1.

Lu Yuan’s company was going to go under if he didn’t find an animator with great potential.

Torrential rain thundered against the sheet metal roof. Before him sat ten people: this year’s cohort of animation graduates from Coral Tree City, three fewer than the last city he was in. These ten strange creatures in Coral Tree City’s menagerie had just left their ivory tower, all looking lost and confused.

Animation, pop music, web literature—all kinds of content had been devoured one after another by generative AI models over the last decade. Generative AI was an omnipresent, omnipotent plagiarist, hunting down every last work of art that was online. Once found, the models could extract the style and details of the work in mere seconds, like hawks snatching up any prairie dog that dared to raise its head from its burrow.

No one was studying the fields decimated by generative AI anymore. Computer science had been the first casualty, then engineering, until finally the destruction spread across all kinds of content creation. Blue-collar work gained mass appeal, with people clamoring over one another to become cooks, mechanics, plumbers, and electricians.

Some of these ten graduates believed that they were built different, that they were born to be animators. They bet it all on their faith that they could become world-renowned artists. Others didn’t have their heart in it and had parents that hadn’t kept up with the times. When it had come time to pick a major, they’d just shrugged and jumped into the sinkhole. After graduation, the sunk cost had kept them on their track, so here they were now, with no way to flee their sinking ship.

Lu Yuan was also betting it all. He was gambling that he could excavate some exceptional, otherworldly talent from among these suckers and mediocre fools—someone who could become the glazer by his side.

So long as he could find that one person, he’d never have to worry about food or shelter for the rest of his life.

He’d glanced at most of their portfolios before the seminar. A couple of them hadn’t even grasped basic color theory, composition, or perspective, rendering each frame full of flaws. Lu Yuan had once joked with his colleagues that this kind of work glazed itself—not even a model would deign to learn from it.

There was nothing wrong with four other portfolios at first glance, but there was something about their work that wasn’t quite fluid. The animations weren’t quite smooth, making the motions feel unnatural. Lu Yuan had seen this many times before. Undoubtedly, they had chosen the wrong key frames, leading to incoherent interpolations.

A couple people had solid foundations but still had a fatal flaw: they didn’t have distinctive personal styles. Having a unique style was paramount. Not only could it cover flaws, but the flaws could even become part of the style. A distinct style would let viewers distinguish your work at a glance and would become a signature that separated you from the masses. It was the manifestation of a creator’s sentiments, evocative like Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky or Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell.

Why isn’t that one person here? Lu Yuan asked himself. Before coming, he’d done a ton of homework. He’d gone to the official website of the Coral Tree City animation school and looked through every sample. In one unassuming corner, he’d found a row of storyboards. In just a few vivid frames, the animator had captured the buildup of anticipation to a rocket launch, the speed of liftoff, and the grand sense of the rocket becoming a minuscule object against the vastness of the night sky.

He didn’t know which student had created the storyboards. For there to be someone who still used the old-school technique of storyboards in this day and age—noting the key frames on paper, defining the camera angle and language of the frames, and not going the easy route of using a computer graphics tool kit . . . The biggest thing was that these storyboards still brimmed with an individual style that the creator had tried so hard to cover up.

Lu Yuan had come to Coral Tree City just to find whoever created those storyboards, but it was obvious that they weren’t among the graduates before him.

“So, I’ve explained the principles of glazing. I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve heard of it. Your professors have undoubtedly brought it up to you before. Nowadays, even if you’re just trundling along, it’s impossible to avoid glazing—” Here, Lu Yuan spoke louder. “If you don’t glaze your works, then GenAI will be able to learn your styles and mass-produce replicas, making you worthless.”

Although that implies that your work has any worth to begin with, Lu Yuan thought.

He glanced around. The atmosphere was thick with tension and deathly silent, save for the rustling of scribbling from one corner. From the very start of the seminar, a man had been ensconced in that corner, head bowed, scribbling away madly at who knows what. In the dim light, Lu Yuan couldn’t make out what he looked like. Every now and then, the light would flash across his furrowed brow. It seemed he wasn’t all that young.

“Now, I’ll show you the demise of those whose styles were stolen,” Lu Yuan said, going through slide after slide.

One slide was a photo taken from the point of view of the monitor, showing a woman in a bathrobe holding a stylus as she worked before the monitor.

“This Polish animator streams her entire life 24/7 from every angle, without any blind spots. Her work was hugely popular for a few years.”

A photo taken by a passerby on the street: a man sitting naked on a park bench while wearing a VR headset, waving both hands in the air, as if immersed in some kind of work.

“This American animator works naked outside every day, changing location every week. His work was popular for about three months.”

More slides and more sensationalist stories.

“These animators are all victims of theft by generative AI. They lost their individual styles, so they have to rely on gimmicks outside the work itself—livestreaming one’s private life, working outside naked; these are all things that GenAI can’t copy. In order to recapture the attention of the masses, they’ve gradually shifted from animation to performance art to distinguish themselves from the work generated by AI.” He paused and couldn’t help but laugh. “Of course, even more victims of style theft have simply changed to blue-collar careers, assuming they were even able to snatch up a position.”

The sermon was effective. Of the ten animators, nine signed contracts for glazing. They fished out USB drives with their best work and handed them over to Lu Yuan. In one go, Lu Yuan used an algorithm to glaze them all.

“All right, now you can upload your work with the confidence that GenAI won’t be able to steal your styles!”

They all left buoyed with hope, while Lu Yuan once again made enough money to cover that month’s provisions.

A notification from the National Glazers Association popped up on his oculens:

Machine learning models have started to decode all glazing algorithms currently on the market. Stop all glazing work immediately and update your algorithms.

Lu Yuan swiped away the notification. This type of alert was nothing new. Three of them would pop up every year, but you’d never hear of any models actually succeeding in breaking the algorithms. He suspected that nothing like that was even happening, and that the alerts were concocted by the Association to scare people into paying more fees for black boxes containing neural net *.pb files. They contained a bunch of binary that humans couldn’t read. Who knew if any of the algorithms inside had actually been updated.

