Am I a Genius?

Ning Zheng froze on the spot and poked it with his sword.

"Xiao Ai?"

I am here.

"Huh?"

Xiao Ai is the AI customer service for the Sword Forging Competition and is here to answer your questions.

Under Little Ai assistant's introduction, he quickly gained a rough understanding of what was going on. He also successfully logged into the highest authority level and discovered that he truly could control and destroy it at any time.

Only then did Ning Zheng let out a sigh of relief.

It just seemed that the other party was not particularly bright.

According to the introduction, Xiao Ai seemed to be a basic AI from 2025, not one of the most advanced.

The most advanced AIs of its era could answer all sorts of specialized encyclopedia questions, even win Go championships, create AI paintings, ghostwrite papers, answer all kinds of professional questions, and help write code.

This low-level artificial intelligence might have been utterly unremarkable among its peers and seemed rather dull, but to Ning Zheng, who had traveled through time from 2005, it was already earth-shatteringly shocking.

"Things got this outrageous twenty years later?"

He stood there in a daze, his memories drifting back to his previous life.

Back in 2005, he had been a simple, innocent twelve-year-old boy who played King of Fighters. Going to an internet café had been an unimaginable luxury. His whole family had merely sat before a television with an enormous back, watching Chinese Paladin 1 and weeping their eyes out from all the emotional knives.

Nor was he particularly wary of this machine.

Because he somewhat believed in fate.

It was not some hesitation born of nearing home.

This was a massive opportunity he had bought with real gold and silver. Since it was an opportunity rather than a calamity, it definitely would not be hiding some trap meant to swindle him.

At the very least, that was true in the short term.

If problems arose later on, it would simply mean that he was too weak!

If he could not safeguard a heaven-defying opportunity and the like, then when the time came, he could use his fortune to settle it and conceal his opportunity.

When he carried the Server home, he discovered that this thing had been transformed into a native artifact and actually possessed the properties of an Indestructible Flesh Artifact.

"Brother, breakfast is ready. What's this?"

Ning Jiaojiao ran over excitedly, rubbing her hands together like a fly, then crouched down and reached out to touch it. "Is this my new toy?"

Ning Zheng fobbed her off, tossed her a stick, and had her go poke ants nearby. Then he sat down in the courtyard and continued fiddling with the thing.

This was a small Server that had mutated while crossing time and space, containing a simple simulation game called "Sword Forging Simulator."

There were similar competing products, such as "Piano Simulator," "Ceramic Simulator," and "Firearm Simulator." In short, it simulated the Blacksmith's process of forging swords: players put in metal, hammered away with clang clang clang clang, forged a sword, and then received an evaluation and score.

It even came with an internal livestreaming platform where people could exchange sword-forging insights.

As for what an independent livestreaming platform was, Ning Zheng examined it carefully. It was probably like television program channels, the kind where one could switch channels.

"I still only half understand it. After all, there's already a twenty-year generation gap between me and them."

He sighed. As a child, he had laughed at his grandfather for not even knowing how to use a television remote. Who would have thought that now, he himself had become the grandfather!

If he had not died at twelve in his previous life, if he had grown up, found work, and married, would he and his peers have lived happily in that society?

Instead of being a slave here, never knowing whether he would survive the day, watched over by a steward wielding a whip as he worked a full ten hours every day.

But now that he truly understood this Server, Ning Zheng was deeply intrigued. To him, whether it actually forged swords was not important.

A little Blacksmith game that harvested fortune seemed quite good.

Over the next three days.

Ning Zheng seemed to have gotten hold of a fun new toy. He never left the house, simply eating River Demon Meat in the courtyard while continuously trying to understand and experiment with it.

Having traveled through time from 2005, he had come from a poor family and had never played any online games. He had almost no understanding of online gaming and could only fumble around and try to manage it himself, feeling like an old grandpa from a backward era.

First came the players' bodies. That did not pose much of a challenge to him.

There were plenty of soulless shells in this world.

For example, the lively severed limbs and flesh of those Demon Cultivators could be put to good use instead of being wasted. They could even multiply into vast quantities of flesh and tissue, serving as their fleshly bodies.

Do not underestimate that pile of cells. Under natural conditions, their bodies would not die for centuries. If their reproduction, division, and cloning were accelerated, they could continue dividing for years before being completely drained dry!

Sword Forging Manor also raised a batch of Money Boys. The nails of those Demon Beasts were materials for casting Money Currency and one of the main sources of income.

The shells of these Money Boys could also be used.

The issue of bodies was solved.

Next was communication through localized language and writing.

It seemed that he only needed to input and save the native language of his world. After all, the functions for translating text and language in future AI were already highly mature.

The easy resolution of the language problem surprised Ning Zheng somewhat. He had not expected Xiao Ai, whose intelligence seemed less than stellar, to be so capable.

The next issue was the newbie guidance that Little Ai assistant continued with:

"Master, the Sword Forging Competition usually needs to recruit a host. A competition cannot do without a host, who must deliver speeches and arrange the various contestants."

Upon hearing this, Ning Zheng understood this host to be roughly equivalent to a Mountain Villa steward.

Ning Zheng did not think there was anything wrong with that.

After all, he normally needed to cultivate. He was running the Mountain Villa to earn cultivation resources, so having a steward was only natural. He could not personally handle every single matter.

However, the steward from when he had been a Blacksmith had been extremely vicious.

Any slave who was even slightly inattentive in forging would be whipped, stabbed with needles, beaten and cursed in every manner possible, or even thrown down to Spirit Manor at the foot of the mountain to feed those vicious creatures.

Ning Zheng was kind-hearted.

He felt that recruiting another steward like that would be somewhat cruel.

Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto yourself. Otherwise, why had he run away in the first place?

But then he recalled the earlier introduction. These were the Blacksmiths most suited to this Sword Forging Manor—in other words, perhaps they would actually enjoy it?

Thus.

With a try-and-see attitude, Ning Zheng recalled the behavior and style of that fat-headed, big-eared steward. Following Xiao Ai's newbie guidance and imitating the template, he wrote a passage:

The Sword Forging Competition is currently in closed beta. 1. Blacksmiths are enthusiastically invited to register. 2. A game host is now being recruited, skilled in business management. Requirements: skilled at abuse and corporal punishment, understands how to withhold and exploit Blacksmiths.

After finishing it, Ning Zheng felt that something was somewhat inappropriate.

"Xiao Ai, is this how one recruits a host for Sword Forging Manor? Is it not quite right to do this?"

Xiao Ai:

Searching. An outstanding host must master the art of adapting to circumstances and guiding events to resolve difficult problems. Such problems requiring quick thinking include: resolving disputes, controlling emotions, and conveying information.

Comparing. Based on the conditions of employment specified by Master, they perfectly meet the three major requirements of an outstanding host. Furthermore, players all enjoy being exploited in this way. As the planner, you are highly qualified!

The tension in Ning Zheng's heart eased. Though he still did not quite understand this so-called "Sword Forging Competition," he had resolved the initial setup right away. Could it be that he really was a genius?

He adjusted the age at which he had crossed over: twelve years old.