RHWHEG – Chapter 83 Pipe Adventure

A blue screen blocked Yu Qunqing’s view, completely covering the AI’s large display. The system was staging a silent protest in its own way!

What 3A blockbuster? Mini-games are the most fun!

Yu Qunqing quietly stuffed the system back away. How could a kid possibly understand the joy of PC games? Nearby, Tang Qianjiang was puzzled as to why Yu Qunqing had suddenly used his ability. She Lulang, meanwhile, was deep in thought—Yu Qunqing’s ability seemed to possess a will of its own…

Tang Qianjiang fumbled as he switched between several pages. Dense streams of data flashed on the screen from time to time, dazzling to the eye. The three-minute trial period quickly passed, and the AI asked, “Would you like to run for administrator of the Human Survival Assistance AI?”

“No…” Tang Qianjiang sounded a little dejected. After a moment, he gathered his courage and asked proactively, “Yu Qunqing, do you have any thoughts about the shelter’s future management?”

The position of shelter administrator was currently vacant. The people’s calm was only superficial. Perhaps once Yu Qunqing and the others left—or even by the next afternoon—new conflicts would erupt. When that happened, the entire shelter would head toward destruction.

She Lulang spoke calmly, dropping a bombshell: “It’s impossible for us not to endanger others’ lives.”

Tang Qianjiang: “Isn’t that villain declaration a bit too candid…” Afterward, he added, “Alright then. I’ll go talk to some people in the residential area. Tomorrow morning, we’ll have free competition.” He was Dr. Chen’s only relative and usually came across as quite harmless, so he naturally had a solid base of popular support.

Yu Qunqing looked toward the pitch-black distance. His ability had curled into a large blue sphere and was desperately ramming into the shelter capsule. But the system couldn’t attack proactively; after so many collisions, not even the air rippled.

Yu Qunqing could already hear the system’s roar from its agitated movements:

“I’m going to uninstall you!!!”

After thinking for a moment, Yu Qunqing said, “The people of Jiangbei City must unite to overcome the Eight-Legged Frostfall. It would be best if the neighborhood and the shelter could join forces. As for the administrator… I have a way to bypass the AI’s principles…”

…

Jiangbei City hadn’t seen the moon in a long time; tonight was still shrouded in fog. Yu Qunqing and She Lulang sat beside the cooling pipes next to the AI capsule. Yu Qunqing felt there was no need to keep secrets in front of the vice-captain, so he openly played on the screen. Having the vice-captain within his line of sight made him feel very safe.

He had Tang Qianjiang release news about the new administrator. The new administrator would be selected from Yu Qunqing’s team; to protect them, the specific identity would be kept confidential. Anyone foolish enough to provoke the administrator would discover that every single one of them could fight back. This was because Yu Qunqing had the system devour part of the AI, bypassing the administrator identity and directly obtaining full permissions.

“Can you turn it into part of a mini-game?” Yu Qunqing asked.

“Beep—this program is too complex and cannot be broken down into a mini-game at present,” the system replied. “Initiating brute-force cracking—”

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be a mini-game,” Yu Qunqing said. “You can learn its program, and maybe someday create an original 3A blockbuster yourself.”

The system paused for over ten minutes as Yu Qunqing waited patiently. Suddenly, the system had an epiphany: “I can evolve! I can break free from the constraints of my original form!”

Thus, the AI’s operating system was retained, while the system roamed freely within humanity’s most sophisticated programs. The massive AI capsule flickered with eerie blue light from time to time—that was the system copying, splitting, and analyzing.

“We never touched AI in our previous life. Who knows what the research center turned the shelter into?” Yu Qunqing said to She Lulang. With time having passed, his attitude toward the shelter had become more peaceful.

AI has two most basic resources: power and computing power. Power drives all hardware operation; computing power handles real-time judgment.

