31: Blood Pact with Custom Controller

Steel Coin's live stream title was still hanging there: 'Sacrificing for Art Season 3: Must Crush That Designer Today.' He stared at the camera, his emo bangs stuck to his forehead with sweat, a half-broken lollipop stick clenched between his teeth, holding a freshly unboxed black controller in his hand.

'Brothers, watch closely,' he said, his voice hoarse. 'This is what that pervert Cheng Mo sent me—not an apology letter, not compensation money, but a declaration of war.'

The barrage exploded instantly: 'Holy shit this design is sick,' 'The five words "pain and joy" carved on it make my heart tremble,' 'Smash it! If you don't, you're not Chinese!'

The camera zoomed in. The controller was matte black all over, with a fine-grained coating on the grips. In the center of the front face, the five characters 'pain and joy' were etched, the font looking as if drawn with a red-hot iron stylus in a single stroke, the edges giving off a faint, scorching sensation. Even through the screen, it exuded a sinister aura.

'He said this is a custom model, one of a kind on the entire internet,' Steel Coin sneered, pushing his headset back. 'Well, today, I'm going to turn this 'uniqueness' into a funeral banner.'

A hundred thousand viewers held their breath.

He raised the controller high, the muscles in his arms tensing as if performing some ancient ritual. After a three-second countdown, he slammed it toward the ground.

'Bang!'

The concrete floor emitted a dull thud. The controller didn't shatter; instead, its bottom spring mechanism caused it to rebound, flipping in mid-air. The side cover popped open with a 'snap,' and a red-and-gold dual-colored ribbon shot out, unfurling a banner that read: 'Congratulations on Clearing the Reality Layer.'

The barrage instantly turned into a blizzard of 'Holy shits.'

Some people screenshotted so fast their hands shook, posting a nine-picture grid. Others immediately changed their IDs to 'I Want to Be Smashed Too.' Within fifteen minutes, the hashtag surged to seventh place on the trending list, making even the Weibo administrators suspect a system glitch.

Steel Coin sat in his chair, unmoving. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his chest heaved, but the corners of his mouth slowly curled upward. He looked down at the deformed yet still intact controller on the floor, reached out to pick it up, the ribbon still tangled around his knuckles.

'Did you hear that?' he suddenly said into the microphone. 'That sound just now... wasn't shattering. It was unlocking.'

The barrage asked: 'Unlocking what?'

He grinned. 'The achievement notification sound for the reality level.'

What no one knew was that within the 0.3 seconds the controller hit the ground and rebounded, Cheng Mo's studio's monitoring system had captured the entire process and automatically generated a behavioral feedback report. The title was: 'Empirical Test of Physical Prop Emotional Detonation Force—Using Streamer Steel Coin's Destructive Testing as an Example.'

At that moment, Cheng Mo was sitting at his dim workstation, four screens in front of him dividing data streams from different dimensions. The top left showed a slow-motion replay: the controller hitting the ground, bouncing, opening, spraying the ribbon, with frame rates accurate to the millisecond. The top right displayed a real-time barrage emotion analysis chart: the anger value plummeted from a peak of 87 to 12, while the excitement value soared to 94, forming an almost perfect V-shaped reversal. The bottom left was a cost calculation sheet: materials and custom etching for a single controller cost 321 yuan, with bulk orders of 500 units reducing the cost to 176 yuan each. The bottom right showed the nationwide search trend curve: 'Congratulations on Clearing the Reality Layer' was climbing at a rate of 20,000 new searches per minute.

He removed the silver earring from his right ear and lightly tapped it twice on the corner of the desk.

Ding. Ding.

As if confirming whether a switch had closed.

Then, he put the earring back on, opened the internal communication interface, and entered a command: 'Production Department, add 500 units of 'Upgraded Custom Controller' to tomorrow's shipping list, all equipped with Micro-electric Shock Modules, threshold set to activate after three consecutive player failures. Note: This is not punishment, but the final trial before celebration.'

Send.

The command landed silently, but the backend immediately generated purchase orders, production schedules, and logistics estimates. The entire process flowed automatically, not even requiring approval.

Cheng Mo leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, his eyes still fixed on the trending rank in the bottom right corner. Seventh → sixth → fifth, the numbers climbed slowly but steadily. He knew that in a few hours, this hashtag would break into the top three, and the platform's algorithm would consequently label 'leap platform nightmare' as a 'nationwide trending phenomenon-level content,' triggering the homepage recommendation mechanism.

