A week later.
Wednesday night at 10 p.m.
Lilith sat on a single-seat sofa eating potato chips, and it was apparent that her mood had improved somewhat.
Gu Fan guessed there might be three reasons for this.
First, Lilith had not shown up for the past week, likely healing her wounds alone in Hell. During this process, she had probably been commended by Lucifer, just like last time.
Second, even though "Sisyphus" continued to rise in popularity and recognition, the increase in negative emotions gathered was gradually slowing down, with the overall trend beginning to stabilize.
There was even a slight sign of recovery recently.
Third, after today, Instructor Ding would no longer be live streaming "Sisyphus"!
In theory, although Gu Fan and Instructor Ding had signed a ten-day agreement, only the first five days were truly binding. After five days, Instructor Ding could choose not to stream "Sisyphus" at any time, as long as he refunded the money for the unused days.
Lilith originally thought that Instructor Ding's negative impact would last at most five days, and even Instructor Ding himself initially thought so.
After all, the beginning of "Sisyphus" was incredibly boring for him and purely torturous.
But the situation changed after he discovered two key bugs.
Instructor Ding became utterly addicted to "Dragon Flap Wings"!
So, he decided to complete the full ten days!
Lucky for Lilith, she was not watching the live stream on the fifth day, or she would have been furious enough to spit blood on the spot.
Now, the ten days had finally passed, and Lilith didn't have to see Instructor Ding's detestable face any longer.
At the moment, in the live stream, Sisyphus controlled by Instructor Ding had just arrived at the entrance to Eden at the very top of Purgatory.
However, pushing the giant stone, he was utterly unable to enter Eden.
Upon reaching the entrance at the top layer of Eden, several angels radiating golden light would appear and use divine power to push the giant stone down the cliff again, causing Sisyphus to lose all his progress.
But unlike the previous failures, during the lengthy process of the stone rolling down the cliff, the Transcendent Heaven Gaming Company's logo, the player's current completion time, and the current game completion time leaderboard would be displayed on the screen.
Obviously, this was the game completion interface of "Sisyphus".
Instructor Ding's completion time this time was 53 minutes, which was his best performance after continuous battles, ranking him 12th on the leaderboard.
It must be said, Instructor Ding's gaming talent was indeed formidable. Achieving such a result in a relatively short gaming duration was already something to be proud of.
As for aiming for the first place on the leaderboard? Instructor Ding didn't have such plans for the time being.
The current record holder had a completion time of 49 minutes, but the competition was fierce.
By the time Instructor Ding reached 49 minutes, that record would have long been refreshed.
Clearly, for a major streamer like Instructor Ding, spending a lot of time repeatedly challenging "Sisyphus" to vie for the top spot on the leaderboard was not cost-effective, as it wouldn't generate enough heat.
Unless some new opportunity arose.
"OK, guys, we've officially completed 'Sisyphus' with a perfect run!"
"Our contract with this game ends now. From tomorrow, we will start streaming a new game."
Instructor Ding declared his liberation, and although there were still viewers in the live stream who wanted to continue watching the game, they were no longer the majority.
Instructor Ding's decision to end the stream of "Sisyphus" also reflected why the game had a slight resurgence in providing negative emotions.
Because those players who could consistently derive enjoyment from the game were mostly bowing out!
New players would need a long time to learn "Dragon Flap Wings," and although "Rolling Stone Acceleration" could be learned from the beginning, its success rate wasn't high, so the positive emotions generated were limited.
And those who had mastered "Rolling Stone Acceleration" and "Dragon Flap Wings," after a week of playing, were almost bored and ready to quit the game.
With this ebb and flow, "Sisyphus" saw a slight resurgence in negative emotions.
For this, Lilith was extraordinarily grateful.
If everything could end here, it would be acceptable to her.
However, it was at this moment that Instructor Ding saw a paid barrage message.
"Little Ding, are you sure you want to give up? Someone has already completed the Five Consecutive Dragon Flapping Wings!"
Instructor Ding was shocked, "What the heck? Are the barrages starting to troll now?"
"Five Consecutive Dragon Flapping Wings? Don't mess around, dude, that move is literally impossible for a human to pull off!"
"What? There's a video?"
"You're kidding!"
Clearly, Instructor Ding didn't believe a single word about the "Five Consecutive Dragon Flapping Wings" mentioned in the paid barrage message.
Ever since Instructor Ding accidentally discovered the "Dragon Flap Wings" move a week ago, people had been studying it and proposed the concept of "Five Consecutive Dragon Flapping Wings" because it represented the best route to clear Sisyphus.
But, players had been trying for a week, and until now, no one could really perform it.
Because it was just too hard!
You see, executing Dragon Flap Wings even once was already tricky; it not only required Rolling Stone Acceleration but also perfect timing, from leaping up to the jump, with nearly every step running the risk of failure.
The chances of successfully executing a single Dragon Flap Wings were low, let alone successfully performing it five times in a row while the difficulty increased incrementally?
It was simply an impossible task!
Instructor Ding's current record was 53 minutes, achieved with few mistakes and after successfully performing Dragon Flap Wings once, which brought him to the 12th place in the global rankings.
Even though there were four more chances for Dragon Flap Wings, he didn't want to try anymore.
Because Dragon Flap Wings itself was a high-risk, high-reward move, and one failure meant all previous efforts were wasted, with no chance of recovery.
Could someone really execute such a move?
Instructor Ding didn't believe it at all, but seeing the barrage messages seriously discussing it, he had no choice but to open the video website and search for "Five Consecutive Dragon Flapping Wings."
The result was shocking.
There was indeed such a video! Someone had actually performed the Five Consecutive Dragon Flapping Wings!
...
At this time, Instructor Ding wasn't the only one streaming Sisyphus.
In Totoro's live streaming gaming section, the channels ranked third and fifth in popularity were also streaming Sisyphus.
Unlike Instructor Ding, these two were lesser-known streamers.
One was called "Heilong," a hardcore platform jumping game player who was especially obsessed with various "jumping fun" gameplay and had formidable skills.
The other was "Lao Lu," a single-player gamer with a preference for racing games, who also occasionally liked to speedrun a game of his choice.
It was the popularity of Sisyphus that had propelled them to the third and fifth places in the gaming section.
As the tide churns, after each high-difficulty game becomes a hit, a few talented players who are particularly good at the game always emerge.
Heilong and Lao Lu were, without a doubt, the talents sifted out by Sisyphus.
They basically monopolized the top two records of the game, with Heilong generally a bit ahead, and Lao Lu playfully dubbed "the eternal second" by his fans.
It was 10 PM, the peak time for live streaming audience traffic.
However, neither of the two streamers were attempting to break records but, like Instructor Ding, were watching this mysterious video.
The title of the video was simple, just five straightforward characters: "Five Dragon Wing Flap!"
But for players of Sisyphus, the weight of these five characters was immense, like Mount Tai.
The video had only been posted less than half an hour ago, and the uploader was a complete newcomer, with the ID "ST002." There was only this one video in their space, and they had no followers yet.
But under the website's recommendation algorithm, this video had already achieved a terrifying popularity, with the view count rapidly approaching one hundred thousand.
Upon clicking on the video, the screen was immediately covered by the same barrage comment.
"Is there another expert?!"