Chapter 148
Because the two brawny men had absconded, the case was still under investigation. Meng Wan was temporarily detained by the police in prison, as soon as the fugitives were caught, she would immediately be transferred to court for her trial. However, if they didn’t catch the two fugitives after 37 days of criminal detention, she would still enter the judicial process, but the court’s evidence against her would not be as substantial.
But regardless of if the evidence was insufficient, Meng Wan herself had admitted to the crime, and the severity of the crimes guaranteed a decade or more of imprisonment. Meng Wan was not someone who didn’t understand the law, but she had mistakenly been too trusting in Fang Zhifei’s plans, and had underestimated Zhou Yun Sheng too much.
She’d always thought that Zhou Yun Sheng was a stupid rich boy who only knew how to spend money, just casually set a trap for him and he would hang, she never would’ve thought that she would be the one hanging.
These days, she was subjected to violent beatings in her cell by the other female prisoners, no slice of skin was intact. They spat on her and abused her endlessly, because her appearance was the most refined and she looked the weakest, she became their tool to vent their grievances. They would occasionally strip off her clothes and make her crawl around the cell, treating her like a dog, even peeing on the floor and ordering her to lick it clean.
In only a few days, Meng Wan was on the brink of mental collapse, not to mention the long prison life ahead. Whenever she remembers her once bright, promising future, then looked down at the ugly and dirty prison clothes on her body, her heart was hit with overwhelming regret. When she was almost unable to persevere, Fang Zhifei visited her, looking at her with eyes full of soothing love.
“I gave you some trouble.” He let out a long sigh.
Meng Wan didn’t speak, he continued, “Don’t worry, I’ll hire the best team of lawyers to help you litigate.”
“How can I litigate? The police have conclusive evidence, I admitted to them to protect you… …”
Fang Zhifei interrupted her slightly resentful words, “Do you still remember your sister? She just finished her bone marrow transplant surgery, and she still needs astronomical treatment fees to get through the rejection period. Behave yourself, I’ll help you take care of your sister. We’ll get married after you get out, don’t worry, I’ll wait for you.”
Meng Wan’s eyes widened, understanding the hidden threat behind his tender words, she stared blankly at him for a few minutes, then clutched her face, crying silently. Until now, she hadn’t realized how deep Fang Zhifei’s scheming was. From the beginning, he’d never personally intervened in these events, he just cleverly made suggestions and guided her actions. Even if she changed her confession now, it wouldn’t cause any harm to him without evidence.
He had planned an easy way out from the outset- let her take the rap.
Meng Wan’s sorrow rose up from within, her quiet sobs turned into bitter wails.
Fang Zhifei comforted with endless tenderness, “Meng Meng, don’t be afraid, this will pass quickly, everything will be okay. Don’t cry, I’ll definitely wait for you.”
“Get lost! Get the hell away from me!” Meng Wan snarled hoarsely.
Fang Zhifei sighed and turned away, but he knew that Meng Wan would endure any suffering for her sister, as long as her sister was still in his hands, she’d never do anything stupid. On the way back, he opened his phone to check on news about ZHOU, but unexpectedly came across shocking news. The poster had written extremely detailed accounts of grievances and grudges between Fang Kunpeng and Zhou family, including with the post many photographic proof of Fang Kunpeng’s extramarital affair, like Zhou Yun Sheng’s and his birth certificates, which both had Fang Kunpeng’s signature.
The netizens were in an uproar, they successively forwarded the post, calling Fang Kunpeng the most shameless slag man they had ever seen. The illegitimate child was even one year older than the legitimate child, taking his wife’s money to support a mistress. Plus, Fang Zhifei’s funds to establish his company were also scooped up from Zhou family, that pair of father and son really created a world record for the most disgusting family.
There were users that analyzed that since Meng Wan was Fang Zhifei’s girlfriend, perhaps framing Zhou Yun Sheng was actually Fang Zhifei’s plan. With Zhou Yun Sheng imprisoned, and ZHOU in chaos, he could freely loot. Holy fuck, what a vicious mind.
These rumors came out, and were soon recognized as an open secret by other netizens.
