After “Eternal Samsara” officially went online, Pei Qian and Meng Chang were naturally paying close attention to it.

Of course, one was in the Advertising and Marketing Department, and the other was in his own office.

They were both equally surprised by the discussions appearing online, but the points of their surprise were quite different.

Meng Chang sat at his workstation in the Advertising and Marketing Department, bewilderedly scratching his head.

“What… is going on?”

“Wasn’t the combat system supposed to be updated in the last week?”

“The demon sword’s automatic parry setting is clearly part of the combat system, right? Why has it appeared already?”

“I need to go find Yu Fei right away!”

Meng Chang couldn’t sit still.

Clearly, the emergence of this automatic parry would disrupt his plans to some extent!

Actually, Meng Chang’s original promotional plan was very simple, a standard application of the Pei-style promotion method: up-down-up.

First, through overwhelming advertising, burn money while simultaneously building up the hype for “Eternal Samsara,” making everyone believe it was a large-scale DLC comparable in size to the main “Turn Back to Shore” game, with major gameplay innovations. While accumulating a lot of attention, this naturally also planted some seeds for criticism.

Then, split all the content of “Eternal Samsara” into four parts, updating new maps and new monsters in the first three parts, and finally updating the combat system—the crucial “key” that would connect all the previous content—in the last part.

Although the total gameplay time and size of “Eternal Samsara” were quite comparable to “Turn Back to Shore,” all the scenes, monsters, and other elements inside were modified from existing materials, easily giving players a feeling of a “reskin.”

And “reskin” often equates to “perfunctory.”

In the first week, players’ dissatisfaction might not be so high, as they would still have expectations for the upcoming content.

By the second and third weeks, when players discovered that it was all the same old stuff, emotions would definitely get somewhat out of control.

Moreover, without the updated combat system, the numerical values of all the minor enemies and bosses on the entire map had been adjusted higher compared to before.

The original values in “Turn Back to Shore” were already precisely calibrated at the limit of what players could bear. Now, with the values raised again without the support of a new combat system, players would find it almost impossible to enjoy themselves.

It might even cause opposition between hardcore players, loyal players, and ordinary players. For instance, hardcore players might mock ordinary players for being too unskilled and unworthy of playing, while ordinary players would vent their anger on “Eternal Samsara” itself.

This way, controversy surrounding “Eternal Samsara” would inevitably accumulate.

By the final week, when the new combat system was updated, players would suddenly discover that “Eternal Samsara” wasn’t just a simple reskin—this combat system truly had the power to transform decay into magic, turning it into a completely different game from “Turn Back to Shore”!

By that time, Meng Chang would have already received his hefty commission, dusting off his hands and walking away, keeping a low profile.

All the subsequent surge of attention and players’ praise for the game would be left for Mr. Pei.

Of course, there would also be interpretations of the game’s deeper meanings from Qiao Laoshi or Mr. Tian, such as the design of the demon sword, improvements to the new combat system, various changes to the storyline, and so on.

Meng Chang originally thought his plan was perfect, but never imagined that something would go wrong in the very first week of the launch!

If the demon sword revealed itself right from the start, wasn’t that essentially hinting to players that the game had a completely new combat mechanism?

How would they accumulate players’ dissatisfaction then?

And when the combat system was updated, would it still be so impressive?

If players consistently believed that “Eternal Samsara” would absolutely not disappoint them, and even found more mysteries while constantly digging into the game content, thereby maintaining their expectations for this DLC…

Then Meng Chang could forget about getting his commission, or even if he did, it definitely wouldn’t be much.

So, Meng Chang was in a hurry.

He immediately stood up, preparing to visit Tenda Games to ask Yu Fei what was going on and to think about whether there was any way to remedy the situation.

…

Both the Advertising and Marketing Department and the Tenda Games department were located in Shenhua Luxury View, so Meng Chang arrived quickly.

He went straight to Yu Fei, who was working, and explained why he had come.

“Huh? The demon sword?” Yu Fei scratched his head in confusion.

Clearly, he wasn’t fully aware of the situation either.

“Wait a moment, let me ask the designer responsible.”

Yu Fei didn’t dare to be negligent and immediately got up to investigate.

After all, Yu Fei had previously guaranteed that he would cooperate well with Meng Chang’s promotional work, but there was already a problem in the first week, which made him feel very embarrassed.

About ten minutes later, Yu Fei finally clarified the situation and returned.

“I’m really sorry!”

“It’s like this, Brother Meng. When I was making the update plan and splitting the game content, I only wrote that part of the combat system would be placed in the final update.”

“But during the specific implementation, something went wrong. The demon sword’s automatic parry mechanism was a relatively independent underlying design when it was created, so the colleague responsible for splitting the game forgot to separate it out. After all, I didn’t specify this point in detail in my plan…”

“Brother Meng, what should we do about this?”

Yu Fei’s face was full of guilt.

He had been substituting as the lead designer for just a month and originally thought the job was quite easy. He didn’t expect that as soon as he made a slightly larger plan, he’d mess up!

Strictly speaking, this was indeed the responsibility of him as the lead designer.

