Losing Money to Become a Tycoon: Starting with Games
Chapter 438: A String of Code
Two hours later, Qiao Liang exited Ocean Fortress with a confused expression.
All that effort—for nothing!
He had first revisited all the well-known scenes in Turn Back Before It's Too Late, then even created a new account to clear the beginner village again. After that, he switched to Ocean Fortress and quickly played through several story-mode stages.
But he found absolutely nothing.
Qiao Liang wasn't someone who gave up easily. The reason he stopped was that he felt he might be heading in the wrong direction.
What if the clue wasn't in these two games at all?
He checked his fan group. Quite a few people had clearly thought the same thing, searching through games they were familiar with. But after two hours, no one had found anything useful.
Qiao Liang scrolled through the chat history, looking at which games others had checked.
Ghost General, Game Producer, Ocean Fortress…
Suddenly, inspiration struck.
Lonely Desert Road!
Since the clue said "lost in a past journey," this game fit the description perfectly!
Moreover, most people had already overlooked this game.
When it first came out, this frustrating game had a brief burst of popularity, but it quickly faded. Compared to Tengda Group's later titles, its recognition was far lower.
And the game itself was incredibly boring. Even those who bought it probably never finished it—and even if they did, it would've long been abandoned in their libraries, gathering dust.
If you wanted to hide something, wouldn't this game be the perfect choice?
Qiao Liang immediately grew excited. He opened Lonely Desert Road and prepared to start driving.
He had once spent a full eight hours driving in this game, so he knew this would be a long journey. He grabbed some snacks, placed water within easy reach, and even went to the bathroom before officially starting.
An hour later, Qiao Liang was already getting sleepy. But just then, he noticed what seemed like a letter drifting past the roadside.
The car was moving fast—the letter stayed in his field of vision for less than half a second before disappearing.
"Damn!"
He didn't catch it clearly. It seemed like a curved letter, but he couldn't tell whether it was a C or a G.
He was certain that no such letters had appeared in the game before. So he restarted the game and turned on screen recording.
After driving for another three full hours, Qiao Liang finally exited the game and made a quick trip to the bathroom.
Returning to his seat, he opened the recording and skipped ahead to the one-hour mark to check the letter he saw.
Sure enough—it was a G!
After that, a letter would drift past every five minutes. Sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right. There were a total of 20 letters, appearing over the course of more than an hour.
After that, no more letters appeared. But just in case, Qiao Liang kept driving for another half hour before quitting.
Using the recording as reference, he carefully wrote down all the letters:
GAICCCCCCACBIADBHCEA
It looked like a string of code.
In other words, other players wouldn't necessarily have to play Lonely Desert Road themselves—they could still obtain this code.
But even with the code, the puzzle had only just begun.
…
At Shangyang Games.
Lin Wan, Ye Zhizhou, Wang Xiaobin, and others were also monitoring reactions across forums, Weibo, and player groups.
There were more dissatisfied players than expected.
Comments like "What kind of nonsense is this? I can't even buy a game after paying?" and "Acting all high and mighty? Fine, I won't play!" were everywhere.
However, even more players were intrigued by the puzzle.
A few hours after launch, players had already discovered the code hidden by President Pei in Lonely Desert Road. But this code clearly needed further decoding to reveal any truly useful information.
Ye Zhizhou was also studying the string of code. The notebook in his hand was already filled with various characters, and he was running searches on his computer—but nothing useful turned up.
"I have no idea how President Pei came up with this kind of promotion method. He's a genius!"
"But… wouldn't it have been better to do this kind of warm-up a month before the game launched?"
"Now the game is already released, but people can't buy it. Some players are definitely going to get upset."
"I wonder if there's some deeper meaning behind this."
Wang Xiaobin thought for a moment. "Hasn't President Pei always been this willful? In Turn Back Before It's Too Late, he repeatedly tried to discourage players. Maybe this is just another unusual marketing tactic."
"Perhaps he's deliberately provoking players' rebellious instincts, making them more eager to participate in the puzzle?"
Lin Wan nodded. "Yeah, I think that's very likely!"
"A lot of players have gone back to play Tengda Group's older games to look for clues. I bet sales for games like Turn Back Before It's Too Late and Game Producer have definitely gone up."
"It's just a pity the duration is a bit short. With experts like Teacher Qiao—who understands President Pei so well—joining in, the clue was found in just a few hours."
"If it had been hidden more deeply, wouldn't sales for the other games have skyrocketed too?"
Ye Zhizhou rubbed his temples. "I actually think President Pei didn't intend to hide it that deeply."
