Chapter 168: Intermission (36)

After chatting for a while with Brother Long, Feng Bujue went offline. After all, since he would not be able to join any games temporarily, he was going to make use of this downtime to get away from the gaming hub and prepare his dinner.

After a 2v2 killing game and a somewhat completed Team Survival Mode, it was about time for dinner, but even though it was called dinner, it was still basically soup noodles.

According to his editor, the payment for the TV appearance would be banked in within these few days, but he did not specify when 'these few days' was. Therefore, whenever it was about dinner time, Feng Bujue would instinctually go to the computer to check his bank account. If there was any new income, he would definitely go online to order take-out. Of course, the result this time was still… nothing.

Feng Bujue did not possess a credit card. At his time, applying for a credit card became something more problematic. At the start of the twenty-first century, the scam cases using credit cards rose to an astounding eighty percent, and the cases that made use of the phone's connectivity to one's personal info accounted for ninety percent of the total cases. Even if the third-generation photon computer arrived and all the citizens' ID were managed by the internet, the ratio showed no sign of declining.

As mobile phones had become an integral part of life, the government could only work on the party that issued the credit card. The way they went about it was to draft new laws and come up with certain limitations. Even though it was impossible to completely end credit card fraud, tighter management obviously led to some results.

A citizen like Feng Bujue, if one was being kind, was an author; if one was being unkind, he was an unemployed person. Someone slightly in the middle would call him a freelancer. He had to pay for his own health insurance, his own EPF, and the money to buy a house? Haha…

A citizen like him could only apply for a credit card with an exceptionally low credit limit, and a person could only have a maximum of three cards. With Feng Bujue's personality, naturally, he skipped doing something so troublesome. If there was an emergency, he could ask his friends for a loan. After all, with his limit, he could only get around several thousand from his credit card.

For novelists, most spent their lives in poverty, those that became successful could be counted on one's fingers, and in fact, most of them had a harder life than Feng Bujue. At least Brother Jue managed to stay afloat. Most youths with literary dreams were in a situation where if they stopped typing, they would have to starve. Suffering the disappointment from the family silently and believing that the day their talent was recognized would arrive, the passion for story telling eventually became a habit of writing, and the attitude toward other authors turned from admiration into envy and jealousy. This kind of life repeated day after day, until one day, they woke up and realized that they had wasted their entire youth in the wrong industry.

Such a culture meant that writers had to bow their heads toward some business rules. In this world, no matter the industry, hard work was necessary to achieve success. Even with hard work, most only ended up with just enough to survive. Big success only belonged to a small portion of individuals. Those who worked hard but failed to succeed or those who did not work hard at all would really starve to death, in shame and in failure. No one pitied the losers anymore.

Writing was a project of passion, but that did not mean that one could ignore the reality of life. Money became the main standard to gauge a man's value in the society. The man could be a nouveau riche or come from old money. Even if he was a jerk, even if everyone knew that his money came from a dirty source, even if he was insane or murderous, as long as he was not locked behind bars, there would be people who lined up to serve him.

The rich rule the world; this motto would remain true in all eras.

Like most children of the middle-class of his age, Feng Bujue often lamented that he was born in the wrong year. As previously mentioned, Ancient China was more suitable for him. If he had been born later, when every human organ except the brain was replaced by machines and he could drink two gallons of machine oil to survive half a year, he could at least enjoy real fairness and equality.

But unfortunately, he lived in the twenty-first century. In this era, to borrow a famous movie's line, 'Nothing is easy in the adult world.' And it was true that lives were not easy for most kids.

Feng Bujue was one of the few who knew his lot in life. When it came time to cook noodles, he would do that. Perhaps one day, the thing in his brain would explode, and his life would end. Or perhaps, after the explosion, he would become a bionic person and live a life of luxury. Anything was possible. In conclusion, if a person was not satisfied with their current life, since anything could change, tomorrow was something worth anticipating.

"Lately, the air quality in City S has shown signs of improving. Heavy pollution has now changed back to the level of medium pollution…"

"The expansion of the parking lot at the 9th subway station has been stopped due to workplace accident…"

"A fifteen-year-old girl is selling her first night online to buy the latest phone model…"

While he waited for the noodles to cook, Feng Bujue turned the television on. He listened to the various news stories and continued to do his work numbly.

After working for ten minutes, his dinner was done. He switched the television off and went to grab a jar of peanut butter from the fridge before returning to the television. He yawned. "There hasn't been any good news on the television lately. Is it because the people's trust in the media has been dropping year after year and they themselves think that publishing good news will achieve an opposite effect?"

Other than the news, Feng Bujue rarely watched television because the popular programs were mostly about a bunch of people sitting there exposing their own dirty laundry and arguing like children in front of the nation to attract attention. Whenever it was dinner time, most stations broadcast those kinds of programs with no real content, and it was hard to find even a little clever writing. For dramas, the plot was mostly about foreigners killing the military and then the military killing the foreigners. Feng Bujue really wished to write a letter to those scriptwriters: 'I suggest you find the time to write a script about resisting the Filipinos or even the aliens. Turn the recipe around and perhaps you'll find success.'

As he chewed on the noodles, he opened the main website for Dream Inc. He initially wished to jump to the tab for Thriller Paradise, but in the corner of the main page, an article caught his eye.

"The company's second online product is already in testing. The beta will probably be out by May." Feng Bujue read the article, mumbling to himself. "The working title of the game is… Mad Thoughts? It's going to be a PVP card game."

He swallowed the peanut-flavor noodles. "The first game has just finished beta, and they're announcing a second game already. The actions of this Dream Inc. sure are hard to understand. If this was another company, before they earned enough from Thriller Paradise, why would they spend resources designing a new product? Won't it cause competition within the company?"

