Chapter 6: Money-Making Game Bug

"Done!"

"What's done?" Weng Jilin asked quickly.

Ever since they had returned to the main city in-game, he had been watching Chen Ye for nearly half an hour. Even though he recognized the English letters on the screen, he found himself completely unable to understand them once they were strung together.

Chen Ye smiled faintly. "Our startup capital of tens of thousands of yuan—it's done!"

"Startup capital? Tens of thousands? Just from the last half hour?" Weng Jilin asked, finding it hard to believe. However, Chen Ye had never been the type to talk nonsense, which only piqued his curiosity further.

"Pretty much. Now we just wait for the money to hit the account," Chen Ye replied with a low chuckle. Everyone loved to show off a little. He was just a normal guy, and as long as the situation allowed it, a mild flex was perfectly harmless.

Weng Jilin, however, was genuinely shocked. He immediately cried out, "Holy shit, tens of thousands?!"

His shout caught the attention of several classmates who were teaming up for a dungeon run nearby. They all looked over and asked, "What tens of thousands?"

"What's up, did a rare item drop?"

Realizing he had gotten too excited and might draw unwanted attention to Chen Ye, Weng Jilin quickly covered for him. "My dad said if I get into a top-tier university, he'll give me a reward of tens of thousands."

At those words, the curiosity vanished from the others' faces, instantly replaced by disinterest.

"So you basically have nothing."

"If you know you can't get it, what's there to yell about? You'd be better off opening more jars to try and get some Legacy gear. At least you could sell that for some cash."

"You think Legacy gear is that easy to pull? I haven't seen a single piece yet!" Weng Jilin retorted.

Nevertheless, this successfully changed the subject. One of the male classmates couldn't help but add, "It's not like you're short on cash. Just buy a piece to show off. The server just launched! A good piece goes for a few hundred yuan!"

Back in 2008, a few hundred yuan was no small sum. Many college students lived on a monthly allowance of just five or six hundred, making it entirely unaffordable for high schoolers. For someone like Weng Jilin, however, he could still manage to buy one if he gritted his teeth and splurged.

But to Chen Ye's ears, their noisy banter sounded like something else entirely—the sound of hard cash rolling into his account!

Due to his limited means in the past, he hadn't played many video games even after going to college. A time-consuming, money-draining game like this dungeon crawler was something he would have never touched. But just because he hadn't played it didn't mean he was clueless. After all, his best friend Weng Jilin was an avid player.

Back then, after their exam results came out, Chen Ye had used the scholarship money awarded by his village to buy a phone, finally allowing him to log into QQ on mobile. Around that time, Weng Jilin had talked his ear off on more than one occasion about a specific bug from the game's launch period. Though he couldn't remember the exact details of how the bug appeared or operated, hearing their conversation and seeing the game on Weng Jilin's screen had suddenly jogged his memory.

They could exploit a glitch with the jar merchants to farm Legacy equipment, then sell it all for real money!

Back in the day, opening a pocket jar cost about one or two yuan. However, the drop rate for Legacy gear was abysmal. A player would have to go through dozens, if not hundreds, of jars, and even then, there was no guarantee they would get a high-level piece or the specific item they wanted. But this particular bug drastically increased the chances of pulling Legacy equipment. At the time, server-wide announcements of players pulling Legacy items had spammed the chat.

These jars could even drop the much rarer Pink Artifacts, which were naturally worth a lot more, though their drop rates were correspondingly lower.

The bug only lasted for a few days before Penguin Company issued an emergency patch. However, if he exploited it properly, he could at least make a tidy sum before the developers fixed it. But he couldn't get too greedy. If Penguin decided to pursue legal action, he wouldn't be able to handle the consequences. In his previous life, he remembered a player who had abused a different bug to make over a hundred thousand yuan, only to be promptly thrown in jail.

Having made up his mind, Chen Ye turned his gaze back to his best friend. To earn his very first bucket of gold, he was really going to have to rely on his buddy.

Half an hour later, inside the unlicensed internet cafe on the second floor of the convenience store.

Weng Jilin watched Chen Ye's flurry of inputs, his jaw dropping wide open. He watched helplessly as piece after piece of Legacy equipment flooded into the inventory. Slowly, his entire field of vision was overtaken by the purple and pink text of rare items. Meanwhile, Chen Ye's movements grew increasingly practiced and rapid.

Before long, they had run out of jars. The in-game gold they had just bought from the classmates sitting nearby was completely depleted, and his inventory was nearly bursting at the seams.

Weng Jilin deliberately shifted his body to block the line of sight of the classmate sitting to his left. Since there was a wall to Chen Ye's right, no one else had any idea what the two of them were doing. Furthermore, Weng Jilin's game account was logged in on Chen Ye's computer.

Swallowing hard, he leaned over and whispered to his best friend, who had finally stopped typing. "Chen Ye, h-how did you know about this bug?"

"Someone told me." Chen Ye cracked his knuckles and stretched his arms, instantly cutting off Weng Jilin's next question. "Don't ask who told me. You know I'm a man who always keeps his promises."

"R-right! I know you are!" Weng Jilin nodded repeatedly, but he still couldn't tear his eyes away from the inventory full of top-tier gear. After admiring the haul for a good while, he turned to Chen Ye. He glanced back over his shoulder to make sure no one was looking their way before asking cautiously, "Bro, isn't this illegal?"

"As long as we don't overdo it, it's not illegal. At worst, the account gets banned," Chen Ye replied with a smile.

"That's fine then! I've only been playing on this account for two or three days anyway!" Weng Jilin looked entirely unbothered. Right now, his main concern was figuring out exactly how much this bag of loot was worth.

Based on the current market rates, a decent piece of Level 40 to 50 Legacy gear was worth three to four hundred yuan. Even a lesser Level 30 to 40 piece could easily fetch a little over a hundred. A rough estimate of this single inventory meant they were sitting on nearly ten thousand yuan! And that wasn't even counting the Flowing Light Meteorite Blade, which was worth close to two thousand on its own! If he factored that in, the total easily broke the ten-thousand mark!

Chen Ye was truly a badass!

"Are you itching to show this off to everyone?" Seeing Weng Jilin looking so restless and eager, Chen Ye minimized the game window, turned to him, and asked with a grin.

"How did you know?" Weng Jilin asked in shock.

"What don't I know about you? I even know you have a little birthmark right on your butt cheek." Chen Ye reached out and gave Weng Jilin's rear a playful slap.

Weng Jilin was genuinely dumbfounded this time. Only the direct elders in his family knew about that birthmark. How on earth did Chen Ye know about it?! Could it be that Chen Ye was his long-lost brother from another mother and father?!

However, his main focus right now wasn't on his birthmark, but rather the tens of thousands of yuan worth of gear sitting in his digital bag. His family might be rich, but that didn't mean *he* was rich. He usually only carried a few dozen yuan in pocket money. He had never seen a sum like ten thousand before! Let alone ten thousand yuan sitting directly in his own inventory!

"I won't show off. I definitely won't flex! I know that if I show off, someone will definitely report me, and this bug won't survive for more than a few days anyway. We need to sell the gear immediately! Am I right?" Weng Jilin kept his voice low, but the excitement was visibly written all over his somewhat handsome face.

Before exploiting the glitch, Chen Ye had already discussed the plan with him. They would use Weng Jilin's account and principal capital for the trial run. If it yielded anything, they would split the profits fifty-fifty.

After a few test runs, Chen Ye successfully spawned his first piece of Legacy gear. Absolutely blown away, Weng Jilin had immediately bought up all the in-game gold from the classmates who had come to the internet cafe to play Dropped City with them. Now