54: An unexpected inspiration from blood pressure monitoring

When Lin Wanqing pushed open the studio door, Cheng Mo was clipping a pen back behind his ear, his fingertips still bearing the faint lines left by spinning the pen moments before. He didn't look up, only catching a glimpse of purple long hair sweeping past the entrance to the testing area in the screen's reflection.

"You're here," he said, his voice sounding like he had just finished a bite of cold pizza. "Chen Hao said to look over the proposal."

"Mhm." Lin Wanqing walked over, holding half a lemon-flavored lollipop, while her other hand had already tapped open the folder on the terminal—Parent Link Design V0.1.

She sat down, the strap of her mechanical watch clicking lightly against the desk edge. The screen lit up, and the flowchart spread out: Online Status Visualization, Key Node Alerts, Forced Pause Application Channel... The last node read "Hearing the heartbeat."

She stared at those four characters for two seconds and bit into the candy.

"That naming is quite interesting," she said. "But it's still too abstract."

Cheng Mo finally turned his head. "What do you mean?"

"Parents don't want metaphors." She scrolled the page. "What they want to confirm is, 'Is my child truly alive?' A heartbeat is proof, but just the name isn't intuitive enough—they need to see the evidence."

"Are you suggesting adding an ECG animation?" Cheng Mo raised an eyebrow. "Don't make it look like an ICU ward."

"Not an animation." Lin Wanqing pulled up a set of data logs. "I just went through the physiological records of the last thirty testers. Every time they cleared a stage, besides emotional feedback like 'laughed' or 'shouted,' there were real physical reactions—average heart rate increased by 38%, and systolic blood pressure peaked around 165."

She zoomed in on a curve: the horizontal axis was time, and the vertical axis was blood pressure value. A red line slowly climbed in the "Challenge Failed" area, suddenly spiked at the moment of "Successful Cliff Jump," then fell back, stabilizing into the respiratory regulation phase.

"Look here," she pointed. "This isn't a breakdown; it's a release. Like sprinting past the finish line, the body spikes. But the information we currently give parents is only 'He struggled until the end and died,' not hard data like 'His blood pressure was 172 when he died.'"

Cheng Mo squinted. "You want to use blood pressure as an indicator?"

"Yes." Lin Wanqing nodded. "It's more stable than heart rate, clearly affected by emotion, and reflects the intensity of focus. If a child fails fifty times in a row and still keeps trying, their blood pressure curve will definitely fluctuate continuously without breaking the critical threshold. This shows they are enduring, but not losing control."

Cheng Mo rubbed the stubble on his chin. "What if a parent sees 'Blood Pressure 170' and calls the police immediately?"

"Then we need to teach them how to read the numbers." Lin Wanqing's tone was calm. "We can add an explanation to the push notification: 'Can reach 180 during normal exercise; this value indicates high engagement, not a medical danger.' We can even use color grading—Green = Healthy Fluctuation, Yellow = Nearing Limit, Red = Observation/Interruption Recommended. Just like the difficulty bars you use in games."

Cheng Mo suddenly laughed aloud. "So you want to change 'Your son is about to have a cerebral hemorrhage' to 'Your son is currently outputting at maximum capacity'?"

"More or less." She also smiled, pressing her tongue against her cheek. "Players are already used to it. During livestreams, they often say 'blood pressure maxed out' or 'mentality exploded,' but they know these are exaggerations. What we need to do is let parents understand their children using the same language."

Cheng Mo leaned back against the chair, his hoodie hood sliding down to cover half his face. A few seconds later, he sat up straight again, picked up the game controller beside him, and pressed a few imaginary buttons in the air.

"If we can really integrate this data..." he began slowly. "We could even create a 'Highlight Moment' report. For instance, the first time a child independently clears the seventeenth floor maze, the system automatically generates a summary: 'This challenge lasted three hours and forty-two minutes, involved seventy-three deaths, reached a maximum blood pressure of 178, and upon final clearance, the autonomous breathing rate dropped by 40%, consistent with deep immersion characteristics. Attached voice clip: He laughed.'"

