Chapter 148: An Introduction to Coding Robots

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

That night, Xia Fei invited Moon Song, Chen Dong, as well as Beihai, Manjun, Bosingwa, and Ye Xiaohan to share a meal, bidding them all a simple farewell before he immediately set off for the Alliance capital in Khanid Star Region.

Vampire slowly lifted off into space; after Xia Fei switched the warship to autopilot, he retired into his cabin to carefully study and research.

The journey from Endaro Star Region to Khanid Star Region would take at least twenty days, and since Xia Fei had nothing to do during this time, he got ready to study how he could get Quantum Holdings to carry out a large-scale industrial-upgrade as soon as possible, from a small company that could only produce the cheapest products to a medium-size business that could compete with others in the Alliance.

From his video calls with Charlie, Xia Fei learned that Quantum Holdings had not only managed to survive and become a fierce competitor on the market but also achieved a net profit of 1.5 billion star coins.

This bit of money was nothing to Xia Fei, but to Quantum Holdings, a company that had just taken the first step in establishing themselves, it was a critical sum. After all, every money earned was from the pockets of extraterrestrials, and it was the first time in history that an Earth-based company had profited from interstellar trade. This was not only good for Quantum Holdings but also a great encouragement for the whole planet.

The facts proved that as long as humans put their heart to it, they too could compete for their position within the Pan-Human Alliance. They were all humans, so there was no reason Earthlings would not be up to par against extraterrestrials.

Now, Andre had already taken a backseat and was managing everything as an aide, only participating in board meetings when pertaining to important decisions that Quantum Holdings would be making. The burden of being the chief executive officer (CEO) had already befallen on the young Charlie’s shoulders.

Though Charlie was two years younger than Xia Fei, born into the Rothschild family, he was gifted with a head for business. After shadowing Andre all those years, Charlie had slowly begun to shed away his initial shyness and was now turning into a shrewd and bold businessman in his rights.

Xia Fei had a hands-off approach toward Quantum Holdings. He had never once participated in its day-to-day operations, leaving it for Andre, Wulong, and the others to operate. Xia Fei trusted those men, and their performance had not disappointed him thus far. He believed that it would only be a matter of time before Quantum Holdings became a heavyweight company in interstellar trade.

Boateng, Sarah, Allan, Sonny, and their family were people whom Xia Fei had recruited from all across the universe to help him with the company as they slowly began to play a more important role in it. Boateng and Sarah were providing support for the company’s transport fleet in their own way, with Boateng responsible for fleet maintenance and Sarah in charge of fleet operations. Both of them performed to their best of abilities to help the fleet become outstanding.

Allan, who had joined the company’s technological research team, used his experience with radars to create a small radar called Dust. This radar was not particularly powerful, but it demonstrated its uniqueness by collecting weak signals with higher precision. Last year, almost one-third of their profits came from the sale of this Dust radar, becoming a representing product of their company.

Sonny, who had a more cheerful personality, had joined Quantum Holdings’ sales department as their business representative, specifically responsible for negotiations with other companies. This man who started out driving a taxi had managed to demonstrate his talent in diplomacy, spending his time traveling to various locations in space, discussing contracts with other companies on behalf of Quantum Holdings, establishing business deals left and right.

Xia Fei had once been worried that Sonny growing up in the warship graveyard would give him an aura of a hoodlum which could not be washed off, and he might not be able to greatly contribute to any measure, but now, it appeared that he had truly been worried over nothing; that slick and persuasive personality had become Sonny’s greatest weapon, and it was reported to him that if the company were to come across someone who was tough to talk sense with, Sonny would be sent. It was as the saying went: ‘Everything has its vanquisher, and it takes a crook to fight a crook.’

Xia Fei was beginning to feel that everyone actually had the potential as long as they were placed in the right position to shine fully. Who would have thought Allan, a man who barely had enough to eat, could become an inventor on Earth and that Sonny, with his ruffian mannerisms, could become a qualified business representative?

In the past year, Quantum Holdings had already accomplished its acquisition and reorganization of the planet’s productivity, now wielding a great manufacturing capacity that spanned across the globe. Now, the question was how to turn productivity into profits.

As Earth was starting to become more prosperous as it traded with other sovereign territories more and more frequently, the Federation dollar was rapidly increasing in value as well. Presently, a star coin could be exchanged for about 1200 Federation dollars, and in the future, the Federation dollars would surely reach its true purchasing power and be accepted by the Alliance, too. It would then be accepted into the universal currency system and the Federation dollar would be completely replaced at this stage, bringing Earth into the star coins era.

