45: The death spiral of legal review

In the meeting room on the 38th floor of Tencent Headquarters, the lights were a harsh, stark white.

Wang Zhen's suit cuff revealed half of his Rolex Submariner strap. His fingertip hovered 0.3 centimeters above the F5 key on the review filing terminal's keyboard. He didn't press it. The time in the bottom right corner of the screen ticked: 02:14:07. It was exactly the same second Steel Coin's camera had shattered three minutes ago.

He plugged the encrypted USB drive into the port. The metal casing was ice-cold. A handwritten note was stuck to the side of the drive: "MH-2025-0422-7791—Emergency Channel." It was his own handwriting, written with a pen reserved for meeting minutes.

He clicked "Submit."

The green progress bar pushed from left to right, stopping abruptly after 0.8 seconds. A red prompt box popped up on the screen with a thickened border and sans-serif font, displayed in the center:

[Filing Failed. Reason: Target product has already obtained ISO/IEC 13485:2016 Mental Health Auxiliary certification (Certificate No: MH-2025-0422-7791).]

Wang Zhen didn't move.

He stared at the string of characters "MH-2025-0422-7791" for two seconds. He wasn't looking at the number itself, but at the space preceding it. The space was too wide, as if someone had intentionally hit the spacebar twice. He slowly withdrew his right index finger and rested it on his knee, the pad of his finger pressing against the seam of his suit trousers.

The meeting room door wasn't fully closed. The air conditioning draft from the hallway seeped through the crack, blowing the corner of a "Tencent Games Compliance White Paper" on the table, making it curl slightly. He didn't reach out to press it down.

On the top right of the main console, an independent pop-up window lit up silently. Gray background, white text, no animation, no sound effects—just a single line:

[MH-2025-0422-7791] certification is now in effect. Covering all Open Beta versions.

Cheng Mo didn't click it open.

He tapped his right index finger on the desk three times—tap, tap, tap.

The rhythm was exactly the same as at the end of the previous chapter. But this time, the desk was solid wood; the sound was duller, shorter, and the third tap was cut off quickly with no aftershock.

He pulled up the printer driver. The interface was minimalist, with only three options: Single-sided/Double-sided/Manual Feed. He clicked "Double-sided Printing," moved the cursor to the search bar, typed "MH-2025-0422-7791," and hit Enter. The printer started with a whir, fed the paper, and spat out an A4 sheet. The paper was slightly warm, the smell of fresh toner mixing with the faint, fishy scent of heated plastic casing.

Cheng Mo picked up the black signing pen on the desk. The pen body had seven scratches, the deepest one catching half of a broken refill. He pulled off the cap, the tip of the pen hovering over the blank space in the bottom left corner of the certificate copy for 0.5 seconds before he began writing:

Tell Manager Wang that we're improving the game even while the players are dreaming.

The final stroke of the character for "dream" was elongated, flicking upward at an angle, with a slightly thicker ink deposit at the end, like an unclosed parenthesis.

He tore off the sheet. The edge of the paper was neat; his hand hadn't shaken. When he tucked it into the envelope, the certificate went in first and the handwritten page second, the latter covering the certificate and perfectly obscuring the "LIMITED_DISTRIBUTION" watermark in the bottom right corner.

On the front of the envelope, using the same pen, the same angle, and the same force:

38F, Block B, Tencent Building, Science and Technology Park, Nanshan District, Shenzhen. For the Personal Attention of Mr. Wang Zhen.

No stamp was attached.

Cheng Mo stood up. There were two light-colored scuff marks on the knees of his cargo pants, left from frequently crouching to debug equipment. He walked toward the door. Nailed above the studio door frame was an old wooden plaque with peeling paint, carved with the words "Extreme Challenge · Special Delivery." Hanging below the plaque was a green mailbox with mottled paint, a ring of verdigris around the opening, and rusted red rivets at the bottom.

His left hand touched the silver stud in his right ear, gave it a gentle twist, and stopped.

The envelope slid in with a dull "thud." It wasn't a crisp sound, but the blunt noise of thick paper hitting a metal wall and bouncing back. The inside of the mailbox was dark, with no light.

He turned and went back to the main console. He didn't pull the chair, just sat straight down. The chair back spring gave a soft "creak," half an octave lower than the sound of the lemon tea cup hitting the table in the previous chapter.