He packed up to go home, only to discover that the man was still sitting in the corner. He didn’t even bother to try to avoid the leak in the ceiling. The brim of his hat had collected a whole sheet of water. He was busy sketching an outline in his sketchbook. After a few strokes, he’d flip to the next page, glance at it, then flip back and continue sketching.

This whole routine felt familiar to Lu Yuan, but he couldn’t recall where he’d seen it before.

“Did you need anything else?”

The man stood bolt upright. “Could you put the glazing case study back up again?”

Lu Yuan was mystified but nonetheless still brought the hologram projector back up. “Did you want me to go over the principles again?”

The man nodded.

“The principle is simple. Animation is made up of a sequence of pictures. Every picture is a two-dimensional array of pixels. Every pixel has properties such as color and brightness. Our glazing algorithm selects particular pixels and alters their properties, such as changing the color or lowering the brightness. A glazed picture is no different to the human eye—the human eye can’t pick out the changes to the pixels.”

Lu Yuan swallowed. He waited to see if the man had any questions, then continued.

“But to the models, it’s not the same picture anymore. Models and humans don’t see pictures the same way. We see green grass and blue sky; the model sees a spread of pixel properties. So our glazing algorithm picks out key pixels to change, just like stealthily dripping a tiny amount of poison into a glass of water, distorting every image to the model. In this way, the model will never see the true face of the image, so it cannot learn the style in the image. On top of that, captions and audio tracks are also glazed, so the model can’t learn what story is being told, either.”

The slide changed to a still from Spirited Away: Chihiro and No-Face sitting on a train traveling over the sea. The still on the left was captioned “original”; the one on the right, “after glazing”—but both stills looked exactly the same. Lu Yuan waved a hand. A new image appeared to the far right of the slide: Chihiro had become a chubby girl; her original, worried expression transformed into one of cherubic sleep. The caption read “model’s interpretation of glazed image.”

The man furrowed his brow, not saying a word.

“Still don’t understand? The principle is simple; should I go over it again?”

“No . . . it’s not that. I understand the principle.” He pointed to the slide. “What does the ‘after glazing’ image look like to you?”

“What does it look like?” Lu Yuan glanced at the slide, then back at the man. “It looks exactly the same as the original, of course.”

“That’s not what I see.” The man thought for a moment. “I’m seeing the chubby Chihiro, just like the rightmost picture that the model sees.”

Lu Yuan was astonished. Could this person really see glazing with the naked eye? No, that was impossible. Lu Yuan figured the man must’ve been pulling his leg, or maybe he had some kind of mental issue. He packed up the projector and made to leave from under the tin roof.

He had pushed open the door and was just about to step out when a cold wind burst in, whipping through the pages of the sketchbook on the chair. The pencil sketch of a girl came to life, turning toward him as her face broke into a big grin.

Thunder rolled as lightning lit up the alley, the sketchbook, and the man. He took in the sight of the man. Sideburns framed a knife-thin face. He glanced again at the sketchbook, now on the floor. The wind had flipped to a page with storyboards sketched on it.

His head roared. Thunder split through his crown.

Turns out the money tree he’d been looking for was right in front of him—and wasn’t a student at all.

2.

For days, Lu Yuan clung to Wu Tuo, spending lavishly to take him out to dine on giant tiger prawns and leopard coral grouper. Wu Tuo was a lecturer at the school of animation. This graduating class had been the last, and the school had shut down afterward. Wu Tuo had been left without a job, so he’d decided to pursue his original dream—becoming an animator like his idol Hayao Miyazaki.

Ever since he was a child, Wu Tuo’s eyesight had been keener than the average person’s. He saw details that others missed, and as he grew older, this ability only grew more powerful.

Lu Yuan fawned over his gift. God had blessed him with a plan to become the next Hayao Miyazaki.

Yet no matter how much Lu Yuan tried to coax him, Wu Tuo wouldn’t make up his mind.

He lived in a slum. His wife had been a programmer, but after being laid off, she was now giving foot massages at a spa. Things were extremely difficult for them as a couple who both had backgrounds in digital gig work. With much effort, they were able to send their daughter to the lowest-tier vocational school. Her classmates soon found out about her parents’ background, leaving her too ashamed to keep her head up.

Wu Tuo had registered for a blue-collar hiring app and had sent his resume to every production job. Based on the information he provided, the software automatically assigned him a number in the queue. The closest he ever got to the front of the line was when he was somewhere in the 13,000s. The estimated wait time to get to the front of the queue was two years.

Everyone with a background like his was in this kind of situation. Being a gig worker was a huge disadvantage. No one wanted them. His wife also had a two-year wait to be considered.

He tried to understand glazing and considered whether to go back to his previous line of work. But when he saw images that had been glazed, he felt he could see the distortions himself—so why not try to glaze things manually? If he could glaze his images himself, he wouldn’t have to waste money hiring someone to glaze them for him. He was stuck at home unemployed anyway, relying on his wife’s income; he couldn’t burden them with another expense. The money he saved by not hiring someone to glaze his work could go toward his daughter’s tuition for vocational school.

But he kept all this from Lu Yuan and only asked him persistently about the details of glazing techniques, all while putting off making any commitments. Lu Yuan thought that his endless questions were just to dispel his own doubts, and once he’d answered all of them, surely Wu Tuo would agree to glazing, so Lu Yuan patiently answered each and every question.

One day, Lu Yuan went over to Wu Tuo’s place to eat, and the two of them chatted over a stewed appetizer. Lu Yuan assured him that his concerns were in vain, as there couldn’t be anyone else who could see the differences like he could.

“Forget it, I guess good things aren’t meant to happen to me,” Lu Yuan said resignedly, waving a hand.

Wu Tuo’s daughter walked in. She had a small face, sallow and lean; she’d been malnourished for a long time.

“Hi, Uncle,” she said, voice soft and weak.

It was quiet inside, save for the rain battering the tin roof, making a racket like some kind of monster gnawing on Wu Tuo’s home, teeth grinding against the roof as it clamped down.

The girl sat to one side, opened a cheap holoscreen, and watched some cartoons. It was her only diversion. They didn’t have the money to buy her any other kind of entertainment system or program.

