New Times, New Hell

Chapter 12 - Battle of Gods

After reaching the company, Yu Zhengdu handed the marionette to his coworker for examination. He found out that the ghost inside the marionette was an orphan that unfortunately was on the receiving end of a Daoist’s evil spell. It died because of this, and its spirit was contained and refined by the Daoist to be his servant. It eventually escaped, but couldn’t stop obsessing over how it had been wronged. As it also hadn’t resolved its grudge with the Daoist, it couldn’t enter samsara, and could only spend its time wandering through the mortal realm.

In these circumstances. Luofeng couldn’t order him into reincarnation either. There was also no need for incarceration, so in the end he only received a lecture, was warned not to scare people anymore, and was released.

***

As graduation season drew closer, the number of posts on the nation’s famous IT skill discussion forum, starflicker, increased too. Most were hopeful graduates asking for help on their senior thesis designs. Technology forums typically were not too friendly regarding these kinds of question posts, and the experts normally wouldn’t even bother answering, unless the question was particularly interesting. Because of this, most posts were only popular for a short period of time before completely disappearing.

But in the past few days, a post on the forum garnered the attention of quite a few people. There was a lot of discussion around it too; even those big experts who rarely commented on the forum replied to the post.

But most people weren’t paying attention to the content of the post. Instead, they were shocked by the author and title.

Title: Logically discussing the probability of using code to lessen the effects of some parents using C-sections to change children’s times of birth.

Contents: As everyone knows, with the advance of medicine, Cesarean sections have become all the rage. Some parents will use this technology to change the natural time of birth of their children. Imagine all newborns’ birth times were scheduled by a system; how should one use code to create a program that would lessen the side effects created from a change in birth date after C-section?

Author: singer

The post was made two days ago. Not long after, it became one of the most popular posts.

Floor 1: When did an elementary school student sneak into the forum?

Floor 2: When I saw the title I was shocked. Was just about to mock them when I read the author’s name. My smile froze&#k2026;&#k2026;

Floor 3: I clicked into the author’s homepage 3 times. It’s the real deal, not a high-quality imitator.

Floor 4: In reply to floor 1, open your eyes and look at the author. If singer is an elementary school student, then this forum is probably preschool.

Floor 5: What happened? The expert got hacked?

Floor 6: singer finally posted? This topic is quite interesting.

……

Floor 58: I reread this post 30 times and still don’t understand. Is my IQ so far off from the expert’s?

Floor 59: [osone]: Thanks for the invite. Clicked in with the intent of discussing cutting edge technology with singer. Let me smoke a cigarette first to calm down, smoking.jpg

……

Floor 345: [lan]: Thanks for the invite. If it were anyone else making this kind of post I would just ignore them, but since it’s singer, then I’ll simply analyze the probability. Typically speaking…… (here we have omitted 6,756 words)

Floor 346: Oh shit, expert lan really replied!

Floor 347: As soon as I saw expert lan’s classic opening, “I will simply analyze it”, I knew that the response wouldn’t be simple.

Floor 348: Me after seeing the title: Are you kidding me? After seeing expert lan’s response: I can never catch up with the expert’s IQ.

Floor 349: At this time I don’t know if I should first kneel in front of singer who came up with this question or lan who replied to it……

……

Floor 555: [singer]: In reply to lan, the method you proposed is doable to a degree, but when operationalized in real life, the following issues appeared…… (here we have omitted 3,860 words) In regards to this, I believe we have more to discuss.

Floor 556: What did I just see? I didn’t even understand lan’s response but singer already operationalized it??? Can the experts mind us normal people’s dignities?

Floor 557: [osone]: I’ve finished smoking. Since lan brought up the probability, and singer already operationalized it, then let me also propose my ideas……

&#k2026;&#k2026; (here we have omitted “n” amount of words)

Floor 664: [singer]: osone’s suggestion has resolved the issues with lan’s proposal to a degree, but not completely. Upon operationalization we encounter the following problems…… (here we have omitted “n” amount of words)

Floor 665: When I first saw singer’s title I thought it was a joke. But after seeing these experts’ responses, I’ve been educated.

Floor 666: Since upstairs is the battle of gods, I’ll just go with my floor number and say, 666.

Floor 667: 666

Floor 668: 666

……

As the nation’s top technology discussion forum, quite a few of starflicker’s forum IDs were owned by famous technicians, the top in the field. For example, taking from the replies alone, osone and lan were rumored to be important employees of the top 5 technology companies in the nation.

These experts normally only observed and rarely posted. As soon as they posted, there would definitely be onlookers. And now this post received replies from both osone and lan, so it obviously became the most popular post on the forum.

