52: Overseas players' unique "revenge"

The alarm was still ringing in his eardrums, but the red warning light on the main console had already gone out. Cheng Mo lifted his hand from the desk, leaving behind a faint, damp imprint of sweat. He didn't look at the screen or speak, just stared for three seconds at the blinking "Visitor Request" icon in the lower right corner of the door access system.

Chen Hao tapped a key, pulling up the external feed: "It's the same man from before. Canadian citizen of Chinese descent, ID registration info unchanged. He's not holding a banner this time, just standing at the door, constantly refreshing his application."

"Let him in," Cheng Mo said.

"Are you sure? This guy was pounding on the glass so hard it almost cracked two hours ago." Chen Hao pushed his glasses up, his finger hovering over the confirm key.

"His son is named Chen Yuhang, sixteen years old, a North America Server Three player, ID 'SkyDiver_0924'. His last login was at 11:07, death count 4,821. You heard the message content too." Cheng Mo stood up, his hoodie's hood slipping down to reveal messy hair. "He's not here to cause trouble. He's here to figure out one thing—whether his son has gone crazy or not."

Chen Hao paused, then pressed confirm.

The door lock disengaged with a soft *beep*, like a countdown before a game starts.

The man's footsteps were heavy as he entered, his leather shoes making dull thuds on the anti-static floor. He clutched a phone in his hand, its screen still lit with the interface of *leap platform nightmare*. The character was stuck in Area B-7, health bar empty, constantly respawning. His face was redder than outside, dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn't slept for two nights.

Cheng Mo didn't go to greet him or speak. He pulled out a folding chair beside the main console, sat back down, elbows on his knees, and looked up at the man.

"You... let me in?" The man's voice trembled slightly.

"You've pressed it three times already," Cheng Mo said with a slight tug at the corner of his mouth. "Keep pressing and the system will sound the alarm."

The man froze, looked down at his fingers, and only then realized he had been repeatedly tapping the door access panel.

"I know who you are," Cheng Mo said. "Your son plays pretty hard too."

"Hard?" The man's head snapped up. "He hasn't slept for three days! His teacher called saying he skipped class! He handed in blank exam papers! The bathroom walls are covered with maps from your game! You call that 'hard'?"

"I was talking about the clearance difficulty." Cheng Mo spun the controller on the desk, using a can of cola as a coaster. "The B-7 he's stuck on is a level that less than one percent of global players have cleared."

"I don't care if he clears it or not!" The man slammed a fist on a nearby display stand, rattling several test controllers. "Making stuff like this is harmful! Grades dropping, sleep schedule messed up, mind in a daze—what is that if not an illness?"

Cheng Mo didn't move, didn't even blink.

"You're right," he said. "These symptoms do exist."

The man was taken aback.

"It's not just your son," Cheng Mo continued. "Over the past two weeks, we've received 2,376 complaints from parents. Average online time per child: fifty-eight hours. Longest: one hundred fourteen hours. Sixty percent showed short-term memory fluctuations, forty percent had mild anxiety reactions, and three actually smashed their monitors."

He paused, pulled a printed sheet from his backpack, and handed it over.

"This is your son's game log."

The man didn't take it.

"You can look at it yourself." Cheng Mo placed the paper on the desk and gently pushed it forward. "During a continuous seventy-two-hour online session, he voluntarily logged out forty-three times, with the longest break being five hours and seventeen minutes. Every time he came back, he clicked 'login' himself."

"So what!"

"It means he wasn't being controlled." Cheng Mo said. "He was choosing to stay."

The man opened his mouth but couldn't speak.

Chen Hao then pulled up a projection. One wall suddenly lit up, playing a video: a bespectacled high school student sat at a desk, face sweaty, eyes bloodshot, muttering coordinate parameters. The scene cut to the moment of clearing the level. The boy leaned back, laughed, then suddenly covered his face, shoulders shaking.

The next scene showed a middle-aged woman being interviewed: "My son never used to talk to me. That night after he cleared the level, he sat by my bed and talked for forty minutes, saying he finally understood what 'giving it your all' meant."

