“I think we should re-examine the other side’s strategy…”

“Yeah… what exactly did they do…”

When Doomsday Assault and Final Assault saw the headless corpse on the ground, disheveled and torn, along with the fragmented tentacle creature scattered not far away, the two of them were instantly thrown into disarray.

Doomsday Assault said, “If the head just now was meant to create psychological pressure, then what is this supposed to be?”

Final Assault continued, “Could it be like this…” A subtle change appeared on his rigid expression. “After they beheaded this person, they temporarily split up. Traceless Sword Shadow took the head back, and that guy named…” He glanced at the game menu, “that guy named Feng Bujue stayed here alone and did something to this corpse…”

“Is that guy a pervert…” Doomsday Assault said, “Speaking of which, Thriller Paradise has very thorough restrictions on this kind of indecent behavior, right? What could he possibly do?”

“How would I know…” Final Assault replied. “I’m just guessing. Maybe we misunderstood… Perhaps they were just being very thorough when searching the body.”

“I hope so…” Doomsday Assault swallowed.

The two from Corpse Blade felt a strange psychological pressure at this moment, which had a much greater impact on them than seeing a tragically dead head.

This has to do with the “medicine” they were using…

Just as Traceless Sword Shadow said, the members of the Corpse Blade Studio cheat. It’s not that they are the scourge of the industry or anything, it's just that they have their own way of doing things.

Take making a movie as an example. A little-known screenwriter spends years, even decades, writing scripts and soliciting sponsorship everywhere, racking his brains to produce a low-budget production, and finally earns five times the box office revenue of the investment.

Another screenwriter with a little bit of connections spends a few months, puts together a shoddy script, finds a few celebrity gossip stars as the leads, and promotes it with the most vulgar and exaggerated means possible, fooling the audience into the theater as if it were a public scam, and earns the same amount of money.

The economic benefits gained by these two types of people are the same in the end. The difference is that the former may have gained some reputation, that is, intangible assets, while the latter is drowned in a sea of骂声 (ma sheng – curses).

But what about the results? People are ultimately forgetful. While the former is raising money for new scripts and disappearing in the next few years, the latter continues to produce similar bad movies at a rate of one per year, using the same methods and getting the same profits…

This example can be applied to countless industries. In this world, to achieve a goal, there is not necessarily only one path to take. As long as you abandon the constraints of morality or certain other principles, there are countless ways to choose.

Corpse Blade Studio has made an undeniable contribution to the exploration of the gray areas of online games. When it comes to exploiting loopholes and finding bugs, they are even ahead of studios like Gods. Of course, even if this is Corpse Blade's strongest point, it is still inferior to Order. After all, Order is the industry leader, and its strength and foundation are there. Studios like Corpse Blade that take shortcuts can never mix into the ranks of the “top”.

But reaching the current stage is enough for them to enjoy. To put it bluntly, everyone’s fundamental goal is to make money and profit. As for reputation, so what if it stinks? This world is very realistic. As long as the money is in place, someone will naturally come to curry favor and whitewash things.

The professional players and staff of Corpse Blade don’t even sign contracts directly with the studio. Third-party contracts have many benefits. Even if someone sues them, it doesn’t matter. When that time comes, they can dissolve the shell company and register a new one. It’s just a matter of changing the sign.

If they can take these kinds of loopholes in real life, they are obviously even more unscrupulous in the game. Corpse Blade Studio even has a professional team that develops cheats. In many games that they have entered, there are still players using paid cheats provided by Corpse Blade.

Those “consumable” games don’t even care about banned players. The games themselves are implicitly charging fees under the guise of being permanently free. Operators are only thinking about how much they can earn before closing the servers, so account registration is very open and doesn’t need to be linked to citizen IDs. The same person can register *n* accounts. Account bans don’t matter; they can just register another account and keep cheating. Players’ mentality is also understandable. If they want to play happily and win, they have to compete with other players in spending money. Giving this money to the game company is like throwing it into a bottomless pit. It’s better to just cheat, play happily, and win. The total cost is still cheaper than those limited-time equipment and props. When they don’t want to play anymore, they just stop renewing the subscription.

However, in the era of fourth-generation quantum computers, it is already very difficult to cheat without being detected technically, even if you insert some undetectable illegal hardware into the gaming pod. As long as the operator and the game itself aren’t too trash, cheating will be discovered sooner or later.

Therefore, Corpse Blade naturally has other methods. They also develop some illegal auxiliary "plug-ins." The functions of this type of software are similar to cheats, but they can only be said to be borderline. Perhaps in the competition between top players, the effect of this auxiliary is almost negligible, but in competitions where the level is not so high, using these types of tools can gain a considerable advantage.

