Chapter 89: Chapter 45: Virtual and Reality
He felt like shouting to the heavens—can’t you all just stop congratulating me!
Eventually, He Kao simply set his phone to Do Not Disturb mode and refused to answer any unfamiliar communication numbers; others could just directly message him if they needed to reach him.
While He Kao was on the phone with his eldest aunt, Qian Guran was also on a call with someone, speaking in a very serious tone: "Yes, I confirmed it personally, the safe deposit box contained a pair of golden paperweights and a property deed.
The paperweights weigh about ten kilograms each, made of pure gold. The property deed’s registered owner is Zhou Du, unit 602 of building number 10 at Guanliu Mansion. There’s nothing else in there...
I waited right at the entrance, and he got into my car immediately after exiting the bank. He couldn’t have anything on him that would escape my notice. Bank insiders can also confirm that he took everything out; you can investigate or check the surveillance footage.
As for the materials you mentioned, there definitely weren’t any, at least I didn’t see them... which is understandable, what a father leaves for his son is best money and property."
The person on the other end of the phone said, "Not necessarily; those things might not have been left for the son. He probably stored them himself and just didn’t expect he wouldn’t have the chance to retrieve them later... Otherwise, how come his family was completely unaware for these twenty years?
Qian Guran didn’t dispute this and agreed, saying, "What you say makes sense. From my investigation, Zhou Du also left more than 800,000 yuan in savings for his family back then, but never mentioned anything about the safe deposit box."
The person on the other end asked, "Oh, how familiar are you with his family’s situation?"
Qian Guran replied, "The savings were spent long ago, and the old folks have passed away... At that time, the elderly were elderly and children were children, you haven’t seen his relatives, but if left twenty years ago, they wouldn’t have reached the child’s hands in the end.
It’s actually more reliable for the son to get them directly upon reaching adulthood twenty years later; but I don’t know if there are any other things stored elsewhere... What materials are you exactly referring to?"
The other person responded, "It’s the transaction records; they were probably sensitive back then, and I’m reluctant to let more people see them."
Qian Guran said, "Understood, then I won’t ask more. I’ll keep an eye out to gather more information for you when I have the chance... I’m in Pingjing. I initially planned to meet you in person, but some unexpected matters came up during the holiday, so I had to call you instead."
He Kao always felt something was off with Old Qian, and indeed, Old Qian had issues. Someone had commissioned Old Qian to investigate what was in the safe deposit box, focusing on those documents and data, but Old Qian helped He Kao keep it secret.
Old Qian didn’t even meet the client face to face, found an excuse to leave out of town, and informed them via phone, while He Kao remained completely unaware.
This holiday was fulfilling for He Kao; after stopping phone calls, he began to adjust his mind and body, realizing his emotions had fluctuated slightly and needed to return to the state—preparation status for cultivation as annotated by Elder Lin.
He Kao practiced the set of Observation Skill annotated by Elder Lin at midnight every night, and after waking up the next day, he performed a set of Eight Pieces of Brocade taught by Old Qian, then had breakfast before starting work.
It was proper work; he worked overtime even on holidays. However, he didn’t stay in his apartment; he moved to the newly opened E-Times District, not as a temporary rental, but as his work site.
Although President E didn’t require everyone to work overtime during the Golden Week holiday, she assigned work tasks, and how to complete them was up to each individual. He Kao came to the site to collect data and perform testing.
E-Times District is the latest real estate project developed by Bada Group. The real estate market has been sluggish in recent years, extremely sluggish, and even large real estate companies like Bada Group are having a tough time.
To boost sales, they came up with various strategies, including collaborating with the "Ideal City" project team to move promotions online.
Ideal City aims to create a virtual living community that includes all sorts of details, and virtual residences can also be part of it. Residences online are just strings of data, seemingly insignificant, but offline is different.
This project integrates online and offline worlds, bringing the virtual into reality. Customers only need to put on AR glasses to easily enter the E-Times District in the virtual city, select their preferred house and unit layout, and map them 1:1 in reality.
In addition, there are modular decoration styles, offering several schemes that can be switched with a single click. More importantly, it allows completing various home arrangements and scenario simulations in the virtual scene.
The system connects to the mall, offering various virtual products, including furniture, cabinets, various appliances, even bedding, and packaged schemes provided by design firms.
Modern home decoration, even when purchasing existing homes with furnished decoration, presents many troubles when adding various furniture items: some do not fit in size, some are found to be uncoordinated after purchase, and the cost to change one’s mind is often too high.
If all of this can be accomplished in a virtual environment and restored in reality, it would not only be extremely convenient but also become a source of entertainment.
Anyone can arrange and experiment as they please, until satisfied. It’s an experience for users, while for the platform, it’s another business model.
All products needed in a household can be included in this virtual scene.
For example, a refrigerator seems to offer multiple models and brands for selection in the virtual scene, but all are provided by the platform. Which products will the platform offer? They are certainly from collaborating partner companies with the project, requiring partners to provide data.
Bada Group is one such partner, providing not only layout drawings and design data but also offering corresponding unit houses for technical personnel to conduct on-site testing.
Data for appliances and furniture are straightforward; simply call the templates provided by merchants. But data for spatial scenes require technical personnel like He Kao to actually sample and adjust, as the employees at Bada Group are not doing this work.
And the product data templates provided by merchants need feedback from the platform’s technical personnel for adjustments during testing.
In recent days, He Kao has been working overtime in a three-bedroom unit layout, fully equipped with household items that are test samples; he just needed to bring some clothes and toiletries.
To outsiders, his behavior seems a bit odd, wearing AR glasses every day and walking around the house, then spending long hours working on his laptop.
In reality, He Kao’s glasses have three modes: full virtual mode, semi-transparent mode, and full reality mode.
Full virtual mode means he can’t see anything in reality, essentially walking through the virtual environment, but theoretically, the virtual and real scenes are nearly overlapping.
For example, if he wants to get onto the bed, he can go to the virtual scene’s bedroom, reach out to open the door and lie down... and in reality, these things do exist.
Future users don’t need or likely won’t have to do this; they can simply control the handle on the spot to achieve spatial movement and scene switching.
But developers and testers like He Kao often need to walk through real spaces to acquire corresponding data for spatial sensations.
He needs to constantly switch between full virtual and full reality modes, comparing the subtle differences between the two scenes, adjusting the virtual scene for more realism, or providing remodel suggestions.
The so-called semi-transparent mode, also known as safe mode, allows seeing both virtual and reality scenes, reducing the likelihood of accidents like bumping into doors while facilitating direct comparison of the two scenes’ differences.
Xiaowu’s mentor, Zhang Yanfei, once sighed, saying that perhaps the detention center is a good place for pure cultivation. He Kao, however, feels that reaching a certain completion level in testing virtual scenes might be a good way to inspire spiritual sense.
Times have changed, with many methods emerging that predecessors and ancestral masters never imagined.
In full virtual mode, theoretically, he doesn’t see the actual physical objects in reality, yet seemingly feels very clearly the presence of those objects.
Initially, it was because of the virtual glasses, but eventually, he switched to another mode—power-off mode.
**
PS: Sorry, I have to rush to Anhui University to give a lecture tomorrow, taking a day off!