Seven Kingdoms of Conquest and Playboy went live at nearly the same time.

Jili Company demonstrated their formidable promotional capabilities: Seven Kingdoms of Conquest shot to the top of every chart almost immediately. Their game content was virtually identical to Invincible Warrior, but the system was nowhere near as elegantly designed.

They probably knew this themselves, and didn’t aspire for the game to last long — it was a one-wave hit, designed to make as much money as possible.

“Their game’s interconnectivity is too strong,” said Zhang Fang. After weeks of fuming, he had finally achieved the composure to study the enemy. “Their in-game currency is universal across all their titles. If a player downloads one game and levels their character to the appropriate rank, they earn currency that can be used in their other games as well. There’s no counter to this — even players who don’t like this particular game will play it for the sake of their other titles.”

A crowd was squeezed into the cramped conference room, with Zhang Fang analyzing the rival camp’s strategy. After so much coaching, his reports had finally taken on a respectable shape.

“But this is their signature approach, and there’s not much we can do about it. The main purpose of today’s meeting is still Playboy…” Zhang Fang brought up their own project and said mournfully, “Team Lead Li, I’m sorry. The company simply has no money left for promotion.”

Zhu Yun: “Not a single coin?”

Zhang Fang said painfully, “To be completely honest — last week we sold the company’s spare monitors and desktop computers just to scrape together payroll.”

Zhu Yun looked wordlessly at Dong Siyang. Had it really gotten this dire?

Dong Siyang sat in his chair with his eyes closed, resting. Beside him, Zhao Teng was slouched lazily in his chair and let out a long sigh: “Even landlords have no grain to spare these days.”

“Hmph.” A single contemptuous snort rang out, unusually sharp in the small conference room.

Everyone turned in unison to look at Hou Ning, who sat unremarkably in the corner. Zhu Yun didn’t know what Li Xun had said to him, but one week after the incident, Hou Ning had shown up to work at Feiyang.

Zhang Fang had never had much patience for newcomers. He pointed at Hou Ning and said, “And what exactly are you smirking about? If it weren’t for the mess you caused a while back, would we be in this frantic scramble right now?”

Hou Ning’s face went pale under the accusation. He retorted, “What does that have to do with me? Yes, I breached the system — but I didn’t end up destroying any data.”

Zhang Fang roared, “You’d dare destroy the data?!”

Hou Ning went even paler, lips trembling. “What’s the big deal anyway — it’s just money, isn’t it? Name your figure.”

At that, everyone turned their heads to look at Zhu Yun again. She had grown nearly immune to his remarks at this point and couldn’t be bothered to speak. She raised her hand and pointed at the wall at the back of the conference room.

A banner hung on that wall, which Zhu Yun had put up on the day Hou Ning joined the company.

Given that nearly half the people in the company had served five or more years in prison, and given Hou Ning’s longstanding habits, and given Dong Siyang’s earth-shattering methods of resolving problems — Zhu Yun felt the constant reminder was necessary.

She had taken the sixth of Google’s “Ten Commandments” and hung it on the wall:

“You make money without doing evil.”

From then on, the nickname “Political Commissar Zhu” spread throughout the company.

Hou Ning bowed his head and said nothing. Zhang Fang deflated and sank back into his chair. Only Li Xun, completely unconcerned, lit a cigarette.

“Don’t worry about my project,” he said.

Zhang Fang: “Even the best game is worthless without promotion.”

Li Xun: “I said don’t worry about it.”

Zhang Fang: “You’re not thinking of going to Zhao Guowei again, are you? She can’t help with promotion — a sixty-year-old woman trying to—”

“Are you done?” Li Xun looked at him. Zhang Fang instantly fell silent.

Li Xun got up and left the conference room.

Zhang Fang banged his forehead on the table. “What are we going to do — I can’t communicate with him anymore. I don’t even dare talk to him…”

“It’s fine,” Zhu Yun reassured him. “He said not to worry about it — just take him at his word. If something goes wrong, it’s on him.”

Zhu Yun said this half-jokingly.

She wasn’t worried. Li Xun never made empty promises. If he said he had a plan, he had a plan.

And Li Xun had indeed found a promotional solution. Three days later, Zhu Yun saw Ren Di at the office.

That day Zhu Yun arrived early as usual. When she walked in, she found Li Xun sitting in his chair as always, and leaning against the desk in front of him was a lean, sharp-edged silhouette.

Ren Di wore a white button-down shirt, one hand tucked in her trouser pocket, the other holding a cigarette. Her skin was startlingly fair, which made her slender brows appear starkly dark. Her hair was loosely tied back with many loose strands falling free. The hand holding the cigarette was slender and long. The smoke drifted through the air as still as the room itself.

The way she looked at Li Xun was exactly the same as it had been at the start of their freshman year — mutual scorn and rivalry, with just a hint of grudging kinship.

