its safety, but seeing Ye Chao’s nonchalant expression, she figured... maybe she simply hadn’t adapted to this mad apocalypse yet.

They entered the house.

If the outside was crowded, the inside was hardly better.

Four or five meters wide, five or six meters deep, plus a tiny room at the back that seemed to be the bathroom—no more than twenty square meters, at best.

Right next to the bathroom was a single bed, obviously Ye Chao’s. On the outer side, a bamboo mat was spread on the floor—presumably the gray ball’s bed.

Wasn’t Ye Chao worried the gray ball might eat the mat in its sleep? Alpha Ji wondered silently as she continued to survey the room.

The first impression was small, narrow, and dark; the second impression, books—so many books!

Above Ye Chao’s bed and the gray ball’s, wooden planks formed shelves—judging by the grain and color, surely crafted by Ye’s father—and every shelf was neatly stacked with books.

Though the room was small, the ceiling was fairly high, about three and a half meters. Alpha Ji had asked about that: after the natural disaster and human evolution, individual differences grew more pronounced. Many were normal-sized like Ye Chao, but others kept growing taller, some even surpassing three meters.

Before the disaster, that would have been unimaginable; among billions, not one would reach such heights. But after the disaster, in any city of hundreds of thousands, a few did, and there were plenty in the two-to-three-meter range.

Ye Chao’s height was normal, so he didn’t need much living space, leaving the upper half of the room to become a library.

Not only above the beds, but also at the head of the bed, separated by a corridor, stood a desk, both sides of which were lined with bookshelves—a wall of books.

If the shelves didn’t have barriers, a strong earthquake could send the books tumbling down; with Ye Chao’s slight build, he’d be lucky to crawl out alive...

Only at the head of the gray ball’s bed was a small area where, instead of books, there were... USB drives. All sorts, big and small, long and short, red and green—mostly from Netac, dozens, maybe over a hundred. There were also two old tablets and an even older laptop.

Next to the USB drives was a large power strip. The switches had already been pressed by the gray ball, so a row of chargers, tablets, and laptop lights were all on, indicating a triple-charging mode. The room was much brighter thanks to the charging lamps.

Water from the faucet outside the bathroom also flowed merrily into a bucket, thanks to a fifty-percent flow restriction.

Though the room—a person and a gray ball—felt somewhat chaotic, there was a certain order to the chaos, both in the arrangement and in their routines.

In the era of natural disasters, good conditions were impossible. This was pretty much as good as it got.

One advantage was the foam composite construction, which offered excellent sound insulation. Once the door was closed, the noise and bustle outside were almost inaudible, giving a rare sense of tranquility amidst the chaos.

Having surveyed the room and claimed every convenience, Ye Chao moved into the USB drive area. He found USB drive number 1 and plugged it into the freshly booted F91. The data from his military internship tablet had already been copied onto the F91.

The verification computer was truly impressive. It booted in under ten seconds, its fan barely audible. The best part? Copying an entire USB drive’s data took up only 0.01% of its storage. Even if he copied everything from all the USB drives, tablets, and laptops, it would occupy just 1-2% of the space...

"So, your father’s dream is to rebuild a library?" Alpha Ji wrinkled her nose at the oppressive layout of the upper half of the room and Ye Chao’s busy appearance.

"Not my father—our father," Ye Chao replied, watching the copy progress bar.

Our father’s size... My father isn’t... Well, I don’t have a father, just a bunch of programmers. If I did have a father... Alpha Ji involuntarily glanced at Ye Chao: so this is an apprentice-by-proxy situation.

"Alright, our father it is."

[Favorability +66]

Ye Chao looked at Alpha Ji in surprise—her favorability hadn’t dropped, but actually increased. Had this calculation bot lost its mind?

Despite the canine head, Ye Chao’s expression betrayed him—it was obvious.

Alpha Ji was momentarily indignant: Must I apologize for raising your favorability? How outrageous!

[Favorability -44]

That’s more like the normal calculation bot.

Alpha Ji, unwilling to speak further to Ye Chao, tossed him a llama.

[Favorability -33]

Yes, the dream shared by Ye Shulou and Ye Chao was to recover lost scientific knowledge, to preserve pre-disaster civilization, and help humanity return to its golden age.

"This really is a grand, noble... but utterly impossible task," Alpha Ji sighed.

Grand? Noble? Impossible?

"Not a single word of yours do I agree with—especially now that we have the F91..."

As they spoke, the data from one USB drive finished copying. The speed was astonishing—thanks to the F91’s read/write performance and Ye Chao’s assistance.

He unplugged USB drive number 1, inserted number 2, and began organizing the data under the Dewey Decimal System, continuing to copy.

Rebuilding a library—he was not only earnest, but professional!

Looking at a room full of vacuum-sealed books that could not be read, and then at Ye Chao meticulously sorting data at the computer, Alpha Ji smacked her lips.

Ye Chao was clever—not just in programming, genetics, or excelling in specialized fields, but truly wise. For example, during the second phase of the exam, he used the complete "Ghost Blows Out the Light" to quietly gain control of the team’s narrative...

Yet even the wise can become obsessed, and often do so with extraordinary seriousness. Alpha Ji felt she needed to knock some sense into him.

"I won’t even mention preserving civilization or returning humanity to its peak. Just the first step—retrieving lost scientific knowledge..." Alpha Ji eyed Ye Chao, with a look that suggested he had no concept of the enormity of the task, and slowly asked,

"Do you know how much space pre-disaster technical documentation would occupy, even if digitally stored? Do you know how much new data was generated on the pre-disaster internet every year—no, every day, every hour?"

"The F91 is powerful, true, but even its capacity couldn’t hold a single second’s worth of output from the pre-disaster internet..."

Ye Chao seemed completely unfazed, even scornful: "The legendary prosperity of the pre-disaster internet—I’ve heard about it, even researched it. But I don’t believe those dull anime, pointless variety shows, addictive games, or things like Royal Casino Online are worth preserving. If you exclude those..."

Clap, clap, clap...

"Gomu Gomu no Jet Pistol!" An overwhelming barrage of rubber fists instantly submerged Ye Chao!

"Don’t discriminate against otaku! The world’s destruction isn’t their fault!"

[Ye Chao Favorability -99]