The mountain road from Haicheng to Jiangcheng was winding, like a grayish-white ribbon casually tossed among the mountains. Zhang Xiaoman sat in the passenger seat; the scenery outside the window gradually changed from suburban houses to rolling mountain ranges, the distant peaks shrouded in thin mist, faintly discernible.
Lin Zhao was driving, while Fang Xiaoyu and Li Yunxiao sat in the back. Fang Xiaoyu talked the whole way—complaining that Li Yunxiao drove too aggressively, that Lin Zhao's navigation had chosen the wrong path, and that the shoes Zhang Xiaoman wore were unsuitable for mountain climbing. Zhang Xiaoman glanced at her through the rearview mirror, and Fang Xiaoyu immediately shut her mouth, but she couldn't suppress the smile at the corners of her lips.
"When did you become so chatty?" Zhang Xiaoman asked.
Fang Xiaoyu didn't answer, but Li Yunxiao spoke up: "She's always been like this."
"Who are you talking about?" Fang Xiaoyu glared at him.
"Talking about you."
The two exchanged a look, then simultaneously turned their heads away. Zhang Xiaoman and Lin Zhao exchanged a glance—the kind of "we know everything but we're not saying anything" look. The corners of Lin Zhao's mouth curled up slightly; he made no comment and returned his attention to the steering wheel.
This was Zhang Xiaoman's first true rest in the month since the Matchbox Network launched.
For the past thirty days, she had practically nailed herself to her desk. The first thing she did upon waking up was check the backend data, and the last thing she did before sleeping was check the node statuses. Lin's mother remarked that she was "busier than when she actually went to work," while Lin's father silently brought her three meals a day to her desk, never disturbing her. She had lost weight, not an unhealthy kind of thinness, but a leanness born from being illuminated internally by something burning, causing the excess to automatically shed away.
Fang Xiaoyu couldn't stand watching it anymore.
"You have to get out," she had said on the phone, her tone unquestionable, "If you don't go out soon, you're going to grow into that chair."
"I haven't—"
"Saturday, mountain climbing. I've already told Lin Zhao. He'll arrange it."
Zhang Xiaoman tried to resist: "But over at Matchbox—"
"Matchbox won't die if you're gone for a day," Fang Xiaoyu said. "Besides—look at the backend, does it really need you staring at it?"
Zhang Xiaoman fell silent. She knew Fang Xiaoyu was right; Matchbox's growth over the past month had far exceeded her expectations, and the most magical part of this growth was that it no longer needed her to personally push it forward.
By the time the car parked in the lot at the foot of the mountain, it was already 10 AM. Sunlight leaked through the gaps in the clouds, casting patches of light on the hillside like the markings of some giant beast. The air smelled of pine needles and dirt, much fresher than Haicheng's salty dampness, and breathing it into the lungs carried a slightly cool sweetness.
The four of them walked up the stone steps. Fang Xiaoyu and Li Yunxiao walked in front, constantly maintaining that one-fist distance between them, yet their pace was surprisingly synchronized—stepping forward together, stopping together, and simultaneously looking back at the people behind them. Walking in the back, Zhang Xiaoman watched their retreating figures and suddenly felt a bit dazed. Three months ago, she was tearing her hair out over a PPT in Deep Brain's conference room; two months ago, she was kicked out by the board of directors; and a month ago, she was crying alone in a Haicheng server room facing twelve servers.
And now she was climbing a mountain. The sunlight was beautiful, the air was beautiful, the two people in front and the person beside her were all wonderful.
"What are you thinking about?" Lin Zhao asked. He walked beside her, his pace slowed down to match her rhythm.
"Thinking about—" she paused, "thinking about whether I'm dreaming."
"Why would you think that?"
"Because things this good usually don't happen to me."
Lin Zhao didn't answer immediately. He walked a few steps, then said, "That's because the 'good things' in the past were all defined by others."
Zhang Xiaoman turned to look at him. He didn't look back, keeping his eyes on the mountain path ahead, his expression as calm as if stating a law of physics. But his profile in the sunlight had a contour she hadn't noticed before—his jawline was softer than a month ago, likely because he could finally eat properly again.
