5: Chapter 5 System Detection: Two Flaws

Los Angeles, Echo Park, dusk.

The sun sank toward the Pacific Ocean, painting the last of its orange-red afterglow onto the crowns of the palm trees on the west side of the park.

On the east side of the park, on the lawn surrounding the lake, a dozen tents of various colors were pitched crookedly, like a pile of discarded colorful trash.

Some tents had faded towels and plastic buckets hanging outside; others had "belongings" piled up at their entrances, modified from supermarket shopping carts.

A few homeless people sat around a fire pit made from a discarded oil drum, muttering words no one could understand.

This was the other side of the Lighthouse Country—not the neon brilliance of Hollywood movies, nor the decadence of Beverly Hills, but Tent City.

A small fraction of the nearly fifty thousand homeless people in downtown Los Angeles had pitched their "homes" in Echo Park.

Zhang Yi's tent was at the very edge, near the park's public restroom.

It was a cheap camping tent, gray-blue in color, with fabric washed to a pale shade and several corners patched with duct tape.

Inside the tent, there was only a thin sleeping bag, a folding stool picked up from a second-hand market, and half a bottle of leftover mineral water.

These were all his worldly possessions after transmigrating.

However, at this moment, Zhang Yi was not outside staring blankly or screaming like the other homeless people.

He sat cross-legged inside the tent, using the folding stool as a table, his entire attention focused on the translucent system interface that only he could see.

In the center of the interface, a scene was playing in real-time.

It was the surveillance view of the B2 underground parking lot at the Las Vegas City Hall. No, it should be said that it was a holographic projection from the system, clearer than surveillance and more realistic than any high-definition camera.

In the image, the young blond man was sitting in the driver's seat of a silver-gray Porsche Cayenne, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly, his face as pale as a sheet, his lips trembling violently.

Link Warren.

The only son of Nevada Senator Edward Warren, a notorious playboy in Las Vegas politics, he had lived in the greenhouse built by his father's power for twenty-six years and had never known what fear was.

Now he knew.

Zhang Yi watched Link's face in the image, which was almost twisted from extreme fear, and the corners of his mouth curled up slightly.

The stage was set; the audience's reaction was perfect.

Just then, the system notification sound rang out continuously.

"Ding! Emotional fluctuation detected from Link Warren, Emotional Value +200."

"Ding! Emotional fluctuation detected from Link Warren, Emotional Value +300."

"Ding! Sustained emotional fluctuation detected from Link Warren, Emotional Value +300."

"Ding! Deep fear detected from Link Warren, Emotional Value +250..."

The notifications came in waves, the intervals getting shorter and the values getting higher.

Link's emotions were like a dam that had been opened—fear, shock, the collapse of his worldview, terror of the unknown... all kinds of negative emotions were intertwined, precisely captured, quantified, and harvested by the system.

Zhang Yi watched the constantly jumping number on the system interface; after returning to zero from the initial 2000, it climbed little by little: 500, 800, 1200, 1800... Finally, when the notifications stopped, the Emotional Value balance settled at 3000 points.

3000 points.

On the first day after transmigrating, with the first show, he had earned 3000 points.

Zhang Yi looked at this number and couldn't help but chuckle.

The laugh wasn't loud; it was drowned out by a burst of meaningless howling that suddenly erupted from a homeless person outside the tent.

But Zhang Yi had truly laughed; it was the first time he had laughed from the bottom of his heart since transmigrating to this world.

"This is interesting." He whispered to himself.

However, the smile did not last long.

Zhang Yi casually opened the system store.

He had only taken a hurried glance when he bought the bionic construction unit earlier; now that the Emotional Value was in hand, he planned to browse properly.

The store interface unfolded before his eyes, with the category list extending from top to bottom: [Basic Technology] [Biotechnology] [Energy Technology] [Space Technology] [Information Technology] [Weapon Technology] [Ultimate Technology]...

He casually clicked into [Weapon Technology] to take a look.

Plasma Rifle: 500,000 Emotional Value. Directional EMP Device: 1.8 million Emotional Value. Gravitational Field Generator: 12 million Emotional Value. Interstellar-class Destroyer Blueprint: 89 million Emotional Value.

He scrolled down. Scrolled again. And again.

The cheapest [Individual Shield Bracelet] was priced at 90,000 points.

Zhang Yi closed the store.

He clicked on [Space Technology] to take a look.

The cheapest [Short-Range Directional Teleportation Device]: 2.8 million.

[Ultimate Technology]... He didn't even have the courage to click into it.

