Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 321: 319: You All Came Together to Mess with My Mind, Right?!

“I paid for two hours, two hours! Not two minutes!”

“You think I’m easy to bully, huh?!”

No wonder Gary was furious. His painstaking preparations and headline article were just the beginning, merely the first step in building momentum.

There were follow-up plans, possible actions of Cloud Dream, and countermeasures, adding up to more than ten pages of proposals, but now they had only just started with the first page.

As soon as he took the first step, someone cut it off with a snap.

Everything below was gone!

Who could bear this?!

But he never expected that the person on the other end of the phone would be even angrier than him!

“Are you sick? If you want to die, don’t drag us down with you!”

Daxia supports the tertiary industry with quite lenient overall policies. Business connections and communication generally maintain a relaxed atmosphere.

However, there must be a “but”; this kind of “tolerance” and “relaxation” only applies to certain departments.

Some departments are inherently in conflict with these two terms.

Even if they try hard to appear “relaxed” and “tolerant” on a daily basis.

But once you see them being serious, you’ll subconsciously swallow and constantly reflect on whether you’ve done something wrong, even if they’re one of your own people.

Spiritual Rhinoceros received such a call.

Only two minutes after the #Cloud Dream Monopoly# hot search appeared.

The call lasted only 30 seconds.

The words on the other side were not intense, and no dissatisfaction was expressed.

After reporting their identity, they sincerely and earnestly said: “Your hot search headline is false information. Cloud Dream is not the only user of virtual reality technology. Such rumor-mongering, if it causes too much negative impact, needs to take responsibility.”

“Avoid affecting normal business operations as much as possible,” that’s their consistent policy.

–After all, they’re not for internal use, so they don’t take advantage of this opportunity to expose too much information or target NetDragon at all.

Even so, the hot search headline disappeared at the speed of light, accompanied by the issuing account being permanently banned and inoperable.

Not forcing the logout was to reserve evidence just in case.

And this was just the beginning.

Following this, the accounts of the posted company, a shell corporation, were temporarily suspended.

NetDragon Company, which placed the order, refused all future cooperation invitations.

The employees and their leaders who took the order were severely warned and punished, with their quarterly bonuses deducted.

The Spiritual Rhinoceros Advertising Department collectively began training to learn lessons and avoid similar problems.

As for the female employee affected by the joint responsibility, it’s weird that she didn’t have a good temper towards Gary!

Unable to suppress her curse, she hung up the phone decisively, leaving Gary with only one sentence: “The order expenses, including the down payment, have all been refunded.”

Gary became even more confused on the phone: Why is Spiritual Rhinoceros willing to refund money this time?

According to their usual practice, money shouldn’t be refunded no matter what, right?

Also, what does “looking for death” mean?

Gary was completely baffled. The call didn’t clear his confusion but made him even more lost.

It seemed he had stepped on a minefield by accident, but which part was it? Cloud Dream? Monopoly? Industry depression?

Or… was it Lincoln himself?

They all looked the same, but each word had subtle differences.

These differences will determine NetDragon’s actions toward Cloud Dream now and even in the future.

The most annoying thing was: since he didn’t know which minefield he had stepped on, he couldn’t be sure if the plan could continue or not.

Or even: should it continue?

As Gary was struggling, the group chat “beep-beep-beep” sounded again.

Gary opened the group chat; it was the water army leader he contacted yesterday talking.

“My army is ready to roll, but where’s the headline???”

“If it’s due to force majeure and can’t be executed…” Although the water army leader was also very surprised, he immediately thought of the key issue: “We won’t refund the deposit!”

Reading this message, Gary, who was deep in thought, immediately felt his forehead veins bulging.

Is there no end to this?!

You guys must have made a pact to mess with my mentality, huh?!

When they saw the headline suddenly disappear, netizens were also a bit surprised.

However, the headline appeared for too short a time, like a flash in the pan.

As a result, very few people actually read the entire article, let alone take screenshots of it.

After a brief moment of confusion, everyone put the matter out of their minds.

–The main reason is that there has been one major news story after another lately, and everyone feels they can’t keep up with the discussions.

Even if someone were to post a screenshot, other players would immediately rush up and argue with them.

Without the hot search headlines gathering together these negative opinions about Yunmeng, players would spontaneously suppress these minority opposing opinions due to Lincoln and Yunmeng’s reputation.

Lincoln couldn’t quite understand which side was responsible for this.

But he had a good habit of not digging deeper into things as long as the outcome wasn’t bad.

Especially since he had serious business: Princess Camille Victoria was coming to see him.

The princess had mentioned before that she wanted to visit Lincoln and play with Little Milkshake when she got the chance.

However, due to her youthful shyness, she had never really felt comfortable coming over.

Now that Lincoln told her he made something to give her, she refused to let others deliver it or have Jordan pick it up. Instead, she chose to come and pick it up herself, using her affection for Little Milkshake as an excuse.