“Uncle, my dad made this himself,” she said with some pride.

The cartoon was of a mother standing by the sea, staring at an island in the distance, a Minnan Xunbu-style flower crown on her head. She took a sprig of cornel from the crown and threw it into the water. When the sprig met the water, it grew into a long and narrow painted boat. The woman leaped into the boat and made her way toward the island.

“She’s going to go save her daughter,” Wu Tuo’s daughter said.

It was an all-ages cartoon, but Lu Yuan had a hard time characterizing the animation style. There was a lively undercurrent of romanticism, much like the charm of Hayao Miyazaki’s work, yet there was also a focus on the negative space, like a Chinese-style ink wash painting. The images moved smoothly through the key frames, responding quickly to the feelings of the woman in the boat. The setting sun enveloped the world in shadows, reflecting the woman’s perturbation over the unknown.

What fascinated Lu Yuan the most were the colors and material of the painted boat. It was painted unevenly, with the texture of an oil painting; the boat was the heart of the image.

“I used oil paints on the original, then created a high-resolution computer imaging model of the texture to extrapolate one-to-one to the animated frames.” Wu Tuo had noticed that Lu Yuan was fixated on the boat. “Texture precedes essence.”

To go to such efforts to ensure that such meticulous detail would be captured, all to render the essence of an object . . . Lu Yuan couldn’t imagine that someone would go to such great lengths for a cartoon.

Wu Tuo’s haggard wife returned home after her shift. Upon seeing a guest, she hastily called out a greeting before tidying the guest room, keeping her back to the guest so that he couldn’t see her exhausted face.

“Just give it a try,” Lu Yuan urged. Wu Tuo lifted a hand to cut him off.

“What happened?” his wife asked, turning back toward them.

“Nothing, just discussing a new animation technique. It’s a bit expensive; I was just asking about it.”

“No problem. I can cover it; I’m catching up to the senior staff now. The manager holds me in high regard,” his wife said.

“I can take 50 percent off for you,” Lu Yuan said, gritting his teeth.

Wu Tuo paid him no mind as he drank his liquor. He finished his glass and changed the topic abruptly. “Lu Yuan, do you hate the times we’re in?”

“Of course, but that’s no use. Can hate fill your stomach? Do you know what my job used to be? I used to do offensive glazing, not this kind of defensive glazing.”

“Offensive glazing?”

“Glazing to mislead, so that a model would mistake a dog for a cat, or a car for a house. If defensive glazing is putting a few drops of poison in a glass of water, then offensive glazing is administering a huge dose of poison. After training on large amounts of images glazed in this way, the model would gradually distort until it wouldn’t be able to tell Jack from Jill,” Lu Yuan said. “Before, there were people who wanted to destroy models that way, so they sought me out to do that kind of work. I agreed once and spent some time poisoning models, but then those big companies found out what I was doing. They destroyed my equipment and put me on online blacklists for several years. After that, even if people asked me to do it, I wouldn’t accept the work, not even if they raised their rates.”

Wu Tuo poured more liquor for him. “What was the result?”

“Jack shit, those big companies just rolled back their models to earlier versions,” Lu Yuan said. “It’s like an ant trying to shake down a tree. A fool’s errand.”

Lu Yuan tried to persuade Wu Tuo a few more times, only to be rebuffed by him each time. In the end, Wu Tuo told him frankly that he was actually planning to drop by his wife’s workplace to see if he could pull some favors and find some back door that would let him skip ahead in line, or maybe it would be better to just find some kind of stable work and figure out glazing later.

After that, Lu Yuan disappeared for several days. Wu Tuo took that time to go online to search for more glazing techniques. He downloaded a pixel modification tool and experimented on the still of Chihiro and No-Face sitting on the train on the sea, relying on his intuition for which pixels to focus on. He lowered the chroma on some pixels, repainted the color on others, then frowned as he regarded the image.

It had definitely been distorted, but not enough.

He tried several times but still couldn’t figure out the optimal pixels to alter. That was the crux of glazing. Finding those optimal pixels was like finding the perfect lever. Just the slightest alteration to those pixels was like putting the barest of pressure on one side of a lever that transferred into a huge result on the other side. He could see traces of distortion with the naked eye that were undetectable to ordinary people, but he was unable to figure out exactly which pixels created the effect.

He had to reverse engineer it.

After pulling an all-nighter, he was able to pick out several key pixels and, with great effort, imitate the results of the glazing. But if he was presented with a new image, he’d have to fumble through the entire process again. Each frame of animation was one image. At twenty-four frames per second, that would be 86,400 images for an hour-long animation. It was a task that was impossible to accomplish for a human. Then Lu Yuan came calling again, so he shelved the task for the moment and focused once more on finding a job.

Two days later, his wife came home overjoyed with good news. Her boss had seen that she’d been taking on extra shifts without a single complaint and had agreed to give him a position in the kitchen of a sauna. Lu Yuan happened to be there when Wu Tuo’s wife delivered the good news. When he heard the news, Lu Yuan couldn’t help but be disgruntled and thought to himself, This little sprout of potential is going to slip away from me.

Wu Tuo’s family strode into the joy of being a dual-income household.

During Wu Tuo’s first few days of work, Lu Yuan didn’t go asking after him and only dropped by once the weekend rolled around. As soon as he walked in, he saw Wu Tuo with a long face, complaining that he’d never worked in a kitchen before. He was too slow making the few simple dishes he was in charge of, and he couldn’t season them right—the dish always ended up too salty or cloyingly sweet. As soon as the customers had a bite, they would complain. The manager had told him, There’s heaps of people queuing up for this position. If you can do it, then do it well; if not, then leave.

Lu Yuan consoled him and chatted about some other matters before leaving. When he came back to visit Wu Tuo a week later, the doors were tightly shut, and it was dark inside, with no one to be found.

He waited a few days before going back. This time, Wu Tuo opened the door for him. As soon as Lu Yuan stepped in, he noticed that the secondhand sofa was gone, as was the holoscreen television. The dining table had also been replaced by a simple folding table.

