Chapter 455: The Forsaken Realm of Gods (44) (1st + 2nd update) [VIP]
What should we do after realizing that Lao Zhang is very likely dead and that there is definitely something wrong with those n.pcs?
Wang Wenhua and [The Resentment Is Heavier Than Ghosts] hesitated for a rare moment.
Go find them and ask them if they know that Slenkimed seems to be alive? Ask them if they are the members of the studio that sold Breath of Slenkimed, and whether Enoch is Lao Zhang?
Putting aside the question of whether they can find these n.pcs, just looking at the current public opinion environment, if these n.pcs are indeed members of a studio that entered the game under the guise of n.pcs, and they are not relatives or friends, why would they tell a few players who only met them once about the inside story about Lao Zhang and the game?
Just because you regard "Breath of Slenkmed" as your youth and wishfully think that the producer should not be dead?
And if I don't ask, [The resentment is heavier than the ghost] Ask yourself, as one of the few people who have had close contact with Enoch, I feel that I will suffer from insomnia for at least a week.
"Whether we can find it or not, we should at least try," [Grudge Heavier than Ghost] murmured in a low voice, "I'll go ask Hector."
"Are you looking for Hector? Can you find Hector?" Wang Wenhua asked.
[Grudge is heavier than ghosts] I just said that this n.pc has no specific location, and we can only see that he is in Cyril City.
How do I find it now? Look for it by force?
"...I can't find them," [Grudge is heavier than a ghost] sat down dejectedly, "If they are really members of the studio, then they are now in Cyril City, and I'm afraid they have already known about Lao Zhang's affairs and can no longer hide them."
"Yeah," Wang Wenhua also advised, "Think about it, if those n.pcs are really members of the studio, and they entered the game to accompany Lao Zhang whose consciousness was uploaded, then now that public opinion has fermented to this extent, tomorrow that... [Pure Love Wild Cockroach] will also release a new manuscript."
Lao Zhang's death now seems to be a foregone conclusion, but Enoch's identity is confusing. As a game that has been on the hot search list for "player accounts are sealed and can no longer be logged in after death", how the dead person's account appeared is a big question.
Even if the players don't make a fuss, the family members of the deceased who want to commemorate the account will do so.
"By then, even if Wei Yu plays dead again, she will still respond, right?" Wang Wenhua speculated, "You will definitely not be able to find them now, so you might as well go offline and rest for a night, and wait until tomorrow or the day after tomorrow to see Wei Yu's response. You still have to go to work tomorrow."
"And now it's not just those n.pcs who are being watched, a lot of people are watching you too," he added, "You're going to go find Hector now, be careful of being surrounded."
"Tsk..." [Grudge is heavier than ghosts] said with some hesitation, "Okay."
Both of them are working people, and their conditions do not allow them to stay up late.
What's more, now both his and Xiao Chun's game IDs are famous. If Xiao Chun, as a media person, had not insisted on meeting the interviewee in person during the interview, he would not have created a group to communicate if he could have met Wang Wenhua in the game. In fact, under the current circumstances, neither of them is suitable to go online.
I had no choice but to bring in my main account. There were rumors that Lao Zhang made a brief appearance in Cyril City. This was a later level 45 map, and it would be too late to train a new account to level 45. Breath of Slenkmed had been unpopular for so many years, and no one had sold their account.
He came in purely out of spite.
"Then I'll log off first," Wang Wenhua said hello and logged out, "I haven't done my daily tasks in other games yet, and the daily tasks will be refreshed at midnight."
[Grudges are heavier than ghosts] was left behind, looking at the Cyril Street where there were only a few players as the evening approached. He noticed that there was only one NPC left at another open-air table that was full of guests just now. He sighed and logged out of the game.
When Guan Hongyan came back, she saw Inol sitting alone with two upside-down pieces of paper on the table. The three players in the distance had disappeared.
"They left?" Guan Hongyan put the coffee and milk tea in her hand on the table and looked around curiously, "Where is Delmis?"