Even if Earth Federation’s dollars could not be entered into the Alliance’s universal currency system, Xia Fei had no plans of depending on low-end products to develop the company. Low-value products had terrible profit margins, only a few hundreds of star coins per tonnage even after adjusting the operating costs. It was hardly profitable and was definitely not a long-term plan.

The screen was blank, the thought-assisted composition program on standby. As long as Xia Fei had a thought, the screen would immediately display what he was thinking about.

Lighting a cigarette, Xia Fei sat down in a chair and quietly contemplated. Industrial design was a broad and profound field of study, and the products that Quantum Holdings could produce were not too high-tech, for it would be extremely difficult to produce if it was too high-tech. Even if they relied on extraterrestrials to ship in equipment and forcibly get them started on production, the yield rate would be a huge problem. After all, Quantum Holdings did not have the experience or the capabilities to produce complex products yet.

Furthermore, industrial designs also needed Xia Fei to have a handle on the technical foundations; there was no way that he could come up with anything beyond his standard even if he died trying.

Electronics, machinery, pharmaceuticals... these were the three main topics Xia Fei was focusing on at the moment and also the things that he was mainly learning outside of his training. He had gotten the foundation, but the lack of experience in product designing was greatly restricting him.

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Industrial design and designing something were two entirely different concepts. The top priority of industrial design was cost control; every cent the base cost of a product lowered meant another cent to profit and competitiveness. In contrast, a product made for personal use did not need to be so particular, where pricing was not an issue as long as it was suitable for use.

After pondering on this for a good while, Xia Fei was still clueless on how to proceed. To someone who had no experience in product design, it was difficult to come up with a complete design for industrialized products.

Furrowing his brows, Xia Fei asked Phantom, who was seated in a corner of the cabin, “Is it possible to mass-produce those medicinal formulas of yours?”

Phantom slowly opened both eyes and sniggered. “First, these formulas are from my discipleship, so you don’t have the right to take it and mass-produce them. Second, it isn’t as if you haven’t tried the medicines yourself; all of them are extreme to a great degree, potentially becoming lethal if even the slightest mistake is made during the process. Even if you can reproduce them, that sort of pain is not something the average individual can handle. If you were to attempt and produce these as you claim, you might very well end up becoming a pauper.”

Xia Fei was silent for a good while. Phantom’s pharmaceutical methodology all depended on using medicinal ingredients with conflicting properties, which created insane effects, and the risk to partake in these was a lot. It appeared as if Xia Fei would have to eliminate pharmaceuticals from the plan, leaving him to find opportunities within the fields of electronics and machinery.

Though the saying ‘once the fundamentals are understood, the rest will follow’ rang true, and Xia Fei had a better understanding of mechanical principles after learning ship maintenance and retrofitting, he was still fairly mediocre when it came to the principle of modifying machinery. The former was through picking up Old Porter’s lifetime worth of experience in the field, while the latter was merely just what Xia Fei slowly figured through plenty of practice, and it was hardly fitting to compare the two.

As such, he had to eliminate the machinery option as well, leaving just electronics for Xia Fei to dabble in.

Electronics was what Xia Fei had picked up in the last year or so from ancient civilization books, and there was no question that it was technologically advanced. However, the problem with this sort of advanced technology was the necessity of a strong production capacity to support, so even if Xia Fei was able to come up with an entirely new product by imitating the ancient technological designs, he would still face plenty of trouble mass-producing it back on Earth.

After going a whole round, Xia Fei was back to where he started. It seemed that product designing was not as simple as what Xia Fei had imagined.

Somewhat dejected, he lay down on his bed and started reading.

Putting the introduction to robot coding Qin Mang had given him on the screen, Xia Fei began to read it studiously from the contents page.

After reading dozens of pages, Xia Fei gradually realized that this book was not simply an introduction to computational programming but the entire process of robotics manufacturing as well as AI coding.

The book was just a simple introductory text and the theoretical information presented could not be considered unfathomable, yet it also provided a grand blueprint on how to manufacture robots for all its readers’ sake.

From the very basics of how to design the appearance and balance control of the robots all the way to the kernel code-to-code robots, including the theoretical knowledge and practical application, everything was described in great detail in the book.

Most importantly, the book even provided many practical cases of robot manufacturing, enabling readers to form a series of scenes, as if they were watching a movie, on how ore could be smelted into metal, creating the robot’s appearance, until finally the installation of an AI system, which would let a robot possess intelligence and emotions, just like humans.

Xia Fei voraciously read page after page, deeply absorbed in every word in the book.

