Chapter Two: "Artificial" Intelligence

After Cheng Guanzhi finished speaking, he left the café, leaving behind only the hurried photo Lin Ke had just managed to snap on her phone.

She looked at it over and over, finding it no different from the motivational quotes she usually posted—just somewhat more disheartened. Annoyed, Lin Ke pursed her lips.

Please, what a load of nonsense.

Trying to act like some kind of big shot.

She trudged back to her apartment complex, stomach growling. There were still a couple of tables at the barbecue stand by the roadside, patrons nursing their drinks. The smoke from the charcoal mingled with the aroma of grilled meat, making her mouth water uncontrollably.

Forget it. She couldn’t even afford her rent; how could she dare covet such luxuries?

Lin Ke, you greedy girl, have some self-control!

What good meat could you expect from a street vendor in a subsidized housing district? Would you really dare eat rat meat fried in gutter oil?

The people on those little stools were all drunken men—hadn’t she seen the news from the city? It was dangerous for young women to be out late at night.

And that barbecue vendor, with a long scar on his face—who knew what kind of shady business he’d been mixed up in?

Lin Ke filled her head with all sorts of wild tales from the internet as she hurried back to her room. Her recent video’s views were still stuck in the double digits, leaving her feeling frustrated and desperately lonely. She dialed her boyfriend Dou Peng’s number.

After a long series of ringtones, a drowsy voice finally answered, “What is it?”

Lin Ke clutched her phone. “Doudou, are you asleep? I can’t fall asleep, I feel awful.”

The voice on the other end seemed uninterested in whatever had happened. “Hey, just try to relax and you’ll fall asleep. Your body is your own, get some rest.”

“My livestream got banned. All those matches I did these last few days were for nothing. I have no income now.”

On the Cocoon platform, the livestream challenge required clocking in for seven consecutive days during a set period to earn the full attendance bonus. Miss a day, and you forfeited not only the bonus but even the tips.

Dou Peng had no understanding of these rules. “That’s normal. The platform will always try to find ways to dock your pay. It’s fine, just start over.”

Easy for you to say!

Lin Ke’s fragile calm shattered in an instant. “I worked so hard, six days of matches! I was just about to get paid! Without this money, I can’t even pay my rent!”

“It’s alright, I’ll take care of you.”

Lin Ke wanted to say something, took two deep breaths, but only managed to exhale heavily.

“Take care of me? With what? You’re a delivery guy who can’t even collect a full-month attendance bonus, still living in the courier dormitory. With your measly three-thousand-yuan salary, are you going to feed me on thin air?”

Why did men always think that keeping a woman from starving was enough to claim they were supporting her?

She wasn’t a dog! It took more than just a bowl of food! Men had no idea how much a single eyebrow pencil cost, or a single lipstick, or what it took for a woman to stand beside them looking beautiful.

And besides, she didn’t need anyone to take care of her!

“Alright, I’ll do a couple more hours tomorrow. Go to sleep, I have to get up early,” Dou Peng’s voice was as indifferent as ever. Before Lin Ke could say another word, she could already hear him snoring.

Lin Ke gripped her phone tightly, then slowly loosened her grasp, letting it fall onto her yoga mat.

People’s joys and sorrows are never truly shared.

The heating in the subsidized apartment was barely working; the chill from the yoga mat seeped into her pores, open from sweat.

Her makeup was a mess, cheap eyeliner smudged into a clear black ring beneath her eyes, blending with the dark circles earned from countless sleepless nights.

She felt the urge to cry again but bit down hard on her lip, refusing to be weak. Taking a couple of deep breaths, she reopened the Cocoon app and entered the short video creation page.

“What is reality? This is reality. When you put a bird in a cage, it gains a master. The master tells the bird, ‘If I didn’t feed you, you’d have starved long ago.’ Yet what the master doesn’t see is, without the cage, the bird would find its own food.

True dignity doesn’t lie in being fed by someone, but in always having the courage to soar the skies and steadfastly affirming one’s right to live. The sky belongs to no master, just as freedom has always been the birthright of all living things.”

This was the passage Lin Ke had photographed from Cheng Guanzhi’s phone. Now, late at night, with smudged makeup and reddened eyes, she recited these words with a tremor of despair, brimming with emotion.

She didn’t really understand the meaning, but it seemed reasonable enough. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Bathed in the dim light of her vanity mirror, she recorded this selfie and finally drifted into a deep sleep.

…

Cocoon Tower.

The thirty-five-story building glowed brightly—on the livestream floor, voices rose in a constant din; on the server floor, fans hummed incessantly.

Cheng Guanzhi stared at the screen for a long while before finally plugging in the USB drive in his hand.

The Cocoon app, boasting itself as the industry’s top big data AI recommendation algorithm—though who could say how much of that was really “artificial” intelligence, and how much just “artificial”?

All for the sake of a meal.

With the new code overwritten, any short videos related to these themes would receive massive recommendations.

At Cocoon, recommendations meant traffic, traffic meant fans, and fans meant money.

Content didn’t matter.

He had tried to resist.

In the president’s office, Cheng Guanzhi had argued his case. Previously, he’d reluctantly pushed suggestive trending topics, but the current mechanism was simply going too far.

But President Wang simply slapped a buyout plan on the table.

“Is that what made you so bold?” Wang’s lips curled into a cold sneer. “Yellow Lantern Video is Cocoon’s biggest competitor in daily active users. Their headhunting team once tried to poach you, offering a 2.6-million annual salary for you to lead their core algorithm team.”

Cheng Guanzhi’s face stiffened.

Wang Tianxia’s tone was icy: “Snow, you’re just a tech guy—a hired gun. Your fate is to shoot where you’re told. Are you now thinking of aiming the gun yourself?

Yellow Lantern’s top streaming team is already in my pocket, clients and all. That company is a hollow shell, about to break its funding chain—how can it possibly compete?

Next, Cocoon will acquire Yellow Lantern outright. When that happens, do you plan to return to Cocoon as a 35-year-old programmer at a subsidiary?”

The mention of “thirty-five” seemed to sting; Cheng Guanzhi’s voice softened. “President Wang, yes, they tried to poach me, but I never agreed, nor did I ever intend to leave.”

Wang’s overbearing attitude seemed to vanish, replaced by a gentler tone. “Guanzhi, ask yourself, how have I treated you?

You’ve been with Cocoon Group for thirteen years—back when we were just two floors in a small building, we fought side by side.

All these years, we pivoted together from long-form to short-form video, developed the livestream track, built our own MCN agency. At our hardest, I sold everything I owned, carried tens of millions in debt, and never once missed a month of your social insurance. When have I ever let you down?”

Cheng Guanzhi was the technical director of a well-known short video platform in China, an internet executive earning over a million a year.

But thirteen years ago, he was just a college dropout obsessed with the internet, joining Wang Tianxia’s startup on nothing but passion.

“I know you’re talented, but be honest with yourself: in this day and age, is talent enough for success?”

Wang rose from his chair and gazed out at the neon-lit city beyond the window.

“Do you know how many résumés I get every day from people younger than you, with better resources and connections, more willing to grind?

Do you know that for just fifty thousand a month, I could hire countless top-two graduates to work themselves to the bone for me?

But Guanzhi, no matter what anyone says, I’ve never once thought of letting you go.

I know it’s not easy for you to care for your wife and child. I also know you truly care about Cocoon.”

The pale glow of the computer screen shone on his face as memories of his conversation with Wang replayed in his mind. In the end, Cheng Guanzhi altered the algorithm.

With a snap, he closed the laptop, plunging the room into darkness.