3: Server in the basement

The phone screen was still glowing, the word "Enter" stuck in the dialogue box. Cheng Mo didn't look at it again, swiping his finger to lock the screen. He stuffed the phone back into his pocket and reached out to push open the iron door.

The door hinges emitted a dry, grating sound, as if they hadn't been moved in years. A wave of stuffy heat, mixed with the smell of metal and dust, rushed toward him. He stood at the entrance, his feet on the damp concrete floor, and looked up to see light at the end—weak, leaking from a half-open door crack.

A few circuit boards were scattered on the ground, their corners blackened and solder joints heavily oxidized. Five or six cardboard boxes were stacked in the corner, printed with "Server Parts," the writing already faded. He took a step forward, his footsteps half-absorbed by the space, leaving only a faint echo crawling along the base of the walls.

He bent down to pick up a circuit board, his fingertip rubbing the interface. This model had long been out of production; it was hard to find even second-hand on the market. He said in a low voice, "Where did you scavenge this from?"

No one answered.

He continued walking inside, bypassing a pile of discarded cables. Ahead was a low platform with a server rack standing on it, its outer shell peeling paint and cooling vents clogged with dust. He raised his hand to wipe it with his sleeve, revealing a line of small characters: **Retired from the Space Agency, 2008**.

He froze for a moment, then rubbed his eyes to confirm he hadn't misread it.

"Scrapped doesn't mean useless." A voice came from above.

He looked up. Chen Hao was on a ladder, his back to him, tightening a screw. The ladder leaned against the side of the server rack, the metal frame letting out a slight creak. He wore a shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and an old-fashioned digital watch on his wrist.

"Just like you and me." After Chen Hao finished speaking, he tightened the last screw and jumped down, landing steadily.

Cheng Mo didn't respond. He walked around the server rack, his finger trailing over the cooling vents. The fans were running, the vibration traveling up through his fingertips. The sound wasn't loud, but it was constant, like something slowly waking up.

"This thing can handle a private server for World of Warcraft," Chen Hao patted the rack, "it's just that the noise is like a tractor."

"You really plan to do it here?" Cheng Mo asked.

"Where else?" Chen Hao pulled a key from his pocket, inserted it into the small lock on the side of the rack, and opened it with a click. Inside was a dense array of circuit boards, with several hard drive indicator lights flashing—alternating green, yellow, and red.

Cheng Mo stared for a few seconds. "Where's the power coming from?"

"Solar panels on the roof, plus two sets of old batteries." Chen Hao pointed to a corner of the ceiling. "The mains power has been cut for three years; we don't need to pay electricity bills."

"What about the internet?"

"Redundant fiber optics from the university lab next door. I snipped a line." He smiled. "They can't trace it."

Cheng Mo didn't smile. He squatted down to check the interfaces at the bottom of the rack. RJ45, HDMI, serial ports, and a few old-fashioned DB9s. He reached out to touch them; the interfaces were clean, with no signs of oxidation.

"You repaired these?"

"I didn't repair them; I picked them." Chen Hao handed him a pair of gloves. "Every single board is functional. The broken ones were tossed long ago."

Cheng Mo took the gloves but didn't put them on. He stood up and walked to another piece of equipment. It was a monitor, a 17-inch CRT; the screen had cracks, but it was powered on, displaying a command-line interface with logs scrolling continuously.

"What are you running?"

"A stress test." Chen Hao walked over and typed a few commands. "Seeing how much longer this pile of junk can hold out."

An error code popped up on the screen. Cheng Mo squinted for two seconds. "Memory parity failure?"

"There's an issue with the third RAM stick." Chen Hao nodded. "But it can still manage for now."

Cheng Mo turned to look at him. "You're planning to make a game with this?"

"Not planning." Chen Hao took off his glasses and wiped them with the corner of his shirt. "I've already started."

He opened a folder and projected it onto the wall. The image flickered, and a video appeared: pixel blocks jumping in the air, shattering into particles upon landing. The character controlled by the player had no health bar, only a heartbeat frequency curve that fluctuated with the operations.

"This is..."

"The leap platform nightmare prototype," Chen Hao said. "That jump model you made—I turned it into the core mechanism last night."

Cheng Mo didn't move. He looked at the image on the wall, his finger unconsciously touching the stud in his right ear. The cold metal pressed against his skin, while the wind from the fan carried a heat that made the stud feel slightly warm.

"How did you get it?" he asked.

"While you were eating your rice ball, I went through your inner pocket." Chen Hao's tone was calm. "The sketches—I scanned them and saved three backups."

Cheng Mo snapped his gaze toward him.

"Don't glare at me." Chen Hao put his glasses back on. "If you really didn't want anyone touching it, you wouldn't have kept it pinned against your chest."

