Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Gan Juncai had put it nicely, yet Li Yang was anxious.

Three days, where would they find members for the basketball within three days’ time? Depend on the weak and old people staying in the basketball team until their retirement? They’d definitely be beaten to death! He secretly said, “Young Master, the time is too tight!”

But Hong Dali totally didn’t have any reaction, as he directly nodded and said, “Alright, then it’s three days later, at 8:00 PM. You can decide on the venue.”

“OK, Young Master Dali is swift and decisive. Then I’ll go back and wait for Young Master Dali’s news.”

After Gan Juncai had left, Li Yang anxiously said, “Young Master, we don’t have anyone in our basketball team!”

“There are, why wouldn’t there be anyone?” Hong Dali asked, “Aren’t there five people in a basketball team? You can’t even gather five people?”

Li Yang was frustrated as he said, “It’s true that it’s only five people, but they’re all professionals! Our people…”

“That’s true…” Hong Dali touched his chin. Then, his eyes suddenly lit up. “Haha, I’ve got an idea! Go out with me tomorrow!” As he spoke, Hong Dali walked back. “Isn’t it only people, would the Heavenly State lack them?”

“People…” Li Yang faltered…

There were many people, but the problem was, how many people knew how to play basketball?!

But since Young Master had said so… Then it could only be done this way. By then, he’d see what amazing plan Young Master had concocted! Anyway, “Dali creates miracles.” This was already Li Yang’s pet phrase…

…

That evening, at 6:00 PM, Dream Dota League was down for maintenance and carried out data integration. The super server worth 200 million at IM company’s side had also been completely assembled upon them desperately rushing the job. What was left was to wait for the next day, at 2:00 PM, when Dream Dota League would officially open its super server.

At 8:00 PM, Shanghai Tianhai City, in an ordinary apartment.

“Let’s look at how many people we have at our server.” Shiroishi Kazuma closed his eyes, using both his hands to continuously rub his temples.

He’d been greatly caught off guard in the face of Hong Dali’s counterattack. The problem now was just too big. Hong Dali’s side had come up with all sorts of moves continuously, and every one of them was greatly unexpected, making him have no strength to fight back. After all, in this digital age, whoever grasped ahold of the stronger technology would have the bigger say.

In Hong Dali’s previous life, the Nokia phone had dominated the cellphone market for as long as 10 years. But because it failed to keep up with the trend of smartphones, within a short one or two years, news of it couldn’t be seen anywhere. It was a situation where the smartphone didn’t have much of an upgrade from the ordinary keypad phone.

Now that Hong Dali had launched his virtual reality online game, who would be able to fight with him?!

“Currently, there are already more than 1.7 million users at the server, and it’s still continually increasing.” Qian Youjin’s expression was extremely ghastly. Because this time, he’d truly understood. Spiritual Sword was done for.

In the entire server, almost all the players were selling their equipment.

The entire market was in chaos.

Actually, initially, there wouldn’t be a big impact if these players left. But the problem lay exactly there—the equipment price in Spiritual Sword had previously been hyped till it became too high. Weapons and equipment which were usually rarer in an ordinary market would cost tens or hundreds of yuan as the starting price. Who would bear to throw away such pricey equipment? But in the face of Dream Dota League’s temptation, their equipment became completely meaningless.

Thus, naturally, the players thought of selling away their equipment at low prices, to avoid it being wasted in their hands in the future.

But people would more often than not follow the crowd.

It would perhaps not be an issue if there were only one or two people selling. If eight to ten players sold their equipment at low prices at the same time, other players would wonder why they wanted to sell their equipment. There would inevitably be someone asking the reason. Thus, when one player spread to ten players, ten players spread to 100 players, 100 players spread to 1,000 players…

The direct consequence resulting from this would be the rapid spread of news, and news of Dream Dota being supported by the nation swept past all the Spiritual Sword servers as if an extremely strong gust of wind carried it.

Initially, this wasn’t a big issue. After all, some would want to play it, but there were also others who wouldn’t want to—after all, people’s preferences differed from one another.

But the problem was still back to the price of the equipment.

The players who wanted to leave sold their equipment at extremely low prices, directly decreasing the prices of all equipment and weapons in the server to a critical point.

Those who wanted to continue playing could only sell their equipment which could initially be sold for 1,000 yuan at a price of 50 yuan now, and even then, nobody bought them. This resulted in this group of people who initially wanted to continue playing to not be able to play as well—whoever saw something in his or her hands rapidly decreasing in value would not feel good about it. Thus, due to curiosity and feelings of unreconciliation, alas, they could only switch

camps…

A very big portion of players started considering taking a look at Dream Dota League, while another portion of players chose to rest for a few days and get more news. Only the last portion of players would consider continuing to stay in Spiritual Sword.