As he read the cases of research and development failures of the robots, Xia Fei shared in the sadness of these researchers, and when reading about the successful development of robots, Xia Fei also shared in their excitement.

Xia Fei had completely lost track of time and space. He was like a plant that was rapidly growing at that moment, continuously absorbing the nutrients found in the book as he immersed in that robot world, unable and unwilling to extricate himself.

The Beast Spirit Codex had given Xia Fei superhuman vision, and his keen nervous system allowed him to register ten lines at a single glance. His completely opened seventh region of the brain made it so that he could understand the problems raised within the book exceedingly fast, and Xia Fei took only three whole days to completely finish reading the tome with over ten thousand pages.

Turning off the screen, Xia Fei closed his eyes and tried to rest for a while; despite his fatigue, his brain managed to retain the memory of what he had just read, and a feeling of extreme excitement made it hard for him to fall asleep.

“I might as well read it again,” Xia Fei muttered to himself.

He had no words to describe that excitement he felt inside him. It was like each freshly minted robot was being placed in front of him, and Xia Fei could even see these robots interact with one another, working busily. Though they appeared cold and emotionless, he could see the indubitably human heart in them. Happiness, anger, sadness, and joy, the myriad of emotions under the sun; all these feelings uniquely humans could all be found in the robots’ expression and words.

Xia Fei did not receive the indoctrination of how robots had wiped out humanity. Though it was a reality that nobody could change, Xia Fei was ultimately unable to feel any aversion or antipathy toward the robots.

Since robots were capable of the range of emotions humans possessed, then the qualities, which had once defined them, had essentially gone well past the scope of basic machinery, becoming completely human in the process. War was human nature, and Xia Fei felt perhaps there was some yet unknown catalyst that triggered humans and robots to clash, which ultimately devolved into war.

He continued to read on with great enthusiasm, and by doing so again and again, he was inadvertently repeatedly absorbing the many high-tech theories found within, which had been developed by the ancient civilization.

Meanings could be discovered after reading a thousand times; concepts and portions of the book that Xia Fei could not make sense of the first time he read it began to make sense after he did so a second and a third time, persisting until he could comprehend all that what was written.

Xia Fei’s reading style was not like those geniuses out there; repeated reading was actually a very clumsy method, yet Xia Fei had never once solved this problem. He had no other options, for his foundation was way lacking compared to others.

The Earth Federation’s education standard itself was fairly limited, and since Xia Fei was essentially someone who hardly had any education to speak of, the difference in terms of his reading techniques and knowledge retention could hardly compare to the top students from more advanced planets.

Fortunately, Xia Fei was resolute. He was like a foolish man moving a mountain, using the most rudimentary method to study and dissect the profound knowledge in the text bit by bit, not once giving up or complaining about how arduous this was.

Time passed very quickly, and Xia Fei, who had spent half a month living on his ship, would be arriving at the Alliance capital in five days’ time.

Xia Fei had not rested for even a minute in this half month. He would casually eat mouthfuls of cold rice whenever he was hungry and drink tap water from the bathroom whenever he felt thirsty. He did not even spend time showering or shaving, dedicating all of it to reading, unaware of the passage of time.

Nine times. This was the number of times Xia Fei had read the introduction to robot coding when inspiration struck when, suddenly, an idea flashed across his mind.

Just like how when a rainstorm began, the water droplets would gradually gather to form puddles before finally becoming a river that flowed on a path of its creation.

Xia Fei knew that when inspiration came to him, he needed to hold onto it tightly in order to develop this idea into a complete plan, which could be put into practice.

Hopping off his bed, Xia Fei was in front of his desk in a jiffy, rapidly formulating and fleshing his idea out.

That blank screen began to be filled out via the utilization of the thought-assisted composition program as several complex lines were conjured unceasingly. In a handful of hours, a complete drawing of a mechanical composition appeared on the screen.

This was a design that came as a result of Xia Fei’s knowledge and inspiration—an original creation that he came up with, which borrowed the technological accomplishments of the ancients.

A creation was like an inventor’s child, and Xia Fei of course loved it very much. What he must do now was nurture this child into a man, to breathe in a complete personality and life to it.

The drawing was repeatedly amended and revised, every detail needing improvement. Furthermore, the ideas that kept coming to Xia Fei’s mind fueled him with further inspiration as he made progress on this design toward perfection, step by step.

Three days later, Xia Fei lit a cigarette and admired the design diagram on the display screen with satisfaction. He was in a surprisingly calm mood, almost as if this was not the first time he had done such a thing.

“What is this?” Phantom finally could not resist asking this question.

Xia Fei smiled. “A product—something that can be sold all over the universe.”