30: Lin Wanqing's psychological battle

Cheng Mo's right hand was still spinning a pen, his knuckles turning white, the pen barrel creating afterimages at his fingertips. The cheap plastic pen was already warped, its tip worn down to half, emitting a faint metallic friction sound as if it might snap at any moment. He stared at the screen, his pupils reflecting a dense heatmap of player behavior, the colors grading from blue to red like a scorched desert.

It was seven forty-five. The sweet scent of champagne hadn't fully dissipated, mixing with the stale odors of electrical rubber and old carpet, floating in the air like an invisible film of oil.

The door didn't make a sound when it was pushed open—Lin Wanqing remembered she had fixed the hinges yesterday afternoon. She was wearing a light gray hooded sweatshirt, a section of her wristband wrapped with purple hair strands visible at the cuff, her mechanical watch face glinting with cold silver in the dim light. She didn't speak, walking to the side of the workstation and gently placing a paper report on the corner of the desk, pinning down the 'Level 17 Labyrinth Clear Rate Simulation Table' that Cheng Mo had just printed.

The sound of the paper sliding wasn't loud, but it was enough to break the rhythm.

"Snap."

The pen tip finally broke, the flying fragments falling into the gaps of the keyboard to keep the cork from the previous chapter company.

Cheng Mo didn't look at her, only glancing down at the report cover: 'leap platform nightmare First Stage Psychological Feedback Report - Internal Version', signed by 'chief experience officer, Lin Wanqing'.

He pulled out a red pen and flipped directly to the third page, finding a passage in bold: '**Players will develop a Pleasure Dependence at the moment of collapse, manifested as a 387% increase in the immediate retry rate after failure, accompanied by release behaviors such as autonomous laughter, table-slapping, and swearing.**'

The red pen circled the words 'Pleasure Dependence' and drew a line to the side, adding a notation: '→ So we need to control the Pain Threshold as precisely as mixing a cocktail.'

Lin Wanqing stood in place, biting the lemon-flavored lollipop in her mouth, the stick clicking lightly between her teeth. "You're doing it again," she said.

"Hmm?"

"Treating people like data streams again." She took half a step forward, her gaze falling on the dark circles under his eyes. "Do you know how long it took me to write that conclusion? Three whole days, watching two thousand three hundred recordings of collapses, and recording four hundred seventy-six emotional transition nodes. It wasn't for you to use as a recipe list."

Cheng Mo looked up, the silver stud in his right ear flashing under the screen's reflection. "But it is data," he said calmly. "Pleasure Dependence equals a Positive Incentive Loop, the collapse point equals the peak of negative feedback; we just need to hit that threshold perfectly to make players curse at the screen while clicking 'Try Again'."

"This isn't a game mechanics issue." Her voice wasn't loud, but every word was clear. "This is an Addiction Model. You are designing a pain machine to get people hooked."

"All good games are." He shrugged, his fingers already typing new commands into the keyboard. "Adjusting the judgment delay for the third jump in Level 17, adding 0.3 seconds of anticipatory pressure to keep players oscillating between 'near-success' and 'total failure' for a few more rounds—isn't that exactly the 'collapse pleasure' you mentioned?"

Lin Wanqing didn't respond. She watched as he picked up a new pen, pressed his thumb against the barrel, and began to spin it. The movement was as practiced as breathing.

She stared at that hand for a full twenty seconds.

Then she suddenly spoke: "This kind of repetitive compulsive behavior has an occurrence rate as high as 83% in the severe anxiety cases I've treated."

Cheng Mo's fingers jerked, and the pen stopped mid-air.

"Are you saying I'm sick?" He chuckled, trying to lighten the atmosphere. "Then I suggest adding an achievement called 'Mentally Unstable Developer', unlocked by breaking five pens in a row."

"I'm not joking." She took a step forward, reaching out her right hand to gently press down on his spinning right wrist.

The pressure wasn't great, but it was enough to stop him from moving.

The pen barrel stood still at his fingertips, as if frozen.

"Your own psychological assessment is also in the danger zone," she said.

Cheng Mo's smile stiffened for a tenth of a second before returning, but his gaze had changed. He didn't pull his hand away or look up, his eyes still fixed on the screen, but his pupils were out of focus, clearly not looking at the data.

"Did you check my file?" he asked, his tone still flat.

"I didn't need to." Her voice lowered slightly. "Your current state is identical to those internet-addicted teenagers I've treated—disrupted sleep, irregular diet, social detachment, and an abnormal obsession with negative feedback. The only difference is that they are addicted to games, while you are creating them."

"So?" He finally looked up, meeting her gaze. "You think I should stop updating? Switch to making some healing, 'soft and fluffy' game? Let players listen to piano music while feeding electronic hamsters?"

"I think you should rest for a day," she said. "Even if it's just getting a full six hours of sleep."

"What's six hours enough for?" He curled his lip. "Steel Coin smashed his second camera during a stream last night, which means there's still room for optimization in Level 15; the Steam nomination results will be announced on the eighth of next month, and for every node we optimize now, three thousand fewer people worldwide will curse, 'Who the hell made this crappy game?'; Wang Zhen's side is definitely preparing for a new round of public relations warfare—and you're telling me I should sleep?"

"Then tell me," she didn't let go, instead increasing the pressure slightly, "when was the last time you maintained clarity without relying on pen-spinning, coffee, or watching others collapse?"

Cheng Mo didn't answer.

A brief silence fell between them. There was only the low hum of the server fans and the distant sound of a soy milk machine from the breakfast stall on the street corner.