Fang Zhifei was exceptionally irritated by this, he moved to delete the post while calling a lawyer, saying that he would sue for slander, asking them to immediately draw up a letter of attorney and publish it, so the rumors could die down. But his personal image was already ruined, from a promising young talent to a conspirator, illegitimate child.
Fortunately, the gamers didn’t care about the moral character of the developers as long as the game itself was good, so the customer base not only didn’t decrease, it rose daily.
But before Fang Zhifei could relax, Fang Kunpeng returned home, pale and dejected. He taught classical literature at the university, and has always advocated the principle of literary accomplishment and morality going hand in hand. In fact, he’d published a very well received essay called “How Scholars Retain Their Bottom Line of Discipline and Ethics.”
He had advertised himself as a writer with both talent and integrity, and was highly respected by his students and colleagues. When this shocking news was posted, his carefully maintained image came crashing down, he was pointed at wherever he went, and endlessly criticized. The dean, after confirming the authenticity of the matter, ordered that his duties be suspended, then they held a faculty meeting to discuss whether or not to dismiss him.
Since the framing incident, Zhou family was now the subject of much attention and sympathy from the people of Y City. Those who’d previously called Zhou Yun Sheng a womanizer and prodigal son, had now changed their tune, saying that his true temperament was forthright and generous, too foolishly trusting, but unfortunately, he met with the abusive Meng Wan the Black Widow, and so on.
At this sensitive time, Fang Kunpeng’s divorce with Zhou mother attracted strong criticism, and after such a dirty inside story suddenly broke, there was no one who wouldn’t call him a brute. Such a person was actually a university professor, Y University must not want a good reputation ah?
Therefore, the dean was not accommodating, he had Fang Kunpeng’s duties suspended the very same day. As soon as Fang Kunpeng walked through his front entrance, the school phoned him. The staff and teaching committee had voted unanimously to dismiss him, he had to clean out his office tomorrow.
Fang Kunpeng was really passionate about his teaching job. He sat in the living room and wept, Fang mother’s arm wrapped around him, soothing him.
Seeing the gloomy atmosphere at home, Fang Zhifei felt very uncomfortable, he directly went up to his room without calling out a greeting. He went online and searched for information about ZHOU. ZHOU would convene a shareholders meeting today to decide whether to declare bankruptcy, it was one of the leading enterprises in Y City, so the media was naturally very concerned about its fate.
The stock traders had dump sold all of ZHOU’s stock, unless another company was willing to invest huge sums of money to save it, there would be no miracle.
Zhou Yun Sheng and Zhou mother slowly walked into the conference room, the two wearing the same style of white suit, hand in arm, their calm demeanor in sharp contrast with the melancholy looking shareholders.
“Thank you all for staying with me until the end.” Zhou Yun Sheng sat at the head of the table and smiled lightly. These people were actually not as noble as he said, as soon as they’d come to their senses, they’d wanted to sell the stock, but no one was willing to receive it. Nowadays, who didn’t know that ZHOU was bound to collapse, buying ZHOU’s stock was equivalent to buying a pile of waste paper.
“I guarantee that in five years, you’ll be very pleased with your decision today. I didn’t come today to discuss the issue of bankruptcy with you, but to discuss the release of two new games.”
The shareholders stared at him with wide eyes, stunned. ZHOU was already like this, where would it get the money to develop new games? Was Chief Zhou sleepwalking?
Zhou Yun Sheng raised his hand to stall the shareholders’ doubtful questioning, he smiled, “Before that, I’ll introduce you to a new shareholder. Mr. Yi, please come in.”
Yi Zheng walked in, expressionless, sat on his right hand side, and nodded slightly to everyone.
“Mr. Yi holds a 36% stake in ZHOU, the second largest shareholder of our company. I’m very grateful to Mr. Yi for reaching out to ZHOU in this perilous time. Thank you.” He stood up and stretched out his arms.
Yi Zheng’s cold expression instantly melted, he immediately stood up and tightly embraced his lover, lightly brushing his lips against the tip of his ear.
The dark clouds shrouding the shareholders’ heads instantly dissipated, turning into sunny blue skies. Who didn’t know that the gambling industry was one of the fastest growing industries, Yi Group was not only wealthy, it had background, with his powerful capital injection, ZHOU would be hard pressed to go bankrupt. No wonder Chief Zhou’s company inspection two days ago was so unyielding, unhesitatingly approving hundreds of resignations, he was long prepared.