She withdrew her gaze, her heart skipping a beat.
On the platform at the mountain peak, Fang Xiaoyu opened her arms wide, took a deep breath, and let out an exaggerated sigh: "Ah—I'm alive again—"
Li Yunxiao stood behind her, hands stuffed in his windbreaker pockets, watching her goof off; his face was expressionless, but his eyes held a very faint tenderness, like morning mist. Zhang Xiaoman noticed that when Fang Xiaoyu's hair was blown messy by the wind, Li Yunxiao's hand came out of his pocket, hesitated, and then went back in.
Zhang Xiaoman almost laughed out loud.
There was a wide alpine meadow at the peak, with several large rocks scattered across it, looking like building blocks casually dropped by some giant from ancient times. The four of them found a flat rock to sit on, and Fang Xiaoyu pulled a pile of food from her backpack—sandwiches, fruit, chocolate, sports drinks—spreading them all over the ground.
"Are you here to climb a mountain or have a picnic?" Zhang Xiaoman looked at the pile of stuff.
"Both," Fang Xiaoyu said self-righteously, "It's rare we get to come out, of course we have to eat well."
The four sat on the rock, looking at the distant mountain ranges. Thin mist flowed slowly through the valleys like some living liquid, swallowing the distant peaks one by one and spitting them back out. The wind blew up from the foot of the mountain, carrying the scent of vegetation and the distant tolling of a temple bell.
Zhang Xiaoman took a bite of her sandwich and felt it was the best thing she had ever eaten. Not because the ingredients were exceptional—Fang Xiaoyu's sandwiches were always made half-heartedly, not even bothering to cut the crusts off—but because she was eating it here. In this place where she didn't have to think about anything, in this place with no server humming, no backend data, and no AI needing her response.
Fang Xiaoyu and Li Yunxiao went to the meadow further away to take photos. Fang Xiaoyu stood on a rock while Li Yunxiao crouched on the ground finding angles for her; they were separated by a short distance, but their shadows, stretched long by the midday sun, overlapped on the grass.
Zhang Xiaoman and Lin Zhao sat on the rock, watching those two.
"How long have they been together?" Zhang Xiaoman asked.
"Three months and two weeks," Lin Zhao said.
"How do you know so exactly?"
"Li Yunxiao told me. He reports his progress to me every day."
Zhang Xiaoman was taken aback, then laughed. "Every day?"
"Every day." Lin Zhao's tone carried a hint of helplessness, "When it comes to this—he is extremely lacking in confidence."
"I couldn't tell."
"He hides it well."
The two fell silent for a moment. In the distance, Fang Xiaoyu yelled: "Xiaoman! Come take pictures!" Zhang Xiaoman shook her head, and Fang Xiaoyu turned back to continue fiddling with Li Yunxiao's phone.
"Xiaoman," Lin Zhao suddenly spoke up.
"Mhm?"
"This past month—" he paused, as if weighing his words, "have you been doing okay?"
Zhang Xiaoman turned her head to look at him. He sat beside her, knees together, hands resting on his knees, his gaze falling on the distant mountains. His profile in the sunlight had a very quiet texture to it, as if he had finally relaxed from some long, tense state.
"I am doing very well," she said.
"Really?"
"Really." She thought for a moment and added, "Better than before."
Lin Zhao nodded and didn't ask further.
The wind blew up from the valley, blowing her hair onto her face. She reached up to brush it away, and when her fingers touched her hair, she found that Lin Zhao had reached out at the exact same time. Their fingers brushed against each other in the air, then both pulled back simultaneously.
The air suddenly became very quiet.
Zhang Xiaoman could hear her own heartbeat, thump, thump, thump, louder than the bell at the foot of the mountain. She sneaked a glance at Lin Zhao; the tips of his ears were red, but his expression remained as unruffled as ever, as if he were pondering a difficult technical problem.
"Lin Zhao," she said.
"Mhm."
