Fang Dinghao quickly reacted. So the ex-boyfriend was the boss? And the boss was the ex-boyfriend?
And this wasn’t just an office relationship—it was a superior–subordinate romance?!
Still reeling from the shock of this piece of gossip, Fang Dinghao looked back and forth between He Xiaoyuan and Lu Chen, everything suddenly making sense.
On the other side, Lu Chen and He Xiaoyuan displayed the same calm demeanor.
From behind Fang Dinghao, He Xiaoyuan glanced toward Lu Chen. Lu Chen stood up from his tatami seat, walked around the low table to greet them, and extended his hand. “Hello, Lu Chen.”
Fang Dinghao also reached out and introduced himself. “Fang Dinghao. Nice to meet you.”
Lu Chen gestured. “Please, have a seat.”
He Xiaoyuan also politely indicated for Fang Dinghao to sit.
The three of them moved toward the table together. Lu Chen and Fang Dinghao sat facing each other. He Xiaoyuan also sat down, but the seat he chose looked somewhat subtle in Fang Dinghao’s eyes. In terms of identity, he clearly belonged on the same side as this man named Lu Chen, yet he didn’t sit next to Lu Chen, nor did he sit next to Fang Dinghao. Instead, he took a tatami cushion and sat at one end of the low table, right between the two of them.
Fang Dinghao noticed this and, even now, was still mentally eating gossip. He thought to himself that He Xiaoyuan really had it tough—things had fallen apart emotionally with his boyfriend, yet at work he still had to keep facing him. Don’t be fooled by how calm he looked on the surface; who knew how much he was hurting inside.
Not easy. Really not easy.
He then thought about how impressive this ex-boyfriend boss was too. A breakup was a breakup, feelings were feelings, but when it came to work, he hadn’t eased up on his little boyfriend at all.
Just look at that mature, elite air—clearly someone who handled everything with ease. He Xiaoyuan was probably being completely controlled by him.
Fang Dinghao continued eating gossip.
Meanwhile, Lu Chen personally poured tea for the three of them. A server followed into the private room to take their order. Lu Chen gestured for Fang Dinghao to order, but Fang Dinghao politely declined, saying he would follow the host’s lead. In the end, the task of ordering fell to He Xiaoyuan, who held the menu and communicated with the server holding the ordering tablet.
During this time, Lu Chen and Fang Dinghao made some casual small talk—nothing in particular. Fang Dinghao looked around and praised the restaurant’s nice atmosphere. Lu Chen responded that the food here was good too. “Xiaoyuan said you like Japanese food. You can try it in a bit.”
Fang Dinghao thought: Wow, calling him Xiaoyuan this and Xiaoyuan that—really not treating himself like an ex-boyfriend at all.
The gossiping soul inside Fang Dinghao couldn’t take it anymore. Finally, he said, “The more I look at you, the more familiar you seem.”
He made an “oh” sound, pretending to suddenly realize something. “So you’re the one who was fishing with He Xiaoyuan the other day.”
Lu Chen knew Fang Dinghao was deliberately gossiping to his face and saying this on purpose. Without showing anything, he nodded and admitted, “That was me.”
Fang Dinghao took a sip of tea and glanced at He Xiaoyuan. “So that means you two aren’t just boss and subordinate.”
Lu Chen said, “Of course.”
He Xiaoyuan was still ordering. Fang Dinghao continued, “But didn’t He Xiaoyuan say you already broke up?”
Lu Chen smiled slightly. “Engineer Fang really knows quite a lot.”
Fang Dinghao paused silently.
It had been a long time—a very long time—since anyone had called him “Engineer Fang.”
That title felt like something from long ago.
Fang Dinghao steadied himself, set down his teacup, put away his gossiping mindset, and his expression changed noticeably.
He asked the man across the table, “I heard you arranged for someone to fish behind me? You know who I am?”
Lu Chen nodded slightly. “I’ve long heard of you.”
Fang Dinghao waved his hand. “Long heard of me is too much. I’m just a guy who writes code and does technical work.”
Just a bit of empty reputation within the circle.
By this time, He Xiaoyuan had finished ordering. The server turned and left the private room, and the sliding door closed along with her.
