“I understand, esteemed god. I have one last question: Is it necessary to store all the results? Why can’t you add an analytical program at the end, to delete all the poems that don’t warrant saving? From what I know, Classical Chinese poetry has to follow a strict structure. If we delete all the poems that violate the formal rules, we’ll greatly decrease the volume of the results.”

“Formal rules? Ha.” Li Bai shook his head contemptuously. “Shackles upon inspiration, and nothing more. Classical Chinese poetry wasn’t bound by these rules before the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Even after the Tang Dynasty, which popularized the strict jintishi form, many master poets ignored the rules to write some extraordinary biantishi works. That’s why, for this ultimate poetry composition, I won’t take formal rules into consideration.”

“But, you should still consider the poem’s content, right? Ninety-nine percent of the results are obviously going to be rubbish. What’s the point of storing a bunch of randomly generated character arrays?”

“Rubbish?” Li Bai shrugged. “Emissary, you are not the one who decides whether a poem is meaningful. Neither am I, nor any other person. Time decides. Many poems once considered worthless at the time of their writing were later lauded as masterpieces. Many of the masterpieces of today and tomorrow would have been considered worthless in the distant past. I’m going to write all the poems there are. Trillions of years from now, who knows which of them mighty Time will choose as the finest?”

“That’s absurd!” Bigtooth bellowed, startling several birds hidden in the distant grass into flight. “If we go by the human bug-bugs’ preexisting Chinese character database, the first poem your quantum computer writes should be:

“a a a a a

a a a a a

a a a a a

a a a a ai

“Might I ask, would mighty Time choose this as a masterpiece?!”

Yi Yi broke his silence to cheer. “Wow! Who needs mighty Time to choose? It’s a masterpiece right now! The first three lines and the first four characters of the fourth are the exclamations—ah!—of living beings witnessing the majestic grandeur of the universe. The last character is the clincher, where the poet, having witnessed the vastness of the universe, expresses the insignificance of life in the infinity of time and space with a single sigh of inevitability.”

“Hahahaha …” Li Bai stroked his whiskers, unable to stop smiling. “A fine poem, my bug-bug Yi Yi, a fine poem indeed, hahaha …” He took up the gourd and poured Yi Yi wine.

Bigtooth raised his massive claws and flung Yi Yi into the distance with one swat. “Nasty bug-bug, I know you’re happy now. But don’t forget, once the Devouring Empire is destroyed, your kind won’t survive either!”