Chapter 544: Gui Ge

【EVACUATION FAILED】

Blood-red four characters appeared on the internet cafe's computer screen; college student Jia Wei suddenly let out a hollow laugh, grabbed the icy red tea on the table, its surface beaded with condensation, and gulped it down in one long swallow.

It was said each generation encountered its own destined scam—from text messages claiming "I am Qin Shi Huang," to OFO bike deposit refunds;

from confidently pre-ordering "Warcraft III: Remastered," to believing LPL was this year's most promising league;

every year you got scammed, but never the same scam twice.

Right now, for instance, the five-character divine game running on his computer—

Sour Horn Porridge Operation.

The first search-strike-evade game for young people: you can't find anything, can't fight anyone, and can't escape. Players who play poorly get rewards; players who play well get punished.

The developers were even more divine: they encouraged player personas, strongly supported escort and companion services, ignored cheaters like Gui Ge, punished team coordination, ignored economic collapse, and feigned deafness to hundreds of thousands of complaint posts.

Before this came Three Kingdoms Kill; after it came Sour Horn Porridge—truly, the waves behind push the ones ahead, each wave stronger than the last.

Thirty million daily active users, a digital demon-sealing tower, firmly trapping all manner of gray and black industries (escorts, bot farms, clubs, cheats), along with the unluckiest green players who didn't cheat.

Jia Wei was one of those green players.

"I'm such an idiot—I actually believed Tengzi's game."

Weary, he screwed the cap back on the iced tea and turned to look at the seat beside him.

One of his dorm-mates, who had come to the internet cafe to squad up, couldn't take another night of consecutive losses—constantly kicked to death like stray dogs by escorts, proxies, and cheats—claimed he was tired, quietly quit the game, and sat on the couch scrolling through short videos on his phone.

As for the other squad-mate—

"Qiangzi, you still playing?"

"Yeah, why not."

Zhang Qiang, wearing a hoodie, sounded just as exhausted; if not for the sunk costs he'd poured into this divine game, he'd have quit long ago. "Besides, I've got hardly any Haf coins left. I'll sell the expansion box, equip everything at once, and die trying."

"Alright, get ready."

Jia Wei's tone was utterly flat. The in-game prices now were outright insane—helmets, armor, armor repairs, guns, and attachments all astronomically expensive, with drop rates even lower.

"Hah, I'm wearing a level-five armor worth its weight in golden gazelles, headgear labeled 'Experimental Data,' a gold bar slung across my back, two smoothbore guns in hand, and golden bullets in my pants worth four Rolex watches—then I'm fighting over a safe full of sour horn porridge with the message 'I Love You, Developer.'"

Zhang Qiang kept muttering complaints when suddenly his eyes widened.

Sour Horn Porridge Operation's treasure-hunting mode required three-player teams; now that one roommate had quit, logically they should be matched with random strangers.

Jia Wei and Zhang Qiang had chosen the Assault Leader and Second-in-Command roles, both with high-end skins—but the random stranger who joined—

"WTF? What the hell?"

In the corner of the matchmaking screen stood a bizarrely dressed player with the ID 【Master Pi Fu】: wearing glasses, a belt of books, and beside him crouched a silver slime.

The craziest part? Behind him lay a giant toad occupying nearly half the screen.

"Is this some summoner from Myoujou Mountain?"

The two college students exchanged glances, their eyes filled with shock and disbelief—their exhaustion from a night of losses vanished instantly, replaced by sudden alertness.

Zhang Qiang frantically grabbed his phone to snap a screenshot; Jia Wei pressed his microphone, excitedly confused: "Bro #3, what character is this? A next-season Naruto skin?"

Li Cheng said nothing, instead looking down at his own hands. As the environment shifted, his body was now coated in the game's filter.

"Sour Horn Porridge Operation."

Li Cheng nodded thoughtfully, calmly addressing his two random teammates: "You two should move away from the computer host."

Jia Wei instinctively asked: "Huh? Why?"

"It might explode."

As he spoke, the top-secret aerospace map loaded; spawn point: lower-left launch zone.

Zhang Qiang nudged Jia Wei with his elbow, showing him his phone screen.

On it was a streamer giving a god-view commentary of the game map. An absurd fact: despite Sour Horn Porridge Operation boasting thirty million daily active users and top-tier industry talent with industry-leading salaries, the dev team's output was pathetically low.

Even after this long since launch, many features still hadn't been implemented—like match replays.

