Jing Shu was honestly speechless. She never wanted to stand out like this. She and Qian Duoduo clearly had a set time to meet, but now, great, everyone knew she had ties with Shiyuan, and worse, everyone thought she was loaded. The key point? She was flat broke right now.
Sometimes, life just wouldn't let you stay low-key, no matter how much you tried.
Qian Duoduo called it a work inspection, but in reality, it felt more like he was showing off the new Shiyuan system to her. To be fair, he'd done an incredible job. In this uniquely blessed environment, he'd managed to build what could only be described as a post-apocalyptic paradise.
Compared to its rough beginnings a year ago, Shiyuan was now practically complete, though there was still room for improvement. It had achieved basic self-sufficiency, enough to feed everyone, but Qian Duoduo wanted more. He wanted Shiyuan to start generating real profit.
As they walked through the complex, specialists explained every section to him in detail.
"Thanks to the vegetable dehydration tech and new breeding techniques we brought back from America, Shiyuan now produces several hundred kilos of vegetables per day. Most of the harvest is dehydrated and stored. At this growth rate, we'll have over fifty tons of dried vegetables in a year. Once rehydrated and mixed with grain, that's enough to feed a million people for a month at minimum consumption."
Qian Duoduo nodded approvingly. "Not bad, though it does use up a ton of energy."
The livestock farms were another matter. Besides the poultry brought in through government channels last year, there were now some rare animals like ducks, goats, and donkeys. There were no horses, and only four or five pigs since the cost of feeding too many was unbearable. After all, with over ten thousand residents in Shiyuan, the daily grain consumption was astronomical.
As for the donkeys, the meat wasn't the main goal. They were raising them for their hides—to make ejiao. Before the apocalypse, ejiao had already been expensive. After the world ended, it became even more of a luxury, famous for nourishing the blood and maintaining beauty, with a two-thousand-year history in China's traditional medicine.
Jing Shu rested her chin on her hand, wondering if she should raise a little donkey too. Then she shook her head. Forget it, ejiao wasn't really important to her right now. What she needed was to upgrade her Rubik's Cube Space. After her recent reorganization, it was already close to running out of room again.
Shiyuan even had its own fertilizer factory now. They collected and dried waste, then processed it into organic fertilizer. The smell was overwhelming though, so she didn't bother visiting that area.
What she didn't expect was that the person giving them the next tour on the third floor was actually Wang Chao—her high school classmate. He'd been a programmer before and had joined Shiyuan after she helped get him and his child a spot inside.
"What you're looking at now is Shiyuan's newest macro script system," he explained. "It's built on large-scale data replication and handles sign-ins, attendance, payroll, auditing, and finance management. It even monitors crops and resources automatically. Basically, it frees up a ton of manpower."
Qian Duoduo nodded with satisfaction. "I heard you're Jing Shu's classmate? Keep it up. You've got potential."
She smiled at Wang Chao. "Once things here settle down, I'd like to hire you to set up a similar system for my new factory—same concept, app-based."
Wang Chao grinned. "No problem. I'll just set up a cloud server and link a local network. Leave it to me."
That promise immediately drew looks of envy from the others around them.
After the tour, Qian Duoduo led her to the conference room. Once everyone else was dismissed, he finally got to the point.
"So, what do you think of Shiyuan's development so far?" he asked, turning a walnut in his hand as he leaned back in the Taishi chair.
"It's impressive, though not unexpected," she said calmly, sitting across from him. She narrowed her eyes slightly. Honestly, she was curious—how did someone as clever as Qian Duoduo end up being taken down later, despite his success?
He took a sip of tea and asked, "What do you think we should do next?"
She countered, "What's your plan?"
At this stage, she already felt Shiyuan was plenty high-profile. Not only did it support more than ten thousand residents, it had spawned countless side industries and provided livelihoods to thousands more who depended on it. The government also assigned around twenty to thirty thousand workers daily.
To put it simply, among the three million survivors still living in Wu City, at least one in every few dozen people had some connection to Shiyuan.
Its name had already spread like wildfire. Everyone dreamed of getting into this so-called paradise of the apocalypse.
Qian Duoduo's expression turned serious. "Development. We need to keep expanding, and fast. This isn't enough. In the next two years, I plan to turn Shiyuan into a true underground city. Not just self-sufficient, but built on its own philosophy—a real, self-contained world beneath the surface."
She frowned. Was he really planning to go that far?
"Mr. Qian, forgive me for speaking bluntly, but right now, you and I are tied to the same rope. If you expand on that scale, aren't you worried everything you've built will just get taken over from above? Even if things in Wu City—or the world—haven't collapsed to the point of total starvation yet, it's only a matter of time. Once that happens, Shiyuan will become a target for everyone. What will you do then?"
He didn't seem surprised by her words.