"I don't know," Enoch said honestly, "He left with his partner."
"Oh, then they're on a date, so just ignore them," Guan Hongyan pointed at the paper on the table with her chin, "Why don't you put this thing away?"
With this magic pattern, she didn't dare to breathe heavily, for fear that an evil wind would blow the thing over. It would be a great opportunity for the magic pattern, which according to Delmis said "the best outcome for ordinary people is death after seeing it", to be blown onto her face, making her die in vain.
Enoch quickly put it away.
After a few words, everyone else came back.
No one in the Knight Academy had eaten enough for dinner, so this was their second snack. Halfway through the snack, Delmis and his partner came back with a branch in their hands that looked dry.
"Found it around the market," Bai Jinshu placed the branch on the edge of the table, "The plants in Cyril City have begun to wither."
"So soon?" White Moth blurted out, "Weren't they all fine when we came in this afternoon?"
There were still fallen leaves all over the ground outside the city at that time, but the branches were not so dry. How come the plants in the city became like this in just a few hours?
"It's very fast." Bai Jinshu lowered his eyes and recalled the plants he saw in the afternoon and the plants now. "At this rate, by tomorrow morning, all the plants in Cyril City will be dry."
Then the withering of the plants will spread around with Cyril as the center.
In less than a week, this withering will spread to the location of the Perrin Mine. The passage from the Perrin Mine to Alterac is still gradually overflowing with wood elements. This land is located above Alterac all year round. The magic sand in the mountain and the plants on the land are all soaked in wood elements. If everything goes well, this strange disease will be blocked by the Perrin Mine, and this vein will become a natural line of defense between the cities of Cyril and Besser.
This is just an ideal situation.
Worse still, even the Perrin Mine cannot stop the spread of this strange disease, and what happened in the alien continent will soon happen in the Breath of Slenkmed. However, this time, the natives of the Breath of Slenkmed will have no way to retreat and will never find the third continent.
"This is too fast," Zhao Yinglai frowned, "Can't the Perrin Mine quickly resume supply?"
Isn't there another mine that can still be mined?
"Yes, but it may not be in time, and more magic sand is needed to restore the previous stable state," Bai Jinshu shook his head, "The magic sand in the Perrin Mine may not be enough."
That's where Outlant is located. The mine tunnel on the left has been dug to the end, and the right will soon be dug through the earth's core. Moreover, this method is tantamount to drinking poison to quench thirst, and can only infinitely prolong the time that Slenkmed is attacked by the strange disease.
Now only the plants are drying up. When the plants are basically dead, the animals living here will die one by one, and then it will be the turn of humans and other intelligent races.
The Grand Mage and his men must have tried other options besides setting up the magic patterns.
Those professional quest mentors who left Slenkmed are likely to be another plan of the Grand Mage, but looking at the current situation, these professional quest mentors may have also failed.
"Now that things have come to this, let's eat first," Guan Hongyan put her hands together, "Even if the world is going to be destroyed tomorrow, let's finish this meal first."
At worst, they can rush back after dinner to persuade the mine to resume work.
However, Guan Hongyan calculated the transportation speed of the Perrin Mine in his mind. According to the speed of the alchemical carriage, if he wanted to travel across the continent to restore the normal supply of magic sand, it might not be able to keep up with the speed of the plants withering everywhere.
"We will set off soon," Yun Guang pondered for a while, "Let's restore the supply to the Perlan Mine first and try to slow down the spread of the strange disease."
Even if a ghost ship is used for transportation, it will still be much faster than the mine's own carriage.
It's impossible that the world will end before we have figured out the rules, right?
The sword of Damocles is not hanging over your head, so it won't work if it is hung over an unknown space.
The rest of the people had no other objections to Yun Guang's arrangement.
Xu Zichen took some time to go to the Adventurer's Guild and cancel the commission they had previously issued. Everyone avoided the players and boarded the ghost ship, heading towards the Perrin Mine.