Fang Dinghao turned his head and looked around again. Suddenly he noticed something and asked, “Does this Japanese restaurant usually have no customers at dinner time?”
Japanese-style private rooms were basically not soundproof. During busy dining hours, you could always hear voices and chatter drifting over from all directions.
Fang Dinghao liked sashimi and ate Japanese food often, so he was very familiar with this. That was why he found it strange that the place was so quiet—there wasn’t the slightest sound of other people talking or chatting around them.
Lu Chen picked up the teapot and poured tea, his demeanor steady and composed. “Today, this restaurant is only serving us.”
Meaning… they had booked the entire place?
Fang Dinghao snorted inwardly and teased, “That’s pretty extravagant.”
So courteous.
Fang Dinghao lifted his teacup and took a sip, speaking bluntly. “Looks like I’m pretty important to you.”
He had already guessed it and said the key word outright. “ChatGPT?”
He Xiaoyuan looked at Fang Dinghao. Lu Chen admitted it just as directly, nodding. “That’s right.”
Fang Dinghao smiled, with a hint of arrogance in that smile. “You’re not working with Lin Xuhan, are you?”
He Xiaoyuan stayed silent, listening quietly. Lu Chen replied, “No.”
Fang Dinghao spoke plainly. “Which company?”
Lu Chen said, “Spirys.”
Fang Dinghao: “……”
He was instantly speechless. “Haven’t you been trying to recruit me for ages? Still haven’t given up?”
He Xiaoyuan raised his teacup and took a sip, thinking he must be referring to Yang Yun’s side.
Lu Chen said, “Looks like Yang Yun still hasn’t convinced you.”
Fang Dinghao let out a breath. “He’s almost annoyed me to death.”
Then he added, “Alright, let’s just eat tonight. Thanks for treating us—or I’ll pay. Just don’t talk to me about compensation, salary, ideals, or lofty goals. I get annoyed just hearing that stuff.”
At this point, He Xiaoyuan looked toward Lu Chen. Lu Chen’s expression still showed nothing. He simply turned, picked up a laptop from the tatami beside him, opened it, clicked a few times, and placed it on the table, turning the screen toward Fang Dinghao.
?
Fang Dinghao instinctively looked over. What was this?
Lu Chen said calmly, “You’ve probably already used ChatGPT, and you’ve even subscribed to their service.”
“But this—you should be seeing it for the first time.”
He Xiaoyuan leaned in to look at the screen as well. He saw a pure white page, with a single sentence in the center that read: Hello, welcome to communicate with me.
Fang Dinghao froze. Realizing what it was, He Xiaoyuan also guessed it. Could it be…
Lu Chen said, “This is the current domestic version of ChatGPT. More precisely, it’s Spirys’s ChatGPT. It’s still in the model-running stage and hasn’t been officially named yet. In the lab, we call it ‘Zhongshi’—‘Chinese World.’”
Fang Dinghao couldn’t believe it. “You already built this?”
Lu Chen didn’t answer that question. He simply gestured again toward the laptop and said unhurriedly, “Try it.”
Then he emphasized, “In Chinese.”
Fang Dinghao’s eyes lit up as he looked at the laptop. He Xiaoyuan lifted his gaze and noticed that Fang Dinghao’s expression had become completely different from before.
He Xiaoyuan then looked toward Lu Chen, who happened to glance back at him as well. In Lu Chen’s calm gaze was a reassuring look, telling He Xiaoyuan not to worry—he would convince Fang Dinghao.
Fang Dinghao was silent for a moment, no one knew what he was thinking. Not long after, he reached out and took the laptop, pulled it in front of himself, switched input methods, and began communicating with “Zhongshi.”
And one had to know—Fang Dinghao was an expert in deep natural language processing. He knew very well what level a ChatGPT-like product had to reach to produce what kind of conversational feedback.
He started with simple exchanges, trying to figure out, purely through conversation, just how far Zhongshi’s model had already progressed.
He stared intently at the screen. His expression and demeanor became unlike anything they had seen from him before.
Time passed quickly during this period. Dishes were brought out one by one. The servers came and went, the sliding door opening and closing again and again. He Xiaoyuan drank tea cup after cup, and even stepped out to take two work-related phone calls along the way…
A full half hour passed before Fang Dinghao finally returned from his interaction with Zhongshi to the real world.
