Bai Zhen and Wang Ning completed their simulation experiment for AFSK-modulated image signal transmission. The two excitedly high-fived—or tried to, since no one could see anyone else in the pitch darkness. They ended up smacking each other’s foreheads instead, producing crisp slapping sounds. Without wasting a moment, they immediately transplanted the entire solution to Bai Yang and BG4MSR’s Icom 725.

It was Friday, no classes tomorrow. Bai Yang sacrificed his sleep to keep his father and Uncle Wang company as they worked late at night.

“private int[] Filter_10Khz(int[] Data), did you get that? OVER.”

“Got it.”

“Repeat it back, OVER.”

“private int[] Filter_10Khz(int[] Data).”

Ban Xia sat with her lamp on, wearing headphones, pen in hand, writing down every bit of code she heard.

They were truly broadcasting code verbally, with Bai Yang holding open a copy of “C#: From Beginner to Mastery.”

Wang Ning and Bai Zhen sat on the bed behind him, laptops on their knees, making one final code check. This was like a divine revelation bestowed by Huawei’s communications experts.

“What’s this code?”

“Hmm… envelope detector program.”

“Move it up a bit, let’s check the transmission layer data receiving program again.”

“Where’s the transmission layer data-sending function?”

“Package them all up, package them!”

The desk clock pointed to 1 AM. Bai Yang rubbed his eyes, yawned, and forced himself to stay alert. Heaven knew if their approach would work—teaching a girl with zero programming knowledge how to install a transmission program. The problems were numerous enough to trigger trypophobia, as Bai Yang had discovered. Over the past two days, they’d force-fed BG4MSR basic programming knowledge, cramming it in like force-feeding a duck. If knowledge could be transmitted like internal energy in martial arts novels, Bai Zhen and Wang Ning would’ve pulled the girl right through the radio for a two-on-one energy transfer session, passing on their decades of amateur radio expertise to BG4MSR, making her head steam like the three flowers converging at the crown, letting her gain seventy years of power overnight like Xu Zhu.

Unfortunately, knowledge couldn’t be transmitted palm-to-palm. Neither could intelligence—what a shame. If it were possible, Duan Yu’s Beiming Divine Art and the Star Hermit’s Star-Sucking Great Method could drain others into idiots. Wouldn’t that be the supreme martial art, turning all victims stupid? Wouldn’t that strike fear into everyone’s hearts?

“Is it Enter next? BG4MXH? BG4MXH?”

The girl’s voice pulled Bai Yang back from his wandering thoughts.

Bai Yang blinked—it was indeed late, his mind starting to fog up.

“That’s right, Enter, OVER.”

Ban Xia marked an Enter on her paper, then started a new line. Recording everything on paper was a good habit—you could always look back and check.

More precisely, this was called a task log. Every step was recorded, and every step could be traced, allowing quick identification of problem sources when issues arose.

“statusChart1.Value = re10(i);”

“status…Chart1.V…Value?”

“Yes, Value.”

Before Ban Xia sat the heavy Icom 725 amateur radio, with an even heavier CRT monitor to its left, along with a yellowed white plastic keyboard. The messy cables all converged at the industrial control board mounted on the wall by the window. Black, blue, red, white, and gray cables were plugged into the board’s ports, with red and blue LEDs glowing in the dim room. These bulky, outdated electronic components occupied almost the entire desk space, like mountains of varying heights made of rectangular blocks, leaving only a small area to spread out paper. The girl was surrounded by them, her head buried so deep you couldn’t see her face.

Half a month ago, Ban Xia wouldn’t have believed she could accomplish all this. Look at these complex electronic components, these tangled cables and adapters—had she done this?

Had she cobbled together a trans-temporal image communication system from a pile of electronic waste?

“private void DatasendThread().”

“private…void DatasendThread()…”

“While(true).”

“What’s this?” Ban Xia asked.

“Sending code,” Bai Yang answered.

“Will it work this time?” Ban Xia asked.

Bai Yang hesitated, “It should be reliable this time. The code wasn’t written by my dad—it’s from an expert we consulted. Much better than my dad’s code.”

He wasn’t completely confident. The code might be fine, but problems weren’t limited to just the code.

Ban Xia copied all the code onto paper. The code itself was very simple, with all modules together totaling less than 400 lines.

Typing it into the motherboard one character at a time, Ban Xia’s two-finger typing speed was surprisingly quick. She double-checked the code with BG4MXH one more time to ensure no errors, then took a deep breath.

She sat in her chair, eyes fixed on the CRT monitor.

“BG4MXH, I’m going to start.”

“Okay.”

Bai Yang turned to look at his dad and Uncle Wang behind him, pointing at the radio to indicate the experiment was about to begin.

Wang Ning and Bai Zhen nodded in unison.

“BG4MXH, want to guess if it’ll succeed?”

Ban Xia’s finger hovered over the keyboard.

“It will.”

“Then shall we make a bet?” the girl said lazily.

Bai Yang was taken aback. “Bet what?”

“Tell her whoever loses has to call the other ‘daddy,'” Uncle Wang said from behind. “That’s all you can bet anyway.”

“Let’s bet something bigger—let’s bet the lives of all seven billion people in the world!” Ban Xia suddenly grinned, her words catching Bai Yang completely off guard, nearly making him jump from his chair. “If you win, you get the lives of all seven billion people. If you lose, they’re all done for.”

At this moment, Ban Xia seemed like a little demon holding a remote control, with the bomb strapped to Earth. All the world’s lives were in her hands—she only needed to press the remote to destroy Earth, killing everyone. All of humanity’s fate hung on her whim, but she wanted to play a game. The little demon found a young earthling and said, let’s make a bet, shall we? Let’s bet the lives of all humanity.

This was truly a high-stakes gamble.

“Want to bet?”

“Want to bet?”

“No answer? Then I’ll take that as a yes!”

“Hey… wait, I didn’t say I agr—”

Ban Xia’s face was illuminated by the CRT monitor’s ethereal blue light. She gently pressed her finger down—a soft “click” in the dead silence.

Bai Yang sat in his chair. After a long silence in the channel, the girl’s voice came through:

“You lost, it failed.”

Failed.

Runtime error.

“Because you lost, all seven billion people in the world have disappeared. Now I’m the only person left in this world. Didn’t I keep my word?”

“I…”

Bai Yang was at a loss for words.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t kill them…”

Ban Xia reached out to turn off the desk lamp and the monitor. The light in the room dissipated. She sat alone quietly in the darkness. There was no moon outside. It was now 2:30 AM.

She lifted her head to gaze at the night sky and said softly:

“They just turned into stars.”