The shareholders hurriedly thanked Yi Zheng, the meeting room finally having a happy atmosphere.
Zhou Yun Sheng raised his hand to interrupt everyone’s reception, he turned on the LED screen behind him and got straight to the point, “While the R & D department was making ‘Magic World Mastery’, I was testing and developing my own game. To be honest, I was always very dissatisfied with ‘Magic World Mastery’s’ production. In my eyes, it could only be described as ‘clumsy’.”
The shareholders glanced at Chief Zhou with strange eyes. Once ‘Magic World Mastery’ launched, it obtained the reputation as the best produced game in the country. The player base increased at a rate of millions per day, once the subscriptions began, they would start raking in hundreds of millions a year. Saying such a game would go bust, Chief Zhou must hate the Fang father and son pair so much that he started babbling nonsense.
Contrarily, Yi Zheng loved seeing his lover’s arrogant little prince look, he supported his cheek on one hand and looked at him with interest.
Zhou Yun Sheng didn’t waste time, he straightforwardly inserted a disk and began his presentation. Grand, passionate music and earth-shattering scenes exploded like a bomb, shocking the shareholders out of reality for a long time. Even when Zhou Yun Sheng finished explaining, they were still so immersed in the game that they found it difficult to extricate themselves.
Where was this a game, this was clearly real life! If they put ‘Magic World Mastery’ and these two games together, clumsy really was the only word that could be used to describe it.
“These two games are copywritten and the copyright is in my hands, there will be no legal dispute. Now, let’s start discussing the issue of releasing them.” Zhou Yun Sheng’s voice barely faded before the shareholders dived into the discussion with 100% enthusiasm.
The reporters squatted in front of ZHOU’s building for more than four hours, as darkness approached, just as they were getting ready to go home, they received a call from ZHOU’s public relations department, saying that Chief Zhou wanted to announce something important.
Is he declaring bankruptcy? The reporters grew excited like they’d injected chicken blood, they immediately updated their official websites and microblogs to tell people to stay tuned, then continued to wait.
Fang Zhifei leaned back in his chair, looking over the microblogs of these reporters with a smile, however, it was not long before an unknown tabloid reporter posted a video on his microblog, which was forwarded tens of thousands of times in just a few minutes.
Zhou Yun Sheng’s handsome yokai face appeared behind a row of microphones, he smiled from ear to ear, his arms wrapped around the taller man’s waist beside him, “If you were waiting for the announcement of ZHOU’s bankruptcy, then I’m sorry to disappoint you. ZHOU has just received the full support of Yi Group and has successfully passed through this difficult time. And in three days’ time, we will release two new games.”
“It’s inconvenient for me to disclose more information here, so I’ll only say that the production aspects of these two games are far better than ‘Magic World Mastery’, please look forward to them. In my opinion, ‘Magic World’ is only a defective product. There are so many flaws in that game, it would simply fail to meet the listing standard. The shortsighted, profit mongering ways of some people really make my teeth itch.”
The reporters surround him to pitch questions, but Yi Zheng’s bodyguards separated them. Yi Zheng pushed his lover’s face into his bosom, comfortingly patting his shoulder as he led him out of the tight encirclement. Worried that the flashes would be too irritating, he also rested the palm of his hand over his lover’s eyes.
Without any need for words, the two men’s close friendship could be seen just from their body language.
The news of Yi Group’s investment in ZHOU quickly appeared on the official websites of the major financial magazines, it’s expected that as soon as the stock market opened tomorrow, ZHOU’s stock prices would rise rapidly. Yi Group had received an AAA rating from the U.S’s three major credit rating agencies, the investors usually placed extreme trust in Yi Group’s investment directions. With Yi’s significant equity stake in ZHOU, ZHOU’s precarious state was instantly stabilized.
Fang Zhifei immediately smashed the coffee cup in his hand when he saw this announcement. It took him more than half an hour to calm down, then he connected to Tengda’s servers, saw ‘Magic World Mastery’s’ growing number of players, and felt much better. Defective product? Zhou Yun Sheng that moron actually had the gall to say this! After his perfect modifications, ‘Magic World’ would become a classic that no one would be able to surpass for the next 50 years, time would prove everything eventually.