“Looks like they are really planning to leave.” Shiroishi Kazuma’s expression was one of defeat. This time, he’d lost too heavily. He didn’t even have the time to think of a solution. After all, that prodigal never used his brain when he spent money. He only considered about how to feel good in spending money and how to feel awesome spending money. As the saying goes, it’s easy to spend money but hard to earn it. Hong Dali could suddenly have an idea on how to spend money today, and another one tomorrow, and every single time he spent money, it’d be akin to adding fuel to the fire and adding to the misfortune of Shiroishi Kazuma’s side.

With such a snowball rolling around… Rolling around…

Alas, Shiroishi Kazuma even felt that his brain cells were at the risk of dying…

“Mr. Shi, we…” Qian Youjin dispiritedly said, “Do we admit defeat just like that?”

“We can only do this.” Shiroishi Kazuma helplessly shook his head. “The situation can’t be reversed already. Observe for two more days. Hope… is almost equal to zero.”

Speaking up to this point, Shiroishi Kazuma lay on the sofa with no strength left, as he forlornly said, “What a pity. Things were so good previously… 1.8 million online users, 1.8 million online users…”

Actually, currently, he still didn’t know. If he knew that all of these happened because he got Sun Yuanzhou to go and threaten Hong Weiguo, what would he think…

Thus, on the next day at 2:00 PM, Dream Dota League was launched once again…

This time, with horrifying speed, players streamed into the server non-stop, their numbers and the level of impact greatly exceeding everyone’s imagination!

All the network professionals stared in bewilderment.

All the psychologists madly analyzed Hong Dali’s secret formula for success. After everything was compiled, the conclusion made them completely lose confidence in life—Hong Dali had made such a huge uproar, initially just for… For fun…

Dammit, what kind of frustrating discovery was this!

The scariest online gaming server in history, Dream Dota League’s only server, had been named by Hong Dali as “Dali Number One.” It was launched at 2:00 PM and the number of people had almost instantly reached 500,000! At 2:30 PM, 900,000! At 3:00 PM, 1.1 million!

At 6:00 PM, the number of online users at the server had insanely exceeded 1.8 million!

Meanwhile, the number of online users at Spiritual Sword had decreased at a drastic speed, decreasing from 1.8 million at its peak, to 1.5 million within half an hour, then 1.2 million. At 4:00 PM, 900,000 people. And at 6:00 PM, it, at last, stopped at 600,000 online users!

Moans of misery sounded throughout all the Spiritual Sword servers. Countless pieces of equipment were thrown away, various characters were deleted, and the initially explosively popular scene with people all over the entire map had instantly decreased by one third, with many locations for training up the levels and doing missions that would cause the players to be completely drowned by monsters once they entered…

On the other hand, at Dream Dota League, countless people were familiarizing themselves with the manipulation and battle tactics, preparing themselves for the upcoming nationwide sports age.

The number of followers on Dream Dota League Tieba forum had rapidly increased to 3 million within four hours, and the number of posts was increasing at an insane speed of 10,000 posts per minute. Even the visitor rate of Sangle Search Engine had increased by 15%!

On Play Together forum, the number of posts of Spiritual Sword almost stopped increasing from 2:00 PM onwards. Meanwhile, Dream Dota League continued to increase in strength. At 2:00 PM, the number of posts for the day was 250,000, and at 6:00 PM, the number of posts at Dream Dota League special zone had practically skyrocketed to 650,000 and above!

…

At the same time, Chenhui Building, the laboratory on the fourth floor.

Hong Dali, who had gotten exhausted from playing lay on Li Nianwei’s lap, with his eyes half closed, he groggily asked, “Sister Nianwei, what time is it now?”

Li Nianwei looked at the time. “Young Master, it’s 6:20 PM now, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, 6:20…” Hong Dali sniffled. “Xinxin, which step should we take?”

“Double the drop rate.” Tang Muxin ferociously said, “Back then they launched a double drop rate event to bully us, resulting in the number of users at our open beta testing on the day of our launch to only be around 100,000! I’m still so mad about it!”

“Oh, double drop rate…” Hong Dali mumbled, “Get Old Liu to release a public notice. Say that from 8:00 PM onwards, players can obtain double the experience points and double the gold coins for three consecutive days. We’ll do it this way too! Tomorrow at 12:00 PM, we’ll launch our previously developed Mastery 1 and Rune 2 systems.”

“Hee hee, Dali, you’re great!” Tang Muxin kissed Hong Dali on the cheek again. “I love you to death, mwah!”

“Oh…” Hong Dali didn’t have the slightest reaction towards Tang Muxin’s kiss and only turned his body. “Then I’ll sleep for a while first. Later, after I wake up, we’ll go out and have a walk. I’m so tired…”

Tang Muxin: “…”

You loghead!

…

“How many online users are left at our server?” Shiroishi Kazuma appeared to have wrinkles added on his face, and when he asked this question, he was extremely unconfident.

“There’s still… 450,000 left.” Qian Youjin listlessly answered, “Fortunately, it has already stabilized…”

Alas, bad things came together. A subordinate hurriedly rushed inside, exclaiming, “Bad news! Dream Dota League will be holding a double drop rate event of experience points and gold coins!”

“What?!”