The video kept rolling—different languages, different faces, the same mix of exhaustion and exhilaration. The final frame froze on a line of text: "I'm not escaping reality. I want to confirm I can still fight."

The room was so quiet you could hear the low hum of the server fans.

The man stared at that line, his lips moving slightly.

"You... edited this, right?" he whispered.

"Raw footage archive number XG-0421, available for verification anytime." Chen Hao said without looking up. "Do you need the password?"

The man didn't answer, his gaze falling on another screen on the main console—a screenshot of his son's last message: "Dad, it's not that I don't want to come home. I'm afraid that once I do, I'll never hear a heartbeat again."

He suddenly reached out and turned his phone face down on the desk.

"He was memorizing maps in the bathroom..." His voice grew hoarse. "Not because he's crazy, but because... he's serious?"

"I don't know if it counts as serious." Cheng Mo said. "But I know many would rather die falling in a game than lie down and wait to die in reality."

"What do you mean?"

"Your son ranks in the top thirty of his grade at school, stress level S-class, social activity eighty percent lower than his peers." Cheng Mo clicked a pen and drew a triangle on the desk. "He couldn't find an outlet in reality, so he went into the game and chose an even harder path. Every time he dies, he knows he's still alive for one more time."

The man slowly sat down, as if all his strength had been drained.

Cheng Mo picked up a cup of water from nearby and handed it over. "We don't make comfortable games."

The man took it but didn't drink.

"But we make games that wake people up." Cheng Mo said. "I once saw a boy who, after clearing a level, spoke to his father for the first time and then cried. His father cursed us just like you did, said we were heartless. Later, they went hiking together—the longest walk they'd taken in ten years."

The man looked up, eyes reddening. "He... really isn't crazy?"

"Whether he's crazy depends on what standard you use to measure." Cheng Mo said. "If it's 'can he get perfect scores on exams,' he might be close. But if it's 'can he still feel his own existence'—he's more aware than many."

The man lowered his head, fingers rubbing the rim of the water cup. After a long moment, he asked softly, "Can I... print a copy of the log?"

"Already prepared for you." Chen Hao handed over a stack of papers, a QR code stuck on top. "Scan it to see real-time progress. As long as he's online, you'll get alerts on your phone."

The man took it, his fingers trembling slightly.

"Aren't you afraid... we'll sue you?" he asked.

"Better if you do." Cheng Mo smiled slightly. "At least someone would be willing to sit down and listen to what we have to say."

The man said nothing more. He stood up, placed the water cup back in its spot, picked up the stack of documents, and turned toward the door.

At the doorway, he stopped.

"He... logged in again yesterday." he said. "At 2:17 a.m., logged in once, only played for ten minutes, then logged out. I didn't dare ask him."

"He might have wanted to test if the heartbeat was still there." Cheng Mo said.

The man nodded, pushed the door open, and walked out.

The glass door slowly closed, reflecting the shadows of the two men inside.

Chen Hao turned off the projection and switched back to the backend data interface. "Public sentiment heat down sixty percent. Parent alliance funding chain monitoring shows no new anomalies."

Cheng Mo leaned back in his chair, spinning a pen in his right hand. The pen tip drew faint circles in the light. On the seventh spin, the tip suddenly snapped, a small metal piece flying onto the desk, rolling twice, and stopping beside the cola can.

He stared at the broken pen, not picking it up.

"Some parents aren't enemies," he said. "They just haven't seen the truth yet."

Chen Hao grunted in acknowledgment, tapped a couple of keys, and pulled up a new log analysis window. The top left of the screen showed that North America Server Three ID "SkyDiver_0924" had just completed a login. Duration: forty-seven seconds. Activity log: none. Only viewed the achievements page.

Cheng Mo glanced at it but said nothing.

He threw the broken pen into the trash, took a new one, held it between his fingers, and lightly tapped the desk.

*Beep.*

A new notification popped up in the lower right corner of the main console: 【Player "SkyDiver_0924" has updated a hidden message】.

Cheng Mo clicked it open.

A new line of text appeared: "Dad, I heard it."