By the time Bian Guanyue returned to the county seat, night had already fallen.
To her, the day's experiences had been rather bizarre.
For the first time, she learned that buses could be so run-down, and that conductors could argue with passengers the entire ride.
For the first time, she learned that her hometown had villages so poor that even the teachers could not be paid.
And her usually cheerful deskmate had unexpectedly hidden a painful past he could not bear to revisit.
Those were another world entirely, one she had never been able to touch!
Entering the pitch-black alley, Bian Guanyue hugged her computer and moved forward cautiously. No one bothered to repair the broken streetlights here, and every time she came home at night, the few dozen meters of darkness frightened her.
She finally hurried to the apartment building, quickened her pace upstairs, and hesitated outside her front door.
She wanted to coexist peacefully with her mother too.
But they always ended up arguing, and she was afraid she would have another fight as soon as she got home.
Bian Guanyue thought, Chen Guiliang definitely doesn't have worries like this. He isn't afraid of anything or any difficulty. He's really brave.
After standing outside for a while, Bian Guanyue cautiously took out her key.
The moment she pushed the door open a crack, her grandmother came over, ecstatic. "Guanguan, you're finally back!"
Bian Guanyue had already called from the bus on her way back from downtown to let them know she was safe.
"Where is she?" Bian Guanyue asked, looking around the apartment.
Her grandfather stood in the living room and said, "Your mother went to stay at a hotel. She'll return to Pengcheng tomorrow. The food is still warm. We were waiting for you."
Bian Guanyue let out a long breath.
The three of them sat around the table and ate, while her grandparents kept putting food into her bowl.
Her grandfather asked, "Did you get the computer fixed?"
"The replacement screen has to be shipped from Pengcheng. The owner doesn't know when it'll arrive either. He'll contact me once the new screen gets here," Bian Guanyue said.
"You went alone?" her grandmother asked.
"A classmate went with me," Bian Guanyue said, then added, "A girl classmate."
Her grandparents exchanged a glance.
They knew very well what microexpressions their granddaughter made when she lied.
It had to have been a boy. He had skipped class all afternoon just to accompany their granddaughter to get her computer repaired.
Pretending not to know anything, her grandfather asked, "I used to go into the city all the time when I was young. Where did you get the computer fixed?"
"At Red Star Department Store," Bian Guanyue said.
Her grandfather reminisced, "That used to be the city center, the liveliest place in all of Dragon Capital. After your grandmother and I made our relationship official, we specially took the bus to visit Red Star Department Store. Your grandmother bought me a pair of pants there, and I patched them up and wore them for over ten years."
Bian Guanyue smiled. "You two were pretty romantic when you were young."
"Romantic, my foot," her grandmother said, immediately tearing him down. "When your grandfather was young, he was only a little taller and a little better-looking. Can being handsome put food on the table? His salary was even a grade lower than mine. I was young and foolish back then, completely out of my mind to have fallen for him."
Her grandfather boasted, "Even if you didn't like me, plenty of others did. So many women at the factory liked me. There were seven or eight matchmaking attempts every year. Your grandmother was panicking inside, so she secretly wrote me love letters. She even copied a Soviet poem and insisted she wrote it herself."
"Who wrote you love letters? I certainly never did. Are you getting senile and confusing your memories?" her grandmother flatly denied it.
Her grandfather argued, "It was you, and you still won't admit it. The love letter is in the cabinet. Want me to dig it out so we can settle this?"
The old couple bickered around the dinner table, and Bian Guanyue's smile grew brighter.
The atmosphere gradually became warm and cozy.
After dinner, she watched television with her grandparents for a few minutes before returning to her bedroom to do her homework.
In the living room, her grandfather turned down the television so he would not disturb his granddaughter's studies.
"Do you think Guanguan is dating someone?"
"How could that be? She's only been at her new school for a week."
"Something feels off."
"Let's observe her slowly. Even if she really is dating someone, don't say anything careless and scare her."
"I'm not an idiot."
"..."
Bian Guanyue took out her practice papers from her schoolbag and diligently flipped through her textbooks as she worked on the questions.
"Where did the kite in the sky go? In the blink of an eye, it disappeared. Who cut its string? Do you know..."
Her phone began to ring.
Bian Guanyue answered. "Hello."
"I am Qin Shi Huang." The voice was solemn and deep.
What kind of nonsense was that?
Bian Guanyue recognized Chen Guiliang's voice and did not know whether to laugh or cry.
Though she did not understand the joke about sending money, she still played along. "Didn't Qin Shi Huang die?"
"I took an elixir of immortality and have just awakened after sleeping for over two thousand years. I need startup capital to open the Qin Emperor's Mausoleum. Once I retrieve the treasures inside, I can recruit troops and rebuild the Great Qin Empire. Then I will make you the Qin Dynasty Empress."
"Your Majesty Qin Shi Huang, what is your UnionPay card number?"
