March 11th, Friday.

Qiao Liang, with two massive dark circles under his eyes, was still following the storyline of “Game Producer.”

His face showed only one expression: unwillingness to give up!

A full week had passed since the official release of “BE QUIET.”

And so far, the sales of this game were still at zero.

It wasn’t because the game was too terrible for anyone to play. Players still had no idea what the game even looked like.

No one had been able to solve the puzzle and obtain the so-called “invitation” yet!

Quite a few people had already given up with curses and complaints. This willful behavior from the game development team would seriously provoke players’ rebellious psychology and discourage many players.

Those with hot tempers directly spewed a few lines like “the development team has a brain problem” on the forums, then stopped paying attention to the game.

Those with slightly better tempers gave up but checked the forums daily to see how far the online experts had progressed with solving the puzzle, thinking they would just copy the answer once someone succeeded.

And there was still a small portion of truly hardcore players, like Qiao Laoshi, who continued to search for the solution to the next puzzle without rest.

During this time, they had tried many methods in silence.

All kinds of content had been entered into the two input boxes, but the page still showed no reaction.

So, everyone believed that the next piece of information should be hidden in other games.

“Turn Back to Shore,” as Tenda’s classic game, had naturally been played countless times, but no matter how many times they played, they couldn’t find any useful clues.

Some online experts even heard that Tenda seemed to be working on a haunted house project called “Thrilling Lodge” and went there in person to investigate.

As a result, they were reluctantly driven away by a manager surnamed Chen, who told them that the project wasn’t even completed yet, so it couldn’t possibly be part of the puzzle-solving content.

After running through all the remaining games and coming up empty-handed, Qiao Liang once again turned his attention to “Lonely Desert Highway” and “Game Producer.”

Qiao Liang suddenly felt that, based on his understanding of Mr. Pei, it didn’t seem impossible that more clues would be hidden in these two games!

Who said a game could only hide one clue?

If players found one clue in a game and then stopped entering that game, wouldn’t that create a “darkness under the lamp” effect?

Moreover, judging from the fact that part of Mr. Pei’s two passwords used the same solution method, whether due to time constraints or because Mr. Pei didn’t want to deliberately make things difficult for players, this puzzle-solving activity wasn’t made that hard.

So, Mr. Pei might have, out of consideration for saving time, only had programmers modify two games—and only the simplest parts!

Thus, Qiao Liang entered “Lonely Desert Highway” once again.

This time he didn’t discover any new clues, but he noticed a detail: originally it took three hours to gather all the clues, but now the time had been greatly shortened!

Qiao Liang’s first reaction was frustration.

Is this how early adopters are treated? I drove painstakingly for three hours, but now, newcomers only need to drive for less than an hour to get the same clues?

He hugged his round self painfully.

But after a second thought, he realized a crucial issue.

The time to find the clues had been shortened, which meant that after he found this clue, Mr. Pei had arranged for programmers to make changes to this game.

Why?

This clue had already been solved, and others didn’t need to drive around in “Lonely Desert Highway” to find it again, so why did Mr. Pei still have programmers modify this game?

“Could it be…”

“Mr. Pei’s action was hinting that one must personally find these clues for them to count?”

Qiao Liang instantly realized something and hurriedly opened “Game Producer.”

He had previously reached the “Lost Everything” ending, but that was shortly after the game was released, back in April of last year.

Strictly speaking, although Qiao Liang had reached this ending, he hadn’t personally found this clue!

Regarding the various choices and endings in “Game Producer,” Qiao Liang was already familiar with them. Running quickly without needing to think, it took less than ten minutes to reach the choice just before the “Lost Everything” ending.

And then, he found that string of clues composed of 0, 1, and 2, which had now been deciphered as the five characters meaning “Search Thrilling Lodge.”

“And then?”

Nothing unexpected seemed to happen.

Qiao Liang controlled the game character and inadvertently arrived at the last level of the “Lost Everything” ending, searching aimlessly.

Suddenly, he noticed a report on the wall.

In the original ending, this report criticized the failed producer, with the headline “To Know Something, You Must Experience It Yourself.”

This report was originally there, criticizing these failed producers (or players) for being all talk and no action, pointing fingers at others’ games, but immediately failing when they tried themselves.

The content of the headline hadn’t changed, but Qiao Liang keenly noticed that the font of this headline was different from all other newspaper headlines—it had been changed!

Most players would directly close the game after seeing the previous clue, and even if they happened to reach this point, they wouldn’t notice this sentence without careful searching.

Qiao Liang quickly exited the game and entered this sentence into the input box on the TPDb website.

Indeed, there was still no response.

After a moment of silence, Qiao Liang entered his Tenda account and password respectively into the two input boxes, then pressed Enter.

This time, the page changed!

Qiao Liang instantly realized that he had guessed correctly!

So the content to be entered into these two boxes was very simple—just his Tenda account and password, not anything else!

