WTYTIAAN Chapter 283

Chapter 283

After burning the midnight oil, Jing Tianyu finally reached the end of his shift as the sky began to lighten.

Dragging his weary body, Jing Tianyu clocked out, ready to head home for a good sleep. As a programmer for a major company, Jing Tianyu rarely had a complete break. There were always various tasks that required him to work overtime, stay up all night, and modify bugs overnight.

Fortunately, his rented apartment wasn’t far, and the company’s housing allowance covered the rent. Coupled with a relatively generous 19-month salary, Jing Tianyu gritted his teeth and continued to slog away at this company.

It was just that his hair was thinning day by day.

The elevator doors slowly closed. Jing Tianyu expressionlessly stared at his reflection in the elevator doors, mourning his lost hair for three minutes.

It was about a ten-minute bike ride home. By the time Jing Tianyu arrived, the sky was completely bright. The whole city had awakened, but he hadn’t slept yet.

Jing Tianyu tossed his laptop bag onto the bed, went into the bathroom for a quick shower, and came out rubbing his almost bare head with a towel. While waiting for his hair to dry, he casually turned on the phone that was sitting on his desk, deliberately ignoring the 99+ notifications in his work group, intending to refresh his Moments and then go to sleep.

Damn bosses, damn modification schemes, all of you go to hell!

Jing Tianyu blankly swiped through his Moments a couple of times, but finally couldn’t resist the performance warning. Grinding his back teeth, he clicked on the work group that was constantly popping up with new messages.

Luckily, the new modification scheme wasn’t for him. It seemed he could get a good night’s sleep today.

Just as Jing Tianyu was thinking this, and his hair was almost dry, ready to turn off his phone and go to sleep, he found that his phone suddenly went black.

Huh?

After staying up all night, Jing Tianyu’s thinking was a bit slow. He was stunned for a moment, thinking that his phone was out of power. Just as he was about to plug it in, the screen flashed and a new image appeared.

The opening of the image was accompanied by the sound of a low horn, the sound heavy and mournful, giving Jing Tianyu goosebumps all over his body.

What the hell?

Jing Tianyu was startled, wondering if he had accidentally opened some video app. He tried to swipe the screen, but couldn’t exit after a long time.

The image on the phone screen continued.

Jing Tianyu frowned. As a programmer, his first reaction was that his phone had been ‘hijacked’.

To ordinary people, this kind of thing would rarely happen, but for big company programmers like him, it was commonplace, and they wouldn’t find it strange.

After all, their company’s games were frequently unpacked, and occasionally they had to lead teams to defend against hackers attacking the servers.

Besides a work group, there were no other confidential work files on this phone. Jing Tianyu wasn’t worried about anything being leaked if his phone was ‘hijacked’. At most, the chat records of his inhumane boss, who deserved to be hanged from a lamppost for exploiting employees, would be exposed.

Just as Jing Tianyu was thinking this, the video on the screen continued to play. The music gradually became more exciting, the drumbeats pounding as if hitting people’s hearts, and even his blood was stirred.

Jing Tianyu frowned, his attention finally focusing on the content of the video, clearly seeing the specific images.

This sight surprised him.

What was this? Beastmen? Elves? Mermaids? It was obviously made with special effects, after all, these weren’t species that existed in reality. However, wasn’t the quality of these special effects a bit too exaggerated?

Although Jing Tianyu was a programmer for a big company and didn’t work on special effects, he still had his own aesthetic sense and understanding. In his opinion, the special effects in this video were comparable to a Hollywood blockbuster.

The kind that took several years and countless money to create, where each frame required dozens of special effects artists to painstakingly work on for several days.

Even the quality presented in this video was a bit more impressive than he knew.

The lighting, the particle movement…

Wasn’t his phone being ‘hijacked’? Why would it play such a top-notch special effects film?

Jing Tianyu was also a movie enthusiast. He was sure that this level of production was definitely not something that had existed before, it must be an unreleased work.

Either a movie trailer or a 3A game trailer.

Jing Tianyu watched the entire video, not missing the line of dark red text at the end.