All of this was within the bounds of 'reasonableness.'

After all, who would investigate a social topic sparked by a streamer smashing a controller?

And no one would think that within that seemingly rugged controller hid thirty-seven micro-sensors, a set of programmable vibration motors, an encrypted memory chip, and a mechanical mechanism triggered by impact angle and rebound trajectory. It wasn't a toy; it was a ritual prop, a converter that transformed virtual frustration into physical achievement.

And Steel Coin was merely the first user to complete the 'certification.'

Cheng Mo picked up a new pen from his desk. He didn't spin it, just gently placed it beside the keyboard. It was an ordinary click-ballpoint pen, its casing printed with a convenience store promotion ad, bought casually from downstairs this morning.

But he didn't drink coffee.

Nor did he check the time.

He just quietly watched the data streams, like a night watchman staring at the embers of a fire, waiting for the next spark to rise.

In the live stream, Steel Coin was still talking.

'I know many of you curse this game for being anti-human,' he said, raising the battered but still functional controller. 'But have you noticed? The harder we curse it, the more popular it gets. The harder we smash it, the louder its response.'

The barrage scrolled: 'So you've been tamed?' 'Does the pain stop hurting after a while?' 'Suggest directly releasing a peripheral urn.'

He shook his head. 'Not tamed. It's acknowledgment.'

'Acknowledgment of what?'

'Acknowledging that I damn well haven't cleared the game, but at least I got a ticket to the next layer.'

As he spoke, he rolled up the ribbon, stuffed it into the controller's crevice, then placed it on top of his monitor, facing the camera.

'From today on, this thing is my new trophy,' he said. 'Anyone who disagrees, come try smashing one.'

The barrage immediately flooded with 'Request shipping,' 'Seeking same-item link,' 'Crowdfund additional purchase.'

Simultaneously, Cheng Mo's email automatically popped up with an order summary notification from an e-commerce platform: natural search exposure for the keyword 'pain and joy controller' had broken 800,000, related product click-through rates increased by 417%, and three third-party manufacturers had already begun producing imitations.

The corner of his mouth twitched. He didn't smile, but his eyes relaxed for a moment.

He knew the spark had been scattered.

What came next didn't require him to light it personally.

He only needed to wait and see how many people were willing to voluntarily reach their hands into the flames.

After all, true pain was never about being knocked down.

It was knowing you'd be knocked down, yet still clicking 'Try Again.'

Steel Coin's final words before ending the stream were: 'Same time tomorrow, I'll continue challenging level 15. If I can beat it, I'll melt this controller, make it into a ring, and wear it on my right ring finger.'

The barrage went wild: 'You're single, what's the point?' 'Suggest renaming it 'Painriage'' 'Is the proposal target Cheng Mo?'

He didn't respond, just raised the controller toward the camera as if toasting.

Then pressed 'End Stream.'

The screen went black.

Cheng Mo's screen refreshed accordingly.

The barrage emotion chart reset to zero, the trending rank stopped at fourth place, controller orders froze at 2,316 units (including pre-orders), and the production system's feedback email showed: upgraded electric shock modules were stocked and ready for shipment tomorrow.

He stood up, walked to the wall, pulled out an unused arcade panel from a pile of clutter, and wrote a line on the front with a marker: 'First-Generation Pain Certification Terminal—Steel Coin Exclusive Edition.'

Then hung it next to the old arcade machine plastered with curse-filled sticky notes.

The two machines stood side by side, one recording players' anger, the other bearing the streamer's madness.

He took a step back, looked at them.

Nodded.

Returning to his seat, he opened a new document titled: 'Feasibility Verification Report for Physical Feedback Link (Draft).'

The first paragraph read: 'When players are willing to pay for failure, to buy into voluntary suffering, and regard it as a status symbol, the boundary between game and reality has undergone a structural shift.'

Stopping here, he paused.

Looked up out the window.

Dawn hadn't fully broken; the city was still asleep.

But his phone vibrated.

It was a system notification from the courier company: 【Your package has been signed for at the front desk and stored in Smart Locker B, pickup code: 0427】.

He didn't move.

Just saved the document, closed it, then refocused on the slowly rising trending curve.

His fingers lightly tapped the desk.

Once. Twice.

As if waiting for someone to knock.