28: The collective madness of the 17th level of the maze

Cheng Mo's fingers lifted from the mouse, then gently settled back down. The cold light from the main console screen reflected off the silver stud in his right ear, flashing like an untriggered achievement icon. After Li Wei left, the room was filled only with the low-frequency hum of the server fans and the occasional clack of a keyboard—Chen Hao was still writing his code comments and hadn't spoken again. The metallic scent of mixed Red Bull concentrate and electrolyte powder lingered in the air, but no one was paying attention to it anymore.

He pulled up the user behavior heatmap with crisp movements. The projection of the financial statements had long been closed, replaced by a real-time global player movement tracking interface. Fifty thousand red dots were densely packed in the same area: right before the exit of the third fork on the 17th Floor Labyrinth, in the "Blind Zone Corridor"—a stretch where the audio system deliberately dropped for three seconds and the visual channel provided only faint flickers.

"It's not a cheat," Cheng Mo whispered, more like he was confirming it for the system's sake. "And it's not a network lag cluster either."

The data stream showed that these players had an average stay of four hours and seventeen minutes, with an average of 9.3 attempts. The highest record for consecutive failures by a single person was thirteen. A bullet chat frequency analysis automatically generated a summary; the top entry was: "This isn't a labyrinth, it's a mental hospital!" followed by "I almost crushed my phone" and "My mom thought I was having a seizure."

He enlarged a forum mirror window, where a post titled "Cheng Mo is Satan" was climbing at a rate of two thousand likes per minute. The poster's ID was "Sober Pill," and the content was three thousand words long—logically chaotic but emotionally charged. The core argument was: no normal human could design a structure that so precisely strikes at psychological defenses; only someone who truly understands pain could do it, and such a person shouldn't be allowed to live.

Cheng Mo stared at those words for two seconds, and the corner of his mouth suddenly twitched upward.

"They finally understand."

He switched back to the backend management interface and typed "Layer_17_Map03" into the search box. The system popped up the original map file, labeled with "Asymmetric Topology | Dynamic Shadow Interference | heartbeat Sync Track." These were parameters he had tuned personally, intended to make players suddenly lose their frame of reference after a period of extreme focus, creating the illusion of "I'm almost out," only to lead them straight into an infinite loop.

Now, fifty thousand people were stuck here simultaneously, as if under collective hypnosis.

He didn't modify the mechanics, nor did he push any hints. Instead, he checked "Permanent Lock" on the permissions panel and entered the name below: [Eternal Proving Ground]. When the confirmation key was pressed, the system automatically sent a floating window announcement to all players still active on that floor. The text was concise and brutal: "You have entered an irreversible challenge zone. Exiting will be considered a failure."

An achievement editor popped up on the secondary screen simultaneously. He created a new entry, chose the "burning crown" icon, and typed in the description: "You didn't escape the labyrinth; you became a part of it." For the title name, he entered: Hell Messenger. He set the uniqueness rule to "Only one born per ten thousand challengers," then saved and published it.

Almost in the same second, the forum exploded.

New post titles began to mutate: "I became a Hell Messenger?" "Just cleared it and got the title, now what?" "Asking if the burning crown actually glows." Someone posted a screenshot showing a translucent flaming headpiece hovering over their character's head, which disappeared after three minutes, though the title was permanently marked on their profile page.

Cheng Mo leaned back in his chair, hands crossed behind his head, watching the global online player curve trend slightly upward. He knew these people wouldn't quit now. The harder they cursed, the less they wanted to admit defeat; the more they lost, the more they wanted to prove that this wasn't just some level an ordinary person could clear—and they were determined to clear it.

At 11:23 AM the next morning, a video quietly surged to the top of the global trending lists.

The title was "I'm Finally F***ing Out," uploaded by the ID "Noob Dog Never Gives Up." The description read: "Came back from buying breakfast for my wife and kid and started playing. Didn't drink water for seven hours, even pissed myself in the chair... but I won."