Because the designers below him had a lot of work, they would strictly follow his plan when completing their tasks. Yu Fei, as the lead designer, should have immediately recognized the special nature of the demon sword’s automatic parry mechanism and specified how to handle this mechanism in the plan. If he had done that, the current situation wouldn’t have occurred.

Since he, as the lead designer, hadn’t written it down, he naturally shared responsibility with his subordinates, or rather, he should bear the main responsibility.

Meng Chang couldn’t help but hold his head in his hands.

This was really awkward!

He couldn’t really blame Yu Fei for this, because firstly, Yu Fei was just a substitute lead designer. He had previously been a novelist and had only been substituting for a month. Expecting him to do everything as perfectly as Hu Xianbin was obviously a bit unreasonable. Secondly, Yu Fei had shown this plan to Meng Chang, and Meng Chang hadn’t realized this issue with the demon sword’s automatic parry mechanism either.

If you didn’t see it yourself, how could you blame others?

The only conclusion was that the demon sword’s automatic parry mechanism was a deeply hidden mechanism. Everyone had subconsciously assumed that even if players discovered this hidden mechanism, it would happen some time after the game was fully released, so they hadn’t given it high priority.

And so, the current situation arose.

Meng Chang was caught in a dilemma. How should the current situation be handled?

Update the game to remove the demon sword’s automatic parry mechanism?

It was possible, but how would they explain it to the players?

If they didn’t acknowledge it as a game mechanic and called it a bug, that would be blatantly lying—players weren’t stupid and wouldn’t believe it. If they admitted it was a game mechanic that had been mistakenly released early, not only might it be embarrassing and make Tenda Games’ internal management look chaotic, but more importantly, it would prematurely expose the new combat system that hadn’t been updated yet.

Once players knew about the game’s combat mechanics in advance, Meng Chang’s commission would basically be heavily discounted, if not completely gone.

So, Meng Chang’s idea was that they must try every possible way to cover this up.

But as for exactly how to cover it up, he had no clue for the moment.

Just then, Meng Chang’s phone vibrated.

He took out his phone, looked at it, and then said to Yu Fei: “…I’ll go see Mr. Pei first.”

“Since what’s happened has happened, there’s no need to rush. We’ll discuss countermeasures later.”

Watching Meng Chang hurry away, Yu Fei returned to his workstation, feeling restless and very uneasy.

“Maybe Mr. Pei should take this opportunity to replace me quickly? I don’t want to be this substitute lead designer anymore anyway.”

…

Meanwhile, Pei Qian was also pacing anxiously in his office, silently cursing.

He had never imagined it would turn out like this!

He hadn’t inquired at all about the promotional plan for “Eternal Samsara.”

On one hand, he completely trusted Meng Chang, believing that his commission last month was a reflection of his capability. Although the gaming platform later experienced a revival due to “Mr. Tian’s” interference, that was an unexpected event and not Meng Chang’s fault.

On the other hand, he didn’t have particularly high expectations for “Eternal Samsara.” It would likely make money, and as long as it didn’t make too much, he could accept it.

So, no matter how the promotional plan was executed, as long as it didn’t become too popular, Pei Qian felt it was acceptable.

After all, if it did become very popular, Meng Chang wouldn’t get his commission, and the most unfortunate one wouldn’t be Pei Qian himself, so what was there to be upset about?

But having only updated a quarter of the content and already exposing the demon sword’s automatic parry mechanism was completely unacceptable!

As Pei Qian’s own exclusive “skipping class” tool, he had originally hoped that players would never find the demon sword and would only suffer in the game.

After all, such a high-difficulty combat system was created with the original intention of discouraging players.

But before they even got to play with the combat system, the method to skip class was exposed—what was the point of discouraging players now?

Just as he was feeling annoyed, there was a knock at the office door.

It was Meng Chang.

Pei Qian got straight to the point: “How did the demon sword’s mechanism get exposed so quickly? Was this also part of your promotional plan?”

Meng Chang coughed twice, very embarrassed: “Mr. Pei, I’m sorry, this was a mistake in my work!”

“It happened like this…”

He explained in detail the issue of his communication failure with Yu Fei, which led to the incorrect update of the demon sword’s parry mechanism.

Pei Qian fell silent.

He instantly understood what had happened.

To ensure players couldn’t find the demon sword, creating a “hidden in plain sight” effect, Pei Qian had gone to great lengths, arranging a triple safeguard.

The demon sword’s weapon damage was comprehensively lower than other weapons, and dual-wielding would not trigger automatic parrying. Players would obtain ghost official weapons after killing them on the Yellow Springs Road and would definitely replace the demon sword.

Each game stage had a limit on the level of demon possession. No matter how many times players died in the early stages, they wouldn’t trigger automatic parrying. At most, in extremely rare cases, there might be an imperfect parrying motion, but it wouldn’t provide 100% damage immunity—players would still die when they should.

Even if experts wanted to complete the game with low-damage weapons, since they would already have mastered the combat mechanics very skillfully, they wouldn’t die many times, and thus wouldn’t trigger the automatic parry mechanism either.

But these three safeguards had all been disrupted because of Meng Chang’s piecemeal update approach!