Chapter Fifty: The Solution from the Goose Corporation

Of course, Little Monkey calling Brother Ma was just a joke for the audience, a playful stunt for the sake of the livestream. But he genuinely believed his analysis made sense; there was no way this event was as simple as it appeared. Whether it was the color of the knights’ armor, their skills, or the odds, there had to be some connection among them—if he could just find that link, predicting the winner would be easy.

“Guys, this event is really fascinating! Looks like I need to do some serious research. I won’t be taking any more requests to open boxes or sky orders today. Damn it, I have to win back that billion no matter what!”

[Big Monkey, you rock!]
[The pig disguise is number one!]
[+V for exciting videos: 14755...]
[The big brother is back, mods, come quick at my call!]
...

Naturally, Xie Jing had no idea that others were rolling up their sleeves to study his event. Right now, as he gazed at the twenty-five billion, two hundred seventy-five million gold coins resting quietly in his account, he could hardly keep from drooling.

And this was just the beginning—the first round. Many players who didn’t yet understand the event’s rules hadn’t invested, and plenty of others only had time to play in the afternoon and weren’t even online yet. If all these players joined in, just imagining the mountain of gold coins was enough to make Xie Jing’s heart tremble with anticipation.

“Earning money from these people is just too easy!”

Most importantly, in the world of Arad, making money didn’t bring vultures swooping in to seize it. In this world, strength reigned supreme; everyone was focused on improving themselves, and wealth was merely an afterthought.

But there was one group whose hair was turning white with anxiety over Xie Jing’s arrival.

At the headquarters of Goose Corp in Guangshen, in one of their offices, a group of balding technicians hammered frantically at their keyboards. Xie Jing’s image, as he stood on the dark city’s avenue, was displayed on a large screen in the corner, rendered as a 2D animation.

As one of Goose Corp’s most profitable games for years, Dungeon Disconnect had more than two hundred backstage operators. Many in this office were network specialists responsible for defending against virus attacks, fixing bugs, and banning cheaters.

Others were game designers.

Then there were the dozen or so middle-aged, balding men furiously typing at their screens—top-tier network experts seconded to the DNF operations team from other departments.

The entire group huddled together, all discussing the figure of Xie Jing on the screen.

“This event definitely wasn’t put in by us! My design team never came up with such a brilliant idea!” the head designer stood up, indignant.

One of the middle-aged experts pushed up his glasses and spoke, “There’s no sign of any intrusion. We can’t find this NPC’s code in the backend data. It’s as if he smuggled himself into the game from another world—he’s truly present, yet there’s no evidence of his existence!”

Brother Zhang, the head of game operations, frowned deeply and looked around the room.

“Is there nothing we can do?”

Many fell silent. Then a designer named Parker Sheep stood up, stooped over, clutching a thick stack of data sheets, giving off a shifty vibe.

“Brother Zhang, according to our surveillance, just in the first horse race event, about twenty-five billion gold coins have already gone unaccounted for. This is just the first round, and already so many coins have moved. Whoever thought of this event is a genius!”

Brother Zhang tugged irritably at his tie and glared at Parker Sheep. “What’s your point?”

Parker Sheep gave a sly smile and glanced at the others.

“Could we shut down the game servers for a while—wait until we’ve completely purged this virus before reopening?”

The network experts looked at each other awkwardly.

“Shutting down is no problem, but this virus probably can’t be dealt with in a short time. If we stay down too long, higher-ups will be very displeased!”

“So, you’re saying you have no way to kick this NPC out of the game right now?”

The experts nodded helplessly.

Parker Sheep finally looked up at Brother Zhang. “Boss, I have an idea!”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Since this event can reclaim so much gold, why don’t we create our own to compete with him? We’ll offer higher odds, design the event more attractively, even give out costumes and rare weapons. We could even allow gold coins to be automatically converted to Q-coins or RMB and credited to players’ accounts, stealing his business and forcing him to surrender!”

He grinned malevolently. “At the same time, we’ll seek help from the authorities to eradicate the virus while minimizing our losses!”

Brother Zhang pondered for a moment. Looking around, he saw most people nodding in agreement.

It was, indeed, an excellent plan! As a Goose Corp game, connected to many other software products, there were plenty of ways to squeeze Xie Jing’s event out of business.

“Alright! Design team, get the proposal ready and update the data immediately. We’ll launch our own competition—right next to the virus event!”

“Yes!”

With the order given, everyone’s spirits soared. Backed by such a powerful company, they were confident that a mere virus was no match for them!

...

At that moment, Xie Jing’s sixth horse race was about to begin.

As his reputation grew, many lucky winners began spreading the word, and more players flocked to invest, each hoping for instant riches.

In just four rounds, Xie Jing had already pocketed over thirteen billion gold coins—one-tenth of his goal of one hundred billion in the blink of an eye.

Completing this task so easily, Xie Jing couldn’t help but hum a little tune in delight.

In his room, Little Monkey was equally pleased.

“Did you see that? After studying three rounds, I’ve completely figured out the rules of this event. Just now, I bet everything on Sean, and won over three million. Damn, wasn’t that amazing?”

[You figured it out again?]
[I bet everything I won earlier on Sean’s opponent, Roland, and lost it all!]
[You should trust Big Monkey! One failure doesn’t mean anything—Big Monkey will only get stronger from here!]
[Trust Big Monkey forever! I just followed him and won over twenty million, hahaha!]

Emotions ran wild in the chat; some were ruined overnight, others struck it rich.

Little Monkey rubbed his hands and glanced at the chat. “Just follow my lead, you can’t go wrong! Now, this is round six: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet. Let’s pick the knight in blue armor—Richard. And his opponent? Hey, it’s last round’s champion, Sean.

The odds of back-to-back wins are low, so Richard should make the semifinals. Looking at the same bracket, there’s Edward and Roland. Based on the Pythagorean-Gravity Theorem, Edward has a better shot.

Now, let’s see their skills...”

He spoke with the utmost seriousness, and tens of thousands of viewers listened closely, their hands unconsciously clicking on Richard as he did.

“Alright, let’s go big this time—fifty million on Richard!”

“Guaranteed win!”