The journey was long, and even at the fastest speed it would take nearly a whole night. I don't know how the real native Hector and the elf boy felt when they heard that the world was about to be destroyed, but Enoch didn't sleep well that night anyway.
"Brother, think positively." The captain, who was still sailing in the middle of the night, was almost scared to death by Enoch floating on the deck like a wandering ghost. If he wasn't a ghost, this scene would definitely be called "seeing a ghost." He comforted him tactfully, "If your world is over, you won't be over either. You can come with me if you become a ghost. I'm bored on the boat alone. You'll have a companion."
Regardless of whether it was "having a companion" in the sense of chatting or "having a companion" in the sense of adding one more person to the group being exploited by Delmis, the captain didn't quite understand Enoch's melancholy.
"It's not that I'm afraid of death..." Enoch hesitated for a while. He really didn't know how to express the strange feeling in his heart. In the end, he could only return to the room with something to say but still hesitated.
He felt that he might really be that "Old Zhang". Upon learning that Slenkmed was about to face a catastrophic crisis, ordinary people would worry about their future lives, but for some reason, his heart was filled with sadness and dull pain of knowing that the world was about to be destroyed.
Has he really done so much for the world?
When we woke up the next morning, we were still a long way from the Perrin Mine. The closer we got, the more lush the trees became, reminding us of the dried leaves outside the city of Cyril.
"Big news," Guan Hongyan waved her hand, "Look at the group!"
Bai Jinshu lowered his head to glance at the group chat. At 8:30 in the morning, Wei Yu issued an announcement regarding the latest hot events.
In this announcement, they officially informed everyone for the first time that producer Zhang Nuoke had died ten years ago. The "Enoch" that appeared in the game was not the deceased Zhang himself, but an n.pc of the same name specially added to commemorate the deceased producer.
At the same time, there appeared a new work from the financial self-media account that first broke the news that "Enoch appeared in "Breath of Slenkmed". This work also contained an explosive piece of information.
[Xiaochun Talks Finance] said that after a field visit, she suspected that producer Zhang Nuoke actually left the studio much earlier. Before "Breath of Schlenkmed" became popular all over the world, the producer who created this legendary work became a vegetable.
He only had time to witness the start of the game. Before he could see its glory, he became an unconscious body lying on the bed. He was dead for several months, and the holographic technology for waking up vegetative patients was released, but he did not wait for the second turning point in his life.
Most of the content in Xiao Chun's video was what everyone had heard yesterday, but when this information was integrated, it revealed a piece of information that Wei Yu had intentionally concealed.
"If Lao Zhang died on the eve of the release of that technology ten years ago, then according to what Xiao Wang said, he was in a rehabilitation center for two or three years before that. He actually became a vegetable when Breath of Slenkmed had not yet become popular all over the world and reached its peak," Yun Guang flipped through the comments under the video and raised his head to ask, "Then who was the person who managed the producer's Weibo account during these two or three years?"
You know, the reason why most players don’t believe that Lao Zhang has passed away is partly because Wei Yu has never issued an obituary, and partly because Lao Zhang’s account has actually been updated all the time, and the last Weibo post was a few years ago.
This is inconsistent with what the insider who first broke the news said: "He died ten years ago."
Since Lao Zhang became a vegetable so early, why did the studio and Wei Yu keep it a secret?
"So now the official blog of Wei Yu has been flooded with comments from players," Bai E rubbed his face. "Most players don't really care about Breath of Slenkmed anymore. But during the peak period of the game's popularity, the company maliciously suppressed the news of the producer's accident and pretended that he had never died. This behavior is a bit challenging the bottom line of the public."
Most people were thinking, "It's fine if you didn't post an obituary for such an important matter, but it's too much to log into someone else's account and pretend they're still alive after the person has died. If someone hadn't bumped into your memorial account this time, would you have wanted to hide this from everyone?"