"Fine then." Zhang Yi took a deep breath and pulled his hand back from the interface.

3000 Emotional Value points, in the face of the store, didn't even count as the smallest fraction.

It was like working hard for a whole day, earning a hundred bucks, and then walking into a luxury store only to find that the cheapest pair of socks was priced at one hundred thousand.

That feeling was indescribable, a bit complicated.

But overall, it was still good, he told himself.

Going from zero to three thousand was already a qualitative leap.

Furthermore, these three thousand points weren't a one-time thing; he had already planted a seed in Link Warren, a seed that would take root and sprout, radiating fear, curiosity, and suspicion to more people.

By then, Emotional Value would continue to pour in.

Zhang Yi adjusted his mindset and reopened the store; this time, he filtered directly for the price range he could afford: under 1000 points.

He planned to buy something for self-defense first.

The park was fine during the day, but it completely changed once night fell.

Those drug-addicted, drunken, and mentally unstable homeless people would, at any moment, rush to your tent, shaking it and shouting.

He had been shaken three times last night; one time, the tent frame was almost broken.

If it weren't for his quick reaction in holding the tent zipper shut, that alcohol-reeking brute would likely have already charged in.

He needed something that would allow him to sleep peacefully.

Just as Zhang Yi was browsing the store, the system interface suddenly popped up a red warning box.

[Warning!]

[The system has detected two flaws in the performance of the script "Extraterrestrial Visitor", which may lead to the subsequent story being exposed.]

[Please, host, view and handle immediately.]

Zhang Yi's brows furrowed sharply.

Flaws?

He clicked on the notification details.

The system interface listed the two problems one by one.

[Flaw One: The arc effect used by the Men in Black.]

[The nano-bionic construction unit purchased by the host is a low-end version, and its internal circuit system has a slight leakage phenomenon. During the performance, the arc generated between the fingers of the Men in Black was actually caused by the leakage of the internal circuit of the bionic unit, but it was misinterpreted by the target audience (Link Warren) as an arc weapon.]

[If the target audience or their associates subsequently retrieve surveillance video and conduct professional technical analysis, they will discover that this phenomenon was a circuit leak, not a weapon attack.]

[This flaw will cause the story's logic chain to break.]

[Flaw Two: The dark red light in the underground parking lot.]

[This light was actually an abnormal flicker caused by the aging malfunction of the parking lot's fire pipe indicator light, but it was misinterpreted by the target audience (Link Warren) as the middle-aged woman and her organization controlling the lights.]

[If a follow-up on-site investigation is conducted, it will be discovered that there is no connection between the light and the middle-aged woman.]

[This flaw will cause the credibility of the story's background setting to collapse.]

After reading these two notifications, the expression on Zhang Yi's face froze.

He had been careless.

When he made up the story, he had designed everything perfectly: the image of the Grey Alien, the actions of the Men in Black, the aura of the middle-aged woman, the badge on the work ID, and the naming of the "Federal Urban Pipeline Maintenance Department".

He had put all his thoughts into the "surface" effect of the story, but had not considered the limitations of the props themselves.

A circuit leak was mistaken for a weapon.

A lighting malfunction was mistaken for high-tech control.

If Link and his father investigated later, given the style of Edward Warren, an old fox who had been struggling in politics for decades, it was impossible for him to remain indifferent after hearing his son say he had "seen Aliens".

He would definitely send people to check the surveillance.

And once they retrieved the surveillance and asked professionals to analyze it, those two flaws would be like paper windows—easy to poke through.

"System." Zhang Yi's voice sank. "I have a question for you."

[Please ask, host.]

"If the story I fabricated is seen through and not believed, what are the consequences?"

The system's reply had no temperature, as precise, mechanical, and emotionless as always.

[If the script story fabricated by the host is exposed or falsified by the target audience, subsequently causing all Emotional Value harvested by said script to be judged invalid, the system will execute the following procedures:]

[First, reclaim all Emotional Value generated by said script;]

[Second, permanently destroy said script from the system database, and clear all materialized props;]

[Third, the system will determine that the host does not possess the potential to operate scripts continuously, force unbind from the host, and proceed to find another host with more potential.]

After hearing this, Zhang Yi was silent for a long while.

Then he softly said one word: "Fuck."

Outside the tent, another homeless person was howling, the voice coarse and raspy, like sandpaper rubbing against a piece of sheet metal.

Another homeless person was cursing at him, telling him to shut up.

The two people were cursing at each other across the lawn, dirty words colliding back and forth in the dusk air; neither could hear what the other was saying, and neither had any intention of stopping.