The next day, ZHOU’s stock prices really rose sharply, after three days, if the new games’ conference was successful, it would presumably continue to climb. The investors who had wildly sold off ZHOU’s shares before now regretted until their intestines turned green, and of course, the bargain-hunter investors were overjoyed, they jumped and danced about in the trading room.
The shareholders and employees who had left ZHOU suffered internal injuries from their dark hate, they waited to see exactly what kind of game could go beyond ‘Magic World Mastery’.
“They couldn’t have developed a new game in such a short time, even if they did, it’s delusional to think it could go beyond ‘Magic World’. Our production team is currently the best in the country, he can’t have found a group more talented than us.” Fang Zhifei resolutely said.
Tengda’s CEO gave him a distrustful look and asked in a heavy voice, “Be honest with me, does ‘Magic World’ really have no technical problems?”
“Don’t you know what I can do? That Zhou Yun Sheng is deliberately trying to discredit our company, ignore him.”
As the two started discussing response strategies, the tech department’s head hurriedly knocked open the door and hectically said, “Boss this is bad, large scale connection drops are appearing in Magic World, more than 50,000 players have already posted complaints. Chief Fang, you need to look at this now .”
Fang Zhifei immediately put down his folder and rushed to the tech department, Tengda’s CEO fished out a heart-rate stabilizing pill and dry swallowed it, his heart suddenly filling with a very ominous premonition.
In fact, ‘Magic World’ didn’t only have a dropped connection problem, more and more serious problems kept emerging. Some players had their equipment disabled, and some players had skill failure. Even with a 4M connection speed, the game’s lagging made them go crazy, and as soon as the lag stopped, the player’s character dropped dead and all their equipment inexplicably disappeared, like they’d encountered a ghost.
The complaints flooded Tengda’s official website, and the angry players directly posted their various grievances on the game’s forum, denouncing ‘Magic World’ as a beautifully packaged piece of shit.
Garbage! Don’t play this game anymore!
They’re lucky this is still a free trial, or I’d rush over to Tengda’s headquarters to break some fucking heads!
A small company is still a small company after all, quality control is not guaranteed.
Didn’t Chief Zhou call ‘Magic World’ a defective product? I thought he was just being shameless, deliberately smearing Tengda, now it seems to be the truth.
Shit, of course it’s true. Tengda bought ‘Magic World’s copyright from ZHOU, so it makes sense that ZHOU knows exactly what this game is made out off.
Oh man, you guys are so right. ZHOU’s a big company, if the game doesn’t meet production standards, it can always delay it. But Tengda’s different, it spent all that money on this cash cow, it’d be nuts if it didn’t start desperately milking it. And as usual, us players get the short end of the stick! It’s great that the problems broke out in the trial period, if this happened after my subscription, I’d sue Tengda for fraud.
Such remarks flooded the Internet. The amount of praise ‘Magic World’ enjoyed in the past was the amount of insults it had to bear now. The number of players began to drastically decrease.
Tengda’s CEO almost died on the spot after learning about the situation, he mercilessly gripped Fang Zhifei’s arm, and bit out, “You and Meng Wan were responsible for leading ‘Magic World’s post-production team, it’s your responsibility to fix this problem. You better think of a way out now, or we’re all finished!”
In order to found Tengda, the two had put all their net worth into it, and also took on a large sum of outside debt. The company could only stand up by looking forward to ‘Magic World’s release, if ‘Magic World’ had a bad reputation, they certainly wouldn’t make any money after the trial period, and the two would lose all their investments.
Fang Zhifei revealed a tensed expression for the first time, he opened up the server’s terminal and began trying to debug the problem.
He examined it over and over, then twisted his eyebrow, “Looks like the game’s code was maliciously tampered with, and the server has been attacked by a hacker. All right, this is nothing, just a few small problems. I’ll restore the code, then set up a few defense systems right away.”
“Then fix it quickly. Announce that the server has been hacked and changed, let the players know that it’s not a problem of our game’s quality.” The CEO was relieved.
Fang Zhifei nodded and led the team to modify the code overnight. But he’d apparently underestimated the seriousness of the problem, no matter how much he modified it, just like loading a backup, the code would be instantly restored to its previous state.
