CH 31

The 16th floor of the Jinmao Building in the Imperial Capital’s top central business district, where the Chinese G.M. branch was located.

Li Yuan came out of the main entrance of the building. He lowered his eyes and carefully looked at the tentative contract in his hands that had been through preliminary screening, and the anxiety in his heart was at last relieved for good.

He grabbed a bottle of mineral water from a vending machine and quickly drained half the bottle, sitting in the open-air rest area outside.

Li Yuan’s thoughts turned, and he couldn’t wait to share the news with his collaborator, Will. He opened the Youtu app interface—

“Will, are you there? I just came out of G.M. Our game project has passed the first round of screening!”

The status displayed on the chat page was “Logged In,” and within half a minute, the other party sent a reply: “The first round of preliminary screening? Is there another competitor shortlisted?”

Li Yuan had guessed that Will would ask this question, so he simply typed the answer by voice, “En, they plan to invest in and track five projects in the second half of the year. We were a little late in delivery, so now there is only one place left.”

He paused, and a glimmer of light flickered in his eyes. “Their Executive Director was not there today. I just took the project material book and explained briefly……”

G.M. intended to get involved with the game industry in China, so at the end of the screening, Li Yuan and another game studio group were left, and the two sides would have a second round of competition next Friday.

At that time, it would not only be the Executive Director, but the company’s Chief Operating Officer and high-level shareholders behind the scenes would also be present at the venue to give their opinions.

In other words, next Friday was the key node that would determine whether their “The Last Fog” could bring in investment.

Li Yuan was both nervous and looking forward to it. If he could really get the support of a large venture capital company like G.M, it would be much better than the small investments he received in the past!

On the other side, Will learned of the situation and asked another essential question, “What is the name of the other game studio? How much do you know about them?”

There was a fitting old saying — know your enemy and yourself, and you can win a hundred battles.

When it came to the competitor, Li Yuan’s expression was joyous. But before he could explain to Will on the other end, a light greeting came from in front of him.

“Hey, Mr. Li, you haven’t left yet?”

Li Yuan raised his head, and his expression returned to the indifferent and arrogant attitude that only appeared to the outside world. “En, just sitting casually. President Ke and Director Xiang have just come down?”

The two young men standing before him were Ke Ming and Xiang Nansheng from Youming Studios. The former was responsible for the game project structure and the external operations of the studio, and the latter was in charge of game development.

They had co-founded “Youming Studios” when they were in college. Over the years, they had developed six or seven small games with explosive style, and could be regarded as an emerging game studio with relatively good momentum in the circle. They had also successively recruited many employees with excellent skills.

Li Yuan had searched for good original mini game IPs, and there was a brief confrontation with Ke Ming. Of course, the process was not very pleasant—

The other party had twice snatched the mini game projects that Li Yuan was interested in at a higher purchase price.

“Young Boss Li, how can you only drink this kind of mineral water?”

Ke Ming sat opposite Li Yuan without waiting for an invitation, and told the person next to him, “Nansheng, go buy two cups of coffee. It’s rare to meet Mr. Li, let’s chat.”

“…….”

Xiang Nansheng pushed up his black-rimmed glasses and walked away resignedly.

In the fairly spacious open-air rest area, only Li Yuan and Ke Ming were left there.

Ke Ming crossed his legs, leaning leisurely on the lounge chair. His contemptuous gaze swung from Li Yuan’s face to the contract of intent on the table. “I haven’t seen you in three or four months, Mr. Li’s skills have improved a lot, ah.”

He had actually created another original game, and even got a contract of intent from a large venture capital firm like G.M.

Li Yuan took out his cigarettes and a lighter with a pear-shaped metal casing from his pocket, and pressed heavily on the contract of intent. He didn’t have time to go around in circles with him. “If Mr. Ke has anything to say, he might as well say it directly.”