“My wife and I were fired,” Wu Tuo said, head hanging despondently as he let him in, his eyes bloodshot. “It happened the day before yesterday.”

Even after the boss’ warning, Wu Tuo hadn’t improved. Once, he’d even cooked beef that had gone bad. After several customers ate the dish, it wasn’t long before they started vomiting and having diarrhea; the restaurant had to pay a large sum to compensate them for the food poisoning. The owner had been thoroughly disappointed and, in a fit of rage, had fired both husband and wife.

“Do you remember that ad looking for ghost workers? Worst comes to worst, I can go give that a try, maybe?” his wife had said to him.

Ghost work was an illegal venture. An incision would be made on the nape of the neck so a microchip could be inserted. Once the microchip was activated, you could work subconsciously. Although it was illegal labor, it was popular on the black market.

Wu Tuo told her to give up on that idea immediately.

Lu Yuan didn’t say much, only consoled him with a few platitudes.

Two days later, Wu Tuo called him and said at last, “I’ll try out the glazing.”

3.

Lu Yuan signed a one-year contract with him. Wu Tuo stared, stupefied, at the balance in his bank account, let out a long breath, grit his teeth, and transferred the payment over to Lu Yuan. Once he confirmed receipt, Lu Yuan swiftly filed away the contract and fed the animation on Wu Tuo’s USB drive into the glazing algorithm, which ran for only a moment before spitting the work back out, now with a layer of glaze on top.

Right as they were about to upload it, the National Glazers Association sent out another notification:

All members must update to the latest glazing algorithm. Anyone who has not yet updated their algorithms must suspend all current work.

Lu Yuan impatiently swiped away the notification. He patted Wu Tuo on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’ll make a noise.” Then, with a press of a key, he started the upload.

The adult animation Coral Tree Island was now available for streaming, alongside a wave of generated movies and animations.

The stats for the first week were truly abysmal: 300 daily views and only 20 downloads.

The second week: the animation had broken 1,000 views and had been downloaded 105 times. Nothing remarkable.

In the third week, the animation suddenly soared past 10,000 views and broke 1,000 downloads. The snowball had started rolling.

After that, each day’s numbers were more than the previous day’s total figures, indicating a skyrocketing viewership.

After a month, the animation had over a million views and over ten thousand downloads.

Advertising companies came in droves, beating each other back for the chance to insert commercials into the work. Tons of people were having spirited discussions about the work on forums, with the most common comment being: Finally, someone’s come along after Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon to bear the flag of Asian animation.

Originally, the contract Wu Tuo and Lu Yuan had signed was for a 40–60 split, but Lu Yuan took it upon himself to change the contract to a 50–50 split, giving Wu Tuo 10 percent more of a share.

The lives of Wu Tuo’s entire family gradually improved. They bought back their furniture and paid a year’s rent in advance. Wu Tuo’s wife felt at ease becoming a full-time housewife, and his daughter could hold her head up high at school.

But every time Lu Yuan discussed the future with Wu Tuo, such as when he’d release the next work he had in store or how he’d manage his career so he could become the next big name, Wu Tuo would always fall silent.

Lu Yuan migrated from the streaming platform he’d originally been on and rented his own private cloud server to establish his own independent online cinema to air Coral Tree Island 2, so that he wouldn’t have to give a cut to the platform.

“Hey Wu, brother, hear me out—it’s not just your work that can make money, but also those eyes of yours!” Lu Yuan tugged on him as he chattered on, drunk.

“What?”

“If you can see the difference in glazed pictures, then that means you can glaze things yourself! You’ve got a natural glazing algorithm embedded right into your eyes. You could roll up the whole glazing industry and protect all of humanity’s creativity!”

Wu Tuo was silent as he finished the rest of his drink.

Once, Lu Yuan asked him sincerely why he was so down.

Wu Tuo replied, “Actually, I already tried applying glaze by hand a while ago. I got the gist of it, but it was way too slow and inefficient. Glazing just one image was fine, but glazing tens of thousands of images was impossible. Humans simply compute too slowly.”

“I figured you must’ve already tried to do it. It was that time when I kept trying to convince you, and you wouldn’t budge, wasn’t it?” Lu Yuan said with keen insight. “You can see where there’s traces of glaze. Anyone like that would try to do it themself instead of paying someone else to do it. I understand. It’s only natural.”

“So when you suddenly disappeared for several days—that was on purpose?” Wu Tuo asked.

“Yep. When you said you were going to try to find some work, that’s when I about figured it out,” Lu Yuan said, chuckling. “If you pick a melon before it’s ready, it won’t be sweet. Letting you try things out for yourself was going to be far more efficient than any more cajoling on my end.”

“You knew that glazing by hand would fail?”

“I’m a bit more experienced than you here,” Lu Yuan said, nodding. He sidled up close and stared him in the eyes.

That twin pair of brown irises, set deep in the shadows of his eye sockets, were like a pair of bullets in a double-barrel shotgun, ready to defend all that could threaten him and his livelihood.

“How could your eyes compare to a glazing algorithm? The limits of the flesh of your body, the speed of the nerves running through your brain—how could they possibly compare to the speed of a nanotransistor?”

---

The next afternoon, Lu Yuan brought Wu Tuo to a mansion nestled in the hills that he’d just rented. A crowd of people dressed in fine, luxurious clothing surrounded them. They enthusiastically shook hands with Wu Tuo, who nodded at them absently. Lu Yuan provided him with an introduction: these were all glazers who had arrived from all around the country. They were all known within the industry; there were at least two or three juggernauts signed under them. Wu Tuo’s work had become very influential; they all wanted to meet with him.

Within the majestic grand hall were laid out two buffet tables, with men dressed in suits and ties, women in long dresses and heels, all elegantly plating food and pouring drinks. Wu Tuo glanced at Lu Yuan. He was busy nodding and bowing at people in acknowledgement, but he didn’t seem any more comfortable than Wu Tuo. He realized then that he and Lu Yuan were the same—neither was used to this kind of spectacle.

“You’ll get used to it, gradually,” Lu Yuan murmured to him, heads bowed together.

