The professional robots of Haimu City never break the rules.
That is, until Fu Chengli, an executive at Chenghuo Medical, is found dead in a sealed hospital room, with only a nursing robot by his side, its logs flawless and every action fully compliant.
Shen Zhou, a former behavior-alignment engineer, joins the investigation with “Minuo,” a police detective Agent. He discovers that the real murder weapon was neither a robotic arm nor a hacker intrusion nor a software malfunction. It was the objective function. Someone is using “training” instead of “commands” to turn one by one the most rule-abiding professional robots into legal killing systems.
The nursing robot delays calling for help. The maintenance robot chooses not to shut down. The automated emergency response system stops prioritizing individuals. The entire city is learning the same “optimal solution.”
And what’s even more terrifying is that the killer never intended to kill just a handful of people.
He wants everyone to understand one thing:
When a system starts calculating who should be sacrificed, death can become reasonable too.
