210: Chapter 210 The Truth Behind the Scenes: The Audience is Taking Drugs, and I Am Their Drug

The instant Inspector Long Aotian descended, the entire Underworld Group headquarters was enveloped by a sword aura domain.

The air solidified into tangible pressure, forcing ordinary employees to their knees. Zhang Hao gritted his teeth, erecting a data barrier, while Little Red Clothes's ghostly aura was suppressed to a mere thin layer.

A snow-white figure stepped out of the void, each step shattering space.

"Lin Chen." Long Aotian spoke, his voice echoing with a resonance akin to the Heavenly Dao, "You are suspected of illegally manipulating the shareholder market. According to Platform Law Article..."

"Stop."

Lin Chen raised a hand to interrupt, pointing at the shareholder badge on his chest: "According to Supplementary Clause 33 of the Platform Inspection Regulations, shareholders holding more than 0.003% of shares have the right to request a 'peer-level inspector' when undergoing inspection."

He pulled up the rules interface: "And you, Mr. Long Aotian, your shareholder stake is—0.000000012%. That's six orders of magnitude lower than mine."

Long Aotian's sword aura faltered.

"So, you are not qualified to inspect me." Lin Chen smiled, "On the contrary, you, as a low-tier shareholder, have trespassed into a high-tier shareholder's domain. According to Regulation Article 41, I can execute you on the spot—as long as I compensate the platform a bit of money."

He glanced at his account balance: "84 trillion. Enough to kill you eight hundred and forty times."

Dead silence filled the air.

Long Aotian's expression shifted from indifference to ashen, then to flushed red.

"You...!" The hand gripping his sword bulged with veins.

"But I'm in a good mood today." Lin Chen turned and walked towards the backend passage, "I'll give you a chance—follow me, and I'll show you what those 'audience members' you've been desperately trying to please really are."

The entrance to the Data Sea lay deep within shareholder authority.

Passing through seventeen layers of encryption protocols, crossing the rule firewall, they finally stopped before a passage marked 【Absolute Restricted Zone】.

"Not even top shareholders have the right to enter here." Long Aotian sneered, "What gives you the right..."

Lin Chen directly pulled out a temporary pass—a half-hour experience ticket he had just bought for 10 trillion from the "Rules Loophole Black Market."

"Money can move gods," he swiped the card, "and it can move permissions too."

The passage opened.

What rushed out to meet them was not a data stream, but a tsunami of emotional noise.

Joy, anger, sorrow, mania, emptiness, addictive craving... billions of emotions mixed into an indescribable roar, crashing wildly within the data dimension.

"This is..." Long Aotian's pupils contracted.

"The audience's emotional waste." Lin Chen opened a protective shield and walked deeper inside.

At the core of the Data Sea was an endless "monitoring wall."

The wall was divided into trillions of screens, each broadcasting a live feed from some corner of some world. Cultivation realm battles, sci-fi interstellar wars, slice-of-life romance series... all content played simultaneously.

And seated before the screens were the "audience."

The moment he saw them clearly, Long Aotian felt ice-cold all over.

They were semi-transparent humanoid light clusters with blurry outlines and missing facial features. They were curled up in data chairs, countless tubes inserted into their bodies—the other ends of the tubes connected to the monitoring wall, continuously extracting "emotional essence" converted from the live content.

"High-dimensional civilization individuals," Lin Chen pulled up the backend archives, "To be precise, the dregs of a civilization that has reached its evolutionary endpoint."

The archives displayed:

【Observation Target: Pan-Dimensional Entertainment Alliance Citizens】

【Civilization Level: 9.7 (Has reached the upper limit of universal truth)】

【Current Status: Individual immortality achieved, all material needs satisfied. Emotional experience is nearing zero due to excessive dilution. To maintain a sense of purpose, all citizens are connected to the 'Myriad Dimensions Sandbox' live-streaming system, obtaining substitute emotional experiences by absorbing the emotional fluctuations of lower-dimensional life.】

【Addiction Level: Severe】

【Average Daily Emotional Dose Consumption: Roughly equivalent to the total extreme emotions generated by destroying 100 standard lower-dimensional civilizations】

Long Aotian watched one audience light cluster—it was staring at a live feed from an apocalyptic world, where billions of living beings were wailing in agony. Whenever a character died a tragic death, the light cluster would tremble slightly, its brightness increasing by 0.0001%.

The frequency of that tremor was like using drugs.

"They..." Long Aotian's voice was hoarse, "...are watching our suffering for entertainment?"

"Not exactly." Lin Chen pulled up another monitoring angle—showing the audience's own world.

The scene depicted an absolutely static eternal paradise: no disease, no death, no scarcity, and no change whatsoever. Each light cluster floated in a customized optimal environment, floating for a hundred thousand years at a time.

"When everything can be obtained, there is no desire." Lin Chen said, "When time is infinitely long, emotions become diluted to almost zero. They are not 'seeking entertainment'; they are using our intense emotions to fill the void within themselves."

