13: Dark Art under Real-Time Monitoring

Cheng Mo hung up the phone, but he didn't put down his mobile. He stared at the seventh player ID that had just popped up on the screen, like staring at a fuse that had finally been lit. Outside the window, the sky was a hazy gray; it was 4:17 AM, and the air carried the burnt smell of overheated wires mixed with the greasy scent of leftover instant noodle seasoning.

He was about to reach for the can of Red Bull at the corner of the desk when the monitor suddenly gave a "beep."

It wasn't a system notification sound, nor a login prompt. It was the first time the bad review monitoring script Chen Hao had written had actively made a sound—a pure red window popped up in the bottom right corner with white text, containing only four words: **Anomaly Detected**.

Immediately after, the main screen switched to a playback video. The timestamp showed it was from three hours ago; the user "Lone Wolf" had completed three consecutive no-damage jumps on the fourth platform. 0.3 seconds before every jump, the mouse trajectory would subtly shift, perfectly avoiding the platform's generated blind spots. Even more absurdly, his viewing angle always remained within an extremely narrow range, as if... he knew in advance which direction the light would reflect from.

“This guy is using reflection prediction,” Chen Hao's voice came from behind. He hadn't fully entered the room yet, carrying two crates of Red Bull and a spare host machine. “I ran an environment simulation. His screen is made of a curved, high-reflectivity material, and the lamp position in his room is fixed. The changes in pixel brightness at the edge of the leap platform can form readable patterns on his screen.”

Cheng Mo didn't look back; his fingers were already clicking on the video's frame rate analysis. “So it's not that his reactions are fast, but that he's looking at the 'answers'?”

“Exactly. Our physics engine's lighting model is too stable, and the reflection coefficient is constant. It's equivalent to giving him a perspective map at the start of every round.” Chen Hao stuffed the Red Bull into the gap under the desk and pushed up his glasses. “He’s been stuck on this level eight times, and the angles he adjusts to after each failure are almost identical, which means he’s conducting experiments.”

Cheng Mo gave a cold laugh. “Quite scientific of him.”

“Should we ban the account?” Chen Hao asked.

“No.” Cheng Mo shook his head. “Banning is admitting defeat. We want to make him feel that—this game simply cannot be calculated.”

He sat up straight, opened the physics engine configuration file, and found the optical parameter module of the rendering layer. He deleted the line of code that originally read "reflection coefficient = 0.68" and replaced it with a string of dynamic functions: using the system time's millisecond value as a seed, overlaying noise perturbations, and automatically fine-tuning the reflection angle during each frame refresh, controlling the fluctuation range within ±3%.

“He can still guess like this?” Chen Hao leaned in to look.

“He can't.” Cheng Mo hit Enter. “The human eye can't distinguish light and shadow jitters within 0.05 seconds. A machine can, but he's using ordinary equipment. Now, forget prediction—even stable reproduction will be difficult.”

Chen Hao silently took out his phone, noted down the new parameter ID, and added a comment to the code: “To Lone Wolf: Welcome to the world of chaos.”

They waited for six hours.

At 10:09 AM, the bad review monitoring system alarmed again. This time it wasn't a flashing red light, but an automatic capture of a forum post screenshot.

The title was: “Does ‘leap platform nightmare’ have a brain-computer interface installed?”

The poster was none other than “Lone Wolf.”

The content read: “Last night I ran the same routine twelve times. The first three were successful, but everything collapsed after that. Starting from the fourth time, the reflections on the edge of the leap platform started flickering like crazy; there was no pattern at all. This isn't random—this is targeted! Did the developers hack my camera? Or can this game really read minds?”

The replies below were already exploding.

“You're not the only one. I noticed it too—it learns from you!”

“LMAO, he's totally tilted.”

“I suggest calling the police; this involves suspected mental monitoring.”

“To the guy above, I suggest you go swap to a matte screen first.”

Chen Hao laughed out loud while scrolling. He took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on. “Cognitive subversion successful,” he whispered, clicking 'favorite' and dragging the screenshot into the “Anti-cheat Results” folder.

