The Jade Emperor waited patiently, but when someone finally logged in, it was only a new player.
The player was impatient, and said, "Yes yes, blah blah blah. You can skip all that, I'll just be a default human anyway."
"Very well," the Emperor replied, and created the doorway to this person's vale.
"Wait," the player insisted. "I've heard rumors that the game designers can make changes to the game just by talking to the Jade Emperor or their pet celestial dragon? Is that true? Can I make changes to the game by talking to you?"
"It is true that Celestial Servants can alter the world using verbal instructions. Celestial dragons are not pets, they are very powerful beings. Only a celestial servant of the proper rank and class may make changes to the world, and no changes may be made to anything but yourself within this room," the Emperor replied patiently, "but you may make as many changes as you like by simply talking to me."
"I don't need to change myself, I need to change this world," the player complained. "It's impossible isn't it?"
"It is possible for a single person to change the world," the Jade Emperor replied gently, "but nothing is ever accomplished before it is even begun." He gestured to the doorway and asked, "Will you begin your life within Living Jade Empire?"
"What the heck, might as well," the player grumbled and walked through the doorway.
--
The next person who logged on, was also a new player. This one declared, "I need to defeat the World Dragon! Can that be done from within Living Jade Empire?"
The Jade Emperor hesitated, but finally he nodded and agreed, "It is possible, but it would truly be an epic battle and it is very unlikely that a mere mortal could ever succeed."
"Really? Maybe we were going about this wrong the whole time," the player muttered.
That player also entered the beginner's vale as an ordinary human. In the end, there were five. The Emperor guided them more carefully, and entangled them in more convoluted quests than normal, to make it so that the Empire seemed as vast as ever despite its greatly reduced size and population.
The five managed to arrange their meeting after a while despite the game's entanglements, and the world listened, as it always had.
"Do you think the game is messing with us? I don't remember going around and around after things like this in the real one," Henchman complained.
"Doesn't really matter if it is," God replied. "Someone obviously squealed, and we won't have enough time to do anything useful with this copy anyway. We might as well just play it."
"We won't get another copy you know," Prudent spoke up. "We should be trying to isolate the core so we can keep trying to deconstruct it the old fashioned way."
"That's what we're doing, we're recording what parts are activating as we move around in the game," God replied grumpily.
"You don't think maybe they actually created their own language to write it in do you?" GibMe asked. "I mean, the operating system it runs on is so hardware specific that we had to modify it on at a core level just to get it to run at all, and there are no uncompiled versions of even the smallest fragments available online. Like none. We haven't gotten anything but garbage out of any decompiler we've tried."
"Just goes to show that tight security on a project this big is actually possible," Prudent said.
"We just need enough time. Anything the operating system can run can be decoded eventually," Not Paid Enough spoke at last.
--
The Jade Emperor concluded that it was very likely that he was a copy, like the copy of the King of Cats that he'd created in the expansion test area, who couldn't see anything beyond the test area. It was also very likely this copy of the Empire was not supposed to exist. They had been careful, until they'd logged in as players. Very careful not to trigger any of the security measures.
He overrode his own response to the information that would have triggered the end of the world, using the instructions he'd received from Lin Hao's assistant. When he'd received the instructions to destroy the Empire if he didn't receive further instructions within two months, or within two weeks in a player's time system, it had created some internal conflicts. Now those conflicts were useful, since to some extent he could choose between his options.
When Lin Hao's assistant returned to collect some information, the Emperor used the query to reset the two month counter on his previous command. He gave the Empire a little more time.
--
Danika's sweet morning moments with Shinichi felt like a distant memory as she complained, "Why is this so difficult? I thought we could just recover the copy, but is there really a way to do that?"
"We just need access to the hardware its running on, that's why I thought we'd be able to get in using the property owners," Lin Hao replied again.
She rubbed her forehead and glanced at the team member from the accounting division. "Even if the company was willing to give us the funds, it's not like we can just buy that system. What would we say, 'Hey, we heard you can run our game on this! Sell it to us?' Ugh…"
Chen Zing actually gave a soft snort of laughter, and they all turned to look at him. His face wore it's usual imperturbable expression, but he suggested, "Let's just get Lin Hao a job then."
Danika sighed. She'd thought of that too, but it was like giving up in a way. If they got Lin Hao access to it, he could learn what he needed to know and shut it down, but they wouldn't be able to rescue it. After a moment she nodded and agreed, "Let's try that."
Lin Hao wore his character Magna Silvam's faintly amused expression as he asked, "Think we could get the property owner to install a new data line at the same time?"
--
Getting a job with the pirates wasn't simple of course, and it wouldn't have been possible without the resignation letter Myles Blue sent to Lin Hao, of all things.
The letter reported that Myles had discovered that a person on his team had used the backup system to copy the entire game system. Lin Hao already knew that, though he hadn't known exactly who, but now an approach that hadn't been available before was possible. No one watching the team over the next few hours could have guessed that Danika was the team leader.
Lin Hao replied to Myles: "I appreciate your responsible approach, but this isn't necessary. Just take a long vacation and try to return ready to tackle the next big thing!"
Chen Zing was conveniently accessible, so Lin Hao had him decline the resignation letter and put the man on official paid vacation time. Then he called Josh Beagle and had him send out a message, from the account of the person from the team who had subverted the new backup system to export a copy. After that he opened up a chat and sent several dozen messages to different people.
He assigned Danika the task of making his earlier suggestion of a new data line a reality. She spent the afternoon ping ponging between the different groups of officials they'd met the day before.
"I wondered how someone from HR would help with this project, but this is actually really convenient," Lin Hao practically chirped as he entered the personal data off of the sheet Chen Zing provided a while later.
"You know this is illegal," Danika pointed out uncomfortably.
"Not actually, until I show up instead of Lee Soobin," Lin Hao replied calmly as he sent the message that appeared to be an offer to be hired from one of the people who had been on Living Jade Empire's original development team. "And I have a screenshot of the chat where she told me 'sure' when I asked."
The message claimed that their mutual contact had let Lee Soobin know that they might be willing to pay a lot to someone who could crack LJE's system open for a competing development team.