Chapter Five: A Glitch?

"Is this... a bug?" Gou Tong wondered. It was Mao Dou's first time making a game, so bugs were to be expected.

He had experimented several times before and found that changing equipment or items at other times was useless; the ending would always default to the "cuckold forgives her" scenario or the suicide ending triggered by prolonged inaction. If he waited too long, he couldn't perform any actions or swap gear. From the "Charging for Love 1v6" event all the way to hearing the heroine's outrageous remarks, and then choosing to forgive her to enter the cuckold ending, the game normally locked out any equipment changes. It was also impossible to use consumables to alter the protagonist's mental state.

If he acted too early—before the "Charging for Love" event—it would only show a decrease in the protagonist's mental state. If it was originally above 50, swapping gear would drop it by 50 points, but nothing else changed; the protagonist would hear the news, his mental state would hit zero, he would gain a status effect, and head toward the ending. If his mental state was already below 50, the moment he equipped the diary, his sanity would drop to zero, triggering the "mental patient" ending.

Only by catching that sub-0.5-second frame of lag—which occurred after meeting the heroine but before selecting "forgive her," right before the game forced the "run away and commit suicide" bad ending—could one pull off a frame-perfect, one-click equipment swap. Only then was there a chance to equip the diary before the suicide sequence triggered. The prerequisites were too numerous, and there was no special item activation or text prompt upon success. It didn't feel like a hidden mechanic at all; it was definitely a bug.

The interface after equipping the diary was quite interesting. The protagonist's mental state was usually displayed as a red bar in the lower-left corner, which could also be hidden. A high mental state meant a long red bar, while a low one meant a short bar. At that moment, having heard that the heroine had other boyfriends, the protagonist's mental state was at zero, leaving no red bar. But after successfully swapping the gear, an extra red bar appeared, representing 50 points (out of a max of 100).

Except, it was inverted. While the protagonist walked toward the distance, all other status bars grew from the zero-line to the right. Only this red bar extended to the left of the zero-line. Since the status bars were already in the corner, wouldn't this bar eventually grow off the screen? Furthermore, the status panel, which usually displayed specific numerical values, stopped showing numbers for the mental state, replacing them with garbled text and black squares. Gou Tong feared the game would crash or force-quit, but it didn't. Nothing happened.

In the past, there had been many events that drained mental state—for instance, selling one's younger sister for a bride price usually drained over 120 points. Gou Tong had once tried a rare item that increased the mental state cap, but the protagonist's 110 mental points still collapsed to zero instantly. Perhaps only a protagonist with a "resilient yet twisted" talent could survive such a blow and continue the game. Theoretically, during that sister-selling event, if the protagonist had a normal 100 mental points, subtracting the cost should have resulted in a negative value. However, the moment the red bar vanished to zero, the "mental collapse/game over" screen would appear.

But this time, the protagonist held the "Charging for Love" status—a unique, permanent condition gained from riding a bike to Youth City for a 1v6 confrontation. This kept the mental state at zero without ending the game.

This "Charging for Love" status was a permanent, infinite effect. So, what would happen next?

The answer was that the protagonist stopped walking after reaching the distance. Because Gou Tong didn't provide input for a long time, the game began to automatically cycle through the surrounding scenery. The protagonist even started stretching and hopping in place, bored.

"Wait, buddy? You're not going to die?"

"You've come to terms with it?"

"Did the protagonist actually make it?"

Gou Tong tried to take control, and the character moved freely; he could do whatever he wanted. After some time passed in-game, it reached the next day—January 1st of the new year. The game paused for a fleeting moment, and then time resumed. It had actually bypassed the two-and-a-half-year time limit! Regardless of whether the bride price was met, the game was supposed to trigger an ending. Now, the date had passed, and it was still running!

After playing for a while longer, Gou Tong slowly figured it out. First, regarding why the protagonist didn't commit suicide: he realized this was likely caused by the repetitive application of the suicide template. He remembered several times when the protagonist was berated by the heroine for not providing enough "tribute," telling him, "You're such a loser, why don't you just die?" If his mental state collapsed, it would trigger a suicide sequence similar to this one. There were other extreme events, like the mother getting sick if the medicine was cut off early; the protagonist's mental state would hit zero, and he would commit suicide in a similar fashion. This "bad ending" likely used the same judgment mechanism. A necessary condition for that mechanism was that the protagonist's mental state must be at zero with no red bar.

But now, the protagonist had a red bar—even if it was negative. So, he didn't commit suicide, skipping the ending screen. The game also required an ending flag animation to conclude. Every path in the game usually converged on the two-and-a-half-year deadline, where the heroine demanded the bride price. The "good ending" involved gathering the money, the heroine agreeing to the engagement, and an animation of the marriage at the end of December, unlocking achievements. The "bad endings" were triggered if the money wasn't gathered, based on various stats—duration of high mental state, attribute levels, positive events, and the number of high-affinity friends—plus a bit of random chance. These led to suicide, mental breakdown, depression, or a lifetime of bachelorhood (which Gou Tong considered the true good ending).

These endings all had real-time rendered cutscenes, after which the game ended and returned to the title screen. But the logic being judged now was a sub-branch of the hidden death ending: immediate execution. It skipped the statistics and the probability dice, heading straight for the suicide animation. But because the protagonist didn't actually commit suicide, the game lacked the ending animation, so it couldn't finish.

He had basically figured out the logic. It was just a bug. If it were a top-tier studio, Gou Tong might have thought it was an Easter egg or a true hidden ending. But Mao Dou was making his first non-live-action game, and his previous cinematic games had very low replayability. They were more like interactive web movies with minimal character-building elements. This game was a massive departure, essentially a debut title for a new company, and Mao Dou was experimenting with new, unseen mechanics; it would be abnormal if there weren't any bugs.

Gou Tong originally thought there wouldn't be any new content if he kept playing. But as he continued, he realized something was wrong.

After entering the negative mental state, every positive mental event—like the mother's concern, the sister coming to visit, or square dancing—would make that inverted red bar shorter. Once it grew into the positive range, the moment it transitioned back to zero, it would trigger a mental collapse animation similar to the sister-selling event, leading to depression or another game-over state. This was completely illogical—good things shouldn't make the protagonist collapse. This confirmed that the inverted red bar was indeed a bug.

Conversely, all negative mental events—continuous labor, constant studying, or the boss berating the protagonist—would make the inverted red bar longer. When the red bar in the lower-left corner grew beyond the screen interface, it would grant a stack of high-mental-state buffs that were usually only available when the mental state was above 80. These buffs provided bonuses based on specific attributes.

In short, at 85 mental state versus 100, the same "High Spirits" buff provided different Charm bonuses. The former might give +2, while the latter gave +5—which was the same as the protagonist's initial Charm at the start of the game. The higher the mental state and the longer the red bar, the greater the gain. And the difference between 100 and 85 wasn't just a 17.6% increase; it was a 2.5x multiplier—exponential data growth.

Normally, the protagonist's mental state had a cap, and the values remained in a dynamic balance, with limited ways to boost it, so these bonuses wouldn't be too ridiculous. But now, this inverted red bar, created by a bug, seemed to have no upper limit. If the red bar were long enough, as if he had 200 or 2,000 mental points, how terrifying would the attribute bonuses from those buffs be?

At that point... Heaven-defying wisdom? A mortal superman? A god of war in the city? A hidden, crooked-mouthed Dragon King?