With all three of them in the same space, Zhu Yun felt a strange dislocation in time. She could feel how much things had changed — none of them were young anymore. The years had left indelible marks on each of them, especially after everything they had been through. The traces of youth on each of them were growing fewer.

But at least there were moments of reunion like this.

Li Xun looked toward the door. Ren Di noticed and turned around. She raised her cigarette toward Zhu Yun with a slight smile. The white shirt caught the light behind her, and she looked impossibly cool.

Zhu Yun walked over, and Ren Di opened her arms and pulled her in. Ren Di’s hands weren’t entirely well-behaved — she grabbed at Zhu Yun a few times, then looked over Zhu Yun’s shoulder at Li Xun with a provocative expression.

Li Xun twisted the corner of his mouth and let out a cold, short laugh.

Zhu Yun straightened up. “Weren’t you in Beijing? When did you get back?”

Ren Di: “Last night. Someone made me come back.”

Zhu Yun looked at Li Xun — she understood that he had called Ren Di in for promotional purposes. At that moment, voices came from the door: Zhang Fang and Zhao Teng had arrived, deep in lively debate about what to have for lunch. Zhang Fang walked in, noticed an unfamiliar person with a distinctly refined presence, paused for a moment — and then suddenly recognized who it was, covering his mouth with a sharp intake of breath.

“Am I seeing things…” Zhang Fang whispered to Zhao Teng, “that’s the lead singer of Qinghong, right?”

Zhao Teng was a little dumbstruck too. “Should be. We can’t both be hallucinating at the same time.”

Ren Di asked Li Xun: “So the requirements are what you just told me?”

“Right,” Li Xun said. “You’d better try to convince Jin Cheng. No need for an obvious ad — just take a photo of him playing the game and post it. Don’t mention the game in the caption. Just say he’s relaxing, taking a break. People will naturally dig into the details themselves.”

Ren Di snorted coldly. “You certainly know how to orchestrate things.” She pressed her cigarette out in front of Li Xun and pulled Zhu Yun aside: “Come chat with me for a bit.”

She tugged Zhu Yun toward the door. Ren Di moved with her own gravity — like a gust of wind, she made Zhang Fang and Zhao Teng step aside from five or six meters away without a word.

Once the two women were gone, Zhang Fang rushed over to Li Xun.

“You know celebrities?! Why didn’t you say so earlier?!”

The business had clearly been settled, but Li Xun looked to be in a less-than-ideal mood — his face was somber, and Zhang Fang didn’t dare crack a joke.

Ren Di wasn’t familiar with the layout of the startup building, so Zhu Yun led her to the stairwell. It was just past the first month of the lunar new year, and temperatures hadn’t risen noticeably yet. Ren Di was dressed very thinly. Zhu Yun asked, “Aren’t you cold?”

Ren Di: “I’m fine.”

Zhu Yun: “Is that red sports car downstairs yours?”

“Mm.”

“So cool.”

Ren Di smiled. Zhu Yun asked, “How did Li Xun get in touch with you?”

Ren Di: “He just did.”

Zhu Yun: “Don’t you have events scheduled?”

Ren Di scoffed. “You think he cares about my schedule? He told me to cancel them and come.”

Zhu Yun: “……”

Ren Di looked at her. “That thick skin — you need to learn from him.”

Ren Di had given the same advice as Zhao Guowei. Zhu Yun couldn’t help but start reflecting on her life. Ren Di peered out the window to survey the entire startup park and asked, “Is this company of yours reliable?”

Zhu Yun: “Completely.”

Ren Di looked skeptical. Zhu Yun said: “We’re slowly getting on track.”

Ren Di: “Getting on track how? I heard you can barely make payroll.”

Zhu Yun didn’t want her to know how dire things were and hemmed and hawed: “No, no, who told you that?”

“Li-the-animal.”

“……He told you that too?”

“This scoundrel — when it comes to cutting costs, what won’t he do? Crying poor is the least of it.”

Zhu Yun laughed awkwardly. Ren Di looked at her. “If you’re short on cash, why didn’t you come to me? Or if not me, at least go find Fu Yizhuo.”

Zhu Yun: “Li Xun didn’t. He probably thinks we can hold on.”

Ren Di: “Wouldn’t more funding be better?”

Zhu Yun: “Don’t worry. He knows what he’s doing.”

Ren Di studied her quietly, then gave a slight nod, cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “Fair enough. Money that comes too easily stops meaning anything — I’m proof of that.” Her voice was very soft as she said it, and a faint detachment crept into her eyes. “Back when I had no money, I treasured every performance opportunity. Now no one cares what songs I write. I just sing a little, take some photos, show my face — and money piles up faster than I can count.”

Zhu Yun said nothing.

“I envy you.” Ren Di looked at Zhu Yun and said, “After all these years, you haven’t changed.”

“What do you mean I haven’t changed — I’ve changed so much.”

