Not Playing the Same Game

Pharah had dropped into PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, leaving all the players dumbfounded.

Some players who had been ambushing and sniping each other immediately stopped.

What kind of joke was this? With a Great Golden Immortal flying around in the sky, what the hell were they supposed to fight for?

Such an outrageously obvious and terrifying cheat made everyone stare wide-eyed. If it could even replicate hero abilities, then one rocket might take out one kid at a time, with splash damage to boot.

Who could fly in this game? Who had unlimited ammo? Who had abilities? Or even ultimates?

Better yet, who in this game had such a handsome, exquisitely designed character model, complete with their own exclusive voice lines?

Everyone immediately started recording or calling their friends over.

"Come see an immortal!"

Some player shouted excitedly in an internet café. His friend beside him knew he was playing PUBG and said disdainfully, "Isn't it just some cheater? What immortal?"

"No, this isn't an ordinary cheat!" The player forcibly turned his friend's head.

When the others saw Pharah soaring over the airport, occasionally landing on rooftops to hop a few steps before taking off with her rockets again, they could no longer look away.

"Holy shit... bro, what game are you playing?"

"PUBG."

"Really? You sure you're not messing with me?"

Some even came over and moved his mouse, wanting to see whether it was just a video.

They had seen cheating before, but never cheating like this. It was practically like someone had personally made an update for the game and added a special character.

This was the kind of cheat people envied.

If it were an ordinary cheat, or one developed based on this game's existing framework, players would actually look down on it. If they got killed by that sort of cheat, they would be furious.

But cheating on this level was different. Seeing someone use it was entertaining instead, and it did not diminish their enthusiasm for the game. On the contrary, no one wanted to die now.

"Brothers, don't shoot!"

"Let's follow her! Damn, this cheat is insane. The character model looks like they just moved Pharah straight over here."

This had originally been a game where people fought to the death without mercy, with only one person able to survive in the end.

But now, players who did not know one another suddenly got along peacefully. No one killed anyone. Those looking for cars looked for cars, those on foot ran, and all of them eagerly followed behind Pharah.

"Hurry up, get in! There's no time!" one player shouted from a jeep, and many players quickly piled into it.

The car had barely stopped before it was packed full of strangers.

The driver watched Pharah in the sky while driving after her.

Others nearby ran alongside them, shouting, "Let me in! Let me in!"

"No room! No room!" Car after car was full, and groups of players swarmed after Pharah.

The players were all unbelievably excited, as if they were taking part in some grand event.

Pharah was not actually flying very fast, but she was in the sky, able to ignore the terrain.

Moreover, Overwatch character models were larger and moved faster. If they were just running, PUBG players could never catch up.

At that moment, everyone only wanted to stay close to Pharah and did not want to be left behind.

The fun of watching this cheater had far surpassed the game itself. Whether they won or lost no longer mattered.

"Bro, wait up!"

"Is that really a cheat?"

"Can you use your abilities?"

More than a dozen cars followed below, and voice chat was a chaotic mess full of every kind of question.

Mo Qiong could hear them too. He slowly descended from the sky and landed on the roof of a car. "Why are you following me?"

Hearing him speak made everyone even more certain that he was cheating, rather than some official Easter egg.

"Where did you buy that cheat?"

"Bro, how much for it? Sell it to me."

Mo Qiong did not know whether to laugh or cry when he heard someone wanted to buy it.

"This cheat can't win. We might not even be able to finish this match," Mo Qiong said.

"That's fine, that's even better! I'll treat it like I paid for it! Even just getting to experience the abilities would be enough!" the driver shouted.

Even people who hated cheats would probably not refuse something like this, because it was no longer merely a cheat that broke game balance. It was an alternative gaming experience.

Everyone else was following the rules of one game, while he could use a character and abilities from another. This crossover was both astonishing and fun.

People who hated cheats might not use things like aimbots or health locks, but completely changing the character model and adding abilities from a popular character in another polished game gave it the feeling of crossing into another world.

They had played the same character before, and had even grown tired of playing Pharah in Overwatch. But playing Pharah in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds was a completely different experience.

In a sense, it was like spending money in a game that did not allow microtransactions, buying a powerful and stylish skin.

People were willing to spend thousands or even tens of thousands on skins. Compared to that, the experience Mo Qiong was displaying was more appealing than any paid cosmetic.

In this game, people were willing to spend money to make their helmets, bulletproof vests, and guns look better. But no matter how good they looked, could they compare to the Raptora Mark VI aerial combat armor?

The characters and abilities in Overwatch were exceptionally polished.

Even if it was cheating, anyone who could afford it would want to try it out—not to win, but simply to show off.

"This cheat is unstable. Not for sale." Mo Qiong spoke as he prepared to leave.

But the man relentlessly pursued him. "How about ten thousand? For a model this polished, with abilities too, any price is fine. Name it."

The offer made Mo Qiong pause for a moment, but he still left without looking back.

He could not sell this sort of cheat, because it was his superpower. Before long, either the system would detect the anomaly and automatically remove it, or staff would investigate the abnormal data and cause this adaptation to disappear.

Of course, if he let this person log into his Overwatch account and enter the game with him, then used Pharah's abilities to launch him into another game, he really could send the other person elsewhere.

But doing something like that for a little money was completely unnecessary.