He stared at the laptop screen, felt around beside it with his hand, found the tea that had long since gone cold, picked it up, and took a sip. Silently, he marveled to himself: it was actually pretty good—surprisingly good—far beyond his expectations.
At that moment, the laptop screen was suddenly pushed shut. In the instant it closed, it was as if the “connection” to Zhongshi had been cut off as well, snapping Fang Dinghao back to his senses.
“Hey!”
Watching Lu Chen take the laptop away, Fang Dinghao looked a little dissatisfied.
Lu Chen smiled faintly. “Not enough?”
Fang Dinghao looked at Lu Chen and didn’t say anything.
Lu Chen continued, “If you still want to ‘see’ her, you’re welcome to join the technical team.”
Fang Dinghao: “…………”
Damn it. He’d fallen right into the trap.
Fang Dinghao waved his hand, looking indifferent. He lowered his eyes, picked up his chopsticks, and started eating. In a lazy tone, he commented, “It’s done fairly well.”
While eating, he glanced up. “After all, it’s Spirys. Deep pockets. You must’ve recruited quite a few top technical experts, right?”
Lu Chen said, “Yes. Everyone except you.”
Fang Dinghao: Damn. Impressive.
Lu Chen and He Xiaoyuan also picked up their chopsticks. He Xiaoyuan still didn’t say much, leaving room for Lu Chen to take the lead. At this point, Lu Chen also didn’t say anything further. He ate quietly, then picked up some sashimi that he had already dipped in wasabi and placed it on He Xiaoyuan’s plate, reminding him as he did so, “It’ll be a bit spicy.”
At this moment, Fang Dinghao didn’t even have the mental bandwidth to keep eating gossip. His entire mind was filled with Zhongshi. It really had exceeded his expectations. The actual hands-on experience was no worse than ChatGPT, and the product’s level of maturity was clearly very high.
He couldn’t help but think: Could it be that they had run their models even more times than ChatGPT? What generation were they on now? How deep had the deep learning gone? Had they integrated all available Chinese corpora?
Fang Dinghao was burning with curiosity. It felt as though tens of thousands of ants were crawling and scratching inside his heart.
This was not something that the simple pleasure of fishing and eating gossip could compare to. This was Fang Dinghao’s soul trembling.
He wanted to know—desperately.
Even though he was fully aware that this man named Lu Chen was deliberately using “Zhongshi” as bait to hook him.
Right now, he was the fish in the pond.
“Zhongshi” was the three-thousand-a-jin ground bait.
Spirys was chumming the water here, luring him in!
Fang Dinghao was unbearably itchy with curiosity, yet also a little irritated. For the first time in over two years, he was shaken.
He kept his head down and ate. Even his favorite sashimi had lost its flavor. At the end of the day, the reason a technical powerhouse could be a technical powerhouse was not just because of skill, but also because of that one-in-a-billion obsessive drive to research and dig deeper.
Only Fang Dinghao himself knew that in his car, besides fishing gear, there were always two laptops.
Sometimes, while fishing, if he suddenly thought of a problem in some piece of code, he would even go back to the car and carry a laptop down.
A tech guy like this—how could he possibly not be shaken when faced with “Zhongshi”?
Halfway through eating, Fang Dinghao looked up. “Hey, can I borrow your laptop again?”
Lu Chen looked at Fang Dinghao.
Fang Dinghao took that look to mean refusal and immediately turned to He Xiaoyuan, signaling him to say something on his behalf.
He Xiaoyuan, having learned under Lu Chen, looked at Fang Dinghao the same way Lu Chen had. He didn’t refuse, though. Instead, he turned to Lu Chen and said softly, “President Lu.”
Lu Chen gave a low “Mm,” then took the laptop and placed it back on the table.
Fang Dinghao grinned, shifted his seat, pushed the bowls, plates, and chopsticks in front of him aside, took the laptop and set it in front of himself, opened it, and even rubbed his hands together, looking eager and ready, before plunging back into an immersive exchange with “Zhongshi.”
This left He Xiaoyuan and Lu Chen looking at each other.
He Xiaoyuan’s eyes signaled: Looks promising.
