Chapter 97: Xiao Sizi's Daily Efforts!

Xiao Sizi stopped the Mouse in her hand and turned her head to look at Lin Xuan.

"What is the language that truly controls the machines in that factory like?"

Lin Xuan answered: "Rows and rows of dense letters and symbols."

"Written out by striking the Keyboard. We call it code."

Xiao Sizi turned back, staring at the colorful blocks on the screen. "The Father Emperor issues an Imperial Decree, the Ministry of Rites drafts it, and the Six Ministries execute it. It is transmitted layer by layer down to the prefectures and counties."

"Officials have selfish hearts. They will outwardly comply while secretly defying, they will embezzle for themselves, and they will distort the Imperial Will."

She extended her finger and poked the hard Personal Computer screen.

"This cat will not."

"If I command it to move forward three steps, it will absolutely not take four."

"If I command it to stop upon touching a red line, it will absolutely not cross the boundary by half an inch."

Xiao Sizi turned her head and looked directly into Lin Xuan's eyes.

"It has no selfish heart; it only recognizes the rules."

Lin Xuan looked at the five-year-old girl before him.

The political precocity bestowed upon her by ancient imperial education allowed her to pierce the underlying core of computer science with a single, precise thrust.

"Correct." Lin Xuan nodded.

"Machines lack human emotions; betrayal does not exist."

"Behind this screen lies a vast, boundless virtual world."

"Code is the law of this virtual world."

"If you learn this language and press the Enter key,"

"you establish a set of absolutely operating laws within this virtual world; you become the Creator."

Xiao Sizi gripped the Mouse again.

A blue 【Move】 module was tightly interlocked beneath a yellow 【If】 module.

The light in her eyes was no longer the curiosity of a child facing a new toy.

Instead, it was an extreme focus attempting to master a brand new power.

The rules took shape, line by line, beneath her fingertips.

The next day.

Lin Xuan, sitting on the sofa, had a professional book on ancient text restoration spread open on his knees.

Xiao Sizi walked in from outside, carrying her schoolbag.

She kicked off the sneakers on her feet and changed into cotton slippers.

She unzipped her schoolbag, took out the Chinese and Math exercise books, and placed them on the coffee table.

She pulled out a pencil, lowered her head, and began solving problems.

Half an hour later.

The two exercise books were closed.

She reached out again, took out a black USB drive, and clenched it in her palm.

"Brother Lin Xuan, the final project for the programming class."

"The teacher asked us to freely create a program, due next week."

Lin Xuan turned a page of his book without raising his head.

"If you encounter logic you don't understand, ask me."

"You don't need to teach me." Xiao Sizi picked up the silver laptop placed on the TV cabinet, "I want to try it myself."

"Lend me the study for these two days."

"Fine." Lin Xuan closed his book, "The plug is on the left side of the desk. Watch your eyes; look out the window every half hour."

Xiao Sizi nodded, holding the Personal Computer, and walked into the study.

The door closed.

An eye-protection desk lamp cast a warm white light.

Xiao Sizi pulled out a chair, sat down, and pressed the Personal Computer power button.

The screen lit up.

She clicked open the programming software depicting a small orange cat.

She created a new blank project and clicked open the "Costumes" panel on the left.

She deleted the default cat image provided by the system.

She clicked on the blank canvas and selected the brush tool.

Drawing with the Mouse was extremely difficult to control.

There was no force feedback like the lifting, pressing, pausing, and striking of a brush.

The cursor slid back and forth on the screen, and the lines were crooked and twisted.

Xiao Sizi pressed her lips tight, cleared the canvas, and began drawing again.

When a line was drawn crooked, she pressed the Undo key.

She drew again.

Her ten fingers exerted force, and her wrist pressed tightly against the table surface.

She tried to piece together a little girl wearing a skirt on the screen using the rough pixels of the Mouse.

She clicked red and painted the collar.