Fang Zhifei exhausted all his effort, but he couldn’t even modify one character, which made him realize that the person who’d tampered with the code was far more skilled than him.
The next afternoon, he finally gave in and contacted a friend from the U.S, paying him a large sum to correct the code. This was someone Fang Zhifei had gotten to know over the internet while he was studying abroad in the U.S, he’d learnt all his hacking skills from this person. This person was the founder of the top-tier hacker organization based in the U.S, in this world, there was no system he couldn’t hack into, including every country’s national defense systems.
If he wasn’t good friends with Fang Zhifei, he wouldn’t even get out of bed to modify such an insignificant code.
“Don’t worry, my friend is one of the world’s most skilled hackers, this kind of task is absolutely no problem for him.” Fang Zhifei appeased the anxiously pacing CEO.
His voice had just faded when someone connected to his computer and played an audio.
“John, I can’t help you this time. The person who attacked you, I’m afraid their skill is already supernatural, I’m also helpless. Just look at this, they’re mocking me. John, I hope you start seriously thinking about who you’ve offended….and then give me their name and digits. Seriously, this hacker’s too savage, I need to be their best friend, like, yesterday!” The other end used a voice changer, apparently not wanting to expose their identity.
After the audio cut off, a video jumped out.
It was a computer screen, rows of modified game code suddenly swirled into a whirlpool, continuously spinning, a few seconds later, a diaper wearing toddler climbed out from the center of the whirlpool, holding a water gun, it aimed it at the screen and said in a childish voice, “Freeze! I’m the Messenger of Justice, and you’re under arrest!”
The chubby toddler was pink and innocent looking, very cute. At near the end of the video, Fang Zhifei heard his friend break out in laughter.
But Fang Zhifei couldn’t laugh with him. If he couldn’t modify the code, that meant they had to re-code the game, and they’d also have to push the game through all sorts of debugging. Because of that, forget about a month, it’d take more than half a year to solve this problem. If they really waited until that time, ‘Magic World’s reputation would’ve already fallen to the bottom, with no chance of recovery.
75 million to buy a piece of garbage, Fang Zhifei clearly didn’t have heart disease, but he still felt a sharp ache in his chest. Tengda CEO’s eyes had long rolled to the back of his head, out cold.
Thinking of Zhou Yun Sheng pre-emptively denouncing ‘Magic World’ as a defective product, Fang Zhifei had no reason to doubt who’d hired this hacker. He couldn’t take this lying down, he turned on the computer, trying to hack into ZHOU’s office system.
Just as he touched the first firewall, he was kicked out, the diaper wearing toddler appeared on the screen, firing the water gun in his hands, shouting pew pew pew.
Fang Zhifei was a stubborn daredevil, he once again attacked the firewall, and the toddler replaced the water gun, taking out a rocket launcher twice its size, then pulled the trigger.
Boom! The loud noise made Fang Zhifei jump in fright, the other side’s 3D effects were too realistic, making the screen fragment like it was truly hit by a rocket, then it flashed blue twice and went completely dark.
Motherfucker! Fang Zhifei ferociously smashed the mouse. He had no choice but to concede to the other side’s hacking skills, he wasn’t even 1/10,000th as skilled as them.
His threaded his fingers through his hair, constantly pulling, his expression fierce and agonizing. Troubled, he didn’t notice that his computer’s webcam was still intact and was silently shooting his desperate expression.
Zhou Yun Sheng was lying on his bed, laughing like a ninny as he leaned over his laptop’s screen.
Yi Zheng walked up to the bedside, with only a towel tied around his waist, and lightly slapped his lover’s firm butt, scolding ‘too naughty’. He was now firmly rooted in Zhou family, occupying half of his lover’s bed every night on the basis of business talk. Zhou mother unexpectedly didn’t find it strange.
“Tomorrow is the company’s game conference, I can’t wait to see Fang Zhifei’s expression. He dared try to sell that inferior product, ‘Magic World’, I’ll choke to death before I can finish laughing about it.”
When the two games came out, they’ll inevitably be compared with ‘Magic World’, the superior one would be obvious at a glance.
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T/N:
Pew pew pew- says biu biu biu in original, the Chinese onomatopoeia for finger shooting sounds.