The video quality was blurry, clearly filmed with an old phone stand. The player's movements were sluggish, the camera shook violently, and several times he clearly reached the exit but turned back due to audio misdirection. The entire video was accompanied by roars, curses, heavy breathing, and even two instances where he seemingly cramped up and dropped the controller. During the final sprint, he pressed the confirmation button with his eyes almost closed.

The video ended on the clear animation: the character stood at the top of the labyrinth as a flaming crown slowly descended, and the system prompt sounded coldly: "Title Granted: Hell Messenger."

Cheng Mo pulled up the original upload records and found that the user wasn't a professional streamer or a regular on the test servers. He was just an ordinary office worker who had registered three months ago and whose highest cleared floor previously was only Layer 9. His device model was outdated, and his network latency was as high as 140ms—a typical member of the "grinder" faction.

But he won.

And he was the first to break through while fifty thousand people worldwide were still trapped.

Traffic monitoring showed the video surpassed 100 million views within twelve hours, with over seven million shares. The comment section was filled with a uniform wave of "We are all Hell Messengers," "True challengers never descend to the mortal realm," and "Cheng Mo owes you a trophy."

Cheng Mo opened the studio's official Twitter account, retweeted the video, and added a single line of text: "True Hell Messengers never descend to the mortal realm." Then, he quietly added the user to a whitelist, allowing him to trigger a hidden dialogue in future versions: "The Administrator remembers you."

The main screen had now switched to a real-time global bullet chat projection mode. Messages from Japan, Germany, Brazil, and South Africa scrolled by in a mix of languages, but the keywords were highly unified: Hell Messenger, Eternal Proving Ground, Layer 17, burning crown.

A Russian player had even photoshopped the title into a "warrior nation" style and posted it on VK, claiming he had defeated the "Curse of the Eastern Demon's Labyrinth."

Cheng Mo didn't laugh, nor did he move. He just stared at the constantly refreshing numbers—the peak global online count had broken records again, 34% higher than the same period yesterday. And at the entrance of the [Eternal Proving Ground], new red dots continued to pour in like an altar that could never be filled.

His right hand rested on the mouse, while his left hand unconsciously rubbed the frayed edge of his hoodie string. The blue light from the monitor reflected on his face, making his dark circles appear deeper, but his eyes were clear, like a machine that had just finished calibration.

Chen Hao was still sitting at the workstation to his right, his fingers tapping on the keyboard in a steady rhythm. There was no conversation between the two, nor was there any need for it. The entire space was so quiet that only the hum of the server fans could be heard, along with the occasional snippet of an overseas livestream leaking from a pair of headphones.

Suddenly, a private message popped up.

The sender was "Noob Dog Never Gives Up," and the content was just one sentence: "My wife says I'm crazy, but my son pointed at the TV and shouted that Daddy is a hero."

Cheng Mo finished reading it but didn't reply. He simply took a screenshot of the message and saved it into a folder named "Human Samples," numbered 28-01.

Next, he pulled up the crash time statistics chart again. The failure curves of the fifty thousand players were still as dense as a supernova, but at the very top, a tiny protrusion appeared—that was the breakthrough node of the first person to clear it, like a needle piercing through dark clouds.

He zoomed in on that point, paused for three seconds, and then added a note below the chart: "The meaning of the 17th floor lies not in leaving, but in staying."

By now, the total number of attempts by global players had exceeded eight million, with an average of 19.2 retries per person. The total number of related forum posts reached 102,000, with 70% of them having undergone a semantic shift from "this game is anti-human" to "you haven't truly played if you haven't gotten the title."

Cheng Mo finally smiled. It was brief, with an almost imperceptible curve.

His right index finger lightly tapped the enter key, refreshing the global data stream.

The bullet chat continued to scroll as a new batch of players flooded into the [Eternal Proving Ground]. As their characters stepped into the third fork, the lights dimmed, the heartbeat track started, and a three-second countdown began.

Cheng Mo stared at the screen, his body motionless and his gaze unwavering.

His fingertip hovered over the confirmation key, ready to respond to the next wave of system dynamics at any moment.