Lin Wanqing's gaze fell on the collar of his hoodie—there was a coffee stain that wouldn't wash out, shaped like a patch of ulcerated skin. She suddenly remembered the words her father said while holding her hand on his deathbed: "Don't let humanity degenerate in a land of gentle dreams."

But the problem now was that someone was using pain to push themselves to the edge of evolution.

"I'm not opposing your philosophy," she said, changing her approach. "Extreme experiences can indeed break psychological comfort zones. But the premise is that the executor cannot break first."

"I haven't broken," he said, his tone a bit stiff.

"The dark circles under your eyes are two millimeters deeper than last week." She stared into his eyes. "Your heartbeat frequency is high, your blink interval has shortened, and your speaking pace has accelerated by 12%. These aren't observations; they are monitored data. I've installed three sets of Non-contact Physiological Data Collectors in this room, and they've been recording since three seventeen last night."

Cheng Mo abruptly pulled his hand back.

The pen fell onto the desk, rolled half a turn, and stopped at the edge of the monitor.

"You're monitoring me?" His voice darkened.

"I am fulfilling my job responsibilities." She stood up straight. "The chief experience officer's KPI isn't just analyzing players, but also assessing the psychological stability of the core team. Article 17 of the labor contract you signed states: 'Allowing behavioral monitoring within the necessary scope.'"

"So you're a psychological surveillance probe sent by HR?" he sneered.

"I'm worried about you." She didn't avoid his gaze. "You just said 'three thousand fewer people worldwide will curse', but do you know? Steel Coin said in his stream that he dreamed he fell into the Level 17 corridor and woke up with palpitations so bad he called 120. This isn't glory; it's trauma."

"He streamed it voluntarily." Cheng Mo lowered his head and resumed typing code, his fingers pressing hard. "No one held a gun to his head."

"But you're using pain as fuel." She took a step closer. "You ignite other people's emotions to light your own path. The problem is, the bonfire is burning too bright, and you're about to step into it yourself."

Cheng Mo stopped typing.

He slowly turned his chair to face her directly.

"Do you know why I made this game?" he asked.

Lin Wanqing didn't speak.

"A former colleague of mine made a casual Match-3 game with eight million daily active users, just sitting back and collecting money. Six months later, he strangled himself with a data cable in his rented room. His suicide note said, 'Every day I wake up, I feel like life has no difficulty.'" He paused. "I'm not afraid of players calling me a pervert. I'm afraid that after they play, they'll feel that reality isn't even as stimulating as a game."

Lin Wanqing looked at him, her gaze softening for a moment.

"So I understand your starting point." Her voice slowed down. "But the method is wrong. The true challenge isn't making people collapse, but making them able to stand back up after they collapse, and even become stronger. What you're doing now is just constantly increasing the stakes, like rubbing salt into a patient's wound and then saying, 'Look, he's still alive'."

"Then what do you want me to do?" He gestured toward the arcade machine covered in curse-filled sticky notes. "Be gentle? Give them consolation prizes? Have 'It's okay, you're great' chicken-soup-for-the-soul pop-ups appear on the failure screen?"

"You need to give them meaning," she said. "It's not that pain itself has meaning, but the process of overcoming it has meaning. You've only given them the first half—torture. The second half—growth—you haven't given them yet."

Cheng Mo stared at her, saying nothing.

Lin Wanqing stared back at him, the lollipop in her mouth almost finished, leaving only a bare thin stick.

Time seemed to be stuck here.

Outside, a sprinkler truck slowly passed by, the blurred sound of music drifting in—an electronic version of 'Jasmine Flower'. Sunlight cut diagonally into the basement, drawing a line between light and shadow on the floor between them.

Cheng Mo's hand was still resting on the keyboard, but it didn't move again.

Lin Wanqing didn't pull her hand back either, it remained suspended in the air, the place where she had just pressed his wrist seemingly still holding the residual warmth of his pulse.

"You're right." He suddenly spoke, his voice lower. "I have been... a bit carried away lately."

She didn't respond, only nodding gently.

"But I won't change direction." He looked up, his gaze sharp once more. "Pain is a means, not an end. I will keep doing this. It's just..." He paused, reaching up to touch the stud in his right ear, "maybe I can try to make the players really feel like they've won once after the pain is over."

The corner of Lin Wanqing's mouth moved imperceptibly.

She didn't smile, but her eyes relaxed.

"Then promise me one thing first," she said.

"What?"

"Next time you spin a pen, get a more expensive one. These cheap pens break too easily; it affects work efficiency."

Cheng Mo was stunned for half a second, then let out a scoff.

"Fine." He picked up the broken pen from the desk and threw it into the wastepaper basket. "When the next round of financing arrives, the first thing I'll do is procure a German-imported precision pen-spinning set, budget five hundred, written into the Q2 administrative expenses."

"Noted." She finally smiled, pulling a new lemon-flavored lollipop from her pocket and slowly unwrapping it. "By the way, just a reminder, a notification just popped up in the backend—Steel Coin is live again, with the title 'Sacrificing for Art Season 3: Today, I Must Crush That Designer'."

Cheng Mo glanced at the side screen, and sure enough, a stream window popped up.

He opened the voice input, speaking as he typed: "Immediately push hidden patch V1.03, adding a Dynamic Visual Acuity Disturbance Module to Steel Coin's exclusive client, with a 0.2-second delay and intensity automatically adjusted according to blood pressure."

After speaking, he looked up at Lin Wanqing: "Does this count as... pain with meaning?"

She bit the lollipop stick and replied flatly: "Whether it counts or not depends on whether he wets his pants."