Instead, he sighed. "You're not wrong. And I'll tell you straight—you'd better be prepared too. The situation in Wu City, and the whole country, is only going to get worse. If the apocalypse doesn't end, what you just described will happen sooner or later. Maybe in three months, maybe in three years."
Her eyes widened in shock. He knew? Then…
He went on, "Things will only deteriorate. When everyone in Wu City is starving, the authorities will definitely come for the fattest sheep first. You think I don't understand that? During peaceful times, we were the rich and powerful, admired by everyone. But when disaster strikes, we become walking targets.
I've still got connections in the capital, sure. But when things get that bad, those connections won't mean a damn thing. You're wondering why I'm still putting myself out there despite knowing all this, right?"
He raised an eyebrow and let out a long breath, as if this was something he'd been holding in for a long time. Everyone saw his glamorous side, but no one saw the other—the side roasted alive over a fire, sprinkled with cumin and chili, sizzling and dripping with oil.
She nodded. She really was curious.
"Like you said, let's take the worst-case scenario. If I don't keep expanding Shiyuan, do you really think the title of Wu City's richest man will save me from being slaughtered later? Even if I lay low, do you think Shiyuan could survive untouched when the world collapses?"
Uh...
"The answer's no," he said firmly. "When you're in this position, there's no way to back out. I've already been pushed to the top of the roasting spit.
Jing Shu, you probably don't realize yet—once your wealth reaches a certain level, it's not really yours anymore."
===
There's someone suddenly lecturing and tearing into me on AO3. It was under My Daughter is the Empire's Lucky Charm in the Head's Up chapter, which mostly talks about how I did my translation.
Their initial comment was just "DO NOT. SUPPORT. AI." When I saw that, of course I replied, explaining why I use AI in some cases, my reasoning, and all that. Just normal stuff. This notification came through on October 29.
In my reply, I said:
"Yeah, I get where you're coming from, and I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I know AI models basically 'steal' from people's work to train themselves, especially when it comes to creative stuff like art and writing.
But here's the thing: where I live, there are no Mandarin teachers or tutors. Maybe you can find some in the city center, but that's a good hour away from me. I'm completely self-taught. So honestly, AI is a huge help for me, especially with things like names—like the examples I gave. It's not just about translating a name, but knowing how to adapt a Chinese name written in Hanzi into a localized version based on someone's nationality, like 杰明·沃克 (Jié Míng · Wò Kè) or 利贵勋 (Lì Guìxūn).
How else would I figure out their 'real' names? Sure, people might know English or Western names since they're so global. But what about other languages, like Korean? I doubt most people understand the conventions for converting Chinese names into Korean or other languages like Thai. It's tricky.
Plus, the 'Mandarin teachers' here don't have Mandarin as their first language—it's probably their fourth or later. Most people here are polyglots and speak at least two or three languages, like Javanese for daily life, Indonesian for the national language, English, and maybe another one. So naturally, their knowledge on this specific topic is limited.
Also, AI isn't some brand-new thing; it's been around for a while, making life easier. Sure, there are unethical sides to how some companies handle AI training, but advanced AI has made a lot of tasks way more accessible for regular people.
So it all comes down to this: just use AI wisely. It's really up to the individual."
Then on December 5 (yesterday), they suddenly replied with this long rant:
"First things first! Using AI wisely is not using it for literally anything. Use your creativity. You think this is called using AI wisely? No. Do you know how much AI causes damage to our environment? I don't think you do. If you do not, then I think you need to learn more. Rapid development and deployment of powerful generative AI models comes with environmental consequences, including increased electricity demand and water consumption. The environmental impact of artificial intelligence includes substantial electricity consumption for training and using deep learning models, and the related carbon footprint and water usage. There are differences between generative AI and traditional AI. You can't pick names? Use name generator or Google search Chinese names bro, you don't need to use AI for that. And I see you use AI images for these people. You do NOT know how people who learn art feel when people use AI 'art' or AI images for their work. Learn how to draw! You don't want to? Appreciate the artists—humans—that work on real art, buy their commissions. That's how you appreciate humans, you dependent AI users. You can't speak Mandarin? Then LEARN. You can't learn? You're too lazy? Too bad, don't use Mandarin at all, then! Self-taught isn't using AI, my friend. Self-taught is teaching. We have YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, all social media channels that can help you learn what you want to learn. Using a shortcut like AI is lame. I bet you write all these paragraphs using AI. I know, you're right that AI is not brand new anymore, but that doesn't mean you need to depend on AI for everything, dude. At least put effort into researching or something. I am still young, and I use purely all my efforts to do arts—draw, sing, play instruments, write, EVERYTHING. It's not good, but it's REAL. Not an AI slop. It's not that hard to learn if you have the want to. So please—please, love our world by not using AI as often as you always do, dear friend."