He had already attracted quite a bit of attention while testing his abilities. Although it could be disguised as cheating, it would be better not to use it again in the future.

As long as it happened only once, it would at most become gaming news. People would talk about it for a while, saying that cheats these days were better made than the games themselves...

If the game company could not figure out what had happened and nothing similar occurred again, they would not do much about it.

But if it kept happening in the future, and not just to one person, and they could not even trace it—a cheat that could not be eliminated—then the game company would definitely take it seriously and do everything possible to solve it.

Once they put their minds to it, things would become troublesome.

Fortunately, Pharah was still a hero from a shooter game. If Mo Qiong had logged into Han Dang's World of Warcraft account and brought over that level 110 elven mage, these PUBG players would probably have been scared to death.

He could ride a dragon into the final circle, start casting Blizzard with a wave of his hand, and stand still while his hundreds of thousands of health points drove every player holding a Kar98k into despair.

But if he did that, the game company would definitely go insane.

"Everyone, this is just a cheat I tinkered together myself. There was a bug in the shop during this update, so I took advantage of it. Once the operators notice, this cheat won't work anymore." Mo Qiong said this after being followed for a while, knowing that people were recording.

He wanted to reassure the game operators so they would not obsess too much over this cheat. Generally speaking, game companies would not keep pursuing a rare cheat forever. They were more likely to crack down on users. Otherwise, cheats would have been eradicated long ago instead of remaining widespread.

"This guy's a god!"

"So this is a one-of-a-kind cheat? We'll never see it again?"

Mo Qiong's words made everyone feel that the cheat was even more precious. Being able to witness it was already a lucky experience. Furthermore, this novel cheat would only exist briefly and would not continue disrupting game balance in the future. That made it something legendary.

The spectators excitedly shouted, "Ultimate! Show us your ultimate!"

They had seen and played Pharah's Justice from Above rocket barrage before, but now every one of them wanted Mo Qiong to demonstrate it, as though it held an entirely new kind of fun.

Mo Qiong symbolically fired a few rockets and said, "No, I need to log—"

Just as he was about to refuse, he suddenly froze. His character seemed to have been attacked, and his health bar instantly dropped by more than half.

At the same time, the dozen or so cars that had been following him, especially those near the front, all skidded to a stop, leaving boxes scattered across the ground. The players inside had all died.

"What? Killed by a vehicle?"

"Damn, there's an immortal!" the players shouted one after another.

Mo Qiong was stunned. He could not see the kill messages for other players, but after thinking about it, he understood what being killed by a vehicle meant.

"Was it the cheater Han Dang ran into earlier?"

An Absolute Domain-type cheat: enter the circle and die to a vehicle. Han Dang had encountered one just like it earlier and had been so angry that he did not want to play anymore. Perhaps that cheater had not been banned yet and had started another match—this very match.

Mo Qiong flew around at random. Since he could not see the map, he had not known he had entered the circle, and he too was now taking damage.

However, this cheat was clearly not an instant-kill type. It instead applied a vehicle collision calculation to every player.

In this game, getting hit by a vehicle was fatal unless it was moving very slowly. At normal speeds, the damage could exceed a player's maximum health by far. An Absolute Domain-type cheat directly inflicted this sort of damage on every player, at exactly enough to kill them.

But while that damage was fatal to other players, it only left Pharah Severely Injured...

Pharah had two hundred health points. She was a fragile hero in Overwatch, but here, she was tankier than anyone!

Mo Qiong was not even playing the same game as them. He had not launched PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds at all! He was playing Overwatch... Everyone thought he was a PUBG player, but they had no idea that his character data was with Blizzard Entertainment. If he died or killed another player, the displayed ID would be the one he had registered in Overwatch. That ID would not be found in this game, or there might be some random player with the same name.

The fragile PUBG players who entered the circle all died, while only his Pharah remained standing in the air.

"Don't come in, everyone! This is fucking Absolute Domain!" someone shouted from among the boxes on the ground.

Many more player convoys were behind them. Seeing the flood of messages saying they had been killed by vehicles, they immediately recognized what sort of cheat this was.

The followers outside the circle shouted for their drivers to stop, then stood at the edge of the circle, not daring to enter.

"Look, Pharah's fine!"

"Like I thought, Great Golden Immortals are the strongest. She's got a health lock, right?"

They still believed Mo Qiong was cheating. The reason he had not died was that he had locked his health.

It was perfectly normal for there to be two cheaters in one match. Sometimes there were even three or four.

A minor immortal was still manageable, and even a lesser immortal could dominate ordinary players. But a powerful immortal was enough to make people despair.

In the minds of ordinary players, a Great Golden Immortal like Mo Qiong was naturally truly invincible.

From the character model to the implementation of abilities, it was easy to see how much it must have cost to make Mo Qiong's cheat.

Other cheats, such as The Flash, merely gave someone the maximum movement speed of a motorcycle. They still used parameters that existed within the game itself. Absolute Domain's vehicle deaths were the same.

But Mo Qiong's cheat was on an entirely different level. It was not like exploiting a bug at all—it was practically an update package...

With such a high-end cheat, locking health was surely nothing special.

They had encountered two immortals in one match, and everyone wanted to see immortals fight.

"Pharah, get him! We'll carry you to a chicken dinner this match!"

"Hit him with Justice from Above!"

"Blow up that cheating bastard!" the spectators outside the circle shouted.