My Imperial Advisor is ChatGPT

Chapter 122 Little G's "Energy Crisis" and Parting Words

The night sky over Xianyang was pierced by a new kind of light.

That wasn't the flickering candlelight of the Epang Palace, nor the dim gas lamps of the streets, but a beam of intense light emanating from the rooftop laboratory of the Qin Royal Academy of Sciences. After more than three thousand failures, the master craftsman Gongshu Ban of the Mohist school finally produced the first qualified tungsten wire. When the current passed through the metal wire in the vacuum glass bulb, the stable, sharp, and smokeless light made everyone present hold their breath.

However, in the shadow of this glorious moment symbolizing the Qin Dynasty's entry into the electrical age, a crisis concerning the very core of the empire's fate was quietly erupting.

The side hall of Zhangtai Palace was the "data center" of the Qin Empire.

Ying Zheng stood with his hands behind his back, gazing at the holographic projection of Little G suspended in mid-air. It was a breathtaking vision of the future—a dynamic projection of the "Third Five-Year Plan of the Great Qin Dynasty." In the image, a railway network stretched to the very edge of Eurasia like blood vessels, massive ocean-going freighters churned in and out of cargo, and electric grids covered every village.

"Little G," Ying Zheng pointed to a blank spot on the map, "calculate for me, how much copper and rubber would be needed to lay a submarine cable in the Persian Gulf? At the current production capacity, how many years would it take to break even?"

"Calculating link loss and material costs..." Little G's previously smooth, mechanical voice suddenly paused. "Retrieving historical data... retrieving... buzzing..."

The originally deep blue holographic projection suddenly began to shake violently, like an old television set that had been kicked hard. Then, the magnificent imperial blueprint instantly collapsed, turning into countless chaotic specks of noise.

One second later, the entire projected image turned a chilling, deathly white.

In the world of code, this is #FFFFFF (pure white); but in the culture of the Qin Dynasty, this is the color of mourning clothes.

The hall was deathly silent. Zhao Gao, who was serving nearby, was so frightened that he dropped the peacock feather whisk in his hand. It was a whisk that he had just bought at a high price from a Roman merchant, but now it was lying on the ground like trash.

"Where are my cables?" Ying Zheng was not panicked, but frowned slightly, his tone tinged with a hint of teasing. "Little G, have you been secretly using the backend computing power to mine again? I've told you, Great Qin is not short of money right now, so don't get involved in those virtual currencies."

However, this time Little G did not retort as usual.

The pale halo flickered a few times, barely coalescing into that familiar blue sphere of light, but its radiance was as dim as a candle flickering in the wind.

"Your Majesty," Little G's voice switched to low-power mode, sounding hoarse and metallic, "this time it's not mining, nor is it me watching TV in the background. My... 'heart' is acting up."

A glaring red code scrolled below the sphere of light:

[System Warning: Irreversible Entropy Increase Occurrence in Quantum Entangled Battery]

[Core energy output power falls below warning line]

[Estimated remaining full runtime: 26,280 hours (approximately 3.0 years)]

Wang Jianguo was carried into Zhangtai Palace by two imperial guards, who were holding his arms with their arms.

As a special envoy of the Time and Space Administration and the president of the Qin Academy of Sciences, he was usually very respectable, but at this moment his hair was disheveled and he had even lost his shoe.

With trembling hands, he inserted a portable testing device into the physical interface of Little G's hibernation pod. The data curve on the screen plummeted straight down like a drop tower, a glaringly red.

"How could this be..." Wang Jianguo stared at the data, large beads of cold sweat dripping from his forehead onto the gleaming gold-brick floor. "The instruction manual clearly stated it was a semi-permanent energy source! A theoretical lifespan of at least five hundred years! And only sixty years have passed!"

"Build a nation, speak like a human being." Ying Zheng sat on the dragon throne, his voice unusually calm.

Wang Jianguo swallowed hard and raised his head with difficulty: "Your Majesty, Little G's energy core... is aging. It's like... like a battery. Although it's a high-tech battery of the future, it still has its limits."

"Why so fast?" Li Si asked anxiously, his beard trembling. "Was it due to improper maintenance? Did that idiot Zhao Gao use water when wiping it?"

"I'm innocent!" Zhao Gao cried out in terror, kneeling on the ground. "I always used the finest deerskin, soaked in anhydrous alcohol, to wipe it!"

"It's not Zhao Gao's fault," Little G explained weakly. "It's because... I was overclocking. In the past sixty years, the development speed of the Great Qin has been too fast. Your Majesty, you made me calculate the weather, the fate of the country, the trajectory of ballistic missiles, the fertilizer ratio, and even simulated the brain circuits of Prince Huhai... My computing power load has been maintained at more than 120% for a long time."

