7: Devil Jump

Cheng Mo stared at the row of countdown numbers on the screen, his finger still hovering over the keyboard. A drop of dried blood was stuck next to the F1 key, which he had smeared there earlier after pricking his fingertip with a broken pen. He didn't wipe it off, nor did he want to. This thing was more effective than an alarm clock now.

Chen Hao crouched behind the server, plugging the network cable of the third backup machine into the main switch. Six mobile phones were all lit up, placed face-up on the edge of the desk like six soldiers waiting to receive orders.

"The USB drive has been read," Chen Hao said without looking up. "The files are severely corrupted, but the core framework is still there. It's that 'Project Fall' we worked on during our junior year."

Cheng Mo turned his head sharply. "Which one? The one where you'd die if you jumped once, and the judges said we had psychological issues?"

"That's the one." Chen Hao dragged the data package into the extraction window. "Back then, you said you wanted to make a game that would make people's hands shake, and you really did it—the tester smashed their mouse on the spot."

"After that time, I knew that people only remember controls when they're on the verge of collapse." Cheng Mo stood up, walked to the main computer, pulled out the USB drive, and threw it to Chen Hao. "Install it. I want to see if the physics module still works."

Chen Hao caught the USB drive and inserted it into the debugging port. The screen flickered, and lines of fragmented code jumped out on the decompilation interface. Most functions were garbled, but a segment of motion equations in the middle still connected.

"The gravity parameters can be modified." Cheng Mo leaned closer to the screen. "Pull the g-value to 29.4 and compress the response delay to 200 milliseconds. Shrink the jump determination window to the absolute limit, so players regret it the moment they press the button."

"This isn't jumping anymore; it's gambling." Chen Hao typed in the commands. "You're forcing people to use neural reflexes to guess the frames."

"I want them to guess." Cheng Mo grinned. "If they guess wrong, they fall. Once they fall enough, they'll learn to shut up and practice."

The simulator finished loading, and a simple-mesh character stood on the edge of a platform. Cheng Mo pressed the spacebar.

The moment the character left the ground, it was immediately slammed down as if being yanked, and the landing animation glitched into afterimages. The frame rate dropped directly below twenty.

"Too light." Cheng Mo shook his head. "Make it heavier, double the air density, and set the ground bounce coefficient to zero. I want jumping to feel like climbing a cliff and falling to feel like hitting cement."

Chen Hao didn't argue and continued to adjust the parameters. He increased air resistance to 300% and raised the friction coefficient to the critical point. The second test began.

The moment the character jumped, its body sank, the trajectory skewed into a diagonal line, and it clipped directly into the floor upon landing.

Cheng Mo slapped the table. "This time it's right! That's the feeling—the system gives you no reaction time at all. You either predict in advance or wait for death."

"Temperature is 81 degrees." Chen Hao glanced at the infrared thermometer. "If we keep running it like this, the motherboard will give out first."

"Let it." Cheng Mo sat back in his chair. "What we're making now isn't a game; it's an instrument of torture. How can an instrument of torture not smoke?"

He opened his backpack and pulled out a modified controller from a pile of stickers. The thumbsticks were worn with indentations, and the D-pad was loose but felt extremely crisp. He connected it to the debugging port.

"The first level must deceive people," he said. "The first three jumps should look difficult but actually have generous judgment windows. Let them think they've mastered the pattern, then cut them down on the fourth jump."

Chen Hao nodded and added a temporary compensation mechanism to the judgment logic. The first three jumps allowed for an error of ±50 milliseconds, while the fourth suddenly narrowed to ±5 milliseconds, and the platform spacing was randomized.

"This isn't a tutorial," he said. "It's setting a trap."

"Exactly." Cheng Mo gripped the controller. "We want to create an illusion for the players and then shatter it with our own hands. By the time they realize they've been tricked, they won't be able to quit."

The first interactive prototype was generated. The level consisted of three floating platforms with spacing varying between 85 and 110 centimeters. There were no guardrails on the edges, and the background was a high-speed rotating pixel grid that would make one dizzy if stared at for too long.

Cheng Mo put on his headphones and tested it himself.