“Young Boss Li, since you’re being direct, I won’t talk nonsense.” Ke Ming sat up slightly and proposed, “How about giving up this competition and giving me the copyright of this game?”

Li Yuan gave an indifferent smile. “Mr. Ke, what nonsense are you speaking?”

Ke Ming’s eyes shifted slightly, and he was no longer polite. “Young Boss Li, my proposal is for your own good. Your ‘Dawn’ has no chance of winning against my ‘Youming.’ No matter how good the project in your hands is—”

He paused for two seconds, and the words he spoke were bordered with dark thorns.

“Either it will make a very small splash, or it will simply rot.”

“Otherwise, why do you think those game makers in the past gave up working with you and came to me instead?”

Li Yuan lowered his head and silently took out a cigarette.

He played with the lighter and circled it around his fingertips, then clicked and lit the cigarette in the end.

Ke Ming watched his movements, and the calculation and shrewdness of a businessman flashed in his eyes. He continued to lobby, “You came here alone to attract investment and maintain the small, broken company of ‘Dawn.’ I’m tired just looking at you. Why don’t you change your career and spend your energy on other things?”

“Why not just bring this game to Youming? I will give you the best treatment.”

Li Yuan let out a snort.

Watching the embers of the cigarette burn little by little, he said, “Boss Ke, the future of the game in my hands, the fate of my company, and the fact that I am attracting investment alone, I won’t bother you to worry about these things. Do you know why?”

“Because—”

Li Yuan took a drag of his cigarette and stood up, picked up the contract of intent, and walked around the table in front of Ke Ming. He bent down slightly and slowly blew the smoke into the other’s face.

Then, he threw out three words arrogantly, “You’re not worthy.”

Ke Ming was choked by the smoke, and his expression changed. “You!”

Li Yuan turned around and left without giving his opponent a chance to fight back.

He bumped into Xiang Nansheng, who was coming back from buying coffee, and did not forget to sting with his poisonous tongue, “Director Xiang, let your boss drink these two cups of coffee at once so as to wake himself up, lest he continue to dream and talk nonsense during the day.”

“…….”

Ke Ming’s face turned green when he heard this, but he could only watch Li Yuan walk away.

. . . . . .

“Meow-wu~”

Inspector, who was sleeping in the cat nest, turned over and let out a soft whine.

Pei Yi finished docking the last game copy of “Joyful Spirit.” Looking at the settlement payment that Party A made on Youtu’s back end, he finally breathed a sigh of relief—

The two games “Joyful Spirit” and “Cloud Realm” sold one after another and added a sum of money to his account. However, he still had to make persistent efforts and continue to develop and write new mini-game projects.

Pei Yi turned back from his short-term work and re-opened the chat interface in the background.

The chat between him and Li Yuan was interrupted fifteen minutes ago. Could the other party have been delayed by something?

As the developer of “The Last Fog,” Pei Yi naturally valued this project, so he sent another message, “Why haven’t you responded? Did something come up?”

Three minutes later, Li Yuan continued the conversation that had dropped off—

“Next Friday’s competitor is Youming Studios. This studio has always stayed in the mini-game circle, but is more well-known. This time, it should be the same as us and also intends to develop a large game series.”

Although it was a preliminary screening, the people in charge that included Li Yuan and Ke Ming still needed to explain the core of their projects.

When the screening was conducted in the afternoon, Ke Ming ranked first.

Perhaps because he had extra confidence in his own game project, he spoke in detail before everyone.

Pei Yi clicked on Li Yuan’s fifty-nine second recording and listened to the relevant news the other party had received. The game project Ke Ming and Youming Studios had as the core of their recruitment and investment was called “Alien Beasts,” and the concept could also be considered applause-worthy—

Due to the improper operation of a xenobiotic experiment in Country X, a large number of mutated organism samples were scattered around, which shortly affected humans and spread to the entire world.

The “protagonist” in the game was the only normal person known so far who was affected without mutating.