"I also think this is unfair," Su Hao yawned. "If you say that when Lao Zhang got into an accident and became a vegetable, the game was on the rise and the producer who was in charge of game quality left the studio because they were afraid that the company's stock price would fall, and players would lose confidence in the game, then that's fine and everyone can understand it. But a few years later, the game became unpopular and the producer of the previous game was no longer needed to stabilize the morale of the team. Now that he's dead, at least give an obituary."
I don’t know what Wei Yu is thinking, but she keeps asking people to pretend that Lao Zhang is alive, and imagine that if this game is his youth, he would be very angry.
"What did Weiyu say?" Xu Zichen was eating breakfast and poked his head out.
"Wei Yu hasn't responded yet," Lu Changfeng replied, "Brother Xu, didn't you check the group chat? Sister Yan sent a link in it."
"You guys take a look first," Xu Zichen waved the bread in his hand, "I guess Weiyu's comment about that memorial account was the result of a whole night of discussion. It's impossible for them to respond right now. It will probably take a few hours before there's any follow-up."
Xu Zichen's speculation was correct. This matter had been fermenting from more than eight o'clock to more than ten o'clock, and Wei Yu had not made any further response. The angry players not only questioned in Wei Yu's comment area, but also found the Weibo of other people in the studio at the time, questioning why they did not tell everyone the news.
Even those who don't play games know about this. When Wang Wenhua got takeout after get off work at noon, his office buddy came over with a braised chicken and said, "Hey, I heard that the boss of a game company died more than ten years ago. The company kept it a secret from the players, but it was recently exposed. Did you know about it?"
"It's not the boss, it's the producer." Wang Wenhua corrected him.
"Breath of Slenkmed, the first holographic game," he didn't say that the news came from him, "the producer of this game became a vegetable more than ten years ago and died ten years ago, but his account has been updated all the time, so no one knows he is dead."
Including him a few days ago, he even left a message in Lao Zhang's comment section. At that time, no one would have thought that the person who created this account had been dead for ten years.
"Tsk tsk, this is too outrageous. Do you guys in the gaming circle also keep secrets?" The slacker poked the rice.
"Maybe the relatives can't accept that Lao Zhang is dead, so they don't want to issue an obituary," Wang Wenhua said absentmindedly. "After all, the holographic technology came out a few months after his death. It's normal for the family members to be unable to get over it."
"True," the slacker nodded, "That's too bad, but if I were from that studio, I would definitely try it privately before the technology was released. Maybe it would work?"
This is the second person to say that the studio must have tried to give Zhang a holographic helmet.
Wang Wenhua frowned slightly and became suspicious.
In the past few years when "Slenkmed" has gone from being popular all over the country to being popular all over the world, although more and more new holographic games of all sizes have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, Wei Yu has always held the core technology of holographic games. It is no exaggeration to say that this first-generation game has built the most complete holographic world.
Moreover, based on the subsequent development of Weiyu, Breath of Schlenkmade is indeed the most complete holographic world. More than a decade later, when Weiyu still dominates the holographic game and other games cannot compare with them, the technical content of Breath of Schlenkmade, as the core code provider of a number of games, is still rising.
As soon as holographic technology appeared, there were many voices saying that it could be used for medical treatment. At that time, the studio and Weiyu Company, which were at the core of game production, were the ones who possessed the most advanced civilian holographic technology. Lao Zhang became a vegetable, so could they really resist trying it?
"I definitely tried, but I don't know if it succeeded or not," Yun Guangguan said from the ghost ship floating in the sky in Breath of Slenkmed. "Looking at Enoch's current situation, I personally tend to think that he succeeded, but an unknown situation caused his amnesia. Considering the actions of the studio and the game company, I think they are very likely to think that he failed."
If they are sure that Lao Zhang has entered the Breath of Slenkmed, then they will definitely come to find Enoch. Once they find Enoch, there is no need for Lao Zhang to work hard with the Grand Mage to save the world.
"Yes," Guan Hongyan raised her head, "If Lao Zhang can contact the people in the studio, then can't he just ask them to finish updating the fourth expansion pack?"