Although they could meet frequently in the virtual office in Yunmeng, it was a public place and she had to conceal her identity, so there weren’t many chances for conversations. It was as if they hadn’t even met.

Camille Victoria couldn’t wait any longer.

Entering Lincoln’s room, the little princess immediately hugged Little Milkshake and happily rubbed it.

Little Milkshake still remembered her scent and obediently lay in the princess’s arms, allowing her to stroke it.

After she had enough of petting, Lincoln led her to sit down on the sofa.

He took out three wooden boxes and opened them one by one to show her the contents inside.

There were three exquisite brooches.

One was a cute, cartoon-styled Little Fire Dragon brooch, the second was a deer head brooch with gorgeous antlers, and the last one was a lush green leaf brooch.

These seemingly ordinary brooches had all undergone incredibly meticulous treatment:

Hidden from the naked eye, the geometric structures and color variations of the brooches, as well as the selective refraction of invisible light beyond the recognition range of the human eye… etc.

The technological value embodied in these brooches was worth more than a fortune!

Princess Camille Victoria looked down at the three brooches, her gaze shifting between the little fire dragon and the leaf.

She looked up at Lincoln and asked, “They’re so beautiful… Can I choose one?”

Lincoln was taken aback and shook his head: “Of course not, they’re all for you. If you don’t like any of the designs, you can tell me what you like, and I’ll make another one for you.”

“Thank you, I really like them,” Camille Victoria replied, finally taking the brooches out of the box and carefully examining them in the palm of her hand.

She had undoubtedly seen more amazing and better-quality accessories before, but these were made by Lincoln himself.

As Camille Victoria admired the brooches, Lincoln explained their functions: anti-spy camera and anti-eavesdropping.

He also explained the principles in detail and told her that their functionality did have some limitations.

The main limitation was anti-spy camera: it could not block cameras without intelligent assistance programs or purely manual camera masters, and if the distance was too close, the high-resolution pixel could potentially recognize her even if the camera could not focus on her.

As Lincoln explained, instead of being disappointed, the princess’s eyes only shone brighter when looking at the brooches!

The cute designs, Lincoln’s craftsmanship, and the “unbelievable” technology were all elements that endeared the brooches even more to Camille Victoria!

She simply loved these practical applications of cutting-edge technology!

After cautioning her to keep the technology as secret as possible and not to wear them in public, Camille Victoria nodded her understanding.

Looking down at her clothes, she asked, “Is there any restriction on where to use it?”

“No,” Lincoln shook his head. “The initial version indeed had to be fixed on the chest, but I found it inconvenient and upgraded it. Now, as long as the brooch is placed within about a 1.5-meter radius, it will work normally.”

Lincoln pointed to the box and said, “As a price, the brooch has to be placed in the box to charge every three days.”

“Charge?” Camille Victoria was very surprised, looking closely at the brooch to find where the battery was.

“Don’t bother to search, it’s inside, using a 2mm*2mm ultra-small wireless charging solution,” Lincoln explained.

Princess Camille Victoria happily pinned the leaf-shaped brooch onto her collar and took out her mobile phone to see how it looked.

But she found that her phone’s front-facing camera was acting up, refusing to focus on her nearby face and preferring to focus on the painting on the wall behind her instead.

Thus, she immediately had a clearer impression of the brooch’s power.

She then took the deer head brooch and pinned it to Lincoln’s chest pocket, stepped back a bit with her mobile phone, and tried to take a picture of him.

The result was that as long as the autofocus was turned on, the camera would never focus on Lincoln—it would always focus on things like his cushions, seat pads, cups, and vases instead.

Even if the autofocus was turned off, the camera’s built-in algorithm would still provide some assistance, but with the brooch’s presence, this help only hindered things.

Camille Victoria couldn’t resist the temptation to play around. She set up her mobile phone, started the timer, and had her and Lincoln, both wearing brooches, sit on a double sofa, placing a vase in front of them on a table.

The mobile phone began to emit countdown beeping noises “Beep—Beep—”

“Click.”

Camille Victoria immediately jumped up, grabbed the phone, and opened the photo.

As expected, the focus of the picture was entirely on the vase, and the two of them sitting on the sofa had been blurred by the depth of field effect to the point of being unrecognizable.

“Hahaha.” The princess found it more and more amusing as she looked at it, laughing so hard she was all in a quiver.

Like this, Princess Camille Victoria stayed at Lincoln’s place until noon, playing with the brooches, teasing Little Milkshake, and chatting with Lincoln about game development and interesting life experiences, enjoying a fulfilling and pleasant morning together.

It wasn’t until she was about to leave that she shyly handed Lincoln a peace buckle with a hanging tassel attached as a return gift, before hastily leaving.

“Peace buckle…” Lincoln looked at the warm and smooth white jade in his hand, not giving it much thought.

It was meant for protection against evil spirits and wishing for peace, after all.

But what he didn’t know was that the peace buckle was also a type of jade pendant.

And jade pendants were once considered tokens of affection, and even today, they wouldn’t be given away casually by women.