22: The Crown of Thorns of the Pain Transmitter

At 12:17 AM, Cheng Mo was still sitting at the main control console. The cold glow of the screen reflected on his face like a thin layer of frost. Outside the window, it was pitch black; not even the streetlights were on. The entire old factory building was like an iron box forgotten by the world, with only the low-frequency hum of the computer case fans pulsing rhythmically like breathing.

His right hand rested on the edge of the keyboard, while his left hand unconsciously rubbed the silver stud in his right ear—a family heirloom, supposedly bought by his grandfather with savings from his time as a technician in an electronics factory. Now, it was polished to a shine, its edges rounded. His fingertip made a slight rustling sound as it brushed against the metal surface.

The monitor was looping the 17th failed recording of Player T37. The character was stuck on the edge of a platform; three consecutive jumps had missed the mark by less than two degrees, each time falling short of landing by a mere centimeter. The player's mouse-click frequency had surged from 120 to 187 clicks per minute; their hand speed was out of control, yet they were still gritting their teeth and holding on.

"Just one more," Cheng Mo whispered, not to anyone in particular, but to himself. "One more time and you'll break."

As soon as he finished speaking, the keyboard suddenly vibrated slightly—not the rebound of a mechanical switch, but more like a pulse coming from within. Immediately after, a black-bordered window popped up in the center of the screen. The font was crimson, appearing instantly without any animation:

[Achievement Unlocked: Pain Transmitter Lv.1]

[Function Unlocked: Player Breakdown Instant Replay (Traceable to all extreme emotional segments from the past 24 hours)]

[Note: You have successfully caused at least 11 players to experience Cognitive Dissonance in a single game session]

Cheng Mo lunged forward, his eyes fixed on that line of text. His breath hitched for two seconds before he leaned back into his chair, his lips curling into a laugh.

"It's here... it's finally here."

He didn't move the mouse or touch the keyboard, just stared at the prompt as if confirming it wasn't a hallucination. Three seconds later, he extended his index finger, slid it across the touchpad, took a screenshot of the system notification, and saved it with the filename: "Certification_001".

Only then did he click the entry for the new function.

The interface refreshed, revealing a video library with a timeline titled "High-Intensity Emotional Event Logs." The first entry was marked in red, labeled "Peak Outburst," with a timestamp of 9:43 PM tonight and a duration of 6.7 seconds.

Cheng Mo clicked in.

In the footage was a young man wearing glasses, sitting upright. On his desk were dual monitors and a mechanical keyboard. The camera angle was high, clearly showing the fine beads of sweat on his forehead. The game reached its 19th failure; the character slipped off the edge of the platform again, its trajectory in the air a perfect replica of the previous eighteen times.

The man didn't say a word. He suddenly stood up, grabbed his mouse with his right hand, and slammed it violently against the wall. The plastic casing cracked, and the scroll wheel flew far away, rolling silently across the carpet. In the next frame, he slammed both hands onto the desk, veins bulging in his neck, his mouth twisting into a silent roar.

Cheng Mo dragged this video into loop mode and played it three times in a row.

The first time, he watched the rhythm of the movements—the timing of the mouse-smashing was precisely within 0.8 seconds after the failure was determined, a classic delayed-outburst type. The second time, he focused on the facial muscles—the left eyebrow twitched continuously, and the lower lip was bitten until it bled without the player noticing. The third time, he focused on the environmental feedback—the water in the cup on the corner of the desk spilled due to the vibration of the desk being slammed, the frequency of the liquid's ripples synchronized with the player's heartbeat.

He pulled a mechanical pencil from the side pocket of his backpack; the lead had long since snapped, leaving only the metal tip. He used it to scribble a line on a sticky note: "Behavioral sample qualified, impact rating B+."

Then he dragged the progress bar and paused it on the frame where the mouse was mid-air.

The light and shadow happened to hit from diagonally above. The shadow of the flying mouse was elongated and distorted; the front connector looked like the spikes of a crown, while the back half of the data cable coiled like thorny vines. The entire silhouette appeared on the white wall like the shadow of some coronation ceremony.

Cheng Mo stared at it for over ten seconds, then suddenly took a screenshot and saved the file, naming it: "medal_001".

He whispered, "This is our medal."

His tone was as flat as a weather report, but the end of his voice trembled slightly.

He pulled up a second replay. This time it was a girl with a ponytail; her headset bore the logo of a streaming platform, and the screen was flooded with comments like "Give me my money back." After failing twelve times in a row, she took off her headset, took a deep breath, and put it back on, only to fall again on the thirteenth attempt. Instantly, she threw the headset to the floor, stomped on it twice, grabbed her phone, and shouted at the camera: "Has any of you played such a subhuman design?! I suspect the developer has psychological issues!"

