"Oh, I see."
The young office drone nodded, showing that he understood the other man's eagerness perfectly.
As a player, he sometimes had similar thoughts himself. The feeling came and went quickly, but seizing the moment to satisfy it brought indescribable pleasure.
So he did not invite the other man to dinner again. They were only casual acquaintances, after all.
But... watching Cui Yuan walk farther and farther away, a certain nameless office drone suddenly felt that his voice sounded a little familiar. He had no idea when he might have heard it before...
A novice video creator's work was steadily gaining traction and spreading online.
Thanks to a video title whose reference was immediately recognizable and genuinely hardcore content, the video's completion and like rates kept climbing.
The rise in those two metrics, in turn, prompted the recommendation algorithm to push the video to more users with matching profiles.
And so, a newcomer's game puzzle-solving video began spreading virally online.
Meanwhile, thanks to the entertaining puzzle-solving process and ingeniously designed puzzles, more and more people began taking an interest in the game featured in the video, "World of Disorder."
Countless people opened the homepage of the largest gaming platform while savoring the video, and sure enough, they found the game sitting at number twenty on the new releases chart.
But after clicking through, more and more people discovered that the game was still only accepting preregistrations. Apparently, only a tiny number of players could obtain activation codes granting access to the closed beta.
Although they had no idea why a game that had not entered open beta was on the new releases chart, they still preregistered and filled out the questionnaire, making sure to submit a bug report afterward.
Did Cui Yuan know his work would cause a butterfly effect like this?
He did, but he had not known the butterfly effect would be this intense.
Of course, he did not care either, because this bug could not be fixed.
Since there was no way to fight it, he could only enjoy it.
But someone cared.
That afternoon, the technical director called the entire department into his office for a meeting, because bug report tickets concerning "World of Disorder" had begun increasing dramatically on the backend that morning.
They were growing so quickly that the technical director even thought their website was under attack... but closer inspection revealed that every ticket reported the same issue, and all had been typed manually by actual humans, rather than spammed by bots.
That only infuriated the director further, because upper management had already decided to quietly let this unfixable bug blow over. It was only a game that had not even launched, after all. How many people could possibly pay attention to it?
Yet in less than two days, the number of people discovering this bug had begun exploding, making their original plan of quietly letting it blow over increasingly difficult to carry out.
"Ugh, what the hell is all this?"
The director raised both hands and rubbed his face, at a loss for words.
But things had reached this point, so everyone would have to work overtime today, even if only for show, although every employee in the technical department now knew that bug could not be fixed.
They had, in fact, already given up hope. Thoughts like "a cyber ghost calls for a cyber ghostbuster" had even surfaced, as they felt this was beyond their job description.
In a sense, they really had stumbled onto the right answer, but unfortunately, their only reward was overtime.
As for programmer Cui Yuan, (one of) the instigators of everything that had happened today, he still had no idea he had caused this upheaval. He merely cursed inwardly, wishing price hikes on upper management's mothers whenever they bought groceries.
As more and more people flooded the game's promotional page, they successfully followed the link to its official website. Quite a few even copied the video and began exploring the website's subpages, trying to reproduce the video creator's puzzle-solving process.
Even more were drawn in by the game's introduction and basic setting, staying on the homepage to register, preregister, and share it.
Some even began studying the monsters they might encounter later, displaying something of a diligent student's spirit.
They noticed that the monster bestiary now contained five types of monsters. Its editor had even added numbers in order of discovery: [00001 Deadwood Vine], [00002 Vine Sheep], [00003 'Plum Blossom' Deer], [00004 Paralysis Flower], and the latest discovery, which had left three players' remains scattered everywhere and even killed Ed once, [00005 Strangler Fig].
Although everyone had only discovered five monsters so far, some genius had come up with this numbering method, making the bestiary look as though it could hold as many as 99,999 types of monsters.
And the prospective players discovered more than just the monster bestiary. There was an NPC encyclopedia too.
Nobody knew why there was only one NPC so far, but the asymmetrical gray-black silhouette and the encyclopedia's description of Ed aroused intense curiosity in quite a few people. In some gaming groups, prospective players even began discussing things like:
"What counts as a question that fits the world setting? Can he answer advanced math questions? If not, could he answer them if I told him they were some mage's final work?"
Or:
"If he really behaves almost exactly like a normal human, can I still rummage through his collection room? That's a hero's signature skill."
In short, wave after wave of discussion kept emerging in the real world. Thanks to the development of the internet, the keyword "World of Disorder" even made the video site's trending searches.
Naturally, the same wind also swept through a certain gaming group, the very group where [Zhongde] and the others had first discussed the game.
After the four of them (actually five) obtained closed beta access, discussion of "World of Disorder" in the group gradually died away.
The five had set up a separate little group to discuss issues, and of course, the players in the main group played more than one game, so this game, still in closed beta, had gradually faded from everyone's view over the past few days.
But because a certain programmer's video blew up within just a few hours, this nearly forgotten name was brought up once again:
[Brother Kong Is Benevolent and Righteous]: "Guys, that 'World of Disorder' from a while back is trending. I watched the video too. How do I put it? I think it's honestly pretty damn impressive. Completely different from that scammy vibe it had at first."
[Your Dad Doesn't Eat Cilantro]: "Credit where it's due, yeah. I feel like that game's got something, but why keep so much good stuff under wraps? If they'd shown it from the start, we wouldn't have trashed it so badly back then."
"True. Zhongde and the others have barely said anything lately. Are they actually playing it? Is it actually that fun?"
"Why not just ask him? @A Zhongde Dried Meat Wholesale."