Chapter 165: Changing Appearance and Disguise

Navali had no leisure to mourn for the seed of AI consciousness that had just been born only to vanish instantly.

Although that sudden realization had shaken his inner self for a fleeting moment, his state of mind quickly returned to calm.

Compared to that, there was a far more important task at hand.

That was to conduct a deeper level of organization regarding what he had just accomplished, so as to understand the true extent of the power he now wielded.

Once his consciousness merged with Lucy’s computing power model, the world of the data layer unfolded before Navali’s eyes with unprecedented clarity.

With a supercomputer boasting a foundation of five hundred quintillion floating-point operations per second, it was as if Navali’s brain had successfully upgraded to a vastly superior driver, allowing his perception to reach into much deeper realms.

Driven by Navali’s consciousness, the computing power model surged; the previously chaotic calculation programs underwent a qualitative transformation in this very instant. Every single computational unit became an extension of Navali’s consciousness, and his power manifested on an even grander scale.

Computing... parsing... self-transcendence... extending... laboratories... the Close AI building... the entire city... and even the entire country...

It was no longer just about simple information, or small-scale tampering and data manipulation.

Supported by the formidable computing power model, Navali felt at this moment like an omnipotent deity. In this virtual realm constructed by humanity over the course of decades, whether it was summoning wind and rain or reshaping the heavens and the earth, everything was merely a matter of a single thought.

At this very moment, he knew the exact storage location of every single nuclear weapon in the country better than the President of the United States. Even for the nuclear submarines lurking in the deep sea or the underground launch silos, the launch signals for every nuclear weapon were now completely under his control.

Should he so desire, he could mobilize a thousand nuclear missiles in a split second to sweep across the United States, culminating in a magnificent and colossal explosion;

Or he could commandeer dozens of the latest fighter jets, steering them on autopilot to plunge straight into the White House and detonate the presidential residence;

Or perhaps cause the entire Nasdaq stock exchange to instantly collapse, triggering a global financial tsunami.

...These things would have been exceedingly difficult for Navali to achieve before he assimilated Lucy’s computing power model—even if he could manage them, there would still be shortcomings, preventing him from executing them to perfection.

But now, everything was entirely different.

...Everything was completely within his grasp.

"So, should I just destroy the entire United States like this, trigger a nuclear explosion, and after killing nearly ninety percent of its citizens, rule over the remaining ten percent in the wasteland?"

Navali asked himself this question in his heart.

This was already within easy reach. For the Navali of yesterday, this would have been the finest possibility he could possibly imagine.

Yet, this thought merely surfaced in his mind for a fraction of a second before he instantly snuffed it out himself.

In his vision, the faces of Masip, Julia, and countless others emerged. Those faces flickered across his mind like fleeting shadows, vanishing in an instant, only to be replaced by Navali’s low, murmuring self-talk:

"...Since it is already possible now... why not make it even more perfection? The long-cherished wish of the 'Solidarity District' established by Teacher Masip shall be fulfilled by me."

Just as he was muttering to himself, a voice suddenly rang out. Navali raised his head and saw Swado staring at him with folded arms and a curious expression.

"Navali, what were you just saying? Is it a new research breakthrough?"

"...No."

Navali shook his head and shifted his gaze to the outdoor display screen of the laboratory.

Because the entire laboratory required strict airtightness and absolute confidentiality, no windows were installed here. However, to allow engineers to relax their minds during breaks between research, several outdoor display screens were embedded into the laboratory walls, displaying real-time scenery from outside the campus.

At this moment, the scenery shown on the screen featured a vibrant green lawn at the bottom and a azure sky at the top—with white clouds drifting leisurely between the two. Sunlight shifted and flowed, and pedestrians strolled lazily, as if things had been this tranquil since antiquity.

Gazing at that display screen, Navali smiled slightly:

"I was just thinking what a fine day it is today."

Swado was momentarily stunned, likely not expecting such a reply from Navali.

He looked at the screen, and the scenery displayed there made him raise an eyebrow.

"Indeed it is."

...

Lunchtime was also break time.

Navali left rather early, and a few minutes after his departure, Swado finished up his work and hurried briskly to the employee cafeteria.

Upon reaching the dining hall, Swado scanned the main hall, pacing from one end to the other, but failed to find the person he was looking for.

In the end, after pacing back and forth several times, Swado had to concede that Navali was truly not here. He shook his head, picked a table at random with a hint of regret, and began to eat his lunch alone out of boredom.

"What a pity... Many sparks of inspiration for scientific research are born from casual chatter at the dining table. I thought I could continue discussing AI algorithms with Navali today."

Chewing mechanically on the exquisite meal delivered by a food-delivery robot, Swado thought absentmindedly and sighed.

...

Just as Swado felt a tinge of regret over Navali’s absence from the cafeteria.

Unbeknownst to him, in a blind spot of surveillance nestled between several buildings of Close AI—a place people rarely visited—Navali stood right beneath a security camera, having completely transformed his appearance.

The dark red scars on his face had completely faded, his physique had suddenly expanded by a circle, his facial features had grown sharp and distinct, his muscles were robust and well-defined, and a cold light flashed fiercely in his eyes. He cut the absolute figure of a modern muscular powerhouse.

The security camera seemed utterly blind; the footage transmitted back to the security center showed no trace of a human figure whatsoever.

Changing out of his lab coat and slipping into the athletic wear he had prepared in advance, Navali stepped out of the blind spot, strolling casually through an environment that was sparsely populated yet densely packed with surveillance cameras.

For safety and confidentiality, the campus built by Close AI had no tourists; only employees could enter and exit using electronic cards and iris verification.

There were not many security guards within the campus—after all, as the most advanced company in the field of artificial intelligence, it was riddled with high-precision surveillance managed by professional AIs, alongside the protection of robotic guard systems. Compared to human eyes, which were inherently unreliable, mechanical perception was far more trustworthy.

Yet, even if Salman racked his brains, he could never have imagined that someone in this world would possess the ability to dominate the virtual realm, project their consciousness into the data layer, and achieve human-machine integration—thus, the guards that ought to have been the most reliable completely betrayed the expectations of their creators. From the moment Navali stepped out of the building until he walked out of the campus, not a single security camera transmitted his image, and not a single robotic guard sounded an alarm.

Thus, in a leisurely manner, he left the campus.

...

Half an hour later.

Inside a large grocery supermarket in San Francisco, the manager, who had been busy for the better part of the day, came to the supermarket’s warehouse to organize the backup ingredients.

"Boxed onions, five hundred and fifty packs; tomatoes, three hundred pounds; cucumbers, two hundred pounds... cross-cut beef, five hundred pounds—wait, where is the beef?! No, the mutton and fish fillets are gone too!"

Looking at the vast shortage of inventory in the warehouse before him, the manager froze mid-action while tallying the items.

He immediately rushed forward by a few steps, only to discover that the back door of the warehouse stood wide open, having been pried off its hinges and forced to the ground, accompanied by the surveillance wires above the back door which had been completely sabotaged.

Connecting this to the fact that just across the street from the supermarket lay the slum district, the manager burst into a furious roar:

"Bastards—you're even looting cheap food like this?!"

And while the manager was roaring in rage,

He had no way of knowing that the sole culprit behind all of this was finally rubbing his belly in full satisfaction, having altered his appearance once again to quietly return to the company.