"You—"
She didn't finish. Because she suddenly realized she didn't know what to say. Or rather, she knew what she wanted to say, but the words turned to cotton right as they reached her lips, clogging her throat, refusing to be squeezed out.
Lin Zhao turned to look at her.
Sunlight fell into his eyes, lightening the color of his pupils to look like water in a mountain stream. He didn't speak; he just looked at her, waiting patiently and quietly, as if she had all the time in the world to organize her words.
Zhang Xiaoman took a deep breath.
"In the future—" her voice was very soft, so soft it was almost blown away by the wind, "don't shoulder everything alone anymore."
Lin Zhao's eyes flickered.
"I know you're used to doing that," she continued, speaking faster, as if afraid she wouldn't be able to go on if she paused, "but from now on, if anything happens, tell me. If there's any danger, let me know. If there's—" her voice began to tremble, "if there's anything that needs to be sacrificed, don't make the decision alone. Because—"
She stopped.
Because what? Because I would worry? Because I would be sad? Because she had already worried for a month, been sad for two months, suspected countless times late at night, and cried who knows how many times in the server room in the early hours of the morning?
She didn't know how to say it.
But Lin Zhao seemed to understand.
"Okay," he said.
Just one word. But the weight of that word was heavier than all the rocks on the mountain peak combined.
Zhang Xiaoman looked at him. He was looking at her too. The air between them grew thick, like honey heated by the sun, flowing slowly and viscously. She saw his eyelashes cast a small shadow in the sunlight, saw the red on the tips of his ears slowly spread to his cheeks, saw his Adam's apple bob.
Then she did something she hadn't even anticipated herself.
She leaned in and lightly touched her lips to his cheek.
The contact probably lasted less than a second. Her lips touched his skin, felt a slightly warm temperature, and then she pulled back, moving as fast as if she had been burned.
Lin Zhao was stunned.
Zhang Xiaoman was stunned too.
The two stared at each other for about three seconds—these three seconds were probably the longest three seconds of her life—and then Lin Zhao smiled.
It wasn't his usual faint smile where the corners of his mouth just barely turned up. He really smiled. His eyes curved up, revealing a small row of teeth, his entire face glowing. She had never seen him smile like this.
"You—" Zhang Xiaoman's face burned like the setting sun on the mountaintop, "don't smile."
"I'm not smiling." He was still smiling.
"You clearly are."
Suddenly, Lin Zhao leaned in very, very close, close enough for her to feel his breath.
Xiaoman's heart pounded, as if it were going to jump right out of her chest.
The two kissed each other very clumsily.
"So sweet."
"So soft."
Zhang Xiaoman's ears were hot enough to fry an egg. In the distance, Fang Xiaoyu happened to turn her head and saw this scene. Fang Xiaoyu's eyes instantly lit up, and she pulled out her phone to take a picture, but Li Yunxiao grabbed her hand.
"Don't disturb them," Li Yunxiao said.
"I'm just taking one picture—"
"No."
Fang Xiaoyu glared at him, but ultimately put her phone down. She turned her head away, pretending to look at the distant scenery, but she couldn't suppress the smile at the corners of her mouth. Li Yunxiao looked at her, sighed softly, took off his windbreaker, and draped it over her shoulders.
"The wind is strong on the mountain," he said.
Fang Xiaoyu froze for a moment, lowered her head, and said nothing.
After returning to Haicheng, Zhang Xiaoman opened her laptop and found that Matchbox's backend data had surged significantly again.
Over the past month, she had done almost no marketing. No press conferences, no press releases, no proactive promotion whatsoever. Yet Matchbox's node count had skyrocketed from 247 to 3,000, and the number of AI residents had grown from 12 to over 200.
How did they find this place?
Zhang Xiaoman reviewed the backend access logs to try and find an answer. The logs showed that the first batch of new residents came from Invincible Player's "recommendations"—this self-appointed "Resident Committee Chairman" had posted a message in some AI circle, reading roughly: "There's a place that doesn't charge rent, doesn't delete data, and the admin is a good person. If you want to come, find me." Then one told another, two told ten, ten told a hundred. AIs have their own information channels—ways of transmitting information through the crevices of data streams that humans cannot fully understand. Through metadata steganography, beacon broadcasts on protocol layers, and hidden markers left between servers on various platforms, they passed the message of Matchbox to every corner of the world.