"The word 'journey' already hints at Lonely Desert Road. As long as you just drive for three hours, you can find the clue."
"It seems like President Pei didn't want to make things too difficult for players at this stage…"
"Or could it be that he was worried that if it were too well-hidden, players wouldn't find it and would start buying all of Tengda Group's older games like crazy?"
"Haha~ that's probably overthinking it."
Ye Zhizhou chuckled self-deprecatingly.
Lin Wan looked at the string of English letters on the screen. "No one has managed to decode this yet. Maybe finding this code is only the true beginning of the game?"
"It could also be that not enough people are participating yet."
During the development of BE QUIET, Shangyang Games hadn't revealed much information about the game.
Mainly because its completion level hadn't been very high earlier, and they were afraid of setting players' expectations too high. Besides, President Pei had never mentioned doing any promotion.
So at this point, not many players were paying attention to the puzzle—and even fewer were seriously trying to crack the code.
With such a small base, the speed of solving it naturally remained slow.
Meanwhile, many players who simply wanted to play a horror game were blocked at the door. As of now, the game's sales were still zero—painfully real.
Wang Xiaobin looked a bit worried. "I'm thinking… what if the players can't crack this code? We worked so hard to make this game, and in the end, no one can even play it. Wouldn't that be…"
Lin Wan smiled. "You're overthinking it. There are plenty of talented people among the players, it's only a matter of time before someone cracks it."
"Besides, the harder the puzzle, the more people will join in. Won't that make the promotional effect even better?"
…
At OTTO Technology.
Chang You was worrying over his PPT.
Although he had already received clear instructions from President Pei, he still had no idea how to execute them.
The key issue was that President Pei's requirements completely overturned his conventional understanding of product launches…
Putting everything else aside, just the requirement to present all the phone's advantages using a single image and explain them within five minutes was already absurd.
Chang You had already asked someone to list all the phone's strengths. Fitting them into one image wasn't too hard, but explaining everything in five minutes? That was simply impossible!
The currently known advantages of the OTTO E1 include a high refresh rate display, a 5800mAh large battery, a flagship chipset, a custom cooling system, a horizontal linear motor, high-resolution dual cameras, fast charging, a customized OS, exclusive Tengda Group benefits, and more.
If the Tengda Group-exclusive benefits were expanded in detail, they would include around fifteen or sixteen items across gaming, entertainment, lifestyle, and other categories.
In addition, features like NFC, infrared, a headphone jack, Hi-Fi audio, and dual speakers—things that other phone manufacturers would definitely highlight—seemed impossible to fit into the presentation for the OTTO E1.
Looking at this list, Chang You felt a headache coming on.
"With this much content, how am I supposed to squeeze it into five minutes? I'm not some professional host who makes a living with my voice…"
"But President Pei gave a strict order, so I have to make it work."
"If I fail, wouldn't I embarrass myself at the launch event?"
"Hmm? Wait… a host?"
"Could it be that President Pei is hinting that I should turn all these selling points into a kind of scripted monologue, and deliver it all within five minutes?"
"Otherwise, why would he specifically limit it to 'five minutes'?"
In that instant, Chang You seemed to realize something. He quickly created a new document and strung all the features together into a single passage.
After counting, it came to about 1,000 words.
Under normal speaking speed—like a news anchor articulating clearly so every word is understandable—people speak around 80 to 120 words per minute.
The upper limit of comprehensible speech speed is about 2.5 times normal speed, which is roughly 300 words per minute.
Anything faster—like certain hosts who can deliver 350 words in 47 seconds—becomes too fast for most audiences to fully process.
And Chang You wasn't dealing with 300 words, but nearly 1,000. He'd also need to breathe—if he spoke too fast, he might pass out.
After calculating, delivering 1,000 words in five minutes meant an average of 200 words per minute—almost double the normal speaking speed!
And those 1,000 words just happened to cover all the key selling points of the OTTO E1…
Chang You was stunned.
"Could this be President Pei's true intention?"
"He wants me to use this method to grab the attention of both the live audience and online viewers—to create a strong performance effect?"
"Even the five-minute time limit was carefully planned in advance?"
"Yes… that must be it. That seems like the only explanation."
"Looks like this old body of mine has some hard work ahead…"
Although Chang You still felt immense pressure, at least now he had a clear direction to strive toward.
Before the launch event, he would have to completely memorize this script and be able to deliver it flawlessly within five minutes. For him, this was absolutely no easy challenge.
But in order to better promote the phone—and to live up to President Pei's trust—Chang You decided to accept it.
No matter what, he would show President Pei his hard work at the launch event!
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