Hong Kong films: From street thugs to Hong Kong financial tycoons

Chapter 118 Top Secret Distribution: The Black Monster Descends on the Mong Kok Arcade!

Hong Kong, early December.

After several cold rains, Hong Kong has fully entered a damp and cold winter. Pedestrians on the street are wrapped up in their trench coats and hurry through the concrete jungle.

However, at the Yaosheng Digital Industrial Manufacturing Base, located at the border of Shenzhen and the New Territories, a completely different scene unfolds.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

Inside the fully enclosed No. 4 giant factory building, hundreds of automated stamping production lines are roaring day and night at a near-frenzied pace.

After more than half a month of blueprint calculation and mold making, Yaosheng Technology's first physical interactive terminal, the "Primordial: King of Fighters" arcade game, has officially entered the crazy mass production stage.

Wearing a safety helmet, Chen Zheng stood on the metal walkway on the second floor, watching the arcade machines below, wrapped in black anti-static film and resembling futuristic space capsules, being assembled in a continuous stream. His heart was bleeding.

"Old Xu, how many units have we built in the past two weeks?"

Chen Zheng turned his head and looked at Chief Architect Lao Xu, who was also wearing a safety helmet but whose eyes were shining with fervor.

"Reporting to Mr. Chen, as of 8:00 AM this morning, the first batch of 100,000 units has all rolled off the production line and the underlying network module testing has been completed."

Old Xu pushed up his glasses, which had slipped down to the tip of his nose, and clutched a quality inspection report tightly in his hand.

"Following the boss's strict orders, these 100,000 machines all use the top-of-the-line aviation aluminum alloy joysticks, high-brightness flat-screen CRTs, and our exclusively developed force feedback micro-motors."

"The cost of each unit was artificially inflated to four thousand five hundred US dollars!"

"Four thousand five hundred US dollars, one hundred thousand units —"

Chen Zheng felt a sudden darkness before his eyes and almost fell off the walkway. That was a full 450 million US dollars, which is more than 3 billion Hong Kong dollars in real money.

Meanwhile, their own incredibly wealthy boss didn't even blink. With a stroke of his pen, he had the finance department approve the huge sum of money, enough to buy half of Hong Kong's commercial district.

The worst part is that Lin Yao actually said he would give away all the stuff that cost over 3 billion to build for free!

"We mere mortals can never fathom what the boss is thinking."

Chen Zheng shook his head with a wry smile and rubbed his wildly throbbing temples.

"Old Xu, has the logistics fleet been arranged?"

"All in position!"

Old Xu stood at attention, his expression becoming extremely serious.

"A thousand heavy trucks are already on standby outside. Starting tonight, these 100,000 Trojan horses will be quietly distributed to the most bustling arcades in major cities throughout Hong Kong, Asia, and even North America through secret channels we've already established!"

Chen Zheng took a deep breath of the air, which smelled of engine oil, and his eyes gradually sharpened.

For more than half a year, Lin Yao acted like an extremely patient super hunter, digging all the traps to their deepest depths.

The most perfect level.

Now, it's finally time to gradually lay out the bait.

"Pass on the boss's instructions!"

Chen Zheng gripped the railing with both hands, looking down at the massive industrial behemoth below, and gave his final command in a deep voice.

"Top secret distribution, officially begins! All machines must remain locked until Chinese New Year. I want to ignite a frenzy of the unknown among gamers worldwide this winter!"

Two days later, in Hong Kong, Mong Kok, on Portland Street.

This is the most diverse and down-to-earth place in Hong Kong, where countless shady transactions and places of pleasure are hidden beneath the flashing neon signs.

Golden Dragon Arcade is the largest and most popular arcade in Mong Kok.

The lobby was filled with a strong, mixed smell of cheap cigarettes, sweat, and inexpensive instant noodles.

Hundreds of arcade machines of various models flickered wildly, and extremely piercing electronic synthesized sounds and screams of game characters dying emanated from the speakers.

"Go! Hadouken! Get him!"

"Damn it, you stole another one of my coins!"

A group of thugs with dyed yellow hair and wearing ripped jeans, along with truant high school students, were huddled around several of the latest Japanese-imported fighting game consoles, frantically pounding on the buttons and cursing under their breath.

Fat B, the arcade owner, was sitting behind the cashier, his belly bulging like he was ten months pregnant, happily counting the huge pile of game tokens he had just exchanged that day.

"Heh heh, these bastards can play this crappy pixelated game with such enthusiasm. Capcom's machines may be expensive, but they recoup their costs really fast."

Fat B took a drag of his Marlboro cigarette, exhaled a smoke ring, and his face was shiny with oil.

In this era of extreme entertainment scarcity, opening a thriving arcade is practically like having a money-printing machine at home.

Just as Fat B was figuring out whether to get two more new Japanese machines at the end of the month.

"The greasy roller shutter door of the arcade was pushed open from the outside."

Three burly men in sharp black suits and sunglasses pushed in a hydraulic cart covered with a thick black waterproof tarpaulin, their faces expressionless.

The three men's attire and aura were completely out of place in this smoky, noisy arcade, like three Siberian wolves that had wandered into a flock of sheep.

The gangsters who had been shouting and yelling immediately shut up and made way for each other when they felt the pressure.

"Who are you looking for? Exchange your currency before playing games. If you're going to cause trouble, think twice before you go. This place is under the protection of Wo Shing!"

Although Fat B was taken aback, he was, after all, a man of the Mong Kok trade, so he put on a brave face and stood up to shout loudly.

The leader of the men in black took off his sunglasses, revealing a pair of extremely sharp eyes. He ignored Fat B's bluff and directly took out a business card from his pocket and gently placed it on the cashier's counter.