It literally came as one giant wall of text, no paragraphs, no spacing, just full narration. For a fuck's sake, I felt so insulted reading that.
Of course, I fired back. I started with:
"First, I'm not sure if you misunderstood something, didn't bother thinking about my answer, have seriously bad reading comprehension, or just wanted to get all 'raging' and show off how awesome you are by tearing into my work, even if you're just talking about the 'Head's Up' chapter, which mostly talks about how I did my translation.
Let me respond to your reply that suspiciously reads like an accusation."
Then I began countering their points: "Using AI wisely is not using it for literally anything," "AI is bad for the environment," "You can't pick names? Use a name generator or Google search Chinese names," "You can't speak Mandarin? Then LEARN. You can't learn? You're too lazy? Too bad, don't use Mandarin at all, then! Self-taught isn't using AI, my friend," "And I see you use AI images for these people," "I bet you write all these paragraphs using AI."
Fuck, I'm still so fucking mad right now.
I just copy-pasted my answer below. I'll give you an update if they reply again.
---
First, I'm not sure if you misunderstood something, didn't bother thinking about my answer, have seriously bad reading comprehension, or just wanted to get all "raging" and show off how awesome you are by tearing into my work, even if you're just talking about the "Head's Up" chapter, which mostly talks about how I did my translation.
Let me respond to your reply that suspiciously reads like an accusation.
About this part, "using AI wisely is not using it for literally anything"—tell me, where in my "Heads Up" chapter, in my disclaimer, or in any of my previous answers do I say I use AI for everything?
And about "AI is bad for the environment"—of course I know. I even knew that because of AI companies, RAM prices shot up like crazy, and some big companies stopped producing for the general public just to meet AI demands.
As for "You can't pick names? Use a name generator or Google search Chinese names"—did you even read my answer? I only use that for foreign names written in Chinese. If you didn't know, I'm a translator, this isn't my original work. I can't just change all the foreign names into brand new ones and call it done.
About "You can't speak Mandarin? Then LEARN. You can't learn? You're too lazy? Too bad, don't use Mandarin at all, then! Self-taught isn't using AI, my friend"—again, where did I ever say I use AI for self-learning? I literally said, "AI is a huge help for me, especially with things like names…" I only use AI for a few things, not everything. Please read it again. I even made a point that many people here are polyglots, so their knowledge about specific topics, like foreign names in Chinese, is limited. So ask real-life people for help on this topic, because their knowledge or knowledge about other specific topics is limited.
About "And I see you use AI images for these people"—yeah, I admit that in the early days of my translation project covers, which you can see on my webnovel, I used AI for 5 projects. But after that, I switched and tried my best to make the covers myself. Now I have over 20 projects, and I mostly use Pinterest images or clean up the original cover, use it as background, and add the title myself. Good? Also, for the "pictures" chapter, where I put images of how I imagine them, I picked those from Pinterest, thanks.
About "I bet you write all these paragraphs using AI"—which part of this chapter says I did that? I literally wrote, "For translation, my process is a little more involved. I always have two browser tabs open for the same chapter: one with the original text and another with a machine translation. When I hit a wall or need a second perspective on a tricky sentence, I peek at the auto-translation to compare."
Do you even get what that means, or did you just catch that I use machine translation as the final version or something? If yes, then your reading comprehension seriously needs to be addressed.
You know Google Translate, right? Yeah, I fucking use it for reference. If you don't even know what Google Translate is, then I'm not sure how to even proceed with this. And if that counts as AI in your book, fine, then yes. I also use AI for picking synonyms or checking what the initial or literal wording sounds like in MTL.
Yes, I admit I use Grammarly and other tools to check my grammar. Is that freaking bad?
Also, if you're trying to argue that copying and pasting this into an AI detector proves I used AI for it, please know those detectors aren't accurate at all. Do you want to put my work into Turnitin or something? Well, this isn't a report or paper that needs plagiarism checks.
Honestly, I don't care if you do everything by yourself. Why? Because I do that too. I have a brain, and my intelligence is something I take pride in. From your tone, though, you made it sound like you were accusing me of using AI for everything in all my projects, and that's honestly insulting. So if my reply comes off aggressive, it's because it is. And when you added "So please—please, love our world by not using AI as often as you always do, dear friend" in your last reply, all the "my friend" stuff didn't soften the tone at all. It actually comes across as diminutive in a negative way.
Let me emphasize this again: I'M NOT THE AUTHOR. Everything I upload here is just a translation. Even if it's not 100% true to the original story, it's because, like I wrote in this chapter, "I see translation as a creative collaboration with the original text. While I will never change the main plot or the core heart of the story, the journey there will be uniquely shaped by my choices." So this isn't a full-blown fan adaptation or fanfic. The lowest accuracy is still around 70–80% true to the original story.
So before you attack someone with your "knowledge," at least understand who and what you're actually attacking.