Cheng Mo didn't laugh. He stared at the text for a long time, then suddenly stood up, walked to the wall, and wrote a line on the whiteboard with a piece of chalk:

“The true challenge begins from the unpredictable.”

After writing, he took a step back and looked at the crooked words, nodding as if confirming something.

Then he turned back to the computer, opened the version management log, and added an update note to the latest submission: “v0.1.3a - Fixed reflection prediction exploit in specific environments; optimized rendering compatibility for low-end devices.”

He pressed confirm.

The backend data showed that seven players were still online. Six of them were progressing normally, but the seventh—the “Lone Wolf”—had died fourteen times in a loop on the fifth level, with his average survival time dropping from the original three and a half minutes to fifty-seven seconds.

Cheng Mo took a sip of Red Bull. He had popped the tab using a game controller, the movement as practiced as breathing.

Chen Hao sat at the secondary workstation, his glasses reflecting the blue light of the forum page, his fingers lightly tapping a rhythm on the keyboard as if testing the trigger interval of some hidden Easter egg.

The studio fell silent, with only the continuous hum of the server fans, which were a bit louder than yesterday—perhaps the load had increased. The old wall clock was still stopped, the minute hand stuck between seven and eight, but the electronic clock on the desk showed that the time was now 11:23 AM.

Cheng Mo suddenly spoke: “Do you think he'll come back with new equipment?”

“He will,” Chen Hao said without looking up. “High refresh rate screen, matte film, a pitch-black room, and manual viewing angle calibration. He'll become more cautious, maybe even record the screen for frame-by-frame analysis.”

“Then we'll just add another layer,” Cheng Mo said. “Next time, we won't just change the reflections; we'll even disrupt the platform's generation rhythm. Use the player's heartbeat frequency as an interference source—oh wait, I haven't built that feature yet.”

“You can simulate it with mouse movement speed first,” Chen Hao suggested. “People have operational inertia anyway; the more nervous they are, the more they repeat themselves.”

Cheng Mo thought about it and added an item to his to-do list: “behavioral fingerprinting prototype—based on operation latency fluctuation modeling.”

He leaned back in his chair, his right hand habitually touching the silver stud in his right ear. The cold metal against his skin reminded him of what his father had said: “A single one is eye-catching, but a pair goes unnoticed.”

Now he understood as well—once a rule is perceived as something that can be mastered, it is no longer a rule.

Only when people cannot see your hand does pain have dignity.

He looked down at the keyboard, the sensation of typing the code still lingering on his fingertips. On the screen, the code editor rested on the last line:

`if (user_input_pattern == "predictive_stable") { apply_chaos_reflection; }`

He pressed save.

He didn't write a comment.

Some things don't need to be said too clearly.

Chen Hao gave a light cough. “Do you want to sleep for a bit? Your dark circles are deeper than yesterday.”

“I'm not sleepy,” Cheng Mo shook his head. “I'm waiting for him to come back one more time.”

“Who?”

“Lone Wolf.”

“He might not come back again.”

“He will.” Cheng Mo stared at the screen. “That kind of person won't admit defeat. He'll feel like he just encountered a 'special case,' and as long as his method is precise enough, he can always win.”

Chen Hao smiled. “So, are you going to let him win?”

“No,” Cheng Mo said. “I'm going to make him feel like—he almost won.”

The two were silent for a few seconds.

Then Chen Hao suddenly stood up, plugged a sixth backup phone into the power supply, set it to automatically record the game screen, and named it “Counter-verification_Channel 6.”

Cheng Mo opened his recording software and created a new audio track titled “Environmental noise sampling 0.5s before player crash.” Although he hadn't started recording yet, he already knew where the first set of test data would come from.

Outside, the sunlight shone in at an angle, falling on the floor cluttered with cables and forming a line between light and shadow. A cockroach crawled across the back of a monitor, was flipped over by the hot air from the cooling vents, struggled for a few moments, and then crawled away again.

Cheng Mo checked the time.

11:46 AM.

His left hand rested above the keyboard, while his right hand rubbed his earring, his eyes never leaving the screen. The new version had been deployed, waiting for the next challenger to crash into it.

He knew that this war had only just begun.

And they had just fired the first shot.