It was supposed to be a casual game, but the Long March dungeon brought tears to everyone's eye

"Holy crap??? Am I seeing things? 100% completion?!"

"Old Li... Old Li survived?! How is that possible! That blizzard was a sure way to die!"

"Zhu Yi, Zhu Er, Zhu San? Who are they? Which big shot? I've never heard of them before!"

"Is this some kind of plant by that old scoundrel Luo? Is he deliberately spreading fake news to salvage the situation in the Grassland arc?"

After Kuang Ge and his friends entered the Grassland Chapter, some players also completed the Snow Mountain Chapter on True Historical Difficulty, only to be utterly defeated by the Grassland Chapter.

The three of them stared blankly at the golden announcement in front of them.

The person they couldn't save despite passing through the snow-capped mountain was rescued by someone else.

A complex mix of emotions welled up inside me.

"That's wonderful..." Ruan Ruan cried tears of joy, "Old Li... he finally doesn't have to die anymore..."

Hawkeye quickly calmed down and immediately rushed into the game's achievement system to check the team's battle replay.

But the result made him frown.

"Cannot be found."

"The other side has hidden all combat data and playthrough videos."

"Aside from this achievement announcement, they're practically invisible in the game; they don't exist at all."

The more mysterious something is, the more it inspires imagination.

Countless people flooded into Luo An Studio's official website and into Kuang Ge's live stream, frantically asking questions about everything related to the mysterious team.

"Brother Kuang! Do you even know who Zhu Yi is?"

"Please, please let that old bastard Luo release the walkthrough video! We're willing to pay to watch it!"

"How on earth did they do that? Reviving a frozen person in that kind of environment doesn't make sense!"

"Did we find some hidden item? Or did we trigger some hidden plot?"

Overnight, the gloom of the grassland's annihilation was swept away.

Everyone's curiosity was piqued to the extreme by this perfect victory that seemed to fall from the sky.

Meanwhile, at Tencent's headquarters, Wang Qi's face grew increasingly ashen.

"Didn't you guys say it was impossible to beat this game perfectly?!"

The core members of the Winter project team sitting below were all silent and trembling.

"Mr. Wang... Mr. Wang," the technical lead said timidly.

"We...we worked through the night to retrieve every data model we could find..."

"What's the conclusion?!" Wang Qi roared like an enraged lion.

The conclusion is... impossible.

The technical lead pushed up his glasses, cold sweat trickling down his temples.

"Based on our reverse analysis of the environmental parameters of the snow mountain dungeon in 'Red Expedition,' the rate at which an NPC who is unable to move loses health is irreversible during that blizzard."

"Even if a player uses all the known recovery items on him, it can only delay his death, and it is impossible to bring him back from the brink of death to health."

"Moreover," the technical lead said, clicking on another data chart, "saving Lao Li will inevitably take a lot of time."

"In that environment, if you stay for even one more minute, the probability of other team members dying from hypothermia will increase exponentially."

"Everyone survives, but we still have to revive an NPC who is destined to die... This is a paradox from a data perspective."

"A paradox?" Wang Qi sneered. "You mean, Luo An is playing magic tricks on us?"

"It cannot be ruled out that... the developers themselves intervened and modified the backend data."

Another planner added cautiously.

"A perfect ending was forcibly introduced in order to generate buzz and counteract the negative public opinion brought about by the grassland dungeon."

"Yes! That must be it!"

"This is not a skill a player could pull off; the game's numerical system is completely broken!"

The others in the meeting room seemed to have found an outlet, and they all echoed their sentiments.

In the eyes of these elites who believe in "data is king", all phenomena that cannot be explained by logic and numbers are heresies and bugs.

Wang Qi's eyes gradually turned sinister.

The disastrous failure of "Winter" made him a laughing stock in the entire business group.

He didn't want to admit that the problem lay in his own beliefs.

Now, in his view, the appearance of this "perfect clear" is the biggest flaw that Luo An has revealed.

"Good...very good." Wang Qi slowly sat down.

"Since Luo An has no sense of martial ethics and has tampered with the data himself, then don't blame us for being impolite."

"Public Relations Department! Immediately organize the largest-scale online media offensive!"

"Let's focus on one key point—'Red Expedition' has a major bug, the numerical system is completely broken, and the developers are cheating players to generate hype!"

"Turn that perfect playthrough into a joke!"

"There's more!" Wang Qi's gaze was fixed on a video clip that was being played repeatedly on the screen.

That was the scene of Kuang Ge charging forward with his old squad leader on his back at the snow mountain pass, even though his health bar was already depleted.

"Get this video trending!"

The title is: "A blatant cheat code! A rundown of the most insulting bugs in 'Red Expedition'!"

"I want everyone to know that their tears of emotion, their so-called faith, are all built on a fabricated data loophole!"

The wind direction changed overnight.

The day before, the entire internet was cheering for the miracle of "perfect clear" and going crazy for the mysterious team of Zhu Yi, Zhu Er, and Zhu San.

The following day, various doubts and smears began to spread like a virus across major social media platforms and gaming forums.

Shocking! Perfect clear of the snowy mountain in "Red Expedition" was actually a pre-ordained script by the developers!

In-depth analysis by data experts: The so-called 100% completion rate is nothing more than a marketing scam to deceive players!

Stop being so moved! Your tears might just be because of a plot hole!

Countless posts and videos with sensational titles sprang up like mushrooms after rain.

There are obvious signs of manipulation behind all of this.

They used various seemingly professional data models and logical flaw analyses to try to prove one thing to all players:

The extraordinary miracles in "Red Expedition," the sacrifices and perseverance that moved countless people to tears, are all fake.

It's a bug.

It's a code error.

It's a "lock-in-health" cheat that the developers meticulously designed to manipulate players' emotions.

The video of Kuang Ge's "zero-health comeback" at the snow mountain pass was used as the number one piece of evidence and repeatedly criticized.

"Look, guys, here! Madman's health bar is completely empty! According to the logic of any normal game, he should die immediately and be forced offline. But he didn't; he even carried the NPC for over ten meters! What else could this be but a bug?"

"This isn't just a bug, it's an official cheat! Blatant fraud!"

"Hilarious! They were bragging about willpower before, so it was just an excuse to supposedly lock in health?"

"So Old Li's survival was also a lie? I guess that old scoundrel Luo entered a line of code in the backend saying 'Old Li, don't die,' really treating us like fools?"

"Give me my money back! This garbage game that relies on bugs to evoke emotions doesn't deserve to cost a single dollar!"