Cheng Mo didn't speak. He turned and walked to the server rack, pressing his hand against the side. The vibration was obvious, the fan speed unstable, with occasional rising hums. He looked down at his hand; his knuckles were white.

"The 'rebellion' you talked about—it's relying on this tractor?"

"The first shot has to be a loud one." Chen Hao took a wrench from his tool bag and handed it over. "You're the lead designer. Get to work and debug it."

Cheng Mo didn't take it.

He stared at the rack for a while, then suddenly bent down and pulled open the bottom drawer. Inside was a row of keyboards and mice, all old models with PS/2 interfaces and heavily worn keycaps. He picked one up at random and tapped the spacebar.

Click.

The sound was crisp.

He plugged in the keyboard and connected it to the master controller. The screen refreshed, and a login interface popped up. The username was 'admin', and the password was blank.

He entered a password.

Incorrect.

He tried a second time.

Still incorrect.

Chen Hao watched from the side without saying a word.

The third time, he typed a string of characters. It was the default key for their project back in university: CMCH2016.

Enter.

Login successful.

The desktop appeared, the wallpaper an old photo: two young men standing at the entrance of the school computer lab, one holding up a certificate, the other flipping the bird. In the bottom right corner of the photo, it said: **Chaos Makers, Never Compromise**.

Cheng Mo's hand paused over the keyboard.

"You've kept this system all this time?"

"No upgrades, no reinstalls," Chen Hao said. "Waiting for you to come back."

Cheng Mo didn't respond. He double-clicked an icon named "Engine Test v0.1." The program launched, the screen transitioned, and a white cube appeared, suspended in a black space. He pressed the W key, and the cube moved forward, leaving an afterimage in its trail.

He tried the jump command.

The cube jumped. The descent speed was off, too slow, and it bounced slightly upon landing.

"There's a problem with the physics engine," he said.

"Those are the parameters from your sketches; I imported them directly." Chen Hao stood behind him. "But the calculation precision isn't enough. This machine's floating-point performance is only one-seventh of a modern graphics card."

"Then lower the precision requirements." Cheng Mo typed commands rapidly. "Use integers to simulate floating points. Sacrifice a bit of realism for stability."

He deleted three lines of code and rewrote two logic segments. The screen flickered as it ran again.

The cube jumped, fell, and vanished the moment it hit the ground, turning into a burst of particle explosions.

"Overdid it again." He frowned.

"You're changing it too fast; the cache hasn't cleared." Chen Hao reached out and pressed Ctrl+Alt+Delete on the keyboard.

After the reboot, the program loaded slowly. The hard drive made a clicking sound, as if it were struggling to read. After waiting twenty seconds, the desktop reappeared.

"This crappy drive is about to die," Cheng Mo said.

"That's why we have to be fast." Chen Hao looked at him. "You're in charge of design; I'm in charge of making it run. Leave the rest to time."

Cheng Mo didn't speak. He opened another folder containing dozens of orderly named documents: "Level Structure Draft," "Initial Punishment Mechanism Design," "User Crash Prediction Model."

He clicked on the last one.

The table listed player psychological reaction data corresponding to different operations, precise to the second. The third column read "Expected Negative Review Rate," with values soaring from 37% all the way to 89%.

"Why did you calculate this?"

"The harder it is, the more they'll curse," Chen Hao said. "The more they curse, the more aggressive the system recommendations will be."

"Who told you that rule?"

"No one." Chen Hao pushed up his glasses. "I guessed."

Cheng Mo stared at him for two seconds, then suddenly laughed. The laughter wasn't loud, but it was exceptionally clear amidst the roaring sound of the fans.

"You're crazy."

"So are you," Chen Hao said. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have come."

Cheng Mo didn't argue. He sat back down in the chair, hands on the keyboard. The screen was still open to the engine test interface. He created a new project file and entered the name: **Project Pain v1.0**.

The save path was D:\Studio\Launch.

He pressed Enter.

File created successfully.

He stood up, walked to the server rack, and reached for the main power switch. It was a black button with a sticky note next to it that said: **Think clearly before pressing**.

He looked at it for three seconds, then pressed it.

A stronger hum sounded from within the rack. All the hard drive lights lit up simultaneously, the fan speed ramped up, and the air in the entire basement seemed to vibrate.

Chen Hao walked over and stood beside him.

"Start hiring tomorrow?"

"Let's make a playable version first," Cheng Mo said. "If it's bad enough, it'll be popular enough."

"Need a playtester?"

"You're up first." Cheng Mo looked at him. "If you can't pass it, then get lost."

Chen Hao didn't move. He took six phones out of his backpack, turned them on one by one, and connected them all to the local network.

"I'm already prepared."