Lin Wanqing's eyes brightened. "And we don't have to wait for clearance. As long as an effective emotional peak is detected, we can trigger a push notification. For example: 'Your warrior just completed an extreme dodge; blood pressure instantly spiked to 175, and the system detected the corners of the mouth turning up.'"

"Absurd," Cheng Mo shook his head. "But logical."

"We shouldn't be afraid of data in the first place." Lin Wanqing withdrew her gaze and looked back at the blood pressure curve. "My dad always used to say that cardiovascular problems aren't about high or low numbers, but whether the trend of change is controllable. Games are the same—it's not the pressure that's scary, it's meaningless exhaustion. What we're doing now is actually helping parents distinguish between training and harm."

Cheng Mo didn't reply, staring at the fluctuating red line on the screen for a long time. Then he reached out and dragged over an unused testing terminal nearby.

"Let's make a prototype interface first," he said. "We'll run the process using simulated data without connecting real devices. We'll replace it once the technology is integrated."

"Alright." Lin Wanqing nodded. "The front end should maintain a minimalist style to avoid looking like medical monitoring. Just use a progress bar + numbers + small icons, like a beating heart with '172' next to it."

"We could also add a dynamic waveform graph," Cheng Mo said while creating a new folder. "Make the background a pixelated grid, and the lines fluorescent green, like an old oscilloscope. Players will think it's cool, and parents will think it's professional."

"The alert copy needs changing too," Lin Wanqing added. "Don't write 'Abnormal physiological fluctuation detected'; change it to 'Just completed a high-intensity challenge.' Turn all negative phrasing into positive."

Cheng Mo hit Enter, and a new tab popped up with a blank editing box. He typed six characters into the title bar: **BP Monitor Prototype**.

"I'll write the simulation logic," he said. "We'll assume the rate of blood pressure recovery after each death represents resilience, continuous failure count corresponds to baseline pressure tolerance, and the peak value at the moment of clearance counts as the burst coefficient. Combining the three generates a 'Psychological Resilience Score,' updated monthly."

"Can this score be made public?" Lin Wanqing asked.

"Of course." Cheng Mo grinned. "We'll set up a leaderboard called the 'Strongest Heart Ranking.' The first place winner gets a vibrating wristband that vibrates every time their heartbeat exceeds 170. They can show off in real life too."

Lin Wanqing nearly choked on her candy. "You really... never forget to manufacture suffering."

"This isn't suffering." Cheng Mo spun his chair, casually picked up a can of cola from the desk, used the edge of the game controller to pry it open, and the pull tab flew off. "This is how people know they're still alive."

The sound of bubbles rising filled the brief silence.

Lin Wanqing watched him drink a mouthful of cola, his Adam's apple moving up and down, his dark circles appearing deeper under the screen light. She suddenly realized that this person had never said why he insisted on making these "torturous" games.

But she seemed to understand a little now.

She stood up and threw the last bit of the lollipop stick into the trash can.

"I'll go organize the complete proposal," she said. "The focus will be on explaining how blood pressure monitoring functions as a cognitive translation tool, not a health warning system."

Cheng Mo gave a low "Mhm," his fingers already tapping out the first line of code on the keyboard.

Lin Wanqing walked to her workstation, sat down, and opened a new document. The cursor blinked for a few seconds, and she typed the title: "Feasibility Study on Incorporating Blood Pressure Fluctuation into the Parent-Side Visualization System."

Outside the window, the city lights were still turning on layer by layer, like some kind of slowly loading interface.

On the left side of the main console, the backend logs were still scrolling. The status of North America Server Three ID "SkyDiver_0924" updated to: Offline, duration forty-seven seconds, only browsing the achievement page.

On the right, Cheng Mo's code editor displayed the first line of prompt: [BP Monitor Prototype Initialization Successful].

He glanced at it, picked up a new pen, and started spinning it between his fingers. On the third rotation, the pen tip struck the corner of the desk with a crisp sound.

He didn't stop, and kept spinning it.