But the prerequisite was that your Tenda game account must have completed the first clue in “Lonely Desert Highway” and reached the “Lost Everything” ending in “Game Producer” to see the second clue!

And you had to do this after “BE QUIET” was released.

Mr. Pei had deliberately given a small hint at the end of the “Lost Everything” ending by changing the font of the headline “To Know Something, You Must Experience It Yourself,” hinting to players that the key to solving the puzzle was to genuinely find these two clues themselves.

And the reason why so many people hadn’t guessed correctly for so many days was that everyone mistakenly thought they didn’t need to look for themselves if others had found the clues, so no one had met both conditions.

There was no response when people entered their account and password.

And this created a vicious cycle, where people assumed that the two input boxes definitely weren’t for entering an account and password, and eventually, no one would try anymore!

Qiao Liang couldn’t help but feel fortunate.

Luckily, he had played “Lonely Desert Highway” again, discovered the changes to the game, and deduced Mr. Pei’s intentions from them!

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have replayed the “Lost Everything” ending in “Game Producer,” let alone try entering his account and password on the website again.

Mr. Pei had indeed only modified these two relatively simple games and the TPDb website, yet had all these players dancing in the palm of his hand!

But… he was still outsmarted by his kindred spirit, Qiao Laoshi!

Qiao Liang couldn’t help but feel smug.

At this moment, the input boxes on the black webpage had disappeared, and a ghastly white invitation appeared, with lines of blood-colored text beginning to appear, seemingly dripping down bit by bit.

“Congratulations, the first lucky one to receive an invitation.”

“You have proven that your clever brain and persistent will can serve as food for the lodge.”

“If now, clever and delicious, you are ready to offer yourself to the Thrilling Lodge, then do as I say:”

“First, find any camera.”

“Then, log into the game with your account and password, and enter this code at the position of the bloody handprint.”

“We have prepared an interesting mini-game for you…”

Below this letter was a code composed of random English letters and numbers.

Qiao Liang already had a camera, though he rarely used it. He hurriedly wiped it clean, clamped it on top of his computer screen, and aimed it at his face.

Afterward, he opened the “BE QUIET” game and clicked on the bloody handprint.

Originally, this bloody handprint had no response, no matter how many times it was clicked, but now an input box appeared. Qiao Liang immediately entered that string of code.

He didn’t consider sharing this with other players right now because he wanted to be the first player of “BE QUIET.”

The computer screen went black, seemingly entering some mini-program.

In the full-screen display, there was a mirror, and Qiao Liang’s face appeared in the mirror.

This program in the game seemed to display what the camera captured in this mirror, giving the feeling of looking into a mirror through the “window” of the display.

Except this mirror was somewhat foggy and a bit scary.

Partly because Qiao Liang’s camera didn’t have very high clarity, and partly because the program seemed to have added a filter when displaying the image.

Next to the mirror was a line of bloody text: “Keep your gaze on the bloodstain in the mirror.”

In the mirror, there was also a virtual frame outlining the contours of a face, seemingly guiding Qiao Liang to position the camera correctly and place his face inside.

Qiao Liang’s camera was installed at the top of his computer screen, so after slightly adjusting the angle and increasing the distance between himself and the screen, the virtual frame on the screen disappeared.

At this point, the bloodstain in the mirror began to spread continuously across the mirror’s surface. Qiao Liang’s eyes followed this bloodstain as it moved, traversing most of the mirror’s area before stopping.

Afterward, the bloodstain in the mirror disappeared, and the line of bloody text changed: “Face yourself in the mirror, and no matter what, do not look elsewhere.”

“Does it mean I need to keep staring?”

Qiao Liang focused his gaze on his face in the mirror and noticed that the area he was looking at seemed to have a faint highlight effect, changing position constantly as his gaze moved.

“Eye tracking?”

Qiao Liang was a bit delighted, yet somewhat surprised.

Eye tracking wasn’t some highly advanced technology; it had appeared a couple of years ago. By using a camera to identify the state of eye muscles and pupils, it could roughly determine the screen position being viewed.

There were now quite a few programs online that could achieve the effect of eye tracking.

Of course, this technology wasn’t as wonderful as imagined. First, it required ensuring that the face was directly facing the camera and collecting data points. When Qiao Liang was following the movement of the bloodstain earlier, that was obviously what was happening.

The whole process was rather cumbersome, but Mr. Pei had simplified the packaging, making it seem somewhat eerie and more immersive.

Secondly, the accuracy of eye tracking was low, only able to roughly determine a large area where the eye was looking, without being very precise.

However, it seemed sufficient for this test.

Qiao Liang began to focus intently on his face in the mirror.

However, after a few seconds, he suddenly felt something was wrong.

In the lower right corner of the mirror, there seemed to appear the edge of a black garment, with dark red bloodstains on it!