With a mindset of giving it a try, he opened "Master Duel" and eagerly entered a ranked match against a player with an English nickname.

"Overweight Martial Artist, activate!"

Child Prodigy opened with a single card, Rock Melt made multiple comebacks from the graveyard, and with Dr. Qin’s first-move operations, the opponent was so baffled that they surrendered, gifting him a victory.

After easily defeating the opponent and switching back to the game screen of "Cultivation Fantasy," Dr. Qin delightedly discovered that his merit points had increased by five!

Great, great, great!

So, the game could be played this way?

Using a newly strengthened, yet unnerfed deck, Dr. Qin bagged a three-win streak in ranked matches, maxing out his merit points for the day.

Switch games, switch games!

Dr. Qin, getting more and more enthusiastic, opened the Steam game library, looking for games that could "provide merit points."

But just as he was looking for a new game and aiming for 100 merit points needed to hit mid-stage Qi Cultivation, a private message suddenly popped up in the background for "Cultivation Fantasy."

[GameBugs private message: Buddy, do you choose to confess, or need me to find you?]

Dr. Qin: "..."

Not good!

How did Ba find him so quickly? Is it really Ba himself? Could it be an impersonator?

...

As it turned out, the person privately messaging Dr. Qin in the game was indeed Chen Ba himself.

On the first day of the game’s public testing, Chen Ba had to oversee the main venue, constantly monitoring the game’s public test status to handle any situations promptly.

There was a player in the game whose merit points surged by dozens while AFK, naturally catching Chen Ba’s attention.

That scene was too familiar to him!

During the second test, Guo Mo also had a mysterious surge of ten merit points while AFK, and the reason is still unclear.

To his surprise, the same scene reappeared during the public test!

Moreover, this time the player seemed to have figured out the pattern, with the merit points increasing repeatedly at intervals.

After observing for a long time, Chen Ba determined that the player had probably figured out the pattern and knew how to consistently trigger this bug before contacting him.

Don’t misunderstand!

Upon noticing the anomaly, Chen Ba brought in Lu and others to investigate Dr. Qin’s account abnormality, trying to identify the problem’s cause.

But the result was identical to that of Guo Mo’s case; they knew there was an issue with the merit source but couldn’t pinpoint exactly where the problem lay or which part of the code was faulty.

As "Qingbao is not a cat"’s merit points continued to increase, Lu once suggested shutting down his account?

But Chen Ba stopped it.

He chose not to close the account, opting to observe further. Through his observation, he confirmed that the issue likely had nothing to do with "Cultivation Fantasy" itself, but was triggered by other reasons, before finally sending the private message.

After contacting Dr. Qin himself, through his description and explanation, Chen Ba finally understood what caused the merit point anomaly.

"Simply put..."

After bringing everyone into the meeting room, Chen Ba said with a serious expression: "This is quite a serious game bug, extremely malicious in nature!"

"The Heavenly Dao program running in the background constantly monitors player behavior, making corresponding judgments..."

With a pen, Chen Ba circled the words "game behavior" on the whiteboard.

"The key point is right here!"

Why did Tianba Studio, which discovered the problem early on during the second test, only figure it out now?

Because this bug acted outside the game, not inside it, their endless internal investigations were bound to be fruitless.

"I get it!"

"This bug happens outside the game, irrelevant to the game itself, so there’s no way to find the problem within the game."

Lu speculated: "So the question arises, what does this bug specifically look like?"

"It’s simple!"

Chen Ba continued to explain: "If the game doesn’t exit and the Heavenly Dao program doesn’t end its process but continues to run in the background, it gets triggered."

This thing is comparable to an input method.

Users can wake up the designated input method program in any software. Similarly, as long as the "Cultivation Fantasy" Heavenly Dao monitoring program does not end its process and hangs in the background, it can be awakened at any time.

This results in a bug!

Even if it’s happening in another game or a player’s behavior in another program, it would still be judged by the "Heavenly Dao" program and receive merit rewards.

"Is it this outrageous?"

Lu was somewhat astonished, couldn’t believe that the Heavenly Dao program had such a powerful function, that it could even "cross-game enforce"?

"You can’t say that..."

Chen Ba coughed lightly, then said with an embarrassed smile: "It’s not cross-game enforcement, don’t make it sound so bad; it’s clearly game process overlap."

Honestly, Chen Ba felt bewildered too.

The Heavenly Dao program was created by him, but its core code was written by the Iron Fool System, so even he didn’t know that this thing could hang in the background and achieve "cross-game" enforcement judgments.

Indeed worthy of the name "Heavenly Dao"!

This program lives up to its name, it’s ridiculously amazing, to the point where Chen Ba doesn’t know how to explain it to the players.

How should he put it?

We designed the merit mechanism in "Cultivation Fantasy" with a Heavenly Dao program that covers the entire Immortal Spirit Realm.

Now it turns out this Heavenly Dao program not only covers the entire Immortal Spirit Realm but the entire PC realm too?

WeGame directly calls it professional!

The functionality of this thing is comparable to XX computer manager or XX antivirus software that continuously runs in the background.

The cheekiest part is that it can intelligently judge player behavior in other software or games, granting corresponding merit rewards.

Honestly, isn’t this more advanced than virus detection software, ad blockers, or popup interception?

"It’s certainly advanced!" 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

Lu thought for a moment, realizing that the Heavenly Dao program’s ability to make cross-game behavior judgments is definitely more impressive than detecting viruses, anti-cheat, or intercepting popups.

But what will players think?

With such a Heavenly Dao program monitoring their every move, even other games will be watched. How to ensure privacy?

"That’s why I said, the Heavenly Dao program must be running in the background without terminating the process to trigger this bug..."

Chen Ba explained: "When players log off normally and exit the game, ending the process, they won’t encounter this situation."

This is also why during the second test, only Guo Mo triggered the bug, and others didn’t.

Because everyone plays the game quite seriously, and doesn’t do other things; at most, they switch screens to reply to chat messages or search for guides.

Doing these things doesn’t earn merit points.

Only when playing "Cultivation Fantasy" and switching screens to do some "positive energy" activities would the Heavenly Dao program capture it and award corresponding merit points.

"For example?"

Lu was very curious, what switch-screen actions would trigger merit rewards? What are the specific application scenarios?

"Entering other games and destroying foreign players, reporting, or retorting against senseless trolls or annoying internet users on forums and other software..."

Chen Ba provided two practical examples.

These were just tested and confirmed to be accurate scenarios, and for now, the two ways through which players have triggered merit rewards.

Are there any other ways?

Chen Ba believes there are.

However, other methods now seem elusive, requiring players to explore them slowly afterward. More importantly, he doesn’t know what situations the Heavenly Dao program would judge.

You might think you’re doing good deeds, but if the Heavenly Dao program doesn’t acknowledge it, it’s useless!

Being a program crafted personally by Chen Ba and having its kernel assigned by the Iron Fool System, the Heavenly Dao program is impartial and devoid of emotion, with discretionary authority that even Chen Ba cannot interfere with.

As for modifying judgment rules or patching this loophole, Chen Ba can’t do it...

Unless this Heavenly Dao program is unraveled and recreated from scratch, this bug is practically unsolvable and will persist as long as the game exists.