On the Seven Towers

After Elena went to the priest's temple. Xiao Chen said he wanted to go out for a walk, so Di Ning accompanied him to wander around the capital.

The capital of the elves is undoubtedly a very suitable city for sightseeing, and Di Ning is a more suitable tour guide than Elena. He will give Xiao Chen some explanations.

"... This place is where the elf army set out to retake the territory from the Black Dragon Empire during the last war. Later, it gradually became a market. Because the market has only been formed for more than two hundred years, it is called the new market, and the old market on the other side of the capital is opposite." Di Ning pointed to a market and introduced it to Xiao Chen. There are many elves setting up stalls in the market. They sell some handicrafts made by themselves, published books, made clothes, etc. Of course, there are also weapons they make and enchanted magic items, but they are a minority.

"For elves, things that are more than two hundred years old are still new things, right?" Xiao Chen asked.

"This is why elves need to change. Otherwise, they can't keep up with the trend of the world." Di Ning pointed to his hair.

"Your red hair?"

"Dyed!" Di Ning said proudly.

It turned out to be a non-mainstream, Xiao Chen thought to himself.

The goods sold by the elves in the market were not particularly valuable. The elves would not sell the real good things in the open-air market. From the perspective of the elves, the magic items here were mostly flashy and just fun things. However, Xiao Chen still exchanged some magic crystal coins with Di Ning and bought a lot of things, such as bracelets that can sing and accompany music, armor that can display images on the surface, and cooking gloves that can prevent burns, etc.

"Your taste is very unique." Di Ning watched Xiao Chen stuff these things into the Traveler's Heart and couldn't help but comment.

"These are quite fun things. I can give them to my friends. The opportunity to enter the Elf Kingdom is too rare." Xiao Chen smiled, but in fact he felt that he had earned it. If the magic array inside these seemingly useless things of the elves can be reversed, the school can refer to them to make magic speakers, magic camouflage uniforms and smelting protective clothing. Once a small invention is properly added to the industrial system, the power that bursts out is not something that the idyllic elves can imagine.

"Well, is that so? If you like this kind of thing, I'll take you to an interesting place." Di Ning took him through the alley, walked along the plank road, and came to an inconspicuous tree house. Most of the tree houses of other people's families were still alive on tall and lush trees, but the big tree under this tree house had withered. The somewhat dilapidated house hung on the dead branches, giving people the feeling that it might fall down at any time.

Di Ning pushed open the creaking door and took Xiao Chen into the house.

Xiao Chen could already smell a mixture of metal and motor oil in the house. This house gave Xiao Chen the feeling of a messy second-hand store, with many old and strange things placed in the store. Various ornaments, clocks, dolls, weapons, armor, stone slabs and iron plates engraved with magic circles, and props that could not be named. Xiao Chen even saw a lot of mechanical parts such as gears, bolts, bearings, and screws. If this was a dwarf mechanic's shop, Xiao Chen could understand it, but if it was an elf's shop, the style of painting was too strange.

Xiao Chen took two steps inside, and a foot-tall golem came over and said, "Hello, guest! Welcome to Maya's magic shop." The golem's words sounded like Di Ning's.

"That voice is me. Do you still expect Maya to say welcome?" Di Ning shrugged and said, "She just likes to play with these things. I asked her to open a store with the things she made, but the business is not good enough."

Xiao Chen looked around again and found that there were quite a few things in the store that could move by themselves. A mechanical spider was crawling everywhere, wiping dust as it crawled, but its movements were very rough, and it kicked over a lot of bits and pieces along the way. Behind it was a floating mechanical octopus, constantly picking up things and putting them away. In addition, a mechanical lizard with red eyes crawled out from behind the pile of debris, glanced at the two people, and after seeing Di Ning, its eyes turned green and retreated to the corner.

"How is it, interesting?"

Xiao Chen nodded and said, "More than interesting, I saw a very genius design."

"Maya is a genius. If her energy was not so scattered, her achievements would definitely be higher than mine. She is a high-level magician, a high-level alchemist, a mid-level warrior, and a first-class craftsman. Maya, like me and Elena, was born in the same spring. The World Tree gave her a power, which she called "structural intuition". So she is very good at making these little things, and she is also good at setting commands for these little things to do and when. I don't know what to call it, anyway, it's not a soul."

"Huh, is it a program?" Xiao Chen said.

"Program? What is that?" A crisp female voice came from upstairs. Then I saw a female elf sliding down the stair railing.

The female elf was similar in size to Elena, but if Elena had always been a goddess, this one could only be described as sloppy. She was wearing short-sleeved work clothes, a work bib, gloves, her hair and pointed ears were tied up with a piece of cloth, she looked dusty, and her face was covered with grease. When she came down, she was holding a wrench in her hand, and her image reminded Xiao Chen of an apprentice in a machine repair shop.

When I was around Elena, I could always smell a refreshing floral scent, but when she appeared, the smell of motor oil in the room became stronger.

However, Xiao Chen's dark vision allowed him to see clearly. The elf's facial features were beautiful, not inferior to Elena's, but in her current appearance, she could not be associated with a beauty anyway.

Maya rushed to Xiao Chen and asked directly: "Tell me quickly, what is a program? How does it work?"

Xiao Chen said: "In our place, a program is a collection of instructions that allows the machine to understand what we want it to do, and then it executes these instructions."

"Well, this word summarizes what I do very well. I used to want to call it an acquired soul or a command sequence, but your statement seems more concise." Maya thought for a while and said.

Xiao Chen's mind moved and he asked, "Can these 'acquired souls' you designed learn by themselves? Can they grow?"

"Some smart ones can, but stupid ones can't." She pointed at the mechanical lizard, "Xiao Hei is smarter, Xiao Zhu is a fool. Xiao Hei can recognize many people now, and he learned it all by himself."