His right index finger returned to the spacebar.

His knuckle was slightly white, the skin over the joint tightened, but he didn't press down. The key stayed perfectly still.

The pop-up in the top right of the main console had closed. Next to the countdown box in the bottom left, a new line of small text appeared:

CERTIFICATE_SENT_MH-2025-0422-7791

The font was one size smaller than the system default, in a matte gray that didn't reflect light.

Cheng Mo didn't look at that line of text.

His gaze fell on the screen to the left of the main console. The biological data stream was still refreshing. The pupil diameter curve was crossing the 6.5mm threshold, rising slowly with a stable slope, no jagged edges, and no sudden mutations.

The joint of his right index finger pressed against the spacebar.

The keycap was slightly cool.

He didn't press it.

On the right side of the main console, that cup of cold lemon tea was still in its original position. A water droplet had condensed on the side of the cup again. It was slightly larger than the one in the previous chapter, hanging two millimeters below the edge of the tape, poised to fall.

Cheng Mo tapped his left index finger on the desk three times.

Tap, tap, tap.

It was exactly the same as the end of the previous chapter and just before he printed the document.

He didn't look at the water droplet.

He pulled up the audio analysis sub-window and dragged in the spectrum of the last 0.3 seconds of laughter from Steel Coin's stream. A red box circled the position of the reverse harmonics, and the cursor stopped at the starting point. He didn't take a screenshot, didn't save it, and didn't create a new document.

He simply zoomed in on that segment, stretching the spectrum to its maximum until the 17.3kHz red line filled the entire window.

Then, he right-clicked and selected "Mark as Archived."

A confirmation box popped up: "Permanently delete original cache?"

He didn't click "Yes," nor did he click "No."

The mouse hovered over the "Yes" button for two seconds. The cursor's shadow fell on the edge of the button without covering the text.

He moved the mouse away.

The code terminal window in the central area of the console was still open. The path bar still displayed: /engine/core/params/override/. The cursor stopped at the end of a blank line. Below the line of code AdrenalineCompensation_v3 = true, there were three empty lines.

He didn't type any new commands.

The joint of his right index finger was still resting against the spacebar.

There was a fine scratch on the surface of the keycap, caused by a slip of the hand while soldering a circuit board last week. The scratch slanted downward from top-left to bottom-right, 0.8 centimeters long.

Cheng Mo didn't twirl his pen.

He didn't touch his earring.

He didn't drink the lemon tea.

He didn't look at the unread email in his inbox.

He didn't click on the contact request from Wang Zhen of Tencent Games Department.

He just sat there.

On the left screen of the console, the pupil diameter curve continued to rise: 6.52mm, 6.55mm, 6.58mm... The audio waveform in the bottom right was still jumping, but the spectrum window had been minimized, leaving only the title bar visible.

The joint of his right index finger pressed against the spacebar.

The keycap was slightly cool.

He didn't press it.

In the bottom left of the console, that line of small text was still there:

CERTIFICATE_SENT_MH-2025-0422-7791

Cheng Mo reached his left hand toward his earring and gave it a turn.

His right earlobe felt a bit itchy.

He didn't scratch it.

He pulled up the Steam backend API interface, entered Steel Coin's streamer ID, and checked his current online status. The page returned:

【last_active】: 2025-04-22T02:14:03Z

【is_streaming】: true

【stream_title】: "leap platform nightmare 24H Ultimate Challenge | Hour 22 | Survival is Victory"

He minimized the page. It shrunk into a narrow bar, with only the title bar visible.

In the headphones, Steel Coin's breathing was steady, 14 breaths per minute.

The joint of his right index finger pressed against the spacebar.

The keycap was slightly cool.

He didn't press it.

On the right side of the console, the water droplet slid down, hitting the desk surface and spreading into a small dark patch.

Cheng Mo didn't look.

He tapped his left index finger on the desk three times.

Tap, tap, tap.

The joint of his right index finger was still resting against the spacebar.

The keycap was slightly cool.

He didn't press it.

In the bottom left of the console, that line of small text was still there:

CERTIFICATE_SENT_MH-2025-0422-7791

The joint of his right index finger pressed against the spacebar.

The keycap was slightly cool.

He didn't press it.