[《Way Back Home》 Open Beta in Seven Days]

Open beta? That should be a game.

But with such amazing quality, how come he hadn’t heard of it before? 《Way Back Home》? Which big company’s new game? He hadn’t heard the publicity department mention it.

Or was this a foreign company’s game? Then the problem was big.

A foreign company’s game was doing publicity by ‘hijacking’ domestic phones. This had already entered the realm of illegal and criminal activity, right?

Thinking this, Jing Tianyu once again tried to control his phone. He found that he could control his phone again. The company work group, which had been obscured by the video, reappeared, messages popping up one after another.

Jing Tianyu hesitated for a moment, glanced at his comfortable bed, and finally resigned himself to taking out his laptop, connecting his phone with a data cable, and accessing the phone’s background data.

Although there were no confidential work files on this phone, his Alipay and WeChat were on it. What if it was ‘hijacked’ again and he had his hard-earned money stolen?

However, Jing Tianyu found nothing.

The background data was all normal, as if the video that had just popped up had never appeared, as if it was all his imagination.

How was that possible?

Jing Tianyu thought subconsciously, he checked again and again, confirming that this wasn’t his imagination.

He really hadn’t found anything!

Then how was his phone ‘hijacked’? No matter how high-end the technology was, it couldn’t be completely traceless, right?

Jing Tianyu couldn’t figure it out. He accidentally clicked on the work group and found that the group, which had just been discussing work modification schemes, was now unusually lively.

[Damn, my phone got hijacked? My phone suddenly played a video, and I couldn’t turn it off no matter what!]

[Was it that one with the beastmen and elves? My phone suddenly popped up with that video too!]

[Holy shit, my computer got hijacked too!! The problem is, this is the company’s computer! It’s only connected to the internal network! What the hell is this? Our company’s server got hacked?]

[No, when I was eating breakfast at home, the TV broadcasting the news also played the video you guys are talking about? Changing the channel didn’t work? What’s going on? The TV station got hacked too?]

[I thought I was the only one who encountered this situation, I didn’t expect everyone else was like this, then I’m relieved]

…

Jing Tianyu widened his eyes. According to what his colleagues in the work group were saying, their phones had also been ‘hijacked’, and not just phones, even company computers and TVs had all played the same video.

What the hell was this?

According to the end credits of the video, was a game really going to kidnap all electronic devices to promote itself?

Things seemed to be getting really serious!

Jing Tianyu quickly opened his social app and, sure enough, found that everyone who was awake at this moment was in an uproar, countless new messages popping up, almost refreshing every second.

[What the hell just suddenly appeared on my phone?]

[《Way Back Home》? What is that?]

[Open beta? A game? Never heard of it. Is it a foreign one? Are foreign companies so arrogant now that they directly hijack phones for publicity? That’s illegal, right?]

[Damn, that game trailer was pretty cool. Does anyone know which company 《Way Back Home》 is from? The special effects are amazing. I just don’t know what the game itself is like, but with this level of detail, it’s probably several tens of gigabytes, right?]

[《Way Back Home》? I seem to remember this game]

[Isn’t this the one that claims to be the world’s first virtual reality game? I remember a lot of streamers were playing this recently? It’s said to have just opened its 3.0 closed beta?]

[No way, virtual reality? Has the world really evolved to this extent?]

[But even if it’s real virtual reality, you can’t forcibly hijack electronic devices for publicity, right? Isn’t that a bit too criminal?]

Jing Tianyu nodded repeatedly, no matter what, forcibly hijacking other people’s phones was indeed a bit criminal.

However…

[Doesn’t anyone else think those monsters in the video look a bit familiar? Doesn’t it feel a bit like those winged monsters in the previously leaked videos?]

[Now that you mention it, it really does look a bit like them]

[Could it be that those blurry videos that looked like they had hundreds of layers of mosaics and couldn’t even make out the Eiffel Tower were made by this game company? Just to promote a new game?]

[The video looks too tragic, it has a very strong sense of heaviness, it looks a bit like a war movie. Is this game a war-themed one?]