For example, in a restaurant, power runs the dishwashers, serving robots, and noodle-cutting machines. Computing power, meanwhile, assesses customer flow, checks whether food prep is lacking, determines if any human-made accidents have occurred, and derives optimal solutions for each scenario.

Advancing AI technology likewise requires a certain amount of power and computing power to unlock upgrades.

This is because AI must work in cooperation with humans. If humans wanted to build a shelter on a dangerous cliff, and the AI released all technologies at once, it would result in massive waste. The AI must confirm that the administrator has the capability to establish basic technologies before increasing trust permissions. In a sense, the AI is training administrators to think more deeply about human survival.

What first caught Yu Qunqing’s eye was the shelter’s functional zoning map, marking the locations of each area.

The map also had a “permission mode,” displaying which personnel were allowed into each area. For example, the residential area was permission level 0—anyone could go; the research center was permission level 3, open only to certain people. This permission function required the technology “Permission Lock,” but the shelter didn’t seem to have unlocked it.

“Do those people in the research center even know how to play base-building games…” Yu Qunqing muttered under his breath as he continued flipping through the AI map.

The map’s third mode was the “Infrastructure X-ray View,” showing a dense web of water pipes and cables buried beneath the shelter, occasionally interspersed with pressure boosters and transformers. The geological structure here was relatively safe, allowing so much to be buried underground. But seeing the tangled pipes made Yu Qunqing’s OCD flare up—he felt an urge to reorganize them all!

“This power usage is way too unsafe…” Tracing the pipes to the surface power plant and water purification plant, Yu Qunqing discovered that despite the power plant being connected to many storage batteries, the shelter’s power supply was perpetually in a critical state.

“Even after authenticating an administrator, the power still hasn’t recovered? And computing power is insufficient too?” Annoyed, Yu Qunqing switched back to the “Functional Zoning” map. He wanted to see exactly where the research center had been using all the power and computing resources.

He scrolled through the functions—rows of LV1 and LV2. It seemed the research center hadn’t invested in infrastructure at all! The more prominent ones were LV3 infrastructure, agriculture, and scientific research zones. These upgrades all made sense. The higher the level, the greater the power and computing consumption, but these projects alone shouldn’t have consumed that many resources.

Finally, Yu Qunqing found the biggest power hogs.

Cafeteria, LV5!

Kitchen, LV6!

“That we managed to survive so long in our previous life was really lucky…”

Yu Qunqing couldn’t help but sigh.

As the saying goes, people are made of iron, food is steel…

But you can’t pour all your resources into that!

She Lulang recalled something: “A lot of the chaos in our previous life was caused by food shortages.”

With that, Yu Qunqing was finally able to reverse-engineer the research center’s base-building logic. Ability users complained about not being full, chaos erupted—so the kitchen was upgraded. A higher-level kitchen consumed more ingredients, and soon the ability users weren’t full again, causing more chaos… and so the cycle repeated.

Sigh. Looks like this really needs a professional player.

At last, he could openly play other games right in front of the system!

Seeing Yu Qunqing brimming with enthusiasm, She Lulang smiled faintly, almost imperceptibly.

Though he didn’t know why Yu Qunqing’s ability was exploring the AI capsule, and why it seemed to have a will of its own… had Yu Qunqing forgotten to tell him something?

She Lulang stared suspiciously at the unusually lively little blue ball.

Yu Qunqing didn’t notice. Probably because openly admitting he had a disaster spawn was too outrageous, he subconsciously glossed over it.

Using minimal power, he activated the AI’s broadcast function and announced to all shelter residents: the new administrator had taken office—let us give a warm welcome.

The AI even came with applause sound effects. Truly fashionable!

The residents in the residential area were anxious. They thought Tang Qianjiang was on their side, and that the advance information he’d leaked was indeed accurate. One member of Yu Qunqing’s team had been elected administrator, with details kept confidential. This uncertainty about who exactly was in charge made them uneasy.

“On the bright side, at least the power’s back. It won’t be so cold tonight.”