She clicked black and outlined the hair bun.

A full two hours.

She had only finished drawing two of the most basic static figures.

One was a girl wearing a Tang Dynasty Qi Xiong Ruju.

The other,

was a modern man in a black trench coat, tall and imposing.

Her wrist ached.

Xiao Sizi let go of the Mouse, shaking her hand.

Then, she opened the code area.

She dragged out a yellow 【When Green Flag Clicked】 block.

Below it, she attached a blue 【Move】 block.

To make the girl's walk look animated, she drew two slightly different girl poses.

In the code, she added a purple 【Switch Costume】 and an orange 【Wait 0.2 seconds】.

The logic was clumsily stitched together.

She clicked run again and again.

She adjusted the steps and wait time again and again.

……

Great Tang, Taiji Palace, Lizheng Hall.

Deep night, silent.

The water clock ticked on.

The palace maids and eunuchs inside the hall had long been dismissed.

Several pots of silver-bone charcoal burned red, dispelling the chill of early winter.

Li Shimin wore a heavy black cloak.

Zhangsun Huanghou sat beside him, wrapped in a white fox fur coat.

The husband and wife sat side by side, watching the Sky Screen.

On the screen was the dim light of a study, and the back view of their daughter leaning over a desk, staring at the glowing Glazed Ware panel.

"Er Lang," Zhangsun Huanghou's voice was slightly hoarse, filled with concern, "It's past the Hour of the Rat, yet Sizi is still fiddling with those blocks."

"That is the study of a later age," Li Shimin said, reaching out to adjust his wife's collar, "She has always been strong-willed; over there, she would not wish to fall behind others."

Li Shimin could not understand what those colorful blocks on the screen represented.

He only knew it was a set of rules called "code."

He watched his daughter repeatedly manipulate that black "dead mouse" (Mouse), watching the extremely crude pixel figure in the screen walk and stop.

He did not understand why Sizi wanted to draw these things.

But he did not go to sleep.

Zhangsun Huanghou did not either.

The Emperor and Empress of Great Tang, on this silent winter night, across a thousand years of time and space, silently watched over their daughter's lamp in this wordless way.

They had missed too much of their daughter's growth.

Now, they only wished to see one more glimpse of her peaceful back.

……

The next day, late at night.

Xiao Sizi locked herself in the study again.

The basic walking animation was finished.

She created a new character.

A blank speech bubble.

She opened the brush tool.

She adjusted the stroke to the finest setting.

She closed her eyes, recalling the brush technique she had practiced at Hongwen Guan.

Inside the white bubble, she wrote the first character.

Father.

The characters drawn by the Mouse had edges full of jagged pixelated mosaics.

There was no ink wash diffusion.

But the structure, the flow of the strokes.

Forcefully revealed the upright, towering backbone of Great Tang Feibai Script.

After finishing one character, a layer of fine sweat beaded on her forehead.

Then she wrote the second character.

Mother.

She wrote very slowly.

With every stroke, she had to stop and catch her breath. The Princess of Great Tang poured all her longing for her homeland and her attachment to her parents into the keys pressed by her index finger.

She knew the Sky Screen existed.

Lin Xuan had told her.

She knew her parents might be standing in the square of Taiji Hall right now, watching her.

In this modern steel city without rice paper or wolf-hair brushes, she could find no post station, nor any homing pigeons.

She could only use the modern laws Lin Xuan had taught her, a system designed to rule the virtual world.

To write a letter that could never be sent.

Outside the study door.

Lin Xuan held a cup of hot milk, his steps extremely light.

He stopped before the door, looking inside through the crack.

The cold light of the screen fell on Xiao Sizi's face.

She pressed her lips tightly together, gripping the Mouse and struggling to move it across the screen.

Lin Xuan saw the image on the screen clearly.

The motion of pushing the door stopped.

He merely leaned against the wall of the corridor.

Holding the milk, he waited silently.