Chapter 450 - 278: Dark! Shadow! Duel! (Part 2)

Chen Ba glanced at it.

The video is really viral. It’s only been uploaded for less than 12 hours, and the views have already reached 5.71 million! Besides the high number of views, the likes and coins data are also quite high, and the comment section has accumulated over a hundred thousand messages.

"Dark! Duel!"

The video uses the common abstract video title template, where an emoji is added after each word.

Chen Ba was intrigued and clicked play. As the video started, a familiar BGM suddenly played.

Fierce Duelist!

This is a purely instrumental track. Whether you’re a 90s kid or a 00s kid, upon hearing it, you’d exclaim, "My gawd, card player."

But that’s not the point.

The point is, with the onset of this BGM, a scene appeared in the video that left Chen Ba dumbfounded.

Originally, the UP master just wanted to watch a pro’s moves. As soon as the view mode was entered and a target selected, the computer screen went black.

Did the game crash and exit?

No, no, no!

Chen Ba quickly dismissed this assumption because he saw that after the brief blackout, Star Emperor 2 did not crash.

However, the screen switched from spectator mode to "duel" mode.

In other words...

The player on the other side was originally dueling with another player; in an unexpected twist, a third person appeared in the game.

Weirdly, the opponent got mysteriously possessed; although the character was the same, the one controlling it was actually the "spectating" UP master.

"You can play like this too?"

Chen Ba was shocked. He never imagined that the spectating feature could also trigger the possession bug, and this possession happened right in front of the "victim’s" eyes.

Most Minotaur episode, cried when watching as a kid!

Chen Ba thought that was all the video had to offer, what Xiong Hongping referred to as a crazy glitch.

But he never expected that things were far from over; the real duel was just about to begin!

Back to the video.

The UP master, who accidentally triggered the possession bug, couldn’t quit and had to brace himself to fight for the victim.

The battle was on the verge of breaking out!

In the spectate function, the possession bug allowed the possessed player, i.e., the UP master, to see the real-time game screen.

This meant that as long as he was familiar with the skills and cast actions of the character he possessed, it would still be fun to take over.

But unfortunately...

The character he possessed was one the UP master had never played, not even once! He didn’t even know what the skills were, let alone the casting actions and commands.

"Don’t hit, don’t hit, let me check the skill description!"

The UP master was in a panic. He didn’t intend to possess anyone, but now that it happened, he could only brace himself and take over.

The problem was he had never played that character, and didn’t know what skills it had or their mechanics, so he was very frantic...

As everyone knows.

When people are panicked, if they can’t calm down, they’ll run around like a headless chicken.

The opponent didn’t know they had switched, still thinking it was the original player, showing no mercy as they attacked swiftly and fiercely, forcing the UP master to flee while holding his head.

During the thrashing, the UP master inevitably suffered some injuries; after all, getting beaten surely means getting hurt, right? Or do you underestimate the opponent?

Yet as he got injured, why did every severe hit cause the game graphics to lag severely?

Finally, the UP master was beaten down.

With a spectacular finishing move that turned the screen into a slideshow, the opponent joyfully finished off the UP master, taking the game screen to blackness too.

"I got knocked out, and not only that..."

The scene shifted, showing footage presumably recorded by the UP master on his phone, as he mournfully revealed the cover of his computer case.

A puff of white smoke promptly rose!

"As you can see, that punch blew my damn motherboard capacitors! Aaah... beast!"

The video abruptly ended with the UP master’s wails, but the shock it left on Chen Ba was just beginning.

What on earth?

What did he just see?

Wasn’t it just a normal game match? How did battling lead the UP master’s PC to start smoking?

The setup doesn’t seem low-end; how did this happen?

Chen Ba couldn’t comprehend it.

He didn’t even know what went wrong or how it led to this. What baffled him more was why the spectating function could also trigger the possession bug?

And it seemed that the damage from triggering the bug via spectating was significantly greater than from normal triggering!

"Driver conflict?"

Recalling Xiong Hongping’s previous statement, Chen Ba, now calm, asked, "After updating the driver, the old Galaxy Set driver wasn’t uninstalled successfully?"

"Yes."

Since Xiong Hongping showed Chen Ba this video, he must have thoroughly investigated it, thus holding some information.

"The old driver version, which you provided, wasn’t replaced successfully by the new driver..."

"The conflict between the two versions, coupled with unknown bugs in the game, led to this situation."

Xiong Hongping explained, "I’ve verified the video’s situation, and it’s indeed real!"

"When forcibly drawing another player into the match via spectate, both sides experienced hardware scheduling problems due to injury feedback issues..."

Xiong Hongping analyzed thoroughly why the conflict between the two driver versions caused such severe consequences.

The root cause is the injury feedback mechanism linking Star Emperor 2 with the Galaxy Set.

When playing Star Emperor 2 with the Galaxy Set, when the player gets hurt or attacked, the Galaxy Set provides a series of "hit" feedbacks.

This is the situation!

But the conflict between the two driver versions led to problems where injury feedbacks meant for the Galaxy Set couldn’t be processed and were even transferred elsewhere...

"Transferred?"

"Yes! Transferred!"

Xiong Hongping gave an illustrative example: when a couple fights and the child is hungry, they pass the responsibility to grandparents, similar "third-party forces."

Normally, when a child is hungry, parents should feed them.

But if parents are quarreling, with no time for the child, naturally other family members must step in.

"The injury feedback needs the Galaxy Set for processing, but due to driver-caused conflicts, it couldn’t handle it and was passed to other family members!"

Who are the other family members?

Of course, it’s the other computer hardware working under the same system.

"But..."

After understanding roughly, Chen Ba frowned and asked, "Transfer processing is useless! The injury feedback mechanism is bound to the Galaxy Set; it can only realize effects on the Galaxy Set."

What’s the use of transferring it to other hardware?

Can the CPU, GPU, keyboard, mouse, or gamepad handle this task? They probably can’t even understand the task information, let alone execute it.

"Exactly, they can’t process it!"

Xiong Hongping raised an eyebrow and said, "Only the Galaxy Set can process this injury feedback task; other hardware can’t do it at all."

"But it’s precisely because they can’t handle it that this overload and overclocking phenomenon occur!"

Hardware isn’t human; it doesn’t know how to refuse. Even knowing the task is impossible, it attempts to solve it—this is the rigid mechanical programming mindset.

It’s like a poor-quality graphics card rendering a top-notch game; despite knowing its limitations, does it reject the task?

No, it doesn’t!

It will stubbornly push through, even if rendering fails or slows to a slideshow, it relentlessly follows your commands.

And that’s exactly where the problem lies...