The comments immediately exploded: "+1," "It's not that you're bad, the game is just hellish," "I suggest calling the police."

Cheng Mo laughed as he watched: "Call the police? Sure, come find my address. I'll even post the house number on the Steam page."

He saved this segment too, naming it: "Medal_002".

The third segment came from a corner of an internet cafe. The lighting was dim, and the player wore a hoodie with the hood pulled low. Upon the eleventh failure, he suddenly reached out and turned off his streaming software, then sat there silently, motionless for four minutes. At the end of the fourth minute, he slowly raised his head, his eyes hollow, muttering something.

Cheng Mo pulled up an audio-to-text plugin. The result showed: "...It's not that I can't do it, it's that it won't let me win."

"Ha," Cheng Mo chuckled. "That's it."

He took that sentence alone, made it into an image with the game's main interface as the background and the text centered and bolded, preparing to use it as promotional material tomorrow.

He scrolled through them one by one, unlocking a total of seventeen breakdown videos. He tagged each one:

- "Physical Venting Type"

- "Verbal Attack Type"

- "Silent Collapse Type"

- "Equipment Blaming Type"

- "Social Help-Seeking Type"

The last one was a man who looked like a programmer, recording his screen and analyzing the code logic while playing, trying to find a loophole in the jump detection. When he discovered the system had no public API documentation at all, he froze. Five seconds later, he burst into wild laughter, saying as he laughed: "You win. You're not a fucking game; you're a trap."

Cheng Mo pinned this to the top of his favorites, noting: "Ideal User Persona."

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his dry eyes. They were bloodshot, but his pupils were frighteningly bright. Having not slept for over thirty hours, his body should have given up long ago, but now he was as awake as if he'd just downed three cans of Red Bull.

He opened the system backend to check the achievement details. Besides the known information, a new line of small text appeared:

[Subsequent levels will unlock group emotional resonance analysis, cross-platform flame war tracking, reverse rating conversion acceleration, and other functions]

But he didn't click to look closer.

He didn't need more functions right now; he just needed to confirm one thing—he was on the right path.

Back when he was eating rice balls in a convenience store, no one believed someone could make money by "being cursed at." When Chen Hao said the "comfort zone modules can't be deleted," he had just smiled and wiped the code clean. Lin Wanqing wrote a report suggesting a psychological buffer mechanism? He knew she meant well, but gentleness couldn't save the numb.

This world was too comfortable.

Swipe a short video and you get a second of pleasure; order takeout and you can live while lying down. Even games are coaxing you, saying "don't lose heart, try again." And the result? People are getting softer, their bones more brittle, screaming "unfair" at the slightest difficulty.

That's why he made leap platform nightmare.

It doesn't teach people how to pass easily, it gives no consolation prizes, and it offers no false hope. He just wanted to see if, when a person is pushed to the limit—fingers trembling, heart rate hitting 180, mind a total blank—they would still press that final jump key.

And now, the system told him: 11 people, at that very moment, experienced a crack in their psyche.

It wasn't depression, it wasn't giving up; it was Cognitive Dissonance—they clearly knew they might not win, yet they still refused to close the game.

This state of contradiction was the precursor to awakening.

Cheng Mo picked up the broken pencil and wrote a new line on the sticky note:

**Live Stream Premiere Tomorrow**

Below it, he drew an arrow followed by three tasks:

1. Edit the "Medal" series short clips (under 30 seconds, captioned "You're only one jump away from a breakdown")

2. Open an official streaming account (Name TBD: "Pain Signal Station" or "Torture Device Stream Room")

3. Set premiere challenge rules (One-hour limit; winners get a custom controller, losers must flood the chat with "I hate you" to complete the task)

He stuck the paper onto the monitor frame, perfectly covering the camera hole.

Then he closed all other programs, leaving only the "Player Breakdown Instant Replay" window minimized in the bottom right corner of the screen like a lurking heart.

He didn't move, remaining seated at the main console. His hoodie's hood was halfway off, his hair was a mess, he hadn't shaved in three days, and the dark circles under his eyes were so deep it looked like he'd been punched twice.

But his eyes were open, staring at that minimized icon as if he could see through it to the storm about to break tomorrow.

With a light tap on the touchpad, he woke the window and took one more look at the "medal_001" screenshot.

The mouse was mid-air, the light and shadow like a crown.

He whispered, "Welcome to hell."

Having said that, he stopped operating the computer and didn't get up. He just sat there, waiting for dawn.