The article was only one paragraph long. It did not provide any game images or more detailed information. In a way, it was nothing more than an announcement… but this had managed to attract the attention of quite a number of players. When Feng Bujue turned to the forums for Thriller Paradise, he already saw a few threads for Mad Thoughts.

Of course, since the official announcement did not provide much information, the threads made by players were merely predictions. Some of them even managed to find fake pictures and act like they had inside sources. They claimed that they had people working at the company, and the forum managers were too lazy to deal with them. This was the first day the new game had been announced, so it would be counterintuitive for them to dampen the hype. After all, the bigger the hype, the higher the interest within the player base.

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"Known player from Jiang Hu, Flashes of Sword, suspected of cheating." Feng Bujue's eyes were soon glued to this thread. It was a hot thread with more than a 100,000 clicks and more than one hundred replies.

The OP was obviously a smurf. The name was all in random English letters, but the account had been registered for quite some time. However, looking through the account's posting history, most of them were meaningless threads, and it was quite clear that this was a mouthpiece for Zombie Blade.

Feng Bujue read the thread with some interest, and it was clear that the account was describing the scenario that he had been playing earlier.

"From the moment my teammate and I entered the scenario until the end when we lost, we didn't even get a glimpse of the other party. They managed to disappear from a supposedly enclosed space, and this map comes with a continuously exhaustive effect on the players' Life Points. The plot introduction stated very clearly that the map outside would have an even greater exhaustive effect! I stayed for a long time inside the map and used more than one Life Points Recovery Potion. I have to ask Flashes of Sword, if you are not cheating, how did you survive longer than me? Don't tell me your backpack is filled with health potions or you've suddenly become a player who specializes in the Medic mastery; I don't think anyone will buy that!"

There were many details that were left unsaid in the thread, and that was done on purpose. After all, this kind of thread to slander others mainly focused on points that would put oneself in a good light. The points that would not do that were omitted or ignored. The one relief was that the account only mentioned Flashes of Sword by name and did not mention Feng Bujue at all. Of course, the OP did not mention himself or his teammate's ID either, and there was no mention of them belonging to Zombie Blade. The excuse provided was laughable. "Jiang Hu is too powerful, and if I provide our IDs, they might come after us for revenge."

When Feng Bujue saw the title, he only thought it was funny. Even from a bystander's perspective who did not know anything, there were many points in the thread that sounded fishy. Furthermore, even if Flashes of Sword was really cheating, why had the player not gone to customer service? What was the point raising a ruckus on the forums?

Now, Feng Bujue understood why Flashes of Sword had such a low opinion of people from Zombie Blade. It was one thing to use underhanded tools in-game, but at least have some dignity.

The more he read, the more interesting the thread became. No wonder it had gathered so much attention. Some of the replies were obviously from members of Zombie Blade. They supported OP blindly, writing things like, "That's right, that's right. Flashes of Sword, if you dare, come out and answer this! What, people from a big gaming studio can bully us normal players? Are you afraid to come out because you are in the wrong?"

This logic was just wrong. When Feng Bujue went offline, he saw that Flashes of Sword was still in-game. No one would have expected those people to raise a hoorah like this on the forums after losing a game of Killing Game. Even if this was seen by people from Jiang Hu and they informed Flashes of Sword, with his personality, he probably would have ignored it. Dogs could bite a man, but a man would not bite back, right? If every big character came out to explain whenever some fifty-cent army came to question him online, he would not have time to do anything other than explain himself all day and all night.

There were some players who were swayed by the atmosphere in the thread. They might not have even heard of Jiang Hu or Flashes of Sword before they read the thread, but seeing how deep the thread OP had gone, they decided to add to the chaos.

Of course, there were people with opposite opinion as well. They came up with many retorts.

"OP show us your real ID. Is being afraid of revenge a valid excuse?"

"One-sided rhetoric!"

"You sure there are no other settings to that scenario?"

Facing those replies, Zombie Blade naturally chose to ignore, argue, or go directly for ad hominem, calling them smurfs from Jiang Hu. Well, since they were a professional fifty-cent army, that was to be expected.

Scrolling down, after about thirty pages, the replies became nonsense. They turned into "Waiting for the truth", "Just passing by", "Ready with popcorn", and very little argument here and there.

This was the normal trend on the forums. At least fifty percent of people would only see the first page and would not look further unless the reply was a livestream or included pictures of beautiful girls. The other half would mostly look through the first few pages, and if there was no new update, they were too lazy to stay and read through the endless yet meaningless back and forth.

Less than ten percent of people would read through every reply and update the thread often. Some of them were really interested in the content and updates, some were only waiting for others to reply or quote their post, and some were there due to a strange reading habit.

Feng Bujue ate using his left hand. He was not left-handed and would not type with his left hand, but he could operate the chopsticks with his left hand. So, eating with his left hand and controlling the mouse with his right had become one of his mastered skills. It was because of this skill that when he finished the bowl of noodles, he also finished reading the thread.

"Hmm… I've finished the thread without even realizing it." Feng Bujue hated arguments; he found them pointless. There was truth and ideals in this world, but people were reluctant to admit defeat and that they were wrong, so they chose to muddy the water.

"I shouldn't have started reading it, ruined my mood." Feng Bujue picked up the bowl and used a paper napkin to wipe his computer table. Then he went to the kitchen to wash up.

He did not crawl back into gaming hub immediately. Since he had just finished dinner, he wanted to do some exercise, like… giving his pet a bath.

Therefore, he turned his dangerous gaze to Arthas. The latter was originally lying on the sofa lazily, but sensing the murderous aura directed at him, he jumped up immediately and lifted his head to meet Feng Bujue's gaze.

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