March 4th, Friday…
Pei Qian arrived at the office early. He accessed the platform to take a look. Not a single person had bought Be Quiet yet! Obviously, gamers could not achieve any breakthroughs in a single day.
Of course, that was what Boss Pei had planned!
The series of codes had been hidden in The Lonely Desert Road, and one would be able to find it after driving for just three hours. What’s more, only one person had to find the code before the others would be able to work on it.
If trying to repel gamers had been his only goal, Pei Qian could have requested all gamers to finish all eight hours—or even sixteen hours-of The Lonely Desert Road. That would have been effective, but the system would not have allowed it.
Thus, Pei Qian had to keep an eye on the difficulty while setting the riddle.
It would not be reasonable to make the riddle too difficult. That was because gamers would not be able to buy the game, and the System would prohibit it.
Yet, making the riddle too easy to solve would result in a lack of a barrier. Gamers would be able to purchase the game very quickly, and Pei Qian would have worked in vain.
Pei Qian’s main goal for setting up the filter was to minimize the number of gamers who would be qualified to buy the game during this cycle, which had less than a month left. He had to reduce the game’s sales volume as much as possible.
As for what he would do during the next cycle, he would think about it when the time came.
The ideal situation for Pei Qian would be for the riddle to take a month for gamers to solve. That way, he would not make any sales during this month.
Moreover, the game had already been released. Gamers were only unable to buy it because they could not solve the riddle and not because Boss Pei had not completed the game. Thus, the System would not take it as an unfinished project, and settlement would not be delayed.
Even if Pei Qian failed to hold them back by a month, buying two or three weeks would still be better than allowing everyone to purchase the game as soon as it was released.
Many gamers had thought of various ways to crack the code. From among them, a bunch of experts emerged.
The entire process was dazzling and included splitting, converting the English alphabets to numbers, converting the numbers to letters on keypads, reversing them, alternating them, forming a sequence, applying the American Standard Code for Information Interchange and the hexadecimal, and the like.
In actual fact, Pei Qian was only an average man. He had not learned about all the complex ways of creating a code. Thus, the riddle was a simple one, which one could use everyday observations to crack.
It was just that there were many steps.
Some gamers had been on the right track. However, the final step was less well-known and more amazing. Thus, once gamers arrived at this step, they mistook it as a dead-end and gave up digging any deeper.
Thus, nobody paid much attention to this accurate way of cracking the code.
GAICCCCCCACBIADBHCEA.
After some observation, one would be able to tell that ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ appear the most times in the code. ‘l’ was the last alphabet of the alphabetical sequence that appeared. If ‘A’ was 1 and ‘B’ was 2, then ‘I’ would be 9. That meant this string of alphabets was meant to be converted to numbers.
71933333313291428351.
If one observed this string of numbers, they would realize that there was an order to every alternate number.
71/93/33/33/31/32/91/42/83/51.
None of the latter numbers surpassed four. This was a very common way of arranging alphabets on a cell phone keypad.
’71’ symbolized the first letter on the number ‘7’ of the cell phone’s keypad— ‘P’. By the same logic, every pair of numbers corresponded to a letter on the cell phone’s keypad.
PYFFDEWHVJ.
However, what came after this would not look so logical. Thus, gamers who followed the same thought process often failed to get any further. As more gamers observed one another’s progress on forums and discussions, they would form the impression that this was not the right way.
In fact, there was nothing complicated about the next step. Its general category was very common in the real world, but this particular branch was very rare. That meant very few people would understand it.
Pei Qian had only learned more about it out of interest. Therefore, when he felt like creating the code, it turned out more effective than he had expected.
Furthermore, even if one managed to get past this step, he would only be one-third done with the entire process.
“Keep working hard, everyone! If you can’t solve it, I will incur losses during this cycle!” Pei Qian could not help but feel arrogant.
Otto Technologies would be holding a news conference for the new cell phone this weekend. Pei Qian had to take a look to ensure that everything went perfectly.
However, before that, Pei Qian sent a message to the programmer who had been put in charge of the riddle. “They have found the clue in The Lonely Desert Road. You can reduce the time needed for the clues to appear from three hours to fifteen minutes.”
…
March 6th, a Sunday…
At Oasis Four Seasons Hotel, the biggest five-star hotel in Jingzhou City…
Tengda had collaborated with this hotel to host many of its events, including high-end business meetings, employees’ recruitment examinations, annual meetings, and the like.
The news conference was also being held in the ballroom in this hotel. Tengda had already invited many members of the media in advance, prepared rooms for them, and paid for their food, accommodations, and transport expenses.
The rest of the seats had been given to customers of Fish-Catching Internet Cafe, Upwind Logistics, and other businesses for free.
In any case, Pei Qian had experienced no problems in filling the entire event venue up.
The news conference was supposed to begin at 3 PM. At 2 PM, Pei Qian sneaked into the event venue and then found a seat in the corner.