"Yaosheng Technology, Channel Development Department"

The man in black spoke calmly and coldly, with an unquestionable, businesslike tone.

"Boss B, right? Our company has taken a liking to your customer traffic and would like to place a newly developed game testing machine here for free."

"Free deployment?"

Fat B paused for a moment, then chuckled as if he had heard the biggest joke in the world.

"Brother, do you think I run a charity? My Golden Dragon Arcade is prime real estate. Even a trash can there can fetch tens of dollars in rent every day."

"You're some unknown tech company, trying to take over my territory with some crappy machine?"

Fat B flicked his cigarette ash and glanced disdainfully at the hydraulic truck covered with a black cloth.

"The arcade market is completely dominated by Japanese machines. The crappy games made in Hong Kong have graphics that are rougher than pixelated images and feel like piles of shit. Who would play them? Get them out of here and stop interfering with my business!"

Fat B's attitude was extremely arrogant, which was not surprising. In the arcade scene of that era, Japanese games were absolutely godlike, and anyone who dared to challenge the god's status would only be humiliated.

Faced with Fat B's mockery, the leader of the men in black neither got angry nor turned to leave.

"Boss B, don't make promises you can't keep."

The man in black extended a finger and tapped it lightly twice on the cash register.

"Our boss said that the machine is free for you, and you don't need to pay a single penny of deposit. Before the first day of the Lunar New Year, the machine will not be turned on and will just be a decoration."

"After the machine is turned on on the first day of the Lunar New Year, the revenue from players' coin insertions will be automatically settled by the machine's built-in network module. Yaosheng will take 70%, and you will take 30%."

"Are you crazy or am I?!"

Fat B jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, spitting almost onto the man in black's face.

"70/30 split? Why don't you just rob someone? The Japanese machines may be expensive, but once I buy them, all the profits are mine."

"You dare to ask for 70% profit with a piece of junk? Do you think what you produce is gold?!"

"Whether it's gold or not, you'll know for yourself once you plug it in."

The man in black didn't waste any words with Fatty B. He turned around and snapped his fingers at his two henchmen behind him.

"Whoosh!"

As the black waterproof tarpaulin was suddenly ripped open, the entire noisy arcade seemed to be paused in that instant.

Everyone's attention was completely drawn to this enormous machine that had suddenly been exposed to the air.

"What the hell is this?!"

The half-eaten Marlboro in Fatty B's hand fell onto the back of his foot, burning him and making him shudder, but he seemed completely oblivious to the pain, staring blankly at the machine in front of him.

The all-black brushed metal casing, the sharp, aerodynamic sci-fi lines, the exaggeratedly flat display screen, and the aviation-grade aluminum alloy joystick that gleams with a cold luster in the dim light.

Standing among those peeling, rough-hewn wooden arcade machines, this machine looked like a fighter jet parked in a pile of tractors.

The sheer visual impact of the futuristic industrial design caused all the gangsters and students present to gasp in astonishment.

"Push it to the very center, the C position, and take down that broken Japanese mech."

The leader of the men in black gave the order in a calm tone.

Fat B was so stunned by the machine's imposing appearance that he forgot to stop it.

They could only watch helplessly as the man in black forcibly pushed aside the Japanese arcade machine that was originally the most popular, and firmly placed this black Cyber ​​Monster in the most conspicuous position in the entire arcade.

"Plug it in and run a self-test program to let Boss B have a look. Otherwise, he'll accuse us of taking advantage of him."

The man in black gave a cold laugh.

Power is on.

"There was no harsh electrical hum like in a cheap speaker, only an extremely deep rumble that seemed to come from the depths of the earth, which swept across the entire hall instantly through the built-in miniature subwoofer."

The vibration made Fatty B feel his heart clench violently.

Immediately afterwards, the expensive flat-screen display lit up, without any mosaic or jagged pixels.

On the screen, an extremely realistic, semi-transparent sonic boom cloud with distorted light and shadow exploded.

At the center of that sonic boom cloud, Erlang Shen Yang Jian, who had shocked four million computer users worldwide half a month ago, stood proudly atop the rolling thunderclouds, wielding his three-pointed double-edged sword, in a posture that defied gravity yet perfectly conformed to physics.

"My God—"

A blond-haired boy who was playing Street Fighter suddenly let go of the joystick, his mouth agape, staring blankly at the screen.

"Is this...is this a movie? The picture quality is amazing—you can see every single hair!"

The hall was deathly silent. Erlang Shen on the screen only stayed for ten seconds, performing an extremely powerful set of Bajiquan before the screen went dark.

Instead, a bright red countdown timer and a line of extremely arrogant characters appeared:

[Primordial Era: King of Fighters, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, I'll teach you what real fighting is.]

[54 days until unlocking and powering on.]

The self-test process ended, the screen locked, and only the countdown timer remained, silently ticking.

The man in black turned around and looked at the fat boss, who was completely petrified and whose back was soaked with cold sweat.

"The machine is here. If you think it's taking up space, you can have someone throw it out anytime."

The man in black put on sunglasses, a mocking smile curving his lips.

"However, I'd like to offer you a friendly reminder: on the first day of the Lunar New Year, if your shop doesn't have this machine, then all the customers on your street will be sucked away by others."

"Your arcade, the largest in Mong Kok, will become a garbage dump that no one visits within a day."

"This 30% profit is a reward from Boss Lin for giving you this space. Don't be ungrateful."

After saying that, the three men in black walked out of the arcade without looking back, leaving behind only the ticking red countdown timer, like a time bomb that could detonate a nuclear bomb in the arcade world at any moment, deeply engraved in the retinas of Fat B and all the players present.