But both osone and lan showing up had nothing to do with the subject of the post, instead, it was because the author of the post was singer.

singer registered on starflicker four years ago. From his somewhat immature posts in the beginning to the incredible advances he made later on, in two years he became on the same level as lan and other experts on the forum. It got to the point that even if he casually commented something, someone would specially go find his comment to take a picture with it.

singer had been very active on the forum a few years back, his replies commonly seen under many different questions. Even now, if you clicked into his homepage, you could see his glorious history, when he and the other experts exchanged ideas and skills. Not only that, but word on the streets was that he had privately helped some experts like lan and osone resolve certain issues with their technology, so they all owed him.

But from the second half of last year, singer had become obviously less active. Especially since he hadn’t posted anything since the start of this year.

Because of this, as soon as he posted, some busybodies immediately invited lan and the other experts to come and reply. Originally, a lot of those who saw the title thought that singer had been provoked and was joking, but they never imagined that lan and the others could still answer professionally. And singer could reply to them logically.

This caused the melon-eating audience to become shocked and surprised. The tower was getting taller and taller, but still several people refused to believe that singer’s question was legit. Half of the tower’s thousands of floors were discussing singer’s actual reason for posting.

The actual reason singer posted was truly not that complicated. He simply ran into some problems in real life.

The owner of the singer account, Yu Zhengdu, just finished replying to lan’s latest comment on his post. He didn’t even spare a glance for the melon-eating audience’s fantasies, directly closing the page and beginning work.

After the accidental collaboration with Wei Xiao temporarily relieved the company’s financial pressures, Yu Zhengdu finally started to examine the problem of creating a system out of the Life and Death Accounts. But the company only had him as their program developer, and he would undoubtedly run into many problems while he worked. Thankfully the age of the Internet had its own solutions. After getting Shang Que’s permission regarding the contents of the post, he started to post on the forum.

Because of his status as a technological expert, all the other experts were more than willing to discuss with him. After these few days, he had managed to resolve several problems too, but it was not quite likely that he would be capable of completing the whole system by himself.

Yu Zhengdu operationalized lan’s latest theory, removing some bugs along the way. In between this, he took a drink of water and peeked at his phone, only to see several WeChat notifications.

lan:【Were you serious about the question you posted on the forum?】

lan:【I’ll be back in the country next month. Let’s meet face to face to discuss the issue you have with Nova】

lan:【When are you taking your graduation picture, I’ll go cheer you on】

lan:【I’m about to start my own laboratory. I’ll apply for you to be in the first group of people working. With company shares】

Yu Zhengdu:【Ey】

lan:【?】

Yu Zhengdu:【You might have to wait a year for me……】

lan:【What does that mean? What happened?】

Yu Zhengdu:【My own fault. I shouldn’t have been greedy about wanting the 5 insurances and housing fund……】

Yu Zhengdu:【I’ll tell you when you come back 0.0】

lan:【……】

Yu Zhengdu ignored lan’s heartwrenching cries and calmly exited from WeChat. He grabbed his laptop to go find Shang Que.

Shang Que was in the middle of charging through his in-game world. But contrary to normal circumstances, this time the corners of his mouth were raised; it seemed that he wasn’t getting beaten up.

As expected, as soon as he saw Yu Zhengdu enter, Shang Que immediately bragged to him, “I’ve gotten my revenge!”

Yu Zhengdu very politely applauded him. “Congratulations.”

Shang Que lifted his head and saw that he was holding his laptop, so immediately let go of his mouse and regained the usual cold expression on his face. He lightly coughed and spoke, “Let’s talk about work.”

Due to the severe lack of employees, the product design portion of the Life and Death Accounts system had fallen into Shang Que’s hands. He was temporarily taking the place of the product manager.

Yu Zhengdu reported his progress. After hearing his report, Shang Que nodded and said, “Un.”

Yu Zhengdu already knew him fairly well. The “un” probably meant that he understood nothing. But he didn’t expect his boss to know anything about technology, and only inquired, “Do you have any new ideas in regards to the product’s design?”

As soon as he asked this, Shang Que’s eyes lit up. He leaned forward. “Yes.”

Yu Zhengdu: “……” He was just being polite.

But Shang Que thought he was being serious. It seemed that he had prepared for this as he gently rubbed his fingers and seriously stated, “I think we can add a program into the system that can reconfigure appearances.”

Yu Zhengdu: “????”

Shang Que impressively understood the question marks on his face for once, and very kindly explained to him, “When our coworkers are on the job, ghosts often come to ask questions about their appearance after reincarnation. A lot of ghosts were ugly in their past lives and hope they can become better looking in the next.”

