Clearly, the emergence of this video took netizens by surprise.
Instructor Ding had no choice but to block the barrage of comments in order to see the operations in the video clearly.
At over thirty minutes, the video was considered long, but for players of "Sisyphus," it was unbelievably short.
After all, the current best record set by the streamer Heilong was 49 minutes!
In the beginning, Instructor Ding subconsciously thought that this recording didn't cover the entire game because it was too short, and the official leaderboard had not been updated.
But after watching the whole video, Instructor Ding fell silent.
This 33-minute video had indeed covered the entire game!
The reason it was not recorded by the officials was that the player chose to push the boulder down the cliff just before reaching Eden, so this achievement was not documented.
Why would they do that?
Instructor Ding didn't know either.
But whatever the reason, this uncut video proved that the fastest time to complete "Sisyphus" could be reduced to within 33 minutes.
What shocked Instructor Ding even more was that this person's gameplay could be described in two words.
That is...
All-Greedy!
What does "greed" mean?
This concept comes from the speedrunning community.
In the pursuit of "speedrunning a game," players will standardize the process of completing a game and continuously optimize it.
During this process, players often encounter a difficult choice: do they take a safer but longer route, or do they take a riskier but shorter route?
This riskier, shorter route might require players to achieve a particular bug or to utilize some special game mechanics, or it simply demands high player skill.
It often comes with high risks, and one failure means all previous efforts are wasted.
When a player chooses to attempt these high-risk actions to shorten the completion time, it is called "greed."
For the average player, their approach to the question of "to greed or not to greed" is usually rational and conservative.
Take the two streamers currently competing for the top spot, "Heilong" and "Lao Lu," for example.
They never blindly pursue the fastest route but prefer to break records in a "squeezing toothpaste" fashion.
The reason is simple.
Firstly, the fastest route is inevitably the riskiest one, and many points where one could be greedy are actually not worth it. The success rate may be less than half, but even if successful, the record time might only improve by about a minute.
If the success rate for five key points is all less than half, then the combined success rate falls below 3%, a simple mathematical problem.
When you can break a record by optimizing other parts, why take such a big risk to chase the limit?
To successfully complete a full-greed run might require two or three days of attempts; the risk is too high.
This not only requires extremely skilled technique but also a strong mentality and a bit of luck, with the latter two being even more important than the former.
Secondly, breaking records slowly in a "squeezing toothpaste" manner can maximize the maintenance of hype.
Like many Olympic champions, in the absence of strong competitors, they might have the capability to greatly improve the world record at once, but they often prefer to hold back a bit and break records gradually.
Therefore, taking everything into consideration, whether from the game perspective or from a real-world standpoint, going "All-Greedy" is not a rational choice.
But the expert in this video seemed to utterly ignore these unwritten rules.
They went for "All-Greedy"!
That is to say, wherever the current route could be optimized or improved, they chose the faster route without considering how high the chance of failure for that route was!
And the most shocking part of this "All-Greedy" gameplay was, of course, the video's theme: "Five Consecutive Dragon Flapping Wings."
Without saying a word, Instructor Ding watched these five Dragon Flapping Wings over and over again.
It was nothing short of astonishing!
As the discoverer of Dragon Flapping Wings, Instructor Ding knew better than anyone the difficulty of this move. Whether it was the timing to start accelerating, the distance, or the location of the jump, everything had very strict restrictions, and a slight misstep could lead to major failure.
Of course, players would definitely choose to "mark positions."
But just like a driver's license test, even if you memorize the points, when you actually get to the test site you're still going to panic and fail if that's what's meant to happen.
However, the person in the video was like a precision machine, and although there were some minor flaws and small mistakes, the process of the Five Dragon Wing Flap was nearly perfect!
The continuous Five Dragon Wing Flap was visually explosive, with each one eliciting amazement from the audience.
After watching the video, the viewers in the live stream were all stunned.
"Damn, who the hell is this?"
"Whose Tai Chi was that?"
"Turning a casual game into such a grind??"
"The smoothness of these moves is unreal!"
"I feel like I've been seeing the world through a pinhole this whole time, can you really play the game like this? Did that dung beetle just fly through the sky while hugging its dung ball?"
"I used to think this game would paralyze any player, I was wrong!"
"Only those who haven't played this game would think these moves are awesome. Those of us who have played are already kneeling; this is simply not humanly achievable!"
"This is what real racing looks like, All-Greedy Bro rocks! Not like Heilong and Lao Lu, those two fools who are squeezing the toothpaste, struggling from 53 minutes to 51 and then to 49, spending three whole days on it. Now All-Greedy Bro has just wiped the floor with you all!"
While everyone was shocked by "All-Greedy Bro," Heilong and Lao Lu, the streamers who specialized in live streaming "Sisyphus" speedruns, felt an unprecedented pressure.
Because of this video, the game's record was brought down from 49 minutes to 33 minutes in one fell swoop.
Although it wasn't clear why the video creator voluntarily pushed the boulder off the cliff and gave up on submitting the record, the video was there for all to see, and all the players had recognized it.
This meant that henceforth, to pursue the ultimate achievement in "Sisyphus," and to become the new number one, players had to meet two conditions: first, complete the Five Consecutive Dragon Flapping Wings, and second, finish in less than 33 minutes!
Otherwise, it wouldn't be recognized by anyone.
Heilong and Lao Lu were already sweating profusely; they each lit a cigarette in silence and then started running the speed pass of "Sisyphus" again.
And this time, their goal was all changed to "Five Consecutive Dragon Flapping Wings."
When Instructor Ding finished watching the video, the direction of the wind in his live stream room had done a 180-degree turn!
The audience was starting to get a little tired of it, since Instructor Ding had successfully achieved 12th place, and along the way completed a Dragon Flapping Wings, everyone thought it was a good time to call it quits.
But the appearance of this video rekindled their competitive spirit!
"Little Ding! Did you see that? Someone did Five Consecutive Dragon Flapping Wings!"
"Yeah, we can't lose! We're still more than ten minutes away from being the world number one!"
"Now you're on the same starting line as Heilong and Lao Lu, it's just a matter of who breaks the world record first."
"Run! Keep running! Show everyone the strength of Ding's Army!"
Seeing how united his fans were, Instructor Ding was quite touched.
"Alright! Brothers, since you all have so much faith in me, support me, then I'll fight another battle!
"Although the game isn't bringing in any commercial deals anymore, I'll continue streaming for another week! Our goal is to challenge the Five Consecutive Dragon Flapping Wings, challenge the world number one of this game!"
Instructor Ding felt his blood boiling, and he relaunched "Sisyphus," starting the challenge once more!
...
"Pfft!!"
Watching this scene, Lilith almost spat out a mouthful of blood.
She never expected that after the money dried up, Instructor Ding would still want to continue live streaming the game.
What she didn't expect even more was that the impact of this event was far from over!
Gu Fan looked at the various negative emotion prompts appearing in his view, and it was clear that there had been a bit of a change.
Originally, as some old players left the game, the negative emotions associated with it showed signs of warming back up. But now, the negative emotions were dropping quickly again, and even more intensely!
Clearly, this video didn't just cause the streamers to break into a sweat and make the top "Sisyphus" speedrunning even more cutthroat; it also brought a large group of old players back into the pit!
Why did these old players, who would normally reduce the negative emotion value, leave the game?
Put simply, they temporarily lost their goals within the game.
But now, they had a new goal, and this "All-Greedy Bro's" video motivated everyone currently playing "Sisyphus!"