Not only that, but his blood could also attract many strange beasts to submit to him. Based on this setting, every time the protagonist of the game broke through a level, he needed to domesticate or destroy the alien beasts inside.

To put it simply, you must fight monsters to get through dungeons, and then approach the original research base step by step to discover the ultimate secret of the mutations.

The voice explanation soon came to an end, and Pei Yi’s eyes flickered when he heard the game setting.

In the next second, Li Yuan questioned from the other side, “Will, do you feel that the background of this game is similar to our ‘The Last Fog?’”

Pei Yi had long noticed the similarity of the background setting, but there would be differences in the gameplay of the two games in the later stages.

However, it should be for this reason that G.M.’s project department considered choosing one of the two.

Yet the background setting was not what Pei Yi cared about the most. At this moment, he felt that there was a sort of indescribable subtlety to the game “Alien Beasts,” but he couldn’t figure out where this feeling came from.

Pei Yi continued to ask, “What are the highlights of their game? Have they been revealed?”

Li Yuan replied on the other side, “It should be the game modeling of various animal shapes. I have seen their print media photos that they provided, and although there is no way to know the effect of the three dimensional imaging, the printed designs were very unusual.”

Pei Yi’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Be more specific.”

“For example, in the designs of the creatures such as butterflies, the thickness of the specially-shaped wings was much more than that of normal ones, and the edges were sharp blades. Other parts of the wings had chewing mouths of various sizes, with fangs when they were opened.”

Li Yuan truthfully told what he knew, “The design drafts of the other beasts were in the hands of the person in charge of the screening. I couldn’t see clearly.”

“…….”

Pei Yi stared at the string of messages sent by Li Yuan, and at once found the reason for the subtle feeling in his mind.

Using his memory, he found an ID nickname on his watch list – Dehydrated.

After finding the corresponding user avatar, he immediately clicked in. His fingers flew down the keyboard quickly as he took a screenshot and sent it to Li Yuan.

“The butterfly model you mentioned, is it similar to this one?”

On the other side, Li Yuan slowed down for several seconds. “Yes! It’s pretty much the same, how did you know, Will?”

Pei Yi scoffed and made up his mind.

“We don’t have enough funds now, and we can’t compete in the modeling and procedural technologies in the short term. The focus of next Friday will still be on the plot structure and the market audience that can be developed by future series updates.”

Li Yuan: “En, I understand.”

“Don’t worry about the rest, I will keep an eye on everything.”

Pei Yi didn’t want to put too much psychological pressure on Li Yuan, who was on the front lines. He added, “As for next week’s two-choice competition, we just need to do our best, there’s no need to force a good result.”

After all, if they couldn’t get investment from G.M., they could also seek other partners.

The precise and powerful sentence was enough to establish a sense of security among cooperative allies.

Li Yuan on the other side did not mention his experience of being belittled and inconvenienced by Ke Ming, but also firmly replied, “Okay.”

The short but productive chat ended.

Pei Yi clicked into the “Dehydrated” personal interface again, and after carefully examining it from top to bottom for a long period of time, he opened the chat box with the other party and took the initiative to send a message:

“Great God, are you there? I have something I want to check with you about.”

. . . . . .

There was a rustling movement from the cat nest.

Inspector, who had finally awoke, walked to Pei Yi’s feet and rubbed back and forth coquettishly, making a continuous comfortable purr.

Pei Yi lifted it into his arms and stroked his pet’s head twice. “Come on, shall we go downstairs and play for a while?”

“Meow!”

Pei Yi deliberately messed up his hair, and then led Inspector downstairs.

He turned the corner of the stairs and unexpectedly found that Bo Yueming and Uncle Kai were in the living room at the moment.

Hearing the familiar footsteps, Bo Yueming promptly located Pei Yi on the stairs, but quickly realized something and shifted his eyes away from the other party’s gaze.

As usual, he asked uncertainly, “Pei Yi?”

