Chapter 36: Why Is It You? (Part I)

Mustang Company.

Sunlight streamed into the office, illuminating a busy, graceful figure.

In fact, today was Liu Ruohan’s first official day on the job, a day for settling in. She had woken up at the crack of dawn to arrive at the office, starting by stocking up on snacks like potato chips, jelly, and lollipops.

Once finished, she replaced her mousepad with a cute kitten-themed one and excitedly stuck cat ears on the corners of her monitor. From a distance, the entire computer setup looked adorable.

After completing all this, she grabbed a broom and swept the already pristine office from top to bottom, only then sitting down at her desk with satisfaction to turn on her computer. In her dictionary, the best part of the day was the morning; a comfortable environment and cute accessories put her in a good mood, and a good mood boosted her productivity.

"Hmm?"

After turning on the computer, she casually popped a lollipop into her mouth and gazed excitedly at the memo on her screen, contemplating her tasks for the day.

The first item on the memo was: "8:00 AM, 'Legend' marketing department meeting, focusing on risk assessment for the upcoming version update."

The second item: "8:30 AM, Dadi Network will officially launch the background expansion pack for their first title, 'War of Warcraft.' The Mustang marketing department will prioritize tracking the market feedback to formulate a response to the competition and design projects to attract players to 'Legend'..."

The third item: "9:00 AM, marketing department project meeting, orientation for new hires..."

"..."

"..."

"Tenth item: Contact Zhang Yang to evaluate the value of his team..."

She sucked gently on her lollipop, reading through the list one by one. Her entire day was packed.

When she reached the tenth item, she frowned slightly in a cute way, her mind drifting back to the way Zhang Yang looked when he left last night. She suddenly felt that this person would be difficult to recruit. If the price offered was too high, the company would definitely object; since the company currently focused on online games, the profits from standalone games were too meager to be worth their attention. But if it was too low... would he even consider coming over?

"Is Zhang Yang's second game about to be released?"

Thinking of this, she opened the Soudu Tieba forum, wanting to see how many people were on the "Beat the Grass Mud Horse" board. According to her previous predictions, it should have reached seventy or eighty thousand members by now...

But the moment she opened it, she saw the name "Zhang Yang" appearing in the top ten trending posts. The post was titled "Interview with Mr. Zhang Yang, Chairman of Universe Technology."

She froze. Subconsciously, she clicked on the post.

Then...

"As an artist, we very much hope to turn games into an art form, providing everyone with sensory enjoyment. Beyond that, I hope everyone can view every one of our games with an objective eye..."

"If you observe carefully, you will find that every game we have now and will have in the future is rich with human philosophy..."

"Metamorphosis is our eternal theme. For instance, this painting of the universe by Mendeleev..."

"It contains a new way of thinking and an all-encompassing capacity. There are many things we must calm our minds and savor slowly before we can realize their true essence..."

"..."

She watched as Zhang Yang shamelessly held up a freshly framed painting on the forum, holding forth on Mendeleev’s philosophy. He talked about the time the painting was made, the brushwork, the tone, the overall compositional logic, as well as the environment at the time and the artist's emotions...

He boasted about every aspect, and not just once—he even added his own divergent interpretations...

The lollipop nearly fell out of her mouth. She was stunned. From beginning to end, she had never seen anyone who could boast like this; it was a comprehensive, omnidirectional, no-dead-angle display of self-aggrandizement.

"This person..."

"This person..."

"Can you have some shame?"

"So disgusting!"

"..."

She decisively closed the forum and rubbed her arms. She had goosebumps all over.

After closing the forum, she checked the time: it was 7:30 AM, half an hour until the meeting. Was this the release time for "Beat the Grass Mud Horse"?

The name... although it was easy to remember, it was truly... so vulgar! It sounded like he was cursing at people. Maybe she should just forget it...

She hesitated for a moment. Even though she knew this game might have some malice toward her, she finally clicked on the official website... She had to admit that Zhang Yang's previous publicity had indeed piqued her interest. What would a game look like when everyone contributed to the script and the art?

"Why is it so laggy?"

"..."