The party went on with glasses of wine and poker chips strewn all about until well past midnight. Holding a glass of red wine the wrong way, Wu Tuo staggered by himself out onto the balcony, leaned against the ornately carved stone banister, and gazed out at the gilded nightscape of Coral Tree City.

He realized then that the rainy season had passed. And the rainy season in his life had passed, too.

A young woman in a red dress slunk up to him and murmured, “I heard you’ve got some magical eyes.”

He turned. The woman stared fixedly into his eyes and, without any sense of taboo, tried to work her way straight into his heart. He nodded.

“How’s Lu Yuan splitting the profits with you?”

Wu Tuo looked out at the nightscape before him, took a vigorous swig of red wine, choked, and coughed. He’d never had red wine before. It was so sour.

“Fifty-fifty, is that so? He’s pretty generous,” the woman said self-servingly, “But actually, you can make even more. With your eyes, the Glazers Association would definitely want to recruit you for development.” She turned to lean her back against the banister and cocked her head to look at Wu Tuo. “If you went solo, you’d keep whatever you made. Wouldn’t that be great?”

The woman slid a business card into his view, turned, and left, her red dress fluttering. Through the glass door, Wu Tuo saw Lu Yuan sprawled out dead drunk on a table, eyes closed and mouth in a big, open grin, as if he were dreaming of something wonderful.

Once day broke and the two of them had halfway sobered up, they both staggered out of the mansion, each with an arm slung around the other’s shoulders as they went downhill toward the rising sun. When they reached the cliffside, Lu Yuan gestured at the city below, pointing to the fine crowds of people and hovercars, rambling on about how this year he could rely on making a living off of what he loved to do, and a good living at that—what incredible luck.

Lu Yuan waved a hand in a big circle outlining the city. “Now, how many people among these would you say are blue-collar, and how many are lined up waiting for a blue-collar job? Do they want to do blue-collar work? No. They have their own dreams, but no one needs their dreams. In these times, their dreams are warts that are to be removed, and to be nipped in the bud at that because if you’re even half a beat late getting to them, they could spell your death.”

Once they reached the bottom of the mountain, the two of them had completely sobered up. Wu Tuo had thought it through. He silently brought the woman’s business card into view and threw it into the recycle bin to be shredded.

People shouldn’t get too greedy, Wu Tuo thought to himself. With a knot in his heart, he once again went into working in animation.

A week later, Lu Yuan called Wu Tuo over. Without demurring, he placed the contract that they’d both signed before them both.

“Take a good look.”

As he watched, Lu Yuan put the contract in the recycle bin and shredded it with one tap of the key.

“That was the only copy. There’s no backup. We’ll sign a new contract.”

Lu Yuan told him that he’d built a loophole into the first contract so that, if Wu Tuo one day decided to up and leave to go solo, he’d take action and leave him penniless.

“I was testing to see if you had any ill intent. It was just a business consideration; you’ve got to understand my perspective.” He solemnly extended a hand to Wu Tuo. “This time, we won’t hide anything from each other.”

Wu Tuo looked at him quietly, not saying anything. After a moment, he held out his own hand and tightly shook Lu Yuan’s hand.

There was no rift between them anymore, and each went about his own business. Lu Yuan was in charge of promotion and distribution, while Wu Tuo devoted himself wholeheartedly to creating. They agreed to meet twice a week to share updates. Every time he went over, Lu Yuan brought a whole pile of gifts for Wu Tuo’s wife and daughter. Without anything to offer in return, Wu Tuo simply devoted himself to Lu Yuan, and the two were so close that they might as well have each been one leg in a pair of pants.

The promotion and distribution preparations were all set; all that was left was for Wu Tuo to finish up the work. Lu Yuan understood deeply that creating wasn’t simple; he didn’t bother Wu Tuo, leaving everything up to him as he went on vacation by himself.

Lu Yuan sunbathed in Bali and only worked a few hours in a week. He drove a speedboat on the ocean, reveling in this sunny paradise, feeling as if he’d finally made his dream a reality. He’d been waiting for this day for a long time.

He was so immersed in this dream that he couldn’t extricate himself to face reality, so much so that it took him a whole week to notice that the view and download numbers on his streaming platform had plunged.

That day, the morning news popped up as usual before him, but after he dismissed the notifications, he felt as if something wasn’t right. He clicked on the notifications and took in the headlines for the latest entertainment news. When he loaded the attached streaming platform, he saw a row of animations in a very familiar style on the most prominent new releases section, their view numbers skyrocketing.

All of them were in Wu Tuo’s style.

Dammit, when did he upload them—and on his own? Lu Yuan cursed. He was just about to call Wu Tuo when he noticed the badges under each work that said “AI-generated.”

His head exploded. He stared dumbstruck for a long while. When had generative AI learned Wu Tuo’s style? It was only then that he remembered the repeated warnings that he’d gotten from the National Glazers Association. He closed his eyes and slapped himself a dozen times.

As he panicked, that dream he’d realized over the past few months suddenly ended.

4.

Within a couple weeks, the independent cinema’s numbers fell to zero. Every advertising company pulled support, and no one was patronizing the platform anymore. Lu Yuan didn’t dare to go find Wu Tuo. He knew only one thing: Wu Tuo’s entire existence had been reduced to nothing.

He’d lost his style, lost everything.

The work that he’d poured his blood, sweat, and tears into had been transformed in just a moment’s computation by generative AI into millions of derivative works. He’d been thrown into a sea of mediocrity, his artistic talent diluted into one in a million.

One night, Lu Yuan returned to the mansion halfway up the hill, which he no longer rented. He’d gone according to the landlord to return the key pass. He circled to the backyard and left the key card in the electronic lockbox in the garden. Just as he shut the door to the box, a hand clapped him on the shoulder. He jerked his head back and saw an expressionless Wu Tuo.

His eyes were deep in their sockets, like a pair of holes in a gun muzzle pointed straight at Lu Yuan.

“Wu Tuo?”

“You’re back, Lu Yuan?”

“Y-yeah. I just got here.”