Inspector slid down from Pei Yi’s arms and quickly ran to Bo Yueming’s side, then continued to act coquettishly~

Bo Yueming’s hand first touched the sofa next to him, and after trial and error, he touched Inspector’s soft fur and asked Uncle Kai, “Did Pei Yi come down?”

Uncle Kai looked at Pei Yi, who was slowly walking down the stairs and pretending not to understand anything. “Little Sir, why are you just standing on the stairs? Are you tired from your nap? Come down quickly.”

Pei Yi nodded with messy hair, not forgetting to give a small just-woken-up yawn, and walked down with a sleepy expression.

It wasn’t until he approached the living room that he realized that there was a brand new pair of guide glasses on the coffee table. The exterior frame was stylishly designed as always, but the color had been changed to tea black.

It looked like a pair of high-end sunglasses.

Pei Yi stared at the new glasses for a moment, properly showing confusion on his face.

“Little Sir, the doctor said that the Second Young Master’s eyes cannot be stimulated by strong light, so he ordered another pair.”

Uncle Kai immediately gave an explanation, and asked with a smile, “Are they good-looking?”

Pei Yi pretended to earnestly study Bo Yueming’s face. “Good-looking.”

With this mixed-race face, what part of it didn’t look good, where did it not look attractive?

Bo Yueming lowered his eyes and rubbed Inspector’s head, hiding the clarity and smile in his eyes.

After nearly a week of adaptation and examinations, his eyes had basically recovered. Shadows and dizziness would only occasionally occur, and his eyes would be sore and tired if he used them for too long.

Of course, these were not big problems. He just needed to combine work and rest, and slowly recuperate to return to his best condition.

Bo Yueming no longer needed the so-called guide glasses. 

As for the fact that his eyes were sensitive to the light, which could easily prolong his illness, that was just his excuse to the outside world.

Bo Yueming needed to take advantage of his “eye disease” and make everyone, including Bo Guancheng, completely relax their vigilance against him, then wait for the opportunity to pay back the pain he suffered some time ago — and more.

The reason why he needed another pair of glasses was because he feared that his “seeing ability” would sometimes be underdeveloped and uncontrolled in front of Bo Guancheng and others, and he might accidentally expose his secret. The black lenses were more likely to cover up his actual situation.

“Uncle Kai, put them away first, ba.”

Other than Uncle Kai, Bo Yueming didn’t mention the recovery of his eyesight to anyone.

The more people who knew, the more likely it would cause unnecessary trouble.

As for Pei Yi, Bo Yueming purely wanted to accompany him to act, and see just what kind of medicine the other was selling in his “playing the fool” gourd.

Uncle Kai suppressed the joy in his heart and put them away properly.

In the next second, assistant Lin Zhong walked in with a tablet.

He stood at the edge of the sofa and seriously reported the next work arrangement. “Mr. Bo, I just received a call from G.M.”

“They said that there will be a final selection for the game project next Friday. As a high-level shareholder, are you going to participate in the voting?”

“…….”

Game project? Final selection?

When Pei Yi heard this, he couldn’t help casting his gaze over.

Bo Yueming caught this “abnormal” movement from the corner of his eye, but didn’t expose it. “En, Yan Cen told me. Let’s arrange it.”

Now that he had temporarily lost his position in Bo Group, he naturally wanted to pay more attention to G.M.’s investments.

Lin Zhong nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll put it in the itinerary.”

As soon as the words fell, everyone heard Pei Yi suddenly call, “Er-ge.”

Bo Yueming tilted his head, continuing to control the degree of eye contact. “En?”

Pei Yi moved closer to Bo Yueming, saying cautiously and with implicit expectation, “I, I go too. Play games.”

“Play games?”

Bo Yueming responded after a few seconds, following Pei Yi’s way of speaking in the past. “I’m going to the company to work seriously, not to play.”

Facing that explanation, Pei Yi continued pretending to be confused. “I go! Play!”