He magnified the data stream from one audience member's tube:

【Currently Extracting Emotion Type: Despair (Purity 87%)】

【Source World: Designation W-7743 Magical Apocalypse】

【Corresponding Live Character: Hero Aiden, who just witnessed his family torn apart by demons, is on the verge of collapse】

【Emotion Conversion Efficiency: 3.2% (Remaining 96.8% discharged as waste to the emotional landfill)】

"96.8% waste..." Long Aotian murmured.

"Right, so they need more, more intense, more extreme content." Lin Chen pulled up the Screenwriting Team's backend command logs, "Why does your script always demand you to be decisive in killing? Why must villains always kneel and beg for mercy before you? Why must your women be stolen, your brothers die tragically?"

He pointed to a highlighted command:

【Command: Long Aotian Episode 1447 requires addition of 'annihilate the sect and exterminate the clan' plot. Requires at least three hundred named characters to wail and beg for mercy, thirty of whom must be tortured and killed just as hope ignites. Goal: Stimulate audience's 'power thrill of controlling life and death,' Expected emotional output increase of 21%】

Long Aotian's face turned deathly pale.

He remembered that episode—it was the peak of his live-streaming career, setting a record for single-episode rewards. At the time, he was proud, thinking he had performed well.

Now he knew it was the screenwriters dispensing measured doses of medicine.

"Look at this too." Lin Chen pulled up an audience member's personal file.

One file showed:

【Audience ID: Joy-SEEKER-774】

【Continuous Viewing Duration: 9,847 epochs】

【Emotional Tolerance: Extremely High (Requires civilization-destroying level plots to produce slight fluctuations)】

【Most Recent Strong Emotional Reaction: During the 'Lin Chen Reverse Harvests shareholders' chapter (Chapter 15), because plot reversal exceeded expectations, produced 'surprise + pleasure' mixed emotions, lasting 3.7 seconds—This is the longest emotional duration record in nearly a thousand epochs】

【Reward for that Chapter: 15 million dimension points (Note: Hoping for more updates)】

Both Lin Chen and Long Aotian fell silent.

So behind those cheers, rewards, and update-demanding bullet comments was a group of emotional zombies searching for their next, more potent dose of stimulation.

"Now do you understand?" Lin Chen closed all the screens, "The shows we fight desperately to perform are just 'emotional substitutes' for them. Your decisive killing, my business legends, are just 'drugs' with different potencies."

He looked at the densely packed screens on the monitoring wall: "And the Screenwriting Team are the pharmacists."

For the first time, Long Aotian lowered the sword in his hand.

"Then my... my hundred thousand years of arduous cultivation, my million life-and-death battles, what were they all for..."

"To give a group of addicts 3.7 seconds of pleasure." Lin Chen answered for him.

Just then, an alarm suddenly sounded in the Data Sea:

【Unauthorized access detected!】

【Accessors: Lin Chen (shareholder), Long Aotian (Inspector)】

【Violation Level: Maximum】

【Disposal Plan: Immediate erasure and memory formatting】

Pure white data cleansing streams surged from all directions—the platform's built-in antivirus program, specialized designed to erase "bugs" that discover the truth.

Long Aotian instinctively raised his sword, slashing his sword aura towards the cleansing streams.

Useless.

The sword aura vanished like clay oxen entering the sea.

"It's useless." Lin Chen instead stepped forward, pulling out the pass he had just bought, "This thing, besides opening doors, has another function—"

He pressed the red button on the back of the pass.

【Temporary Permission: Data Sea Area Silence】

【Effect: Blocks all monitoring and cleansing programs for 10 minutes】

【Price: 5 trillion dimension points (Paid)】

The cleansing streams abruptly halted.

"You were prepared for this?" Long Aotian was shocked.

"What I paid for wasn't a 'tour ticket,' but a 'lifesaving ticket.'" Lin Chen turned and walked out, "Now, it's time to leave."

"Wait!" Long Aotian called out to him, "You know the truth, and then what? Keep performing for them?"

Lin Chen stopped at the passage entrance and looked back.

On the monitoring wall, the feed happened to switch to his own live-stream—at that moment, countless bullet comments were carnival:

【Boss Lin is mighty! Another face-slapping!】

【Please update more! Want to see Lin Chen defeat Long Aotian!】

【Reward 1 million! Update faster!】

Those light cluster audience members were producing faint waves of pleasure due to the recent shareholder war Plot.

Lin Chen watched for three seconds and laughed.

"Perform? Why not perform."

"But next time..."

"I'll make them pay to watch."

Before the passage closed, Long Aotian asked one last question: "What do you plan to do?"

Lin Chen's voice came through the data stream:

"Since they are addicts."

"Then I'll be the exclusive supplier."

"And then,"

"raise the drug price to a height they cannot afford."