“But you still have direction. You’re still grounded.”

That made Zhu Yun laugh at herself.

“Don’t envy me. I’m not as impressive as you make it sound.” She leaned into Ren Di’s side. “It’s because Li Xun is here.”

She seemed to have touched on something. Both of them fell quiet.

After a long while, Ren Di said slowly: “When he had just gotten out, seeing what a mess he was, I was full of thoughts about wanting him to eat humble pie — the worse, the better. But now I think about it, I’d rather see him succeed. Back when he was arrogant and domineering, the rest of us were all doing alright. When he fell — it’s like we all drifted off course too.” Ren Di turned to look at Zhu Yun. “I never thought watching him be pathetic would feel this awful. Take care of him well.”

Zhu Yun: “I am.”

Ren Di put her arm around Zhu Yun’s shoulder, smoked two more cigarettes, and said: “I’ve got something on this afternoon. I’ll head out.”

Though Ren Di cursed Li Xun up and down with her mouth, when she actually helped, she delivered with full sincerity. She moved fast: the very next day, a photo of Jin Cheng sunk into a sofa playing a game was posted. Ren Di had specifically chosen a background — an unfamiliar studio that hadn’t been photographed before — and it generated enormous attention.

The celebrity effect was far more powerful than anyone had imagined. Jin Cheng’s fans began frantically analyzing the photo: the brand of his clothes, the style of the studio sofa — and of course, the game on his phone.

Everyone was searching for what the game was. Before long, a few promotional articles appeared, including several screenshots and a basic walkthrough. The search volume for Playboy spiked exponentially over those days. Everyone was curious enough to want to download it, but discovered the game hadn’t been made publicly available.

Li Xun had only released a few thousand registration codes. Because the game’s quality was genuinely exceptional — in both its systems and its artwork, far exceeding the average adult game — players who got in raved about it endlessly every day. Gradually, having one of these exclusive registration codes for this game in testing became something to brag wildly about.

A week later, the codes for Playboy were being resold online for two thousand yuan each. Li Xun released another five thousand codes, and they were all claimed within the space of about an hour.

On the same day Jin Cheng’s photo was posted, Playboy‘s backend traffic began to surge. Half a month later, the game’s monthly revenue easily surpassed three million yuan.

Zhang Fang sat collapsed in his chair every day like he’d had a stroke, staring at the backend data. Zhao Teng and Guo Shijie were equally dumbfounded.

Only Li Xun showed nothing — if anything, he was smoking more than before. Zhu Yun often watched him stare at a darkened screen for long stretches, motionless, brow furrowed, lost in thought.

She knew what he was thinking about. Not long ago, the toy company that Jili was planning to use as a shell for their backdoor listing had publicly released a draft asset reorganization plan. With the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s final review still roughly half a year away, Li Xun was using this window to push Playboy to its peak and loudly advertise its profitability — presumably to set a trap for Fang Zhijing.

Zhu Yun brought Li Xun a cup of water. He surfaced from his thoughts and said, “Thanks.”

Zhu Yun said quietly, “I’ve looked up domestic game infringement cases from recent years. If it’s only simple genre imitation, it’s very difficult to win a lawsuit.”

Li Xun: “I’ll give them the source code.”

“What?”

Zhu Yun couldn’t hide her shock. This project was something Li Xun had developed entirely on his own, spending an enormous amount of time on it, and it was currently Feiyang’s largest source of revenue. But almost immediately she recalled that when she had been reading through the project’s code before, she had found many strange things. Li Xun used to place great emphasis on code readability, yet this time he had frequently used complex structures.

The more distinctive the code, the more traps it contained. She understood it only now, belatedly — from that early stage, Li Xun had already begun preparing.

Behind her, Zhang Fang and Zhao Teng were chatting away casually, their atmosphere completely at odds with the tension on this side of the room.

Zhu Yun said: “What method will you use to get the source code into their hands? Will Fang Zhijing actually copy and use it directly?”

At that, Li Xun finally showed a hint of a smile.

“That part you don’t need to worry about. Even though their own technical ability is decent, they’ve grown so accustomed to cutting corners that they’ve developed a habit of going for quick wins — they only strip products that have already proven successful. The reason their company has been able to stay afloat is because the current gaming market is so chaotic. The domestic user base is enormous, and players are still new to all of this, so their tolerance is naturally high.”

Zhu Yun held her cup of water and thought quietly.

Li Xun continued: “But what’s hollow is ultimately hollow. People can’t be fooled forever. Once users mature, companies with no independent development capability will reach their end.”

Zhu Yun: “But users aren’t going to mature in just a few months.”

Li Xun: “They don’t need to. We just need to build up enough momentum to stall them.” He picked up the water cup and took a sip, then added: “He’ll definitely use my code. I’ll say something almost laughable — Fang Zhijing probably has more faith in my abilities than I do myself.”