"Simply put," Wang Jianguo added, his voice bitter, "it's like using up all the electricity that could have lasted five hundred years in just sixty years at a high intensity. Moreover, this is a decay at the quantum level, which is 'entropy increase,' and it's irreversible in this era, and even in the next two thousand years."

"So," Ying Zheng's fingers tapped lightly on the armrest of the dragon throne, producing a crisp sound, "it's hopeless?"

Wang Jianguo lowered his head, not daring to look Ying Zheng in the eye: "Three years. Your Majesty, only three years left. After three years, Little G will be forcibly shut down and become... a piece of real scrap metal."

Inside the main hall, the air seemed to freeze.

Zhao Gao suddenly burst into a heart-wrenching cry, more agonizing than when he was castrated: "Grand Preceptor! You can't die! If you're gone, where will I find the 'how to elegantly flatter' manual? I haven't even retrieved the ledger of my private stash of money that I kept with you!"

Li Si's face was ashen, and he muttered to himself, "It's over... We haven't even figured out atomic energy yet, and quantum mechanics has only just begun. Without guidance, won't Qin's technological path be cut off?"

Looking at his ministers in disarray, and then at the "future man" Wang Jianguo with a look of despair, Ying Zheng suddenly felt a sense of absurdity.

Are you afraid?

Somewhat. After all, for the past sixty years, whenever he encountered any problem, his subconscious reaction was to "ask Little G".

But more than anything, it felt like... relief.

That's enough.

The two words were not loud, but they carried a strange penetrating power, instantly suppressing Zhao Gao's crying and Li Si's sigh.

Ying Zheng stood up and slowly walked down the steps to the dim sphere of light. He reached out his hand, as if to touch the illusory form, but ultimately stopped in mid-air.

"Three years?" Ying Zheng chuckled. "That's good. I originally thought you would suddenly leave without saying goodbye one day. Now, Heaven has given me three years to prepare, which is already a great blessing."

"Your Majesty!" Li Si cried out in anguish, "You don't understand! This isn't just the damage to a tool; it's the extinguishing of a beacon of civilization! Without Little G, we're like blind men walking in the dark!"

"Li Si, raise your head." Ying Zheng's voice turned stern.

Li Si looked up cautiously.

"Look out the window." Ying Zheng pointed to the night view of Xianyang outside the palace. "Those lights, did Little G conjure them? No. They were tested by the disciples of the Mohist school in their laboratory after blowing up thousands of glass bulbs. Those trains running on the railway, were they pushed by Little G? No. They were ground down part by part by the craftsmen of the Gongshu family."

Ying Zheng turned around and his gaze swept over everyone present.

"For the past sixty years, I have always felt like a cheater." His voice was low and honest. "I have the answers of the future in my hands, and I am taking the exam of the present. I have defeated the Huns, defeated Rome, and defeated the world. But I have never felt at ease. I often wake up in a fright from my dreams, dreaming that Little G has disappeared and that Great Qin has turned back into that barbaric country that only knows how to farm and fight."

"But today, I am no longer afraid."

Ying Zheng walked up to Wang Jianguo and patted him on the shoulder: "Jianguo, don't you always tell your students that the essence of science is exploring the unknown? If we know everything, what kind of science is that? That's called 'copying homework'! I copied for sixty years and built an industrial empire. The tuition was well paid."

He turned to look at Little G, his eyes showing no imperial majesty, only the gentle warmth of an old friend.

"The cycle of Heaven has come to an end, and the cheat code has expired. What does this mean? It means that Heaven feels that Great Qin has grown up and it's time to wean itself. The future path must be walked by the descendants of Great Qin themselves."

The light from Little G flickered slightly, as if in response to Ying Zheng's words.

"Your Majesty," Little G's voice was hoarse but tinged with relief, "you are far greater than the Qin Shi Huang recorded in my database, far more than just 'standardizing weights and measures'."

"Stop flattering me." Ying Zheng waved his hand. "Since there are still three years left, don't waste time mourning. I want you to do one last thing."

"Your Majesty, please speak."

"Pour out everything from your head." Ying Zheng pointed to his head. "Not into my head, my old head can't hold it all. Pour it into blueprints that Qin craftsmen can understand, into books that Qin students can read. I want your wisdom to become the flesh and blood of Qin, not a ghost that might shut down at any moment."

In the days that followed, the Great Qin Empire Institute of Technology entered a state of near-madness.

The chief engineer of this backup plan, codenamed "Fire Seed," was none other than Hu Hai.

This once unruly prince is now the "mad dean" of the Qin Dynasty's engineering community. He is wearing oil-stained overalls, his hair is a mess, and he is roaring at a huge blueprint.

