Chapter Twenty-One: No Report for Now

Xi Zhijie stepped away from the floor-to-ceiling window and sat down on the living room sofa. The gloomy look in his eyes from moments ago vanished, replaced by the crinkling warmth of a doting father. He beckoned his precious daughter, Xi Rui, to come over and talk.

"I don't like this sofa," Xi Rui said, her face full of disdain. "Don't you think this mix of dark orange and white leather looks as tacky as those phone cases used by Chinese influencers who take hundreds of selfies while wandering around Marina Bay Sands?"

Xi Zhijie let out a hearty laugh at his daughter’s sharpness, even though they had only moved to Singapore seven or eight years ago.

He firmly believed that children were only happy if they were sharp-tongued, and only happy if they looked down their noses at their own compatriots. The underlying logic of this "fatherly love" was simple: his daughter was a true heiress, a true princess, and therefore she need not consider whether her biting sarcasm would hurt others or provoke their resentment before letting it slip out.

Xi Zhijie patted the armrest of the sofa. "Fair enough. We'll have it moved out tomorrow and replace it with a color you like. Xiao Rui, which color was it? My apologies, I know you told me, but I’ve forgotten."

Xi Rui rolled her eyes at her father. "Damson. It’s a very specific, deep purple."

The three-seater sofa in the living room cost 200,000 Singapore dollars—equivalent to 1.2 million yuan at the 2035 exchange rate. If one were to turn back the clock twenty-five years to 2010 in Shanghai, Xi Zhijie, then still a university student, would have gasped at the sight of a 100,000-yuan sofa at the IFC mall, wondering, "Is it made of human skin? Why is it so expensive?"

Now, 1.2 million yuan was but a fraction of a fraction of his assets.

Days ago, to cooperate with the government’s promotion of service robots in malls, Xi Zhijie—who had not exposed himself to the crowds for three or four years—had appeared on the first floor of the Marina Bay Sands shopping center. During the fifteen minutes he spent waiting with media representatives for the officials to arrive, he happened to glance at that luxury brand known for harvesting its core clientele through strict inventory allocation policies. He noticed that the only human saleswoman inside had a lovely smile, one that reminded him of a woman he had been infatuated with in his youth.

On a whim, Xi Zhijie instructed his bodyguard to pick out any seven-figure item and buy it. That was how the "tacky" sofa, as his daughter called it, had arrived. His daughter's preferences, of course, were far more important than a mere 1.2 million yuan.

Xi Zhijie turned to the AI device on his desk. "Xiao Te, notify Butler Yuri of two things. First, remove the current sofa from the living room before twelve noon tomorrow; do not let it appear anywhere else in this apartment. Second, order a new three-seater sofa in Damson. Have Butler Yuri show Miss Xi Rui the brand’s leather swatches first."

"Understood," the AI, Xiao Te, replied. "Sending your instructions to Butler Yuri now."

Once the service robot on the desk fell silent, Xi Rui curled her lip. "Dad, there’s something more important than changing the sofa!"

"Oh, right, right," Xi Zhijie said, looking at his daughter perched on the desk. "That male streamer—how did he upset you?"

Xi Rui was speechless. "Dad, are you a goldfish? Is your memory only seven seconds long?"

"I’m getting old, unlike the streamers you like, who are only in their early twenties."

"But he was actually having a conversation with some old woman, almost forty, who claims to be a writer! And this was after I entered the livestream!" Xi Rui’s voice rose. "They were even talking about philosophy. Isn’t that something only broke, neurotic people study?"

Xi Zhijie asked, "Oh? Did they discuss philosophers?"

Xi Rui shrugged. "They did, but I didn't bother to remember. Something about a philosopher named Tank or something, and some messy story about AI."

"Wittgenstein in the Machine?" Xi Zhijie blurted out.

Philosophy had been his major in university. Wittgenstein, along with Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche, had once been more familiar to him than the bodies of the campus beauties he had slept with. The campus beauty who had once promised him her heart had broken things off immediately after graduation. She would never choose to stay with a financially strapped classmate, even one who could explain Wittgenstein with such eloquence.

Now, when Xi Zhijie looked back on such memories, there was no sting—only a sense of triumph.

Xi Zhijie continued to smile at his daughter. "This female writer sounds quite well-read. You should look into what Wittgenstein is all about. If you can't beat them, join them; then, when they’re in the heat of their discussion, you can make a stunning appearance."

Xi Rui said irritably, "I’m not wasting my time on something so stupid. Dad, we’re the actual controllers of that platform anyway. Just have the platform ban that female writer."

Xi Rui hopped off the desk, plopped down onto the sofa she claimed to hate, and shoved her tablet under her father’s nose. "Look, here’s the account."

"Very well, as you wish, Princess Xi Rui. Daddy will take care of it immediately."

Xi Zhijie turned back to the service robot, Xiao Te, and issued the command to eliminate his daughter's cyber-rival.

Xi Rui kissed her father, satisfied. "Thanks, Dad. I’m going to get my beauty sleep."

Only after his daughter went upstairs and closed her door did Xi Zhijie pull out his phone and type to his subordinate: "The male streamer this time is good; he seems like a living person. As for the female writer’s persona, let’s try a female scientist next time."

He put down his phone and rubbed his temples, feeling a touch of melancholy. Why had his daughter inherited none of his academic brilliance or love for books? She was a carbon copy of her mother—a woman from a prominent family who was essentially a hollow vessel.

Xi Zhijie knew the path he had traveled, which was why he was so afraid of his daughter being swindled by some poor boy. Fortunately, AI chat software was one of the strengths of his business empire; he would simply let a virtual male streamer captivate her for now.

It was a pity that even the stimulation of female rivalry couldn't spark his daughter's interest in learning.

Xi Zhijie stood up, walked to the study on the other side, and closed the door. He opened the internal group of the "Intellect Foundation" and entered his security code.

On the screen, a classified report immediately appeared regarding an unprecedentedly advanced service robot and a young human boy.

Xi Zhijie frowned. *Whose service robot is this? That’s impossible. If a model like this already exists, why hasn't the Supreme Ruler notified us?*

"God Jie, do we need to report this upward?" a subordinate asked on the screen.

"Not yet," Xi Zhijie replied.

He then switched to an encrypted voice channel and told his subordinates to head to Geylang early the next morning to execute a plan.

With this plan, even if the mysterious robot had actually been commissioned by the Supreme Ruler, he, Xi Zhijie, would not be punished for a misunderstanding. In fact, it might even make him appear more astute and vigilant than his colleagues.