Universe Technology's official website was exceptionally slow today; it took forever just to load. Once it finally did... she saw the download page for "Beat the Grass Mud Horse."

Before she could even click it, she saw the site crash, returning nothing but 404 errors. Subsequently, no matter how many times she refreshed, it remained a 404!

"What kind of server is this? A learning toy?" Liu Ruohan was speechless.

She opened the official "Beat the Grass Mud Horse" board. It was extremely lively, filled with controversy and cursing... It was flooded with complaints about scammers, money-grabbing, and trash servers. Some had just clicked in, paid, and couldn't download; some couldn't even reach the site; others were stuck in a lag-fest, and even when they managed to start the download, it would hang at 99% and stop transmitting data.

"Mr. Zhang, we're done for! Over thirty thousand data requests flooded in at once, and the whole system crashed..."

"Mr. Zhang, we need to upgrade the server. There's a major problem..."

"We're working on emergency repairs, but we don't have enough manpower..."

"Mr. Zhang, my computer specs are too low, it won't run..."

"..."

At Universe Technology, Zhang Yang, who had just finished boasting and was feeling refreshed, turned around to see several people in the rented room crying and wailing in front of their computers. His smile instantly vanished, and he suddenly felt a bit awkward.

Since its founding, Universe Technology had largely relied on equipment brought by employees or cheap, discarded goods. They had tried to cut costs here and there, and now, those savings had caused a massive problem! The entire network server had been "saved" into a state of paralysis.

"Go to the forum and post an announcement saying it's for technical maintenance... Don't panic, take it slow. I'm going to buy a server!"

"If that doesn't work, I'll rent one first!"

"..."

At Mustang Technology, Liu Ruohan saw the announcement on the forum: "Official Server Upgrade Notice: 'Beat the Grass Mud Horse' download delayed by five hours..."

She laughed. Was this server made of paper? How could it crash so easily? She shook her head, checked the time, and headed to the conference room for her meeting.

Half an hour later, she walked out of the conference room. As she did, she saw Shen Yi standing at the door of her office, looking slightly hesitant.

"Uncle Shen, what’s wrong?"

"I just took a call. Zhang Yang... well, he wants to ask if we can help him upgrade his server, or rent one of ours. I know such things should be handled by other departments, but regarding Zhang Yang, I think maybe we should help him out first. He’s a talent, and it might make future acquisition talks easier..."

"Huh? This guy came to us?" Liu Ruohan laughed again upon hearing this.

"He's waiting in the guest room next to my office. Should I..."

"Uncle Shen, tell you what, I'll go meet him. Leave the rest to me."

"Good!"

Zhang Yang was draped in a freshly pressed suit, having specifically put on a pair of scholarly glasses, and sat in the guest room with a very serious expression. He didn't look anxious at all. There wasn't a hint of someone in need of help. In fact, a server crash wasn't really a big deal to him... His real goal was to use this as a pretext to test whether Shen Yi truly valued him. He believed Shen Yi was a talent; by chatting more, once Shen Yi was eventually squeezed out by the company and could no longer stay, he could logically poach him.

Yes! You heard that right! Zhang Yang, the owner of a nearly home-workshop-style company currently facing a server collapse, was brazenly plotting to poach the HR manager of a Chinese gaming giant!

At first, Shen Yi had been very enthusiastic, coming down personally to welcome him and inviting him to sit in his office, even pouring him water in a display of true humility. It had left Zhang Yang feeling uncharacteristically flattered. *Why is he so enthusiastic? Why do I feel like I'm being treated as prey?*

Then... Shen Yi said he had to go apply for something. Zhang Yang nodded and waited earnestly, taking the opportunity to observe Shen Yi's office. *Hmm... this decor is nice, I should decorate my office like this later... This dragon statue isn't grand enough, I need something grander! Why does this money tree look like that? It's trash...*

Just as he was excitedly examining the decorations, he heard a knock on the door.

Then...

"Mr. Zhang, I heard your server crashed?"

"That's right!"

He heard a pleasant voice, one that sounded somewhat playful. He turned his head subconsciously.

Then...

When he saw who it was... his smile began to stiffen. His breathing stopped.