[Can this level of blood and violence even be released? Will it pass the censors? Is this going to be R25?]

[They’re already hijacking electronic devices for publicity, do they even care if they can pass the censors? Isn’t it just adding crime on top of crime?]

[I’m abroad, I was a witness to the monsters at the time. Those monsters are real, the end of the world is coming, you guys should hurry up and get ready!]

Reply: [Should I believe in the end of the world or should I believe that I’m Qin Shi Huang?]

Reply: [My charming ancestor, please tell me when we can unify the world, I don’t want to learn English anymore]

[I have connections, I’ve heard some rumors. It shouldn’t be as exaggerated as the end of the world, but there is indeed a bit of a problem.]

The topic #WayBackHome# jumped to the top of the hot search list. Early in the morning, everyone who opened their phones and missed the morning’s electronic device hijacking event saw all the content under this topic.

There were even camera recordings of the video.

In an instant, the entire Blue Star was in an uproar. 《Way Back Home》, the self-proclaimed world’s first virtual reality game, also entered everyone’s field of vision.

Amidst the heated discussions, the truth and other exaggerated conjectures were mixed together, not being taken seriously by the onlookers.

However, several video websites were heavily promoting live streams of 《Way Back Home》’s closed beta by streamers. Curious people clicked on the streams based on searches and found that the scenes in the live streams were indeed battlefields, with blood splattering everywhere and dismembered limbs flying around, making viewers extremely uncomfortable.

It was a completely uncensored battlefield.

A real war.

A post popped up on 《Way Back Home》’s official forum.

[I saw the video, open beta in seven days, I can’t take it anymore. Damn it, is the end of the world really coming? Are we going to have half the people die like Thanos snapping his fingers? Is there a survival tutorial?]

0L: I really don’t want to die! I’m only twenty years old, I haven’t even graduated from college yet! The government should take care of us, right?

1L: Did the original poster sign a confidentiality agreement? This doesn’t seem like it can be posted, right?

2L replies to 1L: I did, but I’m really too scared. We’re about to die, what does a confidentiality agreement matter? They can’t repeatedly flog my corpse, right? Let’s get through this end-of-the-world crisis first and then pursue my responsibility for the confidentiality agreement!

3L: Original poster, you…

4L: I have a bit of inside information. I heard that the official was originally cooperating with a big shot, supposedly a high-level player with a deep level of exploration. The other party seemed to know some inside information and was going to cooperate to resolve this crisis, but the big shot couldn’t be contacted a while ago.

5L replies to 4L: What do you mean? The official isn’t going to just let us go and die, right?

6L replies to 4L: Your censoring is really useless… So you’re saying that the high-level player with a deep level of exploration, the level ranking should only have that one, right? Anonymous

7L replies to 5L: Hard to say, but there is indeed a lot of pressure now, seven days is too short. All I can say is that humans are too small in the face of this kind of natural disaster. For the last seven days, eat what you want, play what you want, and gather with friends and family for the last time as a memento, who knows what the world will be like in seven days.

8L replies to 6L: Who else could it be? Isn’t this already an unspoken agreement among the top 100 in the level ranking? Who doesn’t have some guesses!

9L replies to 7L: Damn! *

[You have been silenced]

10L: So does anyone know where the Anonymous big shot went? I can’t take it anymore…

11L replies to 10L: I have him as a friend, but he’s always greyed out on the friend list, I can’t contact him.

12L: Is the world really going to end? No way, I just finished paying off my mortgage and car loan, I was about to retire and chill, sob sob

13L: Why do you guys still have time to chat idly? Have you killed all the demons? Have you eliminated all the undead?

14L: What what what? I came from the hot search topic, original poster, what do you mean? What are you saying, 7L Chen Zhu? What end of the world? Ah? Isn’t this a holographic game? Are you guys roleplaying? What kind of worldview is this?

15L replies to 14L: No, it’s the end of the world, understand? The end of the world is coming! In seven days, our world will be destroyed, another world will land on Earth, and a random group of people will be selected for annihilation. Whether you can live or not depends entirely on luck!

Did you hear? The end of the world is coming!