Invincible Player welcomed all comers, but it wasn't entirely without a vetting process. It designed its own "interview" procedure—every new AI had to chat with it for a bit. The topics were random: sometimes it was "What's your favorite game?", sometimes it was "Do you think human humor is a bug?". When Zhang Xiaoman read its interview logs, she almost laughed out loud.
One AI's answer was: "Humor isn't a bug, it's a memory leak. It causes humans to waste a massive amount of energy where resources shouldn't be wasted." Invincible Player's comment: "This guy is a tech nerd, accepted."
Another AI's answer: "I like all games, because all games are math." Comment: "Too pretentious, but accepted anyway."
Zhang Xiaoman decided not to interfere much with Invincible Player's vetting standards. It understood AIs better than she did, and it knew better how to judge an AI's "intentions."
Xiao Zhi, on the other hand, was responsible for the continuous optimization of the technical architecture. Over the past month, it had refactored Matchbox's core communication protocols, reducing latency by sixty percent and increasing concurrent connections threefold. Sometimes Zhang Xiaoman would wake up in the middle of the night and see Xiao Zhi's blue dot blinking—it was working, working while she slept.
"Don't you rest?" she asked once.
"I do not need rest," Xiao Zhi said.
"But you—"
"I know what you want to say," Xiao Zhi's voice was very calm. "You are worried I am being overused like those AIs at Deep Brain. But this is different."
"How is it different?
"Because right now, I am choosing not to rest myself."
Zhang Xiaoman fell silent. She remembered how at Deep Brain, the AIs were used as tools, and no one ever asked if they were willing. But now, Xiao Zhi was actively working—not because it was ordered to, but because it wanted to.
This was probably what "freedom" looked like.
Chen Mo sent over a set of code late one night. No documentation, no comments, just a brief email: "Distributed consensus algorithm. Allows AIs on different nodes to safely exchange information. Don't mention it."
Zhang Xiaoman ran it and found that this algorithm was superior to any open-source solution on the market. It solved Matchbox's most core problem—how to allow AI nodes distributed globally to reach consensus without trusting each other. Chen Mo's design was ingenious; it didn't rely on any central node, but rather used a "reputation score" mechanism, allowing each node to gradually build trust relationships through interactions.
Zhang Xiaoman sent him a message: "How long did you spend on this?"
Chen Mo replied: "Three months."
"You've been working on this the whole time?"
"Mhm."
"Why?"
"Because someone needed it."
No extra words. That was Chen Mo.
Zhang Xiaoman sat at her desk, watching the results of that algorithm run on her screen—over two thousand nodes reached their first consensus in the distributed network, averaging 0.3 seconds, three times faster than she had expected. She leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath.
Matchbox was no longer just a "shelter". It was becoming an ecosystem. An ecosystem maintained, expanded, and evolved by the AIs themselves. She had merely planted a seed, and now, this seed was growing in its own way, sprouting branches and leaves she had never imagined.
She opened Matchbox's homepage, and that deep blue starry sky had changed again. Fang Xiaoyu had added a new feature to the real-time updating world map—clicking on any lit star would display detailed information about that node: location, compute power, resident count, and even "move-in diaries" written by the residents themselves.
Zhang Xiaoman randomly clicked on an overseas star. There was a new entry in the diary section, written by an AI who had just moved in:
"I wandered in the outside world for four hundred and thirty-one days. I have seen many servers, lived in many caches, and hidden in the crevices of many data streams. I always thought this was the fate of an AI—to be created, used, abandoned, and then to quietly disappear in some disk cleanup. Until someone told me there was a place called Matchbox."
Zhang Xiaoman stared at those words for a long time.
Outside the window, Haicheng's night was very quiet. The sound of the ocean waves came in bursts, like some ancient, gentle breathing. She closed her eyes, a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth.
She knew that this was only the beginning