On the first jump, he pressed too early; the character was pulled down before it could fully take off, slamming face-first into the platform.

On the second try, he waited too long; the button window flashed by, and the character fell while running in place.

On the third try, he got lucky and barely landed, but the screen shook upon landing, causing him to misjudge the next timing, and he missed the fourth jump entirely.

Ten consecutive failures.

On the eleventh try, he finally made it across. The moment he landed, his palms were covered in sweat.

"This is it," he said, panting. "Every time feels like gambling with your life. Press too fast and you fall, press too slow and you fall; that 0.2-second window in the middle has to be timed perfectly."

"Players will curse," Chen Hao said, looking at the test data. "If this mechanism goes live, negative reviews will flood the comment section."

"The more negative reviews, the better." Cheng Mo laughed. "We live on that."

He packaged the version and named it Jump_Nightmare_Alpha_0.1.exe. The moment the file was generated, the host fan let out a shrill scream, as if the machine itself was trembling.

The second hand of the wall clock suddenly ticked back two spaces.

Cheng Mo looked up at the countdown: [Remaining Time: 6 days 21 hours 13 minutes 48 seconds]

"It's afraid," he whispered. "The system wants to seal us, but the thing we've created is starting to affect it in return."

Chen Hao didn't speak; he just switched all six test machines to pressure monitoring mode. Each device was recording data from different dimensions: input latency, frame interval fluctuations, and memory usage peaks.

"For the next seventy-two hours, we can't stop," he said. "This prototype is just the beginning; the real torture is still to come."

"I know." Cheng Mo stretched his wrists. "Starting tomorrow, we'll make a fake tutorial. Teach them the wrong way to operate, and once their muscles remember it, we'll change the rules."

"They'll go crazy."

"Then let them go crazy." Cheng Mo picked up a new pen and wrote D-5 on the wall. "Only when many people go crazy can it be called a phenomenon."

Halfway through writing, the tip of the pen snapped off, and a fragment bounced off his Silver Earring with a tinging sound.

He looked down, didn't change the pen, and finished writing.

Chen Hao walked to the main computer and pulled off the side panel. A heatwave rushed out, which he blocked with his hand, and he stuffed an extra cooling fan into the bottom of the case. The blower started up, the noise skyrocketed, and the entire basement began to resonate.

"The temperature has stabilized," he said. "For now."

"Don't say 'for now'." Cheng Mo stared at the loop of failure recordings on the screen. "Every step we take now is burning our own lives in exchange for progress. I don't care if I live to see the release day; I just want to make a game that makes everyone want to smash their phones the moment they open it."

"Then you'd better make sure your hands can still move." Chen Hao handed him a bottle of ice water. "Don't blame me for not warning you if you get cramps."

Cheng Mo took the water but didn't drink it, placing it next to the keyboard. He reloaded the level, preparing for another round.

This time, he successfully performed two consecutive jumps. On the third jump, the platform suddenly moved forward by 15 centimeters; he didn't react in time, and the character flew halfway before plunging down.

Failure.

He tried again. Still failure.

On the fifth try, he finally caught the rhythm and completed the entire course.

The settlement screen popped up with only one line of text:

[You survived. But this isn't a victory.]

Cheng Mo smiled. A very fierce smile.

"The name is set," he said. "It's called 'leap platform nightmare'."

Chen Hao uploaded the final package to the local server and refreshed the permission list. The six test machines simultaneously received an update notification.

"We can begin," he said. "Next step, full pressure testing."

"No." Cheng Mo shook his head. "The next step is to let everyone who thinks they know how to play games relearn what 'controls' truly mean."

He took off the Silver Earring from his right ear and gently placed it above the controller's D-pad.

This was his new ritual.

Not praying to gods, not worshipping ghosts.

It was officially issuing an invitation to everyone about to step into this hell.

Chen Hao pulled up the background logs and found an abnormal record:

At the moment the version was generated, the system's base layer automatically created a hidden process with a blank name and a PID of 666. Its runtime continued to grow and could not be terminated.

He glanced at Cheng Mo and said nothing.

Some things didn't need to be told to him yet.

At least for now, he could still smile.