Chapter Eighteen: Accompany Me to the Provincial Capital

“Hey, kid, what have you been up to these past couple of days? Have you estimated your scores yet?”
The next morning, just before heading out, Li Mu received a call from Chen Wan. Smiling at her question, he replied, “Reporting to Sister Wan, I haven’t been busy with much lately—just having fun. My estimated score is a little over 620.”
“Wow!” Chen Wan exclaimed. “Is it really that impressive?”
“As real as it gets.”
“How about your English score?”
“Around 140, I think.”
“Pfft, I don’t believe you.” Chen Wan’s tone carried a hint of playful pride, and Li Mu could easily picture her adorable expression when she acted coy on purpose.
She genuinely didn’t believe it—after all, Li Mu had been in a car accident with her before the English exam, which had to have affected him somewhat. If he still managed to score about 140, that would be incredible!
“Fine, don’t believe me if you don’t want to.” Li Mu pretended to be annoyed. “If you don’t trust me, then I won’t tell you anything more. I’ve got things to do and need to head out.”
“Hey, don’t you dare!” Chen Wan said urgently. “If you hang up on me, we’re not done here.”
Li Mu sighed. “Big sister, what exactly do you want from me?”
“What do you mean, what do I want? I’m not causing any trouble.” She giggled, then asked, “Are your parents at work?”
“Yeah.”
“What, you want to come over to my place?” Li Mu asked.
“Who wants to go to your house!” Chen Wan spat hastily, then proposed, “I’ll pick you up in a bit. Let’s go out and have some fun!”
Li Mu, still thinking about the CD burner Er Bin had promised him, quickly asked, “Where do you want to go, big sis? I was just about to head to the internet café—want to come along? My treat.”
“I don’t want to go to the internet café. I have some business in the provincial capital. We’ll drive. Come with me.” Chen Wan added quickly, “I’ve been practicing my driving diligently these past couple of days, and my skills have improved a lot.”
Back in 2001, the highway network was already fairly extensive, but most of the completed roads were main lines. The expressway from Haizhou to the provincial capital wouldn’t be finished until 2004. Although it was less than two hundred kilometers away, the train only took two and a half hours, but travel by car was unpredictable.
“Forget it, sis, the provincial capital is too far...”
Chen Wan’s voice instantly turned sweet and coquettish, as she started to act cute toward this boy three years her junior. “Please, Li Mu, I have something to take care of in the provincial capital, but train tickets are hard to get, and I’m a little scared to drive alone. If you come with me, I’ll feel so much better. Otherwise, I really don’t dare to go by myself...”
Li Mu hesitated. He really didn’t want to make a trip to the provincial capital at this time, but he’d experienced Chen Wan’s driving skills firsthand. If she really went by herself, he’d never be able to stop worrying.
In his previous life, Li Mu didn’t buy his first domestic FAW Besturn B50 car until 2010. It wasn’t worth much, but at least he had six years of actual driving experience—far more than Chen Wan. He could guide her, or at worst, drive for her himself. At that time, drunk driving hadn’t yet been criminalized, there were no checks, and almost none of the traffic lights had cameras. Traffic management was lax.
He checked the time—it was just after nine. Er Bin was surely already at the internet café, probably with the burner in tow. Installing the driver and burning the discs would take no more than half an hour.
So Li Mu gritted his teeth and agreed, “Alright, but when are we coming back?”

Chen Wan cheered, “If we can’t make it back today, then tomorrow—it depends on how things go.”
“But you have to come with me to Big Spider first. I have something to do.”
“Okay, I’ll be at your neighborhood gate in just a moment. Come out in five minutes.”
After hanging up, Li Mu quickly called Zhao Kang to let him know he’d be out for the day and wouldn’t be coming to the internet café that afternoon. He’d get in touch when he got back.
He packed a change of clothes in his backpack—since the weather was hot, he’d need something fresh to wear in case they had to stay overnight. He left a note for his parents, not daring to tell them where he was really going, only saying he’d be at a classmate’s house for the evening. If he’d said he was driving to the provincial capital with Chen Wan, his parents would have been worried sick.
As soon as he stepped out of the neighborhood, Chen Wan poked her head out of an old Audi A6 and waved wildly. “Li Mu, over here!”
Li Mu was surprised. As he approached, he glanced at the rear of the car—the engine was a 2.8, which must be the top configuration of the domestic A6 series.
He opened the passenger door and sat down, admiring the nearly new interior. He teased, “Sister Wan, was this the car you hit me with the other day?”
“No, this one was out that day. I was driving a Passat...”
Li Mu nodded—what a show of wealth. Even a Passat in those days would cost at least two hundred thousand yuan, and this top-of-the-line 2.8 A6 probably went for around six hundred thousand. It seemed he wasn’t wrong to call Chen Wan a rich, beautiful woman.
Today, Chen Wan wore a full Nike sports outfit—shorts and a T-shirt, likely for driving convenience. Even across the gear stick, her fair, long legs were a visual delight.
“You need to go to Big Spider first, right?”
“Yeah!”
“Alright.”
Chen Wan drove Li Mu to the entrance of Big Spider. Before getting out, he said, “Wait for me in the car, okay? I’ll be about half an hour.”
“Sure,” Chen Wan checked the time, “If you’re done in half an hour, we can still make it to Jinling for lunch.”
Li Mu nodded. When he entered the internet café, it wasn’t crowded. As soon as Er Bin saw him, he pulled a gift bag from under the counter and handed it over. “Here’s the burner and three blank discs.”
Li Mu peeked inside. “Thanks, Brother Er Bin!”
“No need for thanks.”
“I’ll head upstairs.”
Once in the booth, Li Mu pulled out the HP CD-Writer—the top of the line these days—plus three blank CD-ROMs. Yet he only needed to burn less than a hundred megabytes of data, so a single disc would suffice.
He downloaded the official drivers and burning software, installed the burner, and spent about twenty minutes setting it all up. Thanks to the high writing speed, it only took a few minutes to finish burning the data.
Since he had three discs, Li Mu burned three copies, just in case of data loss.