The residents drifted into their cramped rooms in small groups. Too much had happened today; they needed a good night’s sleep. They worried that terrifying changes might come tomorrow—after all, in the apocalypse, nothing is more frightening than the unknown.

“Strange… the heating seems warmer tonight…”

Many people slept unusually soundly. It wasn’t until the next day that they realized why.

In fact, Yu Qunqing had shut down all facilities in the cafeteria and kitchen, bringing the shelter’s power reserve back from “Critical” to “Danger,” while freeing up enough computing power to process three other low-level projects.

He then squeezed a bit more power from other projects.

The research center? Everything except heating was shut down—no need for lighting either!

Other work zones? They housed large production lines for items like the shelter’s specialized cold-weather gear, but all factories were now shut down!

The agricultural zone? Besides farmland, it also had disaster-stone detoxification grinders used to make fertilizer. Disaster stones were scarce anyway—shut that big machine down immediately!

Border defense zone? Only LV2, still guarded by manpower—better allocate a bit more power to heating.

Now the shelter’s power reserve was “Medium-Low,” and its computing power reserve had increased significantly.

Yu Qunqing stingily allocated some heating power to the residential area, while banning all daily water pipeline usage throughout the shelter.

He was going to fix the shelter’s infrastructure properly!

Viewed from the foot of the mountain, the shelter first presented a vast border defense zone. The outermost layer consisted of unmanned traps and defense installations, followed by manned checkpoints. Beyond them lay a large open area used for waiting, observation, and disinfection. Then came another checkpoint.

Behind the border defense zone were the ability hall, cafeteria, and kitchen—now deserted and dark.

Then came the residential area, where narrow metal shacks were packed together like fish scales. The people living here had almost no privacy. In the apocalypse, no one really cared about that. Within the residential area were subdivided zones like disinfection baths and public toilets. With the temperature being low, it still looked barely acceptable.

In different directions from the residential area were the research center, agricultural zone, and other work zones, each occupying long stretches of land.

The AI capsule sat at the boundary between the research center and agricultural zone, surrounded on all sides. Nearby were the power plant and water purification plant.

Yu Qunqing sketched drafts on the AI screen, laying out five main water pipeline routes, and had the AI use its computing power to derive a new infrastructure plan. Since the shelter had expanded bit by bit, the initial water and power layout may have been reasonable, but as more people and facilities were added, plans failed to keep up with change, and the pipes became tangled. The original research center might have considered re-zoning at some point, but reality prevented any drastic action.

The AI couldn’t conjure hardware out of thin air. It could only tell humans what materials were nearby and what methods could be used to assemble decent water pipes. Who did the work, and how—it all fell on the administrator’s shoulders.

Yu Qunqing could wake all residents tomorrow morning and have them haul bricks. With his combat strength, threatening others came naturally to him. With twenty thousand people, a new pipeline system would be done quickly. But waiting until morning was still too slow—without a neat and orderly pipeline system, Yu Qunqing wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it all night.

He called out to the system, which was swimming freely in the sea of knowledge: “I think this part can be turned into a mini-game.”

The system popped into view with a bang: “I told you mini-games are more fun.”

It seeped into the ground, then floated back out a few seconds later: “Would you like to launch the game mini-program—Pipe Adventure?”

Game mini-programs, before the apocalypse, were add-on games attached to social apps. Their advantage was that they didn’t require downloads—just click and play. The system’s nature meant it couldn’t create mini-games out of nothing; it needed a player’s “game slot” and a “game seed.”

Yu Qunqing’s “game slot” was unlocked using “Exploration Points.” After the apocalypse, intact buildings were rare, and the system’s previous upgrade rewards had included some “Exploration Points,” solving this issue. As for “game seeds,” they required special conditions to obtain. However, mini-programs didn’t require downloads, so a “game seed” wasn’t strictly necessary.

“Game mini-program—Pipe Adventure—loaded successfully! Hurry up and organize the pipelines!”