In addition, Corpse Blade also makes no secret of the studio's increasingly bad image and often engages in malicious competition, targeting its peers. Of course, they don't dare to move the big mountains of Order and Gods. They are still self-aware and can't afford to provoke opponents that are too strong. However, they show no mercy to studios that are similar to them, spreading rumors to smear others and attacking the other party's servers, etc. The effects are more or less there, and they have indeed brought down some other studios.

In short, these guys are professional. They have made a living by taking shortcuts and have embarked on a broad path.

There is a saying that goes, what goes around comes around. Corpse Blade eventually ran into a brick wall in a certain game, no… a bloody nose. That game was Thriller Paradise.

This game's system is simply impeccable. It's impossible to cheat at the data level.

So, they secretly organized a network attack, wanting to hack the Dream Company’s servers and test their resilience.

As a result… they stirred up trouble. Not only did Corpse Blade fail to break through Dream Company’s firewall, but they also suffered a counterattack. An unknown virus bypassed countless fake IPs and proxy machines and directly infected and damaged Corpse Blade's own system.

That day, a round cartoon face appeared on all the computer screens in the entire company building. It was a wretched image wearing glasses, constantly making a "hehehe…" lewd laugh. The data on all their computer hard drives was destroyed. The loss was unimaginable and could not be described as just a minor injury. It was simply crippling.

And the scariest thing that day was that the laptop on the desk of the chairman of Corpse Blade Studio exploded… He had only seen it in movies before, national-level intelligence agents remotely causing the other party’s laptop battery to overheat, causing an explosion. He never expected to experience it himself in his lifetime.

Due to the particularity of this matter, Corpse Blade Studio could only suffer in silence. They never dared to launch network attacks against Dream Company again…

Later, Corpse Blade’s hardware development department also suffered a blow. They tried various models of illegal external hardware, but none of them worked on the gaming pods released by Dream Company. The technical reasons were difficult to determine. Even if they disassembled the gaming pods, they couldn't find the problem.

This situation was unprecedented. These days, with so many technicians, they couldn't even do some small cheating tricks in the game. Was there any justice? Was this Dream Company the Ministry of National Defense or something?

So, the members of Corpse Blade Studio united as one. After multiple meetings and discussions, they finally came up with a solution… to make a fuss about the players.

“pu63” is the code name of a drug. What the situation was with models from pu01 to pu62, people don’t know. Anyway, pu63 has now become the only method for Corpse Blade Studio to攻略 (gong lue – strategize/dominate) Thriller Paradise.

The complicated relationship between Corpse Blade Studio and a certain unscrupulous pharmaceutical factory will not be mentioned here for the time being.

In short, after players drink this drug, they will mentally enter a state called “lucid anesthesia.” These seem to be two contradictory words, but the general meaning is easy to understand. It is a type of “forced calmness.”

All experimental data shows that the peak fright value of players taking pu63 never exceeds 50% in the script. Without affecting mental activity, pain tolerance is also improved, and in emergency situations (such as intense battles), they can react more quickly.

To put it more bluntly, this is a different kind of "stimulant" given to players.

The gaming pod only monitors the player's heartbeat, pulse, blood pressure, and other data and cannot provide drug testing functions. Therefore, this drug can be used unscrupulously.

Currently, Corpse Blade’s pu63 is only being used by its internal players. They have not yet planned to sell it externally, but the sales plan is already on the schedule. It is believed that this thing will appear on various third-party trading websites within the next two months. Of course, that is another story…

Back to the story… So, the confidence of the two from Corpse Blade isn’t without reason. With the assistance of drugs, although they will still be afraid, the degree of their fear… at least physiologically, will be alleviated.

With this kind of psychological advantage under external factors, coupled with the actual advantage in game level, it is normal for them to think that they will definitely win.

“Wait… look at that…” Final Assault said, squatting down again. At this moment, he stared intently and found that there seemed to be some traces under the corpse’s half-lifted T-shirt.

Doomsday Assault heard this and also squatted down to take a closer look.

Final Assault lifted the corpse’s T-shirt and saw the situation there. A line of words was carved not far above the corpse’s stomach. The words were carved very deeply, cutting into the flesh.

“whysoserious?” Doomsday Assault read out the line of words and looked up at his teammate, saying, “What’s this supposed to mean?”

“This is…” Final Assault was also puzzled. Suddenly, he discovered that at the “question mark” at the end of the carving, a strand of metal wire was protruding from under the skin. He reached out and used two fingers to pinch the end of the metal wire, wanting to pull it out to take a look…

…………

Bang!

At the same time, in another part of the lab, after Feng Bujue heard the explosion, he glanced at the game menu and then said listlessly, “Tch… only killed one…”