Lu Chen: Mm.
He Xiaoyuan pulled out his phone and typed: 【If this method works, why didn’t President Yang use it back then?】
Hadn’t he thought of it?
Lu Chen took the phone and replied: 【This is the latest generation of “Zhongshi.” The lab only finished running it recently.】
He Xiaoyuan understood.
For geniuses, one plus one equals two held no attraction. Only the sharpest, most cutting-edge technology could spark their curiosity and resonate with them.
What’s more, this “Zhongshi” case belonged to Lu Chen. He was fully in charge. He Xiaoyuan felt that even if Yang Yun knew about this approach, he might not have been able to obtain the complete version of Zhongshi and present it in front of Fang Dinghao.
This method really was one that only Lu Chen could use.
He Xiaoyuan silently took this lesson to heart: only by standing at a higher level could one gain access to the most comprehensive and best resources.
When Lu Chen had previously said that his own position wasn’t high enough to make promises or persuade Fang Dinghao face-to-face, he hadn’t been wrong at all.
That night, they barely ate much food, but spent a long time facing the laptop.
When Lu Chen put the laptop away this time, Fang Dinghao didn’t show any dissatisfaction. Instead, his face was full of a satisfied, happy look.
Picking up his chopsticks again, Fang Dinghao proactively rattled off several technical limitations.
He Xiaoyuan listened carefully while eating. Lu Chen appeared unconcerned. After Fang Dinghao finished, Lu Chen said unhurriedly, “I don’t do technical work. I don’t understand any of what you just said.”
Fang Dinghao replied readily, “Then can you pass it on to your engineers?”
Lu Chen lifted his eyes and said calmly, “You could communicate with them yourself.”
Fang Dinghao nodded when he heard that. “That’s true.”
Then he paused, realizing he had fallen into the trap again—he wasn’t even a Spirys employee. What was he communicating for?
Fang Dinghao ate silently and said nothing more.
Lu Chen and He Xiaoyuan also said nothing. The private room grew quiet again.
The silence didn’t last long. Just as Fang Dinghao was about to speak, Lu Chen said, “I heard that your previous two jobs were both rather unpleasant experiences.”
Here it comes.
Fang Dinghao knew it—here came the persuasion again.
For two years now, he’d been like a fish in a pond, completely figured out by everyone who wanted to reel him in.
Speechless.
Truly speechless.
Lu Chen said, “The atmosphere at Spirys is pretty good.”
Fang Dinghao didn’t like hearing this sort of thing. Or rather, too many people had made him promises like this, and he didn’t believe any of them.
Atmosphere? What kind of atmosphere could there be between people? What was this, dating?
He had seen through it long ago. Work was work. Going to work meant entering a place where you fought me and I fought you—boring as hell.
When Lin Xuhan had sent someone to approach him for collaboration before, Lin Xuhan had also promised him a good working atmosphere. Fang Dinghao had someone ask Lin Xuhan whether he could guarantee that one hundred percent. What did Lin Xuhan say in response? Lin Xuhan said that even without going to work, interacting with people was something one had to learn and experience in life, and instead tried to persuade him to adapt rather than hide away in his own world.
Fang Dinghao had told him to get lost.
He still had the same attitude now.
If even someone like Lin Xuhan couldn’t guarantee such a promise, then you—someone working for Spirys, even if you’re an executive—how much can you really guarantee?
Fang Dinghao had always been blunt. He said exactly what he thought, then asked the man across the table, “Even if you promise me now that you can do it, what are you using as a guarantee?”
Lu Chen put down his chopsticks and met Fang Dinghao’s gaze. “I can promise—one hundred percent.”
“My technical team has clear divisions of responsibility. I won’t say there are absolutely no conflicts, but at the very least, everyone who’s worked together long-term has done so happily.”
Fang Dinghao said, “I’m asking you—what are you using as a guarantee?”
Lu Chen said, “I am Lu Chen.”
Fang Dinghao said, “What are you using as a guarantee?”
Lu Chen said, “My identity.”
Fang Dinghao said, “What identity? Your identity as an executive?”
Lu Chen said, “I am the owner of Spirys.”
“Pfft.”
He Xiaoyuan sprayed a mouthful of tea.