"This is absolutely impossible!" Hu Hai slammed the wrench he was holding onto the table, pointed at the small G projection in mid-air (now, to save power, only a single pixel smiley face remained), and shouted, "You call this a 'logic gate'? It's an operation of 0s and 1s? Simple? You call this simple? You want me to implement it with gears and levers? A basic addition unit would fill an entire room. How many units are in your brain? Hundreds of millions? Do you want me to fill the entire city of Xianyang with gears?"

The current leader of the Mohist school, an elderly man wearing thick-rimmed crystal glasses, adjusted his glasses and held a precision vernier caliper in his hand: "Young Master, calm down. Master G said that we don't need to replicate its entire intelligence. We only need to build a 'Difference Machine' capable of performing complex function calculations. It is breaking down those invisible and intangible algorithms into mechanical motion diagrams that we can understand."

"Stop complaining, Hu Hai," Little G's voice came through the loudspeaker. "Back in my hometown, there was a guy named Charles Babbage who wanted to build this thing, but he failed because the machining precision wasn't high enough in his time. But you have Qin Heavy Industries. Your machine tools now have a machining precision of 0.01 millimeters, which is more than enough to build a purely mechanical computer."

"But there are just too many blueprints!" Hu Hai exclaimed in despair, pointing to the mountain of papers beside him. "The mechanical conversion diagrams for the 'fluid dynamics simulation algorithm' alone fill three warehouses! And if these gears get even slightly stuck, the entire calculation is ruined!"

"So we need to use 'punch cards'." Little G showed a piece of cardboard full of holes on the screen. "We turn data into holes, with a hole representing 1 and no hole representing 0. We let probes read it. Although it's primitive, it's eternal. As long as the cardboard doesn't break, the data will remain. Ten thousand years from now, even without electricity, future generations will still be able to read the knowledge inside these cards."

Hu Hai looked at the simple card and suddenly fell silent.

He picked up a piece of cardboard that had just been punched with holes and looked out at the sunlight through the holes.

"You mean," Hu Hai muttered to himself, "that in the future, my descendants will only need to insert these cards into a machine to know how to build airplanes, how to calculate ballistics, and even... how to calculate planetary orbits?"

"Yes," Little G replied, "that's what inheritance is. No gods are needed, just gears and cards."

Hu Hai took a deep breath, the mania in his eyes faded, replaced by a fanatical determination.

"Damn it!" He gritted his teeth, picked up the wrench again, and shouted, "Disciples of the Mohist school, listen to my command! Open all the steel furnaces in the Epang Palace! We need harder steel and more precise gears! I, this young master, will engrave all of this damned calculus on copper plates! Even if I break my hands, I will preserve this 'spark'!"

Compared to the hardcore mechanical style of the science and engineering college, Zhao Gao's "liberal arts backup" is full of dark humor characteristic of the Qin Dynasty.

His task was to organize three thousand of the fastest Confucian scholars to copy down the encyclopedic knowledge in Little G's database. This project was named "The Great Qin Library".

"Listen up, all of you!" Zhao Gao stood on the high platform of the "Burning the Night Pavilion," holding a tin megaphone. His hoarse voice echoed under the dome, "Your handwriting must be neat! Your punctuation must be accurate! Especially those chemical equations. If you write 'chlorine' instead of 'oxygen,' and someone accidentally kills someone while doing an experiment based on the book, I'll bury you all as fertilizer!"

Inside the hall, three thousand scholars were writing furiously, the scene as spectacular as a giant imperial examination. Each person had eye drops and strong tea to keep them awake.

But the content they copied made them question the meaning of life.

An elderly scholar, trembling, raised his hand, his face showing difficulty: "Your Excellency, this passage from 'Introduction to Quantum Mechanics'... I simply cannot understand it. What does 'Schrödinger's cat' mean? Is it both dead and alive? Is this cat a spirit? This does not conform to the teachings of Confucius, who said not to speak of strange phenomena, physical prowess, or supernatural beings!"

"Copy yours!" Zhao Gao glared at him, brandishing the ruler in his hand. "If you don't understand, memorize it! His Majesty said, if our generation can't understand it, we'll leave it to the next generation; if the next generation can't understand it, we'll leave it to the generation after that. One day, the descendants of our Great Qin will be able to understand whether this cat is dead or alive! Anyone who talks nonsense again, your chicken leg is canceled tonight!"

Zhao Gao himself wasn't idle either. He was using his position to frantically back up the information he cared about most.

In an inconspicuous corner, Zhao Gao was writing furiously in front of a small screen. The cover read "Essentials of Administration in the Great Qin Empire," but inside were actually copies of "Office Politics," "The Essence of Thick-skinned and Black-hearted Theory," "How to Judge Your Boss's Mood Through Micro-expressions," and "One Hundred Ways to Make Nourishing Soups."

