40: Empire Cornerstone Registration Successful

The morning mist had finally dissipated, and the fluorescent lights no longer hummed, but Cheng Mo was still sitting at the testing table. His pen tip hovered over the paper; the sentence "Cognitive Impact Threshold Optimization" was only half-finished. His fingers were stiff, and his hoodie cuff rubbed against the edge of the table, making him look like a game character that had been forcibly paused.

The door opened.

Lin Wanqing walked in carrying a disposable paper cup. The hot coffee pressed against her palm, the cup printed with a convenience store logo. She didn't say a word, placing the cup on the corner of the table, just enough to weigh down a sketch filled with arrows. Steam rose from the coffee; Cheng Mo looked down at it, then looked up at her.

She stood there, the mechanical watch on her wrist ticking steadily. Her purple hair was tied in a low ponytail, and she wasn't chewing on a lollipop or frowning. She just looked at him, as if waiting for a loading completion prompt.

Cheng Mo moved.

He put down his pen, braced his hands against the edge of the table, and stood up, his chair scraping against the concrete floor. He skirted around a pile of cables and walked to the cardboard wall in the center of the room. This wall had originally been used to block drafts from the north window; now, it was yellowed and curling at the edges, plastered with half-torn sticky notes with writing like "T37 Crash Time" and "17th Failure Feedback."

He reached out, grabbed the edge, and ripped it away.

The sound of the cardboard tearing was as crisp as the sound effect for unlocking an achievement in a game. Scraps fluttered down, landing on his shoulders and shoes. Sunlight slanted in from the newly exposed window, illuminating the floating dust in the air and the marker-drawn topology map on the wall—it was the prototype draft he had written last night, with lines as messy as tangled earphone cords.

"We're expanding recruitment next month," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but every word carried weight. "I want Tencent to know what a true gaming revolution looks like."

No one responded.

Chen Hao only walked in then. He wore a white shirt buttoned to the top, his gold-rimmed glasses reflecting the light, holding a manual for the temperature control panel. He glanced at the cardboard wreckage on the floor, then at the beam of light outside the window. Without saying a word, he walked straight toward the external air conditioning unit.

Beep, beep, beep.

He pressed a few buttons, adjusting the temperature from 28°C to 24°C and changing the mode from "Ventilation" to "Cooling." The sound of the machine starting up was quieter than before.

"First, let's turn this place into a battlefield where we can breathe," he said, closing the manual and turning toward his workstation.

Only then did Lin Wanqing smile. It was faint, disappearing as soon as the corners of her mouth lifted, but she did smile. She didn't go for the folding chair by the wall but sat directly on a cable box, opening the notebook she carried and flipping to a blank page.

Cheng Mo didn't move.

He stood where he was, reached into his hoodie pocket, and pulled out a highlighter—fluorescent orange, with a piece of the cap missing. He walked back to the newly exposed raw wall and began drawing on the brightest patch of sunlight.

A thick line cut across, followed by vertical lines, partitioning the area. On the left, he wrote "Testing Station"; on the right, he labeled "Live Stream Area"; the middle was left empty with a circle drawn in it, labeled "TBD."

"The testing station goes here," he said, as if confirming it, yet also as if announcing it.

Lin Wanqing looked down and typed: "Lead Designer, Assistant Designer, UI, UE... Should we add Legal?"

"Not yet," Cheng Mo looked back. "We'll wait for them to come knocking on our door."

"What about Finance?"

"I'll use Excel for bookkeeping."

"Last time, you recorded refund data as income."

"The system auto-corrected it."

"Which system?"

"...My sixth sense."

Chen Hao was typing over there, not even looking up. "I suggest making it clear in the job posting: 996 is expected, but they must know how to calculate probability. First question of the induction exam—what is the probability of maintaining operational precision after seventeen consecutive failures?"

"Put it in," Cheng Mo said. "And add one more line: Preference given to those skilled at cursing."

Lin Wanqing looked up at him. "Are you serious?"

"Of course." He twirled his pen—a new one this time, with an intact tip. "The more the players curse, the more it shows we've hit the mark. What we want isn't for them to like it, but to remember it."

"But there are many ways to be remembered." Her fingertips paused on the touchpad. "It doesn't necessarily have to involve making people break down."

"Breaking down is the first step to awakening." He pointed to the partitions he had just drawn on the wall. "Look, even our office is divided into three sections—Testing, Development, and Observation. What about life? How many people spend their whole lives in a single square, punching in, eating, sleeping, on a loop that doesn't even have a pause button?"

"So you're going to force them to press the pause button?"