But the black-market cheat industry, driven by profit, had built it themselves.

If even one cheat was in the match, enabling the radar-sharing feature would let the god-view website see:

the exact locations of every exposed item on the map, every team's ID, gear, character setup, and even each player's gun aim direction.

The cheat websites made replays a hundred times better than the official ones—absurd beyond absurdity.

Just now, Zhang Qiang had privately messaged a streamer using the god-view website.

"Hello, viewers! New match incoming—oh, top-secret aerospace, six teams, each with at least one 'Magical Pearl' cheater. It's the familiar aerospace city again, full of futuristic tech vibes."

The streamer, known as Hua Ge, chatted smoothly in his livestream room. The total illicit profits from Sour Horn Porridge's gray market far surpassed any previous video game—even the official events were giving out escort vouchers and actively supporting club escort and proxy services.

The gray markets of DNF, Nishuihan, and Dream of the West couldn't even compare.

This caused cheat updates to come at breakneck speed, with an enormous variety of cheats.

Auto-aim, bullet tracking, Bloodhound—no need to list those common ones.

Then there's the Absorbing Palm Technique—kill an enemy and instantly pull their loot box right to your feet;

the Lei Shen Technique—teleport anywhere on the map;

the Dou Zong Strongman—unlimited skill usage, flying freely through the air;

the Paralysis Technique—freeze targets in place, immobile;

each one more absurd than the last.

Compared to these, things like Treasure Mouse (only reveals loot, doesn't kill), password rooms openable without passwords, or gear disappearing upon death so opponents can't loot you—these could actually count as green play.

Small peek isn't peeking. jpg

Streamer Hua Ge, accustomed to the absurdity of monsters littering the aerospace city, calmly continued: "You can see, in the first half of the map, every team is full of talent—hard-lock and x-ray are just standard.

The second half is no less impressive—this player named 【Master Pi Fu】 just accelerated time, sprinting from the lower-left corner straight onto the bridge. Wait—no!"

Hua Ge's eyes snapped wide: on the god-view mini-map, around Master Pi Fu, ten 【African Star】 icons suddenly appeared.

This thing is one of the highest-tier resources in the entire Sour Tamarind Porridge, and some unlucky players have played for thousands of hours without ever touching a single one.

"Could it be some newly appeared resource-duplication cheat? That can't be, right? Directly duplicating the African Star is way too perverted, way too heaven-defying."

The bullet comments in Hua-ge's livestream room, after a brief delay, scrolled across the screen like a horizontal waterfall. He reacted belatedly, hurriedly picked up his phone, and read the private-chat content once more.

At last he saw the bizarre scene of the character-selection screen that Zhang Qiang had sent him, along with Zhang Qiang's own real-time gameplay-sharing link.

He hurriedly clicked in, and saw that the player named 【Master Pi Fu】 was truly standing atop a giant toad, suspended above the bridge, with ten glittering African Star diamonds floating beside him.

". Ladies and gentlemen, today we can finally say we've seen a real immortal. Just don't know what he's flashing ten African Stars for — surely he's not testing a cheat in real time?"

Hua-ge sucked in a cold breath, instinctively feeling doubt.

Cheats like Star-Siphoning Great Art, Flying Lei Shen, and Dou Zong powerhouse all basically call on the game's own code, so they can barely be explained away,

but what's the deal with this giant toad? There's no such thing in the game.

Before he could react, in Zhang Qiang's gameplay screen (he and Jia Wei were still running from the spawn point toward the bridge), a player figure wearing green pants suddenly flashed into view beside Li Cheng, reaching out to grab a diamond.

The African Star has an extremely low drop rate; even on the highest-difficulty map, it's very hard to get one.

This green-pants player was clearly a holder of both the Flying Lei Shen and resource-x-ray cheats. Seeing ten African Stars, he couldn't hold back and activated them on the spot, trying to snatch food from Hukou.

Did he succeed?

The green-pants player had already touched the African Star, the inspection animation had even appeared, but the next instant, that giant toad slightly moved its eyelids, and terrifying gravity crushed him flat on the spot — not even giving him the chance to fall heavily wounded.

Li Cheng casually brushed the dust from the corner of his garment. The Phase-Change Demon's ability is assimilative corrosion — the larger the environmental scene, the more room it has to work.

At this very moment, it must be hiding somewhere on this map, disguised as a player, an NPC, even a resource or a building. He needed to force it out.