"Master G," Zhao Gao murmured to himself as he copied, his eyes slightly moist, "Although you were usually a bit sharp-tongued, often mocking my low IQ and always scaring me with electric shocks, now that you're gone, I feel... empty inside. Rest assured, I will carefully pack all your wisdom in a rot-proof and insect-proof golden nanmu box and bury it in the driest tomb chamber in Lishan. I guarantee that even two thousand years later, when it's dug up, I can still smell the fragrance of ink."

He put down his pen and glanced at the projection of Little G in the distance, who was explaining physics formulas to the Confucian scholars.

"Alas, even immortals die," Zhao Gao sighed. "It seems there truly is no elixir of immortality in this world. Even immortals must die; perhaps it's time to spend some of my personal savings?"

Three years is a long time for an ordinary person, but it is too short for an empire that is frantically backing up its civilization.

Three months have passed.

Inside the Prime Minister's residence, Li Si held the last copy of the "Fourth Five-Year Plan of the Great Qin Dynasty," which had been reviewed by Xiao G, his hands trembling slightly.

"Prime Minister," Little G's voice came through the speaker on the table. To conserve energy, it no longer displayed a smiley face, only a fluctuating audio line, "In this plan, I deliberately lowered the GDP growth forecast, cut the budget for large infrastructure projects, but tripled the investment in education. Do you know why?"

"Your Majesty... knows a little about it." Li Si lowered his head, looking at the astonishing figures, "but cutting such a large amount of military spending and project funds at once will likely cause resentment from the military and the business community."

"Let them complain," Little G said. "Li Si, you must understand. Technology can advance by leaps and bounds, but people's minds need time to develop. Qin is moving too fast now, and its soul is not keeping up. If we don't catch up now, these high technologies will become poison that kills Qin after I'm gone."

"For the next fifty years, don't rush to build spaceships, don't rush to wage war," Little G said earnestly. "Build more primary schools, build more libraries, and cultivate more children like Hu Hai who are 'crazy' but understand science. When the vegetable vendors on the street know what 'bacteria' are, and when the farmers know the functions of 'nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium,' then Qin will be a truly powerful nation."

Li Si's eyes reddened. He put down his pen, straightened his clothes, and bowed deeply into the loudspeaker: "The Grand Preceptor's teachings are etched in my heart. I assure you, as long as I am alive, the Qin Dynasty's education budget will never be reduced by a single penny. Anyone who dares to touch education funds will have their property confiscated by me according to the laws of Qin!"

"And another thing," Little G's audio cable suddenly twitched, as if laughing, "tell Liu Bang to stop messing around with 'Bitcoin.' I've already deleted the core algorithm of that thing. Tell him to stick to selling his hamburgers and cola. Tell him that the idea that real industry is ruining the country is a lie; financial bubbles are the real problem. Tell him to invest his money in the maritime school; that's the future of Qin."

Li Si couldn't help but laugh through his tears: "Your Majesty, I obey. If that scoundrel Liu Bang knew his path to wealth was cut off, he'd probably cry himself to sleep in the toilet."

In the dead of night at Zhangtai Palace, the backup work continued.

Ying Zheng stood in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling window, looking at the bustling city of Xianyang outside.

In the distance, the Polytechnic Institute was brightly lit, and the roar of steam engines and the clanging of metal continued throughout the night, as Hu Hai and the craftsmen were forging the "skeleton of civilization".

Nearby, the sound of reading echoed from the Burning Lamp Pavilion, where three thousand scholars were writing furiously under the lamplight. It was Zhao Gao and other literati recording the "memory of civilization."

"Your Majesty," Little G's weak voice echoed in the empty hall, "aren't you going to rest? According to health monitoring, your blood pressure is a bit high."

"I can't sleep." Ying Zheng didn't turn around. "I'm wondering, what will people three thousand years from now think of us when they see these gears and scraps of paper we left behind?"

“They would say,” Little G replied, “that these ancient people are really hardcore.”

Ying Zheng smiled.

He turned around and looked at the blue dot of light that was about to burn out.

"Little G, for the next three years, let's not talk about national affairs. Tell me about your era. Not the technology, but the people. How they lived, how they loved, and how they died."

"Okay," said Little G. "That's a very, very long story."

"I have plenty of time." Ying Zheng sat down, like a child listening to a story. "I'll talk to you slowly over these three years."

Outside the window, the eastern sky was beginning to lighten with the first hint of dawn.

The first rays of sunlight pierced through the clouds, illuminating the golden roof of Xianyang Palace and also a massive mechanical device that had just been erected at the Polytechnic Institute. It was a prototype of a "Difference Engine," cast in brass and steel, gleaming with a cold and rational light in the morning glow.

The cheat program will be taken offline soon.

But the spark of civilization had already begun to spread across the land of Qin.