Chapter 31 Friday, March 11th

Qiao Liang, sporting two enormous dark circles under his eyes, was still grinding through the storyline of *Game Producer*.

His face wore only one expression: unwilling to give up!

A full week had passed since the official release of *BeQuiet*.

And so far, the game's sales remained at zero.

Not because the game was so terrible that no one wanted to play it; in fact, players didn't even know what the game looked like.

No one had yet solved the puzzles and obtained the so-called "invitation"!

Many people had already given up with grumbling complaints. Clearly, the game development team's willful behavior was severely triggering players' rebellious psychology, discouraging many.

Those with fiery tempers directly sprayed the "production team is mentally ill" on the forums, and then stopped paying attention to the game;

Those with better tempers gave up, but still browsed the forums every day to see how far the online experts had progressed in solving the puzzles, thinking of copying the answers after someone succeeded;

And then there was a small group of truly hardcore players, like Teacher Qiao, who were still tirelessly searching for the next puzzle solution.

During this period, they had stubbornly tried many methods.

Various content had been entered into the two input boxes, but the page remained unresponsive.

Therefore, everyone believed that the next information should be hidden in other games.

*Turn Back is the Shore*, as Tenda's classic game, had naturally been run countless times, but no useful clues were found.

Some experts online even inquired and found out that Tenda seemed to be really working on a haunted house project called "Horror Hostel," and even went to the site to investigate.

As a result, a person in charge surnamed Chen very helplessly drove them out and told them that the project had not yet been completed and could not be part of the puzzle.

After running through all the remaining games and getting nothing, Qiao Liang turned his attention to *Lonely Desert Road* and *Game Producer* again.

Qiao Liang suddenly felt that, based on his understanding of President Pei, hiding more clues in these two games didn't seem impossible!

Who said a game could only hide one clue?

If players found a clue in one game, and then stopped entering that game, wouldn't that create a "right under your nose" effect?

Moreover, judging from the fact that part of President Pei's two passwords had the same solution, whether because of time constraints or because President Pei didn't want to deliberately make things difficult for players, this puzzle-solving activity was not that difficult.

Then, President Pei was likely to save time by having the programmers only modify two games, and only the simplest parts!

So, Qiao Liang re-entered *Lonely Desert Road*.

This time he didn't find any new clues, but he noticed a detail: the time it took to collect all the clues, which used to be three hours, had been greatly shortened!

Qiao Liang's first reaction was annoyance.

Was this the treatment for pioneers? He painstakingly drove for three hours, but later comers only needed to drive for less than an hour to get the same clues?

He hugged his chubby self in sympathy.

But then he had a second thought and realized a crucial issue.

The time to find the clues had been shortened, indicating that after he found the clue, President Pei arranged for programmers to make changes to the game.

Why?

This clue had already been solved, and others didn't need to drive around in *Lonely Desert Road* to find it again, so why did President Pei still have the programmers modify the game?

"Could it be..."

"Is President Pei hinting that only finding these clues yourself counts?"

Qiao Liang instantly realized something and hurriedly opened *Game Producer*.

He had played the "Lost Everything" ending, but that was shortly after the game was released, back in April of last year.

Strictly speaking, although Qiao Liang had played this ending, he had not personally found this clue!

Qiao Liang was already very familiar with the various choices and endings of *Game Producer*. Running quickly, without needing to think, he reached the choice before the "Lost Everything" ending in less than ten minutes.

Then, he found the string of clues composed of 012, which had now been deciphered as "Search Horror Hostel."

"And then what?"

Nothing unexpected seemed to happen.

Qiao Liang controlled the game character and accidentally came to the final level of the "Lost Everything" ending, searching aimlessly.

Suddenly, he noticed a report on the wall.

In the original ending, this report was criticizing the failed producer, and the title of the report was "True Knowledge Comes from Practice."

This report was always there. It criticized those failed producers (or players) for being all talk and no action, confidently giving pointers when playing other people's games, but instantly failing when they actually tried it themselves.

The content of the title hadn't changed, but Qiao Liang keenly noticed that the font of the title was different from the fonts of all the other newspaper headlines. It had obviously been changed!

It's just that most players would close the game after seeing the previous clue. Even if they accidentally arrived here, they wouldn't see this sentence unless they searched carefully.

Qiao Liang hurriedly quit the game and entered the sentence into the input box on the tpdb website.

As expected, there was still no response.

After a moment of silence, Qiao Liang entered his Tenda account and password into the two input boxes respectively, and then pressed the Enter key.

This time, the page actually changed!

Qiao Liang instantly realized that he had guessed correctly!

It turned out that the content to be entered in these two boxes was very simple: his own Tenda account and password, nothing else!