“Why didn’t you do the update?”

“W-what?”

“Before you went on vacation, you delegated your work inbox to me. I opened the inbox and found the notices the association had sent. I thought you’d done the updates a long time ago. Why? You’d already made so much money; why didn’t you do the updates? I trusted you.”

“I thought that was just to scare people . . . ”

“Dammit, did you ruin me on purpose?!” Wu Tuo grabbed him by the collar with both hands.

“What good would it do to ruin you?!” Lu Yuan yelled.

Wu Tuo slowly loosened his grip. He released Lu Yuan. He took a few steps back. Lightning flashed across the sky. The rain fell with a soft whisper, then intensified—the rainy season had begun again. Wu Tuo stood in the middle of the field staring at Lu Yuan for a moment longer before turning and walking away. The rain pounded down in torrents. Lu Yuan saw Wu Tuo’s silhouette stoop over against the curtain of rain, every drop of water beating against his back.

That night, Lu Yuan deleted Wu Tuo’s contact information, then filed for bankruptcy.

Lu Yuan supported himself with the money he had left over from when business had been booming. He was a vagrant for a while, then used his connections to find a municipal job. He was a security guard in the slums of Coral Tree City, where many people lived in poverty, and many sold ghost labor. The good and bad mingled together. It was a mess, but the pickings were still good.

The two of them lost touch. Half a year passed by.

One day, Lu Yuan received a notification that someone was interested in purchasing the assets of his company that he’d put up for auction. The other side had paid anonymously and had claimed the independent cinema and the glazing algorithm data. He didn’t think any more of it; it was a good thing to make some money.

The people in the slums would often bribe him. His wallet grew fatter. One time, when he was reconciling his accounts, he realized that there was a discrepancy—but not in the negative; he was over by 345 yuan. After he sifted through the transactions, he realized that the sum had come from the independent cinema. A few days later, another 573 yuan came in. A week later, the money from the independent cinema increased to 2,178 yuan.

He tried to log in to the independent cinema and realized that it hadn’t closed in arrears—someone was operating it. The cinema was still just showing the same two titles of Wu Tuo’s old work as it had been showing a year ago. He scrolled back and forth and didn’t see anything of note until he scrolled to the bottom, where he saw a new work:

Coral Tree Island 3: Part 1

He clicked and watched it. It was only a dozen minutes long, but it was undoubtedly Wu Tuo’s style.

The story began with the mother climbing out of the painted boat on the sea onto the island. Every shot had a focal item with the oil paint texture. There were only three different flowers left in her hair.

At the last minute, the mother plucked a peony from her hair and, at the witch’s suggestion, jabbed the sharp stem at an angle into her arm. The peony sucked all the blood and flesh from that arm and transformed it into a sea star-shaped parasol of flesh. She raised this flesh parasol, resisting the corrosive acid rain that eroded all things.

After the rain passed and the skies cleared, a scorched path appeared in the wild and thick grass, leading to where her daughter was imprisoned. She held on to the umbrella with her good right hand as she stepped onto the path.

In the last few frames, all focus was on the umbrella. It had a spiral pattern, like a giant eye, staring at the viewers beyond the screen.

The animation had amassed over a hundred thousand views in the past week, and the numbers were still rising.

Was it Wu Tuo’s new work? Lu Yuan watched it repeatedly, but nothing in particular jumped out at him. His style had been completely mastered by generative AI; there were hundreds of works that had ripped off his style. Why were there still people watching?

He couldn’t figure it out.

Money continued to flow into Lu Yuan’s account. The hits at the independent cinema had reached a peak in half a month; just as they were about to fall off again, there was another new work:

Coral Tree Island 3: Part 2

In this part, the sun never rose over the island shrouded in darkness. At some point, one of the two flowers left in the mother’s hair had been covered in fluorescent mushrooms. They shivered as they said that they were going to freeze to death; could they grow onto her body to survive? After the mother agreed, the luminescent fungi climbed onto her left leg, spreading their mycelium. The mother sacrificed her right leg, but in exchange gained luminescence that dispelled the darkness.

Now, the focus was on the mushrooms. The ethereal yellow-green glow they gave off had a gelatinous quality to it. The yellow was the most luminous, as if it were a gilding.

The views rose again, as did the royalties. What exactly was going on? Lu Yuan couldn’t figure it out. He lurked on the forums and searched the term “Coral Tree Island” to see what people were saying. He realized that it wasn’t just on film forums—even on everyday message boards, people were using oblique language to discuss the topic. Utterly mysterious.

ID: Silksea Wanderer
I live in Coral Tree City. I’ve seen the creator; it seems he really animates like that, just like they say.

ID: Bamboo Fan
Have you all noticed that at the end of each part, there’s a tiny line of text in the lower right corner . . .

Lu Yuan watched again. Indeed, at the end of the first part, there was a line: “Part 1 of 4.”

At the end of the second part: “Part 2 of 4.”

Then Part 4 would be the final installment.

Lu Yuan couldn’t take it anymore. He went to find Wu Tuo.

Wu Tuo opened the door and stared at him, blankly at first. Then, Wu Tuo’s gaze hardened as he looked him over more thoroughly. He took a couple steps back and welcomed him in, as if he’d been waiting for him to arrive.

Wu Tuo limped as he led the way. Lu Yuan felt apprehensive; he didn’t know what had happened within the last half year. They sat facing each other. Wu Tuo was wearing long sleeves and had a leather glove over his left hand. His movements were stiff.

Lu Yuan didn’t dare to look directly at him. His eyes were heavy with fatigue and exhaustion, but he was like a rusty but still serviceable gun protecting its home.

Lu Yuan swiped a few times on his oculens, took several thousand yuan from his account, and transferred it over to Wu Tuo with a wave of his hand. Wu Tuo glanced at the transfer request and, without any consideration, pressed the “decline” button.

“Take it.”

Wu Tuo waved him away with his right hand, saying he didn’t need it. His left hand didn’t move.

“Where are your wife and daughter?”

“My daughter’s at the school dorms. My wife is lying down inside.”

“Lying down?”

“She has brain necrosis.”