The game project “The Last Fog” was equally important to Pei Yi. Not to mention that their competitor, Youming Studios, still had some strength and standards.

Pei Yi’s thoughts at the moment were very simple and clear—

If Bo Yueming was personally going to the G.M. branch to vote next Friday, then he’d better take this opportunity to follow by his side to take a look and know the final result as soon as possible.

Bo Yueming reconfirmed, “You want to follow me to the company?”

Pei Yi nodded hastily, and kept using the words “play games” as an excuse for his foolishness.

“…….”

Bo Yueming frowned slightly.

Since his eyesight had recovered, he had become increasingly certain that Pei Yi was “playing the fool,” but the other party’s performance in the past had been measured, and he never messed around with this kind of business.

Besides, he had never mentioned G.M. in front of Pei Yi, so why did the other party suddenly want to go? For whom?

Bo Yueming suddenly remembered his answer to Lin Zhong, and his heart felt sour again. “Do you want to play games, or meet Yan Cen?”

Pei Yi, who was pretending to be silly, was stunned. He said slowly, “Huh?”

Why was Yan Cen involved?

Uncle Kai and Lin Zhong looked at each other tacitly, and simultaneously chose to leave the room so that the two could have some private space to talk.

Pei Yi shook his head in incomprehension, then continued to hum, “I, I want to play.”

Bo Yueming refused. “No.”

G.M. was a business, not a place to mess around.

“…….”

Hearing Bo Yueming’s resolute refusal, Pei Yi sighed deeply inside.

Playing the fool didn’t work, and being good also didn’t work!

The villain was indeed the most difficult to attack!

It seemed that he still needed to find another way to follow up on this investment competition, which would be difficult.

The atmosphere gradually became silent.

Pei Yi was discouraged and resigned to his fate, but finally struggled a bit, “I want, want to accompany Er-ge.”

“……..”

Bo Yueming’s steadfast thoughts suddenly cracked, and then silently disintegrated in an instant. He glanced at Pei Yi, and then quickly looked away, his heart feeling a little itchy—

His mouth was aggrieved and coquettish, and he didn’t forget to stroke the cat in his hand?

So he was bullying a “person who couldn’t see,” but dared to put all his thoughts on his face when there was no third person! He didn’t know how to play the fool even a little bit!

Why did he want to accompany him?

Who would believe such a lie?

Bo Yueming thought about it silently, then looked at the frustrated kitten who was gradually lowering his head, and changed his tone. “You can.”

“But since you said you want to accompany me, you have to obediently follow the whole time, and you are not allowed to run around without my permission. Can you do that?”

“…….”

Why did he suddenly agree?

Another small question mark appeared on Pei Yi’s head.

But he had been waiting for this opportunity to “accompany” him, and would go as long as he was allowed. He didn’t care about what rules and regulations there were!

At this thought, Pei Yi quickly nodded. The frustration in his eyes vanished, and there was even a faint glint of success.

Bo Yueming had a panoramic view of this scene. He held back his helpless smile, and sat on the side while pretending not to see it.

The two had their own thoughts and tried their best to hide them.

Uncle Kai returned after putting away the glasses. “Little Sir, there is still some time before dinner. Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?”

Pei Yi remembered that his purpose for going downstairs was to look for something to eat since he was hungry after working long hours.

Uncle Kai met Pei Yi’s expectant eyes and offered, “There is freshly made pudding and honey cake in the kitchen. Which would you like to eat?”

Pei Yi felt sweetness on the tip of his tongue when he heard it, and with the firm idea of ‘adults don’t have to choose,’ he pretended to be well-behaved and raised his head to answer—-

“Want both!”

The expected answer appeared.

It was only when eating sweets that the kitten did not wear the slightest disguise.

Bo Yueming let out a short laugh, then quickly restrained himself before Pei Yi could notice the flaw.

He coughed and motioned to Uncle Kai calmly. “En, get him a little of both.”