"I don't have an ID card, so the bank won't let me open an account."
Bian Guanyue nearly laughed aloud when she heard that. She quickly held it in and said, "Then how am I supposed to give you the money?"
"On Sunday, when you go to evening self-study, put the money in your desk drawer. Remember, don't let anyone notice."
"If I give you the money, can you issue me an invoice?"
"Forging documents is illegal. Woman, mind your manners!"
"What if you take the money and refuse to honor your word?"
"I'll give you a token. Whoever holds it is as if I myself had arrived."
"Fine. I'll withdraw the money tomorrow."
"See you this weekend!"
After saying that, Chen Guiliang hung up.
The corners of Bian Guanyue's lips curled up. Smiling, she muttered to herself, "Idiot!"
Her deskmate was ridiculously absurd. Even his phone calls were weird and neurotic.
Suddenly, she no longer wanted to do her homework. She lay facedown on her desk in a daze, recalling that crazy bus from earlier that day.
After hanging up, Chen Guiliang sat on the sofa and thought for a while. "Uncle Feng, can I borrow some paper and a pen?"
"Go get them from the study yourself." Feng Tao was looking after the child.
The apartment was 118 square meters. The developer had been fairly honest, with almost no shared common area.
There was a large bookshelf in the study filled with books on computers and the internet. There was also a computer that his uncle had assembled himself.
Pulling out several sheets of A4 paper, Chen Guiliang planned to write something down.
He had neither money nor technical skills, so he could only provide operational ideas and partner with others. His first priority was preventing them from crossing the river and tearing down the bridge after getting what they wanted!
He could make use of the "dark forest rule." If they dared to keep everything for themselves, then no one would get to play.
He also had to bring his uncle in. If Tao Chenggang tried to keep everything for himself, or tampered with the profit-sharing, then he would be offending his uncle's old friend as well.
After playing with the child for a while and taking a shower to wash away the smell of alcohol, Feng Tao came into the study to see what Chen Guiliang was doing.
That A4 sheet was covered in pay-to-win schemes!
"You want to put all of this into a private server?" Feng Tao asked.
"Yeah. This stuff will make it popular," Chen Guiliang said.
"Impossible." Feng Tao repeatedly shook his head. "If you recklessly make large-scale changes to the game, there'll be so many bugs that it won't even run."
Chen Guiliang suspected that his uncle simply was not skilled enough. "I'm just adding a few functions."
Feng Tao gave an example. "There's an expert named Le Jian who developed a function for clearing red-name status. It still had bugs when it first went online. You want to add so many functions, which is far more difficult than clearing red names. Technically, it's a huge challenge."
Chen Guiliang sensed that something was off. At this point in time, even adding a function to clear red-name status required an expert?
"With the source code, can't you just modify the game however you want?" Chen Guiliang asked.
Feng Tao was instead shocked. "You have the Legend source code?"
Chen Guiliang became even more confused. "Didn't the source code for Legend leak last year?"
Feng Tao said speechlessly, "Who told you the Legend source code leaked? What got out last year was only an overseas server program. Right now, Legend Private Servers are made by modifying the launcher IP."
Chen Guiliang said, "..."
This was entirely the media's fault. Chen Guiliang had been fooled for twenty years.
Of course, it was also possible that Shanda had deliberately released false information, portraying itself as a victim to gain public sympathy and use that to fight the Han side for control of Legend.
Chen Guiliang asked again, "Then how do those domestic Legend Private Servers modify game functions?"
Feng Tao explained, "At first, they used reverse engineering to locate things, then modified the binary main program files. Two months ago, a game group called CNE released a private-server modification tool, making it easier to create and modify private servers."
At that point, Feng Tao complained, "It was precisely because of that modification tool that Legend Private Servers are everywhere now. The competition got too fierce and the money got too hard to make, so I quit."
"Fuck!"
Chen Guiliang could not help swearing.
The Legend source code leak was something that happened later.
The civilian experts tinkering with private servers repeatedly reverse-engineered it until Ling Feng Studio finally recreated the source code. Shanda then cracked down on them hard, and when Ling Feng Studio was forced to disband, it retaliated by publicly releasing the Legend source code.
That was still a long way off.
At present, changing or adding private-server functions was extremely difficult from a technical standpoint. Of course, it could also be said that it was not difficult, but it would take time to slowly work through it.
This unexpected development disrupted Chen Guiliang's plans.
Reborn people were not omniscient, because much public information had been wrong from the very beginning.
He had wanted to implant the tricks used by pay-to-win browser games into a Legend Private Server and make a quick profit.
But the problem was that he could not implant them!
Things like check-in systems, ranking systems, and lottery systems were difficult to shove directly into a private server.
What now?
Chen Guiliang had confidently promised to discuss business with Boss Tao. They had already arranged to meet, but what the hell was there left to discuss?
He had to change his approach.
Before you continue