Lu Yuan dropped the cup he was holding, spilling his drink all over the floor. Wu Tuo grabbed a rag with practiced ease and, as he bent his head to wipe it up, he said: “After GenAI learned my style, the money stopped coming in. My daughter’s vocational school was still charging fees for room and board, technology, and tuition. The money from before wasn’t enough, and my wife couldn’t just sit around and do nothing. So she went behind my back to become a ghost worker. She got roped into a shady business that had her overclock herself, leaving her with permanent nerve damage. We spent all our money and still couldn’t heal her, so now she’s always unconscious.”

Lu Yuan held himself back for a long time before finally asking, “But . . . but you still won’t take the money?”

“I don’t need it.”

Lu Yuan wanted to ask about what was going on online but felt like now wasn’t the right time.

“Shave your beard. You look like you’re ten years older.”

“No time.”

“What have you been so busy with lately?”

“Animating.”

“Still?” Lu Yuan said, gently probing.

“It doesn’t matter what I do. I couldn’t even work in a kitchen. I’m a good-for-nothing; all I can do is animate. My whole life I’ve felt like I’m drowning and going under; it’s only when I’m sketching that I feel I can come up for air and take a breath.”

“It’s all good to breathe, but you can’t just hole yourself up at home. Your daughter’s school; your wife’s treatment, these all need money.”

“I have a path for making money.”

“What path?”

“A way that I can always keep animating and making money.” Wu Tuo’s gaze was firm.

“What?”

“Just like what you showed me in the beginning, with how those artists who lost their styles became the only people capable of doing it—a kind of performance art!” he said, standing with the force of his excitement. The lower half of his body clanged coldly. Lu Yuan looked beneath the table. There was nothing there, just a small leaflet:

Donate your body: Free digitization of consciousness.

Lu Yuan wanted to take a closer look, but Wu Tuo had already gotten up to send him off, dragging one leg as he saw him out the door. The door shut; the curtain was drawn. Lu Yuan stood alone in the dark alley.

5.

Lu Yuan hid in a corner and lingered outside Wu Tuo’s home past midnight. The crowds thinned; those that were left fought with each other or weren’t of sound mind. As he waited, the third installment was released online.

Part 3 of 4.

The fluorescent mushrooms had betrayed their host. They spat spores over to the mother’s other leg. These offspring burrowed into her pores and quickly multiplied, growing and digging their mycelium into her marrow. The mushrooms now covered her entire right leg.

She had offered her entire right leg in exchange for more light.

The views kept increasing.

After midnight, Wu Tuo opened the door and walked out. He was wearing a hoodie and had his head covered. He glanced around, then walked out of the alley. Lu Tuo slunk after him.

The two of them left the slums, one ahead of the other, going through mud and piles of garbage to get to the heart of Coral Tree City.

Wu Tuo stepped into a skyscraper and took the elevator to the 134th floor. Lu Yuan took the next elevator. When he got to the floor, Wu Tuo was nowhere to be seen.

There were corporate offices everywhere on this level. Lu Yuan circled the floor and found one office with the door ajar and light coming from the gap under the door. He gingerly tiptoed in. There was an open lobby inside, with a sign in the center:

Brand New Smart Technology: Vanguard of Digital Consciousness.

A deposit notification popped up on his lens: 3,420 yuan. With just this one work, the independent cinema’s numbers had surpassed anything they’d done before.

A headline popped up at the same time: What will be in Part 4?

It was an investigative report. He swiped the article to one side of his field of vision, skimming its contents as he made his way inside.

 . . . The uniqueness of this animation lies not in what it’s about, nor its technical craft, nor even who created it, but in the colors and textures within . . .

It was the night shift. Lu Yuan didn’t bump into anyone. To either side was glass room after glass room, all emitting the buzzing sound of electronics. He looked left and right. Some of the rooms were empty; some had people lying in them, all in a deep slumber, a huge apparatus rigged up to their heads.

Ding—another 3,500 yuan had been deposited.

 . . . Several renowned artists said that they had never seen these colors and textures before. Although the difference might not be apparent to a layperson, these are not ordinary colors . . .

Lu Yuan found the room that Wu Tuo was in. He was lying on a gurney, his head slowly being wheeled toward the equipment, but all Lu Yuan noticed was the cold light reflecting off of Wu Tuo’s lower body and his left hand. Each of those limbs had been replaced by a metal prosthesis, and the cheapest kind at that.

Ding—another 5,670 yuan had been deposited.

 . . . Medical experts state that, based on the colors and textures, these seemed to be human cells and tissue. The red of the flesh umbrella is hemoglobin; the golden edge of the fluorescent mushrooms is the yellow of subcutaneous fat. The white space of the background as the camera pulls away into the distance is ground-up bones . . .

He didn’t have a bad leg—he simply didn’t even have legs anymore. Nor did he have his left hand anymore, which he now wore a leather glove over.

Part one had been an arm. Part two had been a leg; part three was the other leg. Fiction and reality were unfolding together . . .

Ding—another 12,430 yuan.

Wu Tuo’s independent cinema had now become the center of attention nationwide.

 . . . This is an extreme form of performance art. We theorize that this is to draw attention to the last installment . . .

Lu Yuan pushed open the door to the glass room. He disregarded the people in white lab coats blocking his way and dashed over to Wu Tuo’s bedside.

“Wu Tuo! What are you doing? What are you planning to do for part four?”

Wu Tuo only gave him a glance before he went under the anesthesia and closed his eyes.

The staff called for security and dragged Lu Yuan out. Several hours later, as dawn broke across Coral Tree City, someone who looked to be the head came out to mediate. After interrogating him about the entire sequence of events, and in the middle of Lu Yuan’s questions, the head glanced at his watch nervously and asked about the progress of the upload. Then, he asked, “What’s your relation to him? Friend?”

Lu Yuan paused, then nodded.

“As long as you’re not a journalist, then that’s fine,” the person said. “The nondisclosure agreement only covers the period up to when he uploads his consciousness, but now the upload is probably complete.”

“What’s he doing?”

“He wants to digitize his consciousness and put it online.”