"No." He shook his head. "I want them to smash the button with their own hands and then ask—why do I have to press this button at all?"

Lin Wanqing said no more. She looked down and continued listing positions, but behind "User Experience Researcher," she quietly added in parentheses: (Basic psychological assessment skills required).

A prompt sounded from Chen Hao's side, indicating the server self-check was complete. He pulled out the USB drive, tucked it into his shirt pocket, and got up to check the network lines. The fiber optic interface was still dripping; he knelt down and wiped it dry with a paper towel, his movements as meticulous as if he were treating a surgical wound.

"The city is coming to check the circuits next week," he said. "They say we registered for commercial power, but our actual usage is three times over the limit."

"Tell them we're doing AI training."

"That's the truth."

"Then we definitely can't change it."

"What if the power gets cut?"

"The backup power lasts twelve hours."

"Not enough."

"It's enough." Cheng Mo leaned against the wall, the highlighter held between his fingers. "The day the power actually goes out, we'll just treat it as the system forcibly entering power-saving mode."

Lin Wanqing closed her notebook and stood up. She walked between the two men, her gaze sweeping over the 80-square-meter space. The cardboard was gone, the walls were bare, the empty cans on the floor hadn't been cleared yet, the arcade screen was plastered with "T37 Challenger" curse notes, and three unopened monitors were piled in the corner.

But for the first time, she felt that this place didn't seem like a temporary base, but a starting point.

"When are we posting the recruitment notice?" she asked.

"Tonight," Cheng Mo said. "The title will be 'Extreme Challenge: Welcome to Curse Us'."

"And the subtitle?"

"'If you've received the best education, but only want to do something outrageous'."

Chen Hao took off his glasses and wiped them with the corner of his shirt. "I suggest adding the salary range."

"Salary negotiable."

"Benefits?"

"Free energy drinks daily, and—unlimited experience of the limits of the human spirit."

"Someone will call the police."

"Then that means we're doing it right."

The three of them fell silent at the same time.

There was no laughter, and no applause. But the air between them had changed. It was no longer the tense confrontation of the previous chapter, nor the tentative testing of the early startup days, but a silent consensus: this thing had to be done.

And it had to be done on a larger scale.

Cheng Mo looked down at his shoes, where a small scrap of cardboard still lay. He bent down to pick it up, walked to the trash can, and threw it in. Then he slung on his backpack, pulled a roll of electrical tape from the side pocket, and walked back to the wall to start securing the loose lines.

Chen Hao went back to his computer and opened a new project folder, naming it "Project_X." He entered the password, and when the encryption protocol prompt popped up, he hit Enter.

Lin Wanqing opened the memo app on her phone and created a new entry: "Interview Question Bank." The first entry read: "Please describe an experience where you were so angry at a failure that you wanted to smash your equipment. Did you end up smashing it?"

Outside, sunlight had already flooded the entire room. The dust in the cracks of the floor was clearly visible in the light, and cables stretched along the base of the walls like the neural pathways of some organism. The business license lay quietly on Cheng Mo's desk; in the legal representative column, the name "Cheng Mo" was printed in clear, dark ink.

He stopped what he was doing and glanced back.

Then he walked over and straightened the business license so it was no longer crooked.

Chen Hao suddenly spoke up: "The air conditioning filter needs to be changed."

"Buy a new one."

"No money."

"Crowdfund it."

"With what?"

"With our ideals."

"Ideals aren't discounted."

"Then write a blurb: Support us, and you'll get to see Wang Zhen turned into an NPC in the game."

"He already appeared in the first version of 'Click Hell'."

"Delete him."

"Why?"

"It's too good for him," Cheng Mo said, picking up the highlighter and drawing an arrow on a blank spot on the wall pointing toward a future workstation. "We're going to let him live until the final stage, fully leveled and geared up, only to find out that the Boss is himself."

Lin Wanqing looked down and recorded: "Ultimate Proposition: When you defeat all your enemies, you realize the greatest enemy is the kind of person you wanted to become."

"Use that sentence."

"For real?"

"For real."

After she finished typing, she looked up at the two of them. Cheng Mo was wrapping the last section of wire with tape, and Chen Hao was staring at the screen refreshing the logs; neither of them was looking at her.

But she knew they had heard.

Twilight began to seep in from the window, and the daylight gradually faded. The fluorescent lights flickered on again, emitting that familiar hum. This time, it no longer felt cold; instead, it sounded like the startup of some engine.

Cheng Mo put down the tape and stood up straight. The silver stud in his right ear flashed under the light like a system loading indicator.

He didn't say a word, just picked up the pen and continued drawing on the wall.