After burning, Li Mu deleted all the data from the computer.
He didn’t have much money left, and with the data secured, there was no reason to keep renting the machine. He called out a quick goodbye to Er Bin, who waved him off and refused to accept any extra payment.
Li Mu checked his wallet—he still had about two hundred yuan. He stopped by the tobacco and liquor shop next door, bought two packs of premium Zhonghua cigarettes, tossed them to Er Bin, and ran off before Er Bin could protest.
Back in Chen Wan’s car, Li Mu asked, “Do you know the way to the provincial capital?”
“I do,” Chen Wan nodded. “Head west out of the city along the national highway, just keep following it and we’ll reach the outskirts of Jinling. From there, it’ll be easy.”
“Alright.” Seeing her so confident, Li Mu fastened his seatbelt, waved his hand, and said, “Let’s go.”
…
While Chen Wan was driving straight toward Jinling, Sun Peng in a residential flat in Zhongguancun, Beijing, was on the verge of a breakdown.
From yesterday until this morning, he had tried to add Li Mu’s QQ account more than twenty times, but every friend request had disappeared into the void. Meanwhile, Stone Age Overlord had already set off a wildfire among Stone Age players!
Downloads from various websites had exceeded three hundred thousand—already surpassing the game’s peak concurrent player count, which meant that virtually every highly active player, and a good portion of the moderately active ones, had already downloaded Stone Age Overlord.
Sun Peng was receiving constant feedback from major distributors. It was now clear that all the internet café suppliers had banded together, notifying provincial agents that they would be compensating users—essentially a polite way of saying that July’s payments would not be settled. If the agents didn’t have a new cheat tool to surpass Stone Age Overlord, they wouldn’t be continuing with Abe’s cheats; after all, they simply couldn’t sell them anymore.
Compensation was tolerable—Sun Peng could stand not earning a cent in July—but he couldn’t accept the entire revenue line being cut off for good.
If Stone Age Overlord continued its onslaught, Abe’s cheats would be dead within a week.
No retreat, no surrender… Even the online alias of this person was so fierce—it was clear he meant exactly that. He could easily destroy Sun Peng with Stone Age Overlord, and in terms of ability, they were worlds apart.
Once Abe’s cheats lost their market, this person could easily imitate his model and build a tiered distribution network. At that point, there would be no way back.
It wasn’t just Sun Peng who was panicking; his two partners with shares, and even other developers, were anxious as well.
Twenty to thirty thousand yuan in monthly revenue—taking twenty thousand as a baseline, after expenses and salaries, the three partners split over ten thousand yuan, of which Sun Peng, as the majority shareholder, pocketed six or seven thousand himself. In 2001, that was enough to buy a small apartment in a third-tier city or a two-bedroom in a fifth-tier city like Haizhou.
Now, all this income was about to vanish.
“We have to get in touch with this ‘No Retreat, No Surrender’ guy,” Sun Peng said, lighting his fifth cigarette, addressing everyone in the room. “He probably doesn’t have a complete sales network yet. To profit from Stone Age Overlord, he’ll have to put in a lot of effort. If we can get in touch, we can offer our sales channels as leverage, and also play up the idea that Stone Age doesn’t have much life left as a game. If we can lure him into working with us, there’s still hope. Otherwise, we’ll have no choice but to disband.”
Jia Bei, known for his ruthless nature, smacked his lips and suddenly thought of something. “The Game Kingdom forum is right here in Beijing, and it was one of the first places Stone Age Overlord was uploaded. I’ll try to get in touch with the admin, offer some benefits, and dig up the registration and login IP address of the uploader!”