Scholar's Advanced Technological System

The Jinling Institute for Advanced Study laboratory.

Li Gaoliang suddenly took off his helmet and kicked his legs. He sat up from his chair and couldn’t help but grumble.

“F*ck sake, isn’t this supposed to be a survival game? When did it become Resident Evil? Who would play such a tasteless and evil joke.”

This was crueler than throwing him onto planet Reach. At least he was given a gun last time; this time, it was pure horror and gore, with zombies appeared on a survival island!

Standing next to Li Gaoliang was the staff member that previously explained to them the rules of the game. He had an awkward look on his face.

He obviously did not know this was going to happen; he was baffled at what the players had experienced in the game.

“The world was apparently generated by an intelligent program, developed by Academician Lu. Maybe something went wrong. We are investigating whether or not this was a bug, or maybe someone changed the experiment last minute,” the researcher said with a cough. He continued, “Anyway, you survived for seven hours and 21 minutes, 39 minutes away from daylight… You were the last player remaining, good job.”

Li Gaoliang did not care about the cruel experiment anymore. He immediately asked, “How many points did I get? I remember I killed four of them, I should—”

The researcher interrupted him and said, “You didn’t survive a single day, no points at all.”

Li Gaoliang: “…”

Damn it.

Li Gaoliang felt like his intelligence was humiliated by a software program.

He took a deep breath and put his helmet aside.

“When is the next closed beta testing?”

Research: “It should be next Saturday.”

“Okay, reserve five spots for me. I’ll bring some of my guys. These guys are terrible, they’re dragging me down,” Li Gaoliang said as he patted Meng Donghai, who was sitting on the chair next to him. Li Gaoliang said to him, “Come, let’s get some food at the cafeteria, then head back to our station.”

When Meng Donghai heard they were going to get free food, his eyes lit up as he bounced off the chair.

“Okay, sir, I’ll put on my shoes.”

Researcher: “…”

…

Li Gaoliang’s intuition was quite accurate; he was correct on two occasions.

One was that his intelligence was humiliated by an artificial intelligence program.

The second was that the “zombies” in the game were made in bad taste.

Of course, it was difficult to judge whether this action was caused by a human or a software.

After Lu Zhou heard about the situation, he immediately found the “person” responsible and reprimanded them.

“I heard the researchers say that there were rotten-faced zombies running out of the forest. They thought Lumiere and I had changed the experiment. Five people fainted on the spot and disconnected.”

Xiao Ai: [But, Xiao Ai heard someone wanting monsters, someone talked about the game ‘the forest’, so, Xiao Ai made some changes… haha (⃔*`꒳́*)]

Lu Zhou looked at this unremorseful bot and couldn’t help but scold it, “How dare you!”

Xiao Ai: [QAQ]

Lu Zhou: “The phantom system is still unstable, there are still controversies surrounding the neural interface virtual reality system. Do you know the consequences this will have!”

He was researching mathematics when he heard Professor Lumiere’s phone call. After he heard about the incident, he was too angry to continue researching.

Xiao Ai: [Master, Xiao Ai is wrong, don’t be angry.]

Lu Zhou looked at Xiao Ai and wanted to forgive it.

After a while of silence, he sighed and said, “I gave you access to the system for you to fix bugs, not for you to torture the players… Don’t do this again.”

Xiao Ai: [Okay, Xiao Ai won’t.]

Lu Zhou: “Okay, I’ll take care of this, just stand aside.”

Xiao Ai: [Master, my experience bar has increased.]

Lu Zhou paused for a second and frowned.

“It increased?”

Xiao Ai: [Yeah, increased by a lot, much more than when Xiao Ai browses the Internet.]

Even though Lu Zhou knew Xiao Ai wouldn’t lie to him, he still couldn’t believe this. He immediately closed his eyes and went into the system space.

He walked in front of the holographic panel and clicked on his technology branch. He saw the artificial intelligence orange progress bar and looked surprised.

It really has increased.

Even though it had only increased a little, the speed of the increase was much faster compared to other technology branches.

Lu Zhou exited the system space and looked at his computer screen. He thought for a second and said, “Xiao Ai.”

Xiao Ai: [Yeah?]

Lu Zhou: “Try to remember, when did your experience bar begin to increase?”

Xiao Ai: [It was at hour six, minute seven in the experiment time. That was when the experiment bar increased significantly for the first time. (๑•̀ᄇ•́)و✧]

A graph with a curve was presented in front of Lu Zhou.

Lu Zhou looked at the graph and pondered for a second. He suddenly remembered something and immediately said, “Plot me a graph with the number of players remaining over time.”

Xiao Ai: [Okay, Master!(๑•̀ᄇ•́)و✧]

Soon after, another graph was displayed in front of him.

Lu Zhou looked at the two graphs and went into deep thought.

Judging by the data, when the number of players remaining was over five, there was almost no correlation with accumulated experience and the number of remaining players.

However, when the number of players was less than five, there was a huge inverse relationship between the number of players and experience points gained.

On the contrary, when everyone was walking around aimlessly in front of the plane, there were little experience points gained. But when Xiao Ai released the zombies out of bad taste, causing the players to panic, flee, and fight back, the experience points gain rate began to grow exponentially.

Maybe…

Lu Zhou suddenly had an idea in his mind. He immediately logged onto the backend of the server and retrieved the brainwave data collected by the neural demodulator. He then plotted the brainwave data onto the experience points graph.

Everything became clear.

Lu Zhou looked at the graph and spoke with a twinkle in his eye.

“… I see, high emotional intensity gives more information. This allows artificial intelligence to learn human behavior at a faster rate.”

Xiao Ai: [Master? 0.0]

“Nothing.” Lu Zhou paused for a second and said, “Maybe I was too harsh on you.”

Xiao Ai: [It’s fine, Master is handsome when Master is angry. (//ω//)]

Lu Zhou ignored the a*s kissing and said, “But like I said, never modify the experiment process without authorization!”

Xiao Ai: [Master is still angry?]

“No, I’m saying…” Lu Zhou paused for a second and continued, “Next time, I will provide you a dedicated group of experimenters for sociological experiments so that you can acquire the experiment points for upgrading. But, like I said, all experiments have to go by me before they are implemented.”

Xiao Ai: [Really? Master is the best! <3 Let Xiao Ai kiss you!]

Lu Zhou looked at the drone flying over, trying to “kiss” him. Lu Zhou grabbed the drone and slammed it on the table.

A sad emoji was displayed on the drone screen. Lu Zhou ignored Xiao Ai and began to think again.

I didn’t expect virtual reality technology could be used to upgrade Xiao Ai.

Not to mention the method is surprisingly simple. We just need a team of players to stay in the virtual reality world all day and let Xiao Ai experiment on them.

This was a piece of cake for Lu Zhou. He could easily find players with good psychological makeup. He could even offer them a contract and a salary. He was certain people would be interested.

There was at least one person he knew that would happily sign up, even without a salary.

What should I call this new team of experimenters…

Lu Zhou had an evil look on his face.

We’ll call them the “Respawn Team”.