Shang Que’s face was contemplative. “I can understand their frustrations too……”

Yu Zhengdu looked at Boss’s devastatingly beautiful appearance, extremely confused about his frustrations. He asked, “How come you can understand these types of frustrations?”

Shang Que: “The game I’m playing recently, at first I didn’t choose a good looking face. It was so ugly I almost abandoned my account. But yesterday I reconfigured the face, and as expected, I now feel much better playing……”

Yu Zhengdu: “……”

The more he heard, the more Yu Zhengdu thought something was off. He casually turned Boss’s computer so the screen was facing himself. Everytime he had come to see Boss, the man had been playing his game, so he was more than familiar with what characters his boss used. It only took a glance for him to see the difference. He really did switch faces.

Yu Zhengdu: !!!!

To reconfigure an appearance in this game meant that you had to spend money!

He took a closer look at the character and found that not only did he switch faces, his equipment had also gotten exponentially better! No wonder Boss wasn’t getting beat up anymore!

Yu Zhengdu looked at Shang Que expressionlessly. “Boss, are you spending money on your games?”

Shang Que originally didn’t see an issue with this, and was even quite pleased. But after being questioned by Yu Zhengdu, his smile unknowingly froze. His gaze shifted to the floor as he pretended nothing happened. “Ah, I spent a little.”

Yu Zhengdu tsk’d. “Do you know how tight our development budget is?”

Shang Que felt a bit guilty. “Didn’t you say we could spare some for my games……”

Yu Zhengdu looked at him speechlessly, then asked, “Do you know how much you’re worth?”

Shang Que didn’t know.

Yu Zhengdu went for the kill, “Around 228,000 RMB.”

Shang Que, the unambitious boss, said, “That’s.. not bad!”

Luofeng’s accounts normally only had enough RMB to scrape by paying rent and the water and electricity bills. If you compared the savings now to how much Luofeng historically had, it really was not so bad.

Yu Zhengdu told him emotionlessly, “That’s bad.”

He crossed both arms over his chest. “Just the money you have right now, after paying my salary, there’s barely enough left to create a small program.”

He continued to strike blows, “How about, you consider only creating a small program.”

Shang Que immediately became alert. “No.”

Yu Zhengdu stared at him wordlessly.

After getting stared at, Shang Que surrendered and dejectedly rested his head on his hand. He sulked, “Before our company gets rich, I’ll never spend money on my games again.”

Yu Zhengdu nodded, and continued, “Aside from this, I think we need to hire a professional product manager.”

Shang Que was unimpressed. “Haven’t I been doing a good job!”

Yu Zhengdu stared at him in judgement. “You mean your suggestion to ignore the power of genes and try to add a facial reconstruction feature to the Life and Death Accounts?”

Shang Que: “……”

Shang Que felt slightly depressed. “Isn’t this suggestion very humane?”

Yu Zhengdu was very depressed too. “Not only humane, you’re simply a product genius!” The real kind of “ghost.”

Shang Que: “……”

Yu Zhengdu calmed himself down. He very seriously suggested, “Boss, you should spend less time on playing games and more on coming up with ways to earn money!”

After leaving Shang Que’s office, Yu Zhengdu thought he was going to worry himself to death. His contract with Luofeng was only for a year; if he didn’t successfully create the program within a year, he didn’t know how the company was going to resolve this issue in the future.

The more he thought about it, the more depressed he became, so he simply decided to pull up a stress-relieving game he had made in the past. He changed it a bit and started playing.

That coworker whose eyes were often tired passed behind him on his way to the breakroom. As soon as he saw the computer screen, he became surprised and leaned over to ask, “Wow, what game is this?”

These ghosts often travelled soundlessly. Yu Zhengdu wasn’t focused and got caught red-handed. He hurriedly covered the computer and made a “sh——” hand sign. “Speak softer.”

But that coworker was extremely excited. He shook the hand holding his eyes to and fro in front of the screen. “I saw Boss’s face. Let me see what it is.”

Yu Zhengdu almost had a heart attack. “……Can you put your eyes back first?”

His coworker’s eyeballs spun around to look at him. “Just let me see it.”

Yu Zhengdu could do nothing but carefully observe their surroundings and finally let go of the computer screen after seeing no one else around. He said quietly, “Don’t tell anyone. This is a little game I made where you can dress up the Ghost King……”

On the screen, Shang Que had just changed into a red dress……

The coworker: “Holy shit!!”

The eyeballs in his hands were sparkling. “This is so cool, install one for me too!!!”

Yu Zhengdu: “……”