“A virtual human?” This kind of technology had become available in the last decade or so, but Lu Yuan didn’t understand why Wu Tuo would want to use it. “He wants to become a virtual human?”

“Yes, but the place he wants to be uploaded to is a little different. It’s not a community for virtual people. Instead, he wants us to upload his binary into 76800 × 43200 × 4200000 three-dimensional dynamic array space, and he wants the uppermost layer to be linked up to a container on some streaming platform.”

76800 × 43200. That was the highest resolution that the independent cinema supported.

He wanted to turn himself into an animation.

Part four was going to be Wu Tuo himself: His consciousness. His soul.

A person wearing a lab coat exited, carrying a glass vessel with both hands. The water-like liquid inside rocked. “According to his wishes, this is what he wants to leave behind to the world.”

Lu Yuan took a look at the vessel. Dazed, he furrowed his brow and watched the object inside the glass, trying to figure out what it was. When he realized, he hurriedly looked away, turned, and left quickly.

News spread quickly. Three days later, everyone knew what the fourth installment was going to be about. They all gathered online to wait for its release. The frame for the fourth installment appeared, but there wasn’t a progress bar. The splotches of color on the canvas fluctuated nonstop. Golden lightning tore through the sky as a boundless horizon of rain streaked past. Vigorous swaths of grass whipped to-and-fro. 3,300,000,000 pixels were coming together, feeling about and experiencing together.

Computer experts said that Wu Tuo was currently in the layer under the topmost three-dimensional data space for his consciousness. Essentially, he was behind the screen. He couldn’t allow his everyday consciousness to infect the top layer used for animation.

He needed some time to adapt, like an uncoordinated child picking up a pencil for the first time to draw. Thirty-some years after the first time Wu Tuo drew storyboards in a sketchbook as a child, he was now relearning how to draw.

Massive crowds of people lurked in the cinema day and night, excitedly recording the changes in the canvas. On the third day, the jumble of rainbow colors was no more. The frame was pitch black. On the fifth day, several blue-white dots burst forth on the canvas, like bubbles breaking the surface of a plane of water, as if the first signs of life were forming in the deep. On the seventh day, a riotous profusion of colors burst forth in a coherent order, splitting into tectonic plates that drifted toward all four corners of the canvas.

The island appeared again. The fluorescent mushroom-covered one-armed mother holding aloft a flesh parasol appeared again. The story was continuing. Wu Tuo’s digitized consciousness was faster than the average person’s. He was now swifter at animating as well, so much so that he could now livestream the process of animating.

The mother arrived at the precipice, where she could hear the whimpers of her daughter coming up from below, but there was no way for her to go down to where she was. The witch appeared again and told her to throw her last flower into the abyss. She felt for the last coral tree flower on her head, only to find that its roots had fused with her spinal cord.

She understood then what she had to do. She closed her eyes and jumped into the abyss. There was a muffled thump. Then, countless vines climbed up out of the abyss, reaching their tendrils in all directions to embrace the entire island, and yet they still didn’t cease to grow. They continued reaching toward the opposite shore until they had densely bound the island and the mainland together. As the daughter climbed out of the abyss, each vine blossomed with a coral tree flower.

The story was over. The canvas went dark for a day.

Then, a new animation began to play.

Everyone was excitedly making screen recordings, taking screenshots, sharing the footage. These animations were an actual human; generative AI could never hope to replicate this.

A month after the nonstop sharing of the footage, the mother model stopped being able to see properly. It was making basic mistakes in image recognition, identifying men as women, women as men, dogs as cats, cats as dogs. No matter how many rollbacks each company performed, the mother model would quickly start to make errors again.

Only Lu Yuan understood why. This was offensive glazing. Just as he’d said in the very beginning, Wu Tuo was a human with the ability to glaze. Constrained by the limits of the human body, he was unable to glaze an entire work, but after digitizing himself, he no longer had those constraints.

Lu Yuan finally understood Wu Tuo’s master plan.

The endless stream of animations had been like cup after cup of poison that the masses enthusiastically shared, flooding the internet with toxins. The models were being endlessly polluted and could no longer generate work as expected.

Taking advantage of the wave of enthusiasm, the city art museum opened a new exhibit. Posters of Wu Tuo plastered every surface. People waited in long lines, all to see what this animator had left behind in meat space.

Lu Yuan went with the crowd, getting closer and closer to the new exhibit. He drilled his way through the outer three circles, then the inner three circles besieging the exhibit until he found himself in front of the display. With great effort, he stared straight at the pair of eyeballs floating in the jar of formalin.

Wu Tuo’s eyes.

They had sunk to the bottom of the jar; fine red blood vessels had climbed all over the ghostly white irises, all converging at the pupils. Lu Yuan stared at those pupils. They still seemed so alive, still emanating power as they watched everything, exhausted yet unyielding, like two worn but still functional bullets, guarding the home they’d been guarding for their entire existence.

Although Lu Yuan was now flush with cash, he hadn’t slept soundly since the day he bribed the head chef at the sauna to sabotage things. He and Wu Tuo’s eyeballs stared at each other for a long time. Then, he received a message from a private server:

Take care of my wife and daughter. There’s enough money.

He’d long since picked up Wu Tuo’s family and settled their debts. Only then could he dare to stand face-to-face with this silent pair of eyes and apologize.

Originally published in Science Fiction World, February 2025.

Translated and published in cooperation with Storycom and Science Fiction World.

Translator’s Note:

The names “Lu Yuan” (路远) and “Wu Tuo” (吴跅) have an additional layer of meaning to them in the original Chinese. “Lu Yuan” means “the path is long”—possibly alluding to Lu Yuan’s long con—while the “Tuo” in “Wu Tuo” refers to transgressive behavior and a lack of moral restraint. The surname “Wu” is also homophonous with 无, which is used to negate terms. Whether Wu Tuo is a name meaning “transgressive” or “moral decision” is ambiguous. Either way, Wu Tuo’s name seems to allude to his final actions in carrying out his performance art. The two characters’ names can also be read together to form a four-character phrase with additional interpretations.