He could have sat in the first row if he had wanted to, but there were cameras set up to live-stream the entire news conference. Pei Qian would definitely appear on camera if he sat in front. Then, his identity would be exposed.
Thus, Pei Qian had told Chang You that he would be coming, but he had not told Chang You where he would be sitting.
Many people were present. It would be extremely difficult for Chang You to locate Pei Qian in this crowd.
That way, Boss Pei could keep his identity hidden and be able to observe the entire process. One could say he would be killing two birds with one stone.
Comforting and gentle music was playing, and people were bobbing their heads. Many people were streaming in as well.
The screen was still black. Perhaps it was because Pei Qian had arrived too early.
If this had been a news conference for any other cell phone, the huge screen would be displaying videos about the cell phone to warm the audience up. There would probably also be advertisement posters of the spokesperson.
However, Pei Qian realized that Otto’s cell phone had none of these.
Chang You had brought up the spokesperson issue before, but Pei Qian had not thought about it at the time. Thus, he had not given Chang You a clear direction.
It looked like Chang You had forgotten about that, too.
If there wasn’t even a spokesperson, Pei Qian guessed that there would be no introductory videos either.
Yes, that was just as well. Chang You could just walk up onto the stage and speak dryly. Once he finished going on about the cell phone’s flaws for an hour, he could get off work. That would meet Boss Pei’s expectations perfectly.
Pei Qian was still fantasizing when the lights dimmed.
The screen came on!
A high-tech logo slowly appeared on the big screen. It looked like the rising sun, dissipating the darkness. At once, it caught everyone’s attention.
The camera panned out, and the logo became smaller and smaller. Someone’s back appeared in the foreground, coincidentally blocking out the light from the logo and leaving a good-looking silhouette.
After that, he reached out and held the light ball in his hand.
A ray of light immediately shot out of his hand. The minimized logo stuck onto the back of the phone and faintly glowing with a breathing light effect!
The person turned around. The handsome and dazzling Lu Zhiyao looked straight through the camera, addressing the audience at the venue. He held a very impressive-looking cell phone in one hand. Behind the cell-phone, the logo was still glowing. Everything looked extremely high-tech.
That was not the end. Two advertisements followed that. One of them was the one involving the drone delivering take-out.
At last, the camera stopped on the publicity image. With an Otto cell phone in his hand, Lu Zhiyao smirked.
Pei Qian was stunned. He had just opened a bottle of water, but he had completely forgotten to take a sip.
What the h*ll…? Wasn’t that the advertisement in Tomorrow is Beautiful?
Pei Qian instinctively thought about himself watching Tomorrow is Beautiful in the cinema before.
At that moment, it felt like he had traveled through time. He was equally caught off-guard and confused! Pei Qian had seen this cell phone’s advertisement and the logo when he watched the movie. However, it looked different from Otto Technologies’ logo. Thus, he relaxed. Why did Otto Technologies end up copying the movie?! Was it trying to ride on the movie’s coattails?!
That’s so shameless!
What’s more, since when did Lu Zhiyao become Otto Technologies’ spokesperson?
One could say that Lu Zhiyao was now very famous. Ever since Tomorrow is Beautiful premiered, he had washed himself clean of his reputation for being the ‘toxicity in the box office’. What’s more, his remarkable acting and the fame that he already had strengthened his position as a first-tier young actor in the country.
If he won an award, Pei Qian would be in big trouble.
Given what Lu Zhiyao had achieved with Tomorrow is Beautiful, it was only natural for him to reciprocate and act as Otto Technologies’ spokesperson.
Pei Qian should have been pleasantly surprised. Yet, that was not what Pei Qian was feeling at the moment.
Instead, he only felt horrified!
This way of kicking the news conference off was much more engaging than playing introductory videos. That was because Tomorrow is Beautiful was still screening, and it was still popular. Many people present had probably already watched it.
Those advertisements appeared in Tomorrow is Beautiful. They had been carefully filmed, and they looked novel. They obviously stood out from other cell phone commercials. Seeing them naturally caused the audience to think about the futuristic and high-tech cell phone brand that appeared in Tomorrow is Beautiful.
Pei Qian had not revealed this in the publicity material. Thus, everyone present was obviously pleasantly surprised! The originally dead atmosphere had been livened up!
The journalists of the tech media whispered to one another. Clearly, the advertisement and Lu Zhiyao’s role as the spokesperson had impressed them.
Feeling like he was sitting on pins and needles, Pei Qian began to panic. The start of the news conference had gone very differently from what he had expected. This did not look like a good sign.
He opened his bottle and drank a mouthful of water to calm his nerves.
Calm down, calm down. I don’t think the situation is as bad as I think.
It might not be useful to start off so well. What if the high expectations end up being crushed?
If Chang You presents a slideshow and conducts the news conference completely opposite from other cell phone manufacturers like I told him to, people would just curse louder later.
Then, the fact that the start was so impressive would seem very distant.
There’s no need to worry now. Everything will get better!