What's the point of going through so much trouble? As long as this problem in the game settings is solved by players, the world will be saved.
"Old Zhang went through so much trouble, setting up magic patterns with the Grand Mage, and causing the professional mentor to disappear. There is only one possibility, that is, he cannot contact his companions outside the game."
Since no fan could use the supermodel's method to solve the problem, he could only try to find a solution within the framework of this Western fantasy world.
"Dermis," she stood up by holding onto the table, "Can you tell if he's an outsider or a native?"
"Indigenous people." Bai Jinshu answered decisively.
"Players also say that Enoch is an N.P.C..." Guan Hongyan murmured in a low voice, "Then what kind of situation can lead to a successful awakening but be considered a failure, and Lao Zhang who entered the game can't contact the studio..."
Bai Jinshu tapped the table with his fingertips: "Time difference."
"Thirteen years ago, Lao Zhang became a vegetable. At the same time, the studio tried to wake him up with a holographic helmet. After putting on the helmet, Enoch did not appear in the game, so they thought they had failed." Bai Jin said in a steady tone.
"But it actually succeeded?" Zhao Yinglai and Bai E looked at each other, "It's just that the time of success has changed!"
"After Lao Zhang died, he actually appeared in Breath of Slenkmed," Xu Zichen took a breath, "At that time, he couldn't contact his friends outside the game and couldn't tell them that he was alive again. Because the game was dead, he couldn't meet any players and it was difficult to spread the news. At the same time, the studio that thought he was dead sold the game out of despair and completely gave up on Slenkmed."
"That would explain how the Perrin Mines were discovered," White Moth suddenly interjected, "because in the physical location of the game, Alterac is underneath the mines."
"What is physical location?" Lu Changfeng asked when he didn't understand.
"I'm just trying to describe it to you..." Bai Moth gestured for a long time, "There may be many independent scenes in a game. These scenes may be a large map, or a separate room. When playing, you may click on the door to teleport into the room, but in fact, the real physical location of the room you entered is not behind the door. Your character was teleported into the room, and the physical location of the room is somewhere else. It's just that the plot makes you think you entered behind the door."
This is done to adapt to the player's equipment. After all, the larger the scene, the harder it is to carry. There is no need to model a separate scene according to the plot location. In order to save space, it is common to directly stuff it into a place where there is empty space or bury it under the current map.
So from the perspective of game development, Alterac is likely to be stuffed under the Perrin Mines.
In the game setting, Alterac is an independent map that can only be entered through the fairy in the lake. As indigenous people, they would only think that they have reached the fairy kingdom by crossing the lake, and no one would connect the two places that are so unrelated.
The only one who knows that the fairy kingdom is actually located under the Perrin Mine in the physical sense is the game developer, Lao Zhang who entered here.
"Does this prove that the person who set up the magic pattern together with the Grand Mage is Lao Zhang..." Guan Hongyan raised her eyes.
"Yes," Bai Moth nodded confidently, "It was definitely Lao Zhang who told the Grand Mage."
Therefore, Lao Zhang must have known that Schlenkmade was facing a crisis and must have participated in resolving the crisis.
There was a gap in his memory. In his impression, the game had not yet been released to the world before he lost consciousness, but when he woke up again, the game had already been cancelled.
For him, the easiest way is not to do all this mess, but to spread the news and let his colleagues in the studio complete the fourth expansion pack.
He was not aware of the sale of Breath of Slenkmed, and he certainly hoped that his colleagues in the studio would come back to see him. Even if it was the eve of the server shutdown, they could get the information that "Lao Zhang has entered the game."
"So Lao Zhang must have left some clues that only the people in the studio understand. At the same time, this clue must be spread widely enough so that as soon as they enter here, they will know that the message was left by Lao Zhang."
Everyone looked at each other.
Bai Jinshu exhaled slowly: "If the purple-haired adventurer travels all over the continent, he can save the world and open the door to the kingdom of God."
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