Are You Worth It?!

"You're working again? This past month, how many days have you even stayed home? What's so great about that company? Why are you killing yourself with overtime? We don't lack money. Can't you just quit? How long have you even slept? I don't want you exhausting yourself like this!" Zhou Xuanxuan cried, tears streaming down her face.

Liu Jie stood helplessly by the doorframe. Seeing his wife sobbing so bitterly, he felt as if a knife were twisting in his heart.

He stepped forward and pulled his wife into his arms. His voice trembled as he said, "Honey, just one more week. Once this game stabilizes, it'll be over. I swear that when the time comes, I'll make it up to you properly. Our boss is a Divine Person. He's an absolute legend in our industry. I want to follow him. I'll be able to learn so much in the future!"

"And didn't you say you liked the houses at Kaiyuan No. 1? I'll save up enough money soon!"

"I'm going to work. Take care of yourself at home!"

After saying that, Liu Jie headed for the door.

"I don't want a house! I just want you to stay home! You only got back a few hours ago, your body can't take this! I don't want you to go! I don't want money, and I don't want a house!"

Zhou Xuanxuan shouted through her tears.

"Honey, be good."

"Are you worth it?!" Zhou Xuanxuan suddenly screamed herself hoarse.

Liu Jie fell silent. With his back to Zhou Xuanxuan, he said, "Honey, this is my path. I think it's worth it!"

"Wait for me to come back!"

Squeak~

The door opened and shut. Looking at the empty space before her, Zhou Xuanxuan could only cry silently.

You carry everything on your own!

Why!

Why do you have to work yourself so hard!

Late at night.

One speeding car after another arrived downstairs at Future Technology Crystal Company.

They were all the company's programmers. Dark circles hung beneath their eyes, and they looked utterly listless. Clearly, they had just been dragged awake.

They took the same elevator without speaking to one another, standing there in a daze with blazing fire in their eyes.

Their bodies were numb, resting.

But flames burned in their hearts. They were incredibly excited—the game was finally showing promise.

Once they entered the office, the notification chimes continued ringing nonstop.

"Move, move, move! The servers are about to crash! Nearly a hundred thousand people are still queued up to enter the game. We have to solve this tonight and release all the bots!"

Guo Yang said, his messy bedhead sticking up everywhere.

He had not closed his eyes for an entire day and night either.

The office sprang into action.

In the room next door, Ye Fan was not asleep either. He was continuing to program the Core Code for an artificial Super Brain Computer.

These codes would take at least another month to complete.

While coding, Ye Fan heard the commotion next door. He froze for a moment and glanced outside. It was already past one in the morning.

Why were they still working overtime?

"X, investigate this overtime situation!"

[Ding. Searching for the target. Analyzing the target's behavior!]

[Ding. Search complete. Target Warfire Hero has exploded across major Livestream Rooms. Downloads have reached three hundred thousand!]

Hearing that, Ye Fan was stunned. Then the corners of his mouth rose, though he could not help admiring those people.

He had been lucky enough to encounter this system. But what about them?

They were risking their lives.

Looks like I need to do something for them.

Ye Fan made up his mind.

Huya's top PUBG streamer was not known for his team skills, but as an entertainment streamer.

That night, while streaming PUBG, he noticed that his traffic was less than half of what it usually was.

What was going on?

Had he stopped being funny enough?

Or had people found out about him farming noobs?

As he searched for the problem, he discovered that the streamer group chat had exploded.

"Damn it, my traffic is terrible! I have no idea what's going on!"

"I just looked into it. Someone's streaming Warfire Hero, and most of the traffic has gone over to watch it!"

"Doesn't that game require insanely high specs to run?"

"No. I'm downloading it right now. It doesn't need high specs at all—even a trash computer can run it. People online fooled us. I suggest you all download it too, before our traffic keeps bleeding away!"

Only after seeing the messages in the group did Huya's top streamer suddenly understand. He hurriedly searched for Warfire Hero on the platform.

He found that it was all unfamiliar streamers broadcasting Warfire Hero.

They were all small-time streamers.

Yet some of them had hundreds of thousands of viewers, while even the worst had tens of thousands. Since they were small streamers, they lacked resources and did not have high-definition channels. Once too many people flooded in, their streams began to lag.

Then the traffic would flow into other Livestream Rooms.

Therefore, practically no one streaming Warfire Hero had low traffic.

Damn it.

Huya's top streamer hurriedly downloaded Warfire Hero.

The same thing was happening over on Douyu.

One person after another was downloading Warfire Hero. The more people watched, the more people downloaded it.

The flames of war were burning.

At Bluehole Group headquarters.

The time difference between there and here was only a few hours, but they worked in two shifts. Only the Technology Department did so; the other departments got off work normally.

A bored technician, who had been nodding off, heard a server alert sound.

It was a low-traffic alert.

"What's going on? Why is that sound appearing?"

The technician opened the data and discovered that traffic in the China Region was plummeting. The number of online users had dropped from six hundred thousand to around three hundred thousand.

It had been cut in half outright.

What was going on? How could something like this happen? He had to report it to the supervisor immediately.

This was a major issue.

While the technician was making the call, he saw that the online user count was still dropping wildly. His eyes nearly popped out of his head.

What the hell was going on?

What had happened over in China?

Bluehole received the news and immediately convened an emergency meeting.

At Penguin Group headquarters.

They had likewise discovered that player counts across major game channels were declining. Whether it was DNF, Honor of Kings, League of Legends, CF, or other major games, their player counts were all plummeting.

It was not just Penguin. NetEase was experiencing the same thing. Overnight, the flames of war spread across the land.

Their online user counts were dropping, while Guo Yang's side was celebrating one after another.

At the moment, fewer than four hundred thousand bots remained online across all their servers.

To every major game company, bots were a disgrace.

But now that the online bots were constantly being removed, it meant the number of real online players would only keep rising.

The current online player count had reached nearly six hundred thousand.

"Did we succeed?"

A programmer asked in disbelief.

"Of course we did! We succeeded! Hahaha!"

Guo Yang laughed happily, and the entire office immediately erupted in cheers and laughter.

Listening to the laughter next door, Ye Fan was happy for them as well. Their efforts had not gone unrewarded.

Ye Fan looked at the goals drafted on his desk.

Those goals were all projects for the company's future development.

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