But the premise was that your Tenda game account must have really run through the first clue in *Lonely Desert Road*, and reached the "Lost Everything" ending in *Game Producer* to see the second clue!

And this had to be done after the release of *BeQuiet*.

President Pei had also deliberately given a small hint at the end of the "Lost Everything" ending, changing the font of the title "True Knowledge Comes from Practice" to hint to players that the key to solving the puzzle was to truly find these two clues themselves.

The reason why everyone hadn't guessed correctly for so many days was because everyone mistakenly thought that they didn't need to look for the clues themselves after others found them, so no one had met both conditions at the same time.

Everyone entered their account passwords and got no response.

This created a vicious cycle, which was that everyone thought that the input boxes definitely weren't for filling in account passwords, and over time, no one would try it again!

Qiao Liang couldn't help but feel fortunate.

Fortunately, he ran through *Lonely Desert Road* again, discovered the changes in the game, and deduced President Pei's intention from it!

Otherwise, he wouldn't have run the "Lost Everything" ending of *Game Producer* again, let alone try entering his account password on the website again.

President Pei had really only changed these two relatively simple games and the tpdb website, and had played so many players in the palm of his hand!

But...he was still cracked by his confidant, Teacher Qiao!

Qiao Liang couldn't help but feel smug.

At this time, the input box on the black webpage had disappeared, and a pale white invitation appeared. Lines of blood-colored words began to appear on it, seemingly dripping down little by little.

"Congratulations, the first lucky person to get the invitation."

"You have proven that your clever brain and perseverance can become food for the hostel."

"If you, a clever and delicious morsel, are now ready to dedicate yourself to Horror Hostel, then do as I say:"

"First, find any camera."

"Then, log in to the game with your account and password, and enter this string of code in the position of the bloody handprint."

"We have prepared an interesting little game for you..."

Below the letter was a string of random English letters and numbers.

Qiao Liang already had a camera, but he didn't use it often. He hurriedly wiped the camera and clipped it to the computer screen, pointing it at his face.

Then, he opened the *BeQuiet* game and clicked on the bloody handprint.

Originally, this bloody handprint didn't respond no matter how you clicked it, but now an input box appeared. Qiao Liang immediately entered the string of code.

He didn't consider sharing this with other players right now, because he wanted to be the first *BeQuiet* player.

The computer screen went black, and it seemed to be entering a mini-program.

A mirror appeared in the full-screen display, and Qiao Liang's own face appeared in the mirror.

The program in the game seemed to be displaying the image taken by the camera in the mirror. It felt a bit like looking in a mirror through the "window" of the monitor.

It's just that the mirror was a bit hazy and a bit scary.

One reason was that Qiao Liang's camera didn't have very high definition, and the other was that the program seemed to have added a filter when displaying the image.

Next to the mirror was a line of bloody words: "Stare at the bloodstains in the mirror."

There was also a virtual frame in the mirror, outlining the contours of a face, seemingly guiding Qiao Liang to straighten the camera and put his face in it.

Qiao Liang's camera was installed above the computer screen, so after slightly adjusting the angle and moving himself further away from the screen, the virtual frame on the screen disappeared.

At this time, the bloodstains in the mirror began to spread continuously across the surface of the mirror. Qiao Liang's eyes stared at the bloodstains as they moved, passing through most of the mirror's area, and finally stopped.

Then, the bloodstains in the mirror disappeared, and the line of bloody words also changed: "Face yourself in the mirror, and don't look anywhere else, no matter what."

"Does it mean to keep staring?"

Qiao Liang turned his gaze to his own face in the mirror and found that there seemed to be a faint highlighting effect on the area he was looking at, constantly changing position as his gaze moved.

"Eye tracking?"

Qiao Liang was a bit surprised and a bit unexpected.

Eye tracking wasn't a very high-end technology. It had already appeared two years ago. By identifying the state of the eye muscles and pupils through the camera, the location on the screen being looked at could be roughly determined.

Many software programs on the internet can achieve eye-tracking effects.

Of course, this technology isn't as wonderful as it seems. First, it is necessary to ensure that the face is facing the camera, and data points must be collected. Qiao Liang's act of staring at the movement of bloodstains was obviously doing just that.

The whole process was relatively cumbersome, but President Pei, through simple packaging, made the matter seem a bit strange and more immersive.

Secondly, the accuracy of eye tracking is very low, and it can only roughly determine a large area of the eye's gaze, and cannot be particularly precise.

However, it seemed to be enough for this test.

Qiao Liang began to concentrate on staring at his own face in the mirror.

However, after a few seconds, he suddenly felt something was wrong.

A piece of black clothing seemed to appear in the lower right corner of the mirror, with dark red bloodstains on it!