Chapter 5: Turning the Tables

"Ahhh!" Lu Qiuyi clutched her head, rolling twice on the plush carpet in agony. "What do I do, what do I do, what do I do!"

She sat up abruptly, staring blankly at the dazzling night view outside the window. Her brain raced, desperately trying to squeeze a shred of useful information out of a completely blank mental slate.

Technical details? A pipe dream.
Fabrication? He Jingyue was no fool.
Confession? That was equivalent to a self-inflicted explosion, leading straight to Game Over.

Just as despair began to set in, a thought flashed across her mind.
The Lu family!
Lu Mingxuan!

Since the Lu family was so eager for intelligence on the "Wisdom Speak" project and so willing to throw money at it, could she perhaps pull a reverse play?

Lu Qiuyi fished her phone out of her bag, opened WeChat, and found the chat window labeled [Father Lu]. The chat history was still frozen on that photo of a blank notebook and the transfer of one hundred thousand yuan from earlier that evening.

Lu Qiuyi took a deep breath, organized her thoughts, and typed rapidly on the screen:

[Lu Qiuyi]: Father, regarding today's core meeting on the "Wisdom Speak" project, the technical details are extremely complex. He Jingyue has requested that I report to him privately tomorrow morning. To ensure the accuracy and value of the information and to avoid arousing suspicion, I would like to ask you: which areas is the Lu family currently most eager to learn about? This will help me better distill the core information.

Send!

"This is called 'seizing the initiative,'" Lu Qiuyi thought to herself, "I'm such a genius, ha-ha."

Not long after the message was sent, her phone vibrated.
It wasn't a reply from Lu Mingxuan.
It was a new friend request in the WeChat contacts.
The profile picture was pure black, and the request note read: [Zhou Lin].

Zhou Lin? The secretary from the General Office? She hurriedly accepted the request.
It was accepted almost instantly.

[Zhou Lin]: Assistant Lu, still awake? Mr. He asked me to pass his work WeChat to you for future communication. This is his WeChat.

Attached below was a WeChat contact card. The profile picture was also a minimalist black background with the nickname: [JY].

He Jingyue's WeChat?!

Lu Qiuyi tapped the card cautiously, her finger hovering over the "Add to Contacts" button, hesitating. Would it be too abrupt to add him directly? Should she say something?

Just as she was agonizing over it, another message from Zhou Lin arrived:

[Zhou Lin]: Mr. He is usually quite busy. His WeChat is primarily for urgent work communication; please do not disturb unless necessary.

Subtext: Don't blather on and annoy the boss while he's trying to rest.

Lu Qiuyi curled her lip, but obediently clicked "Add." She sent the request with the note: [General Assistant Lu Qiuyi].

The request was accepted almost instantly.
Looking at the new black profile picture in her contacts, Lu Qiuyi felt immense pressure.
She instinctively tapped on his Moments—as expected, it was completely blank, save for a cold, thin line.
Truly, pure He Jingyue style.

Just as Lu Qiuyi was about to close WeChat, her peripheral vision caught the message she had sent to Lu Mingxuan earlier. She glanced back at the new, intimidating black profile picture in her contacts, and a brilliant idea struck her.

Her fingers danced on the screen, typing, deleting, and writing again. Finally, she pressed the "Post" button for her Moments.

The post contained only one photo.
The angle was carefully composed: a corner of a desk with an open notebook, and a half-finished cup of coffee sitting beside it.

Caption?
There was no caption.
Sometimes, silence speaks louder than words.
A photo of herself working hard at midnight, meticulously organizing meeting minutes, sent precisely to the big boss.

After posting, Lu Qiuyi felt like a thief; she quickly flipped her phone facedown on the desk, her heart pounding wildly.

Just then, the phone she had placed facedown lit up, emitting a continuous, buzzing vibration.
The name flashing on the screen was none other than—
[Father Lu]

Responding so quickly? Was he offering guidance? Or had he seen through her probe?
Lu Qiuyi stared at the flashing name, took a deep breath, and pressed "Answer."

"Father."

On the other end of the line, Lu Mingxuan's voice carried a heavy note of confusion: "Qiuyi, the content you sent is a bit hard for me to understand."

Lu Qiuyi's heart was instantly gripped by an invisible hand.
Why would he say that? Had he discovered a flaw? Or was there some special way the original owner used to pass information that she had overlooked?

In a flash of lightning-fast realization, Lu Qiuyi's gaze darted to the open meeting notebook.
To take that "working late" photo for He Jingyue, she had scribbled randomly on the notebook, her mind a complete mush, focused only on creating the illusion of diligence without paying any attention to the content.

The paper, once white as snow, was now covered in messy, chaotic handwriting and doodles:
At the top of the page were a few crooked, oversized characters that nearly tore through the paper: [The bird-speak Xie Mingxiao was talking about!!!]

Below that was a smaller, resentful line: [I don't understand any of it! Just destroy it all!]

Further down, there was a large, crying stick figure with the caption: [Me, Lu Qiuyi, died at the Developer Conference.]

Next to the figure was an even messier, distorted square that could barely be identified as a computer screen, covered in question marks and exclamation points.

In the corner, there was a small note: [He Jingyue is a big devil! His eyes could kill!]

Most absurdly, right in the center of the page, in a very conspicuous spot, was a question written in bold, circled, and punctuated with three huge question marks:
[How to make an AI learn to tell dad jokes???]

Lu Qiuyi: ...
Her vision went dark; she nearly fainted on the spot.
Lu Mingxuan had actually looked at it in such detail.

"Buzz—" The suffocating silence from Lu Mingxuan on the other end continued, as if silently interrogating her.

Lu Qiuyi took a sharp breath and spoke with a deliberately cultivated, excited tone: "Oh, you noticed it too, didn't you?"

She spoke at a breakneck speed, giving Lu Mingxuan no chance to interrupt.

"Yes, that exact question! 'How to make an AI learn to tell dad jokes'—that is the most cutting-edge, core, and easily overlooked ethical trap that He Jingyue didn't explicitly mention in the meeting today, but one that the entire 'Wisdom Speak' project team is secretly exploring."

Lu Qiuyi’s speed was like a machine gun, her brain spinning lies driven by a desperate will to survive.

"Think about it, what is 'Wisdom Speak'? It's generative AI. It needs to understand human language and even simulate human conversation. In human language, what is the hardest thing to grasp? What is most prone to ambiguity and offense? It's humor!"

"He Jingyue might have seemed to be listening to technical details at the meeting today, but the questions he asked Xie Mingxiao at the end were all covertly probing the model's depth of contextual understanding and its grasp of emotional nuances. Isn't that precisely laying the foundation for AI humor?"

Lu Qiuyi finished in one breath, feeling as if her lungs were about to explode.
She could imagine Lu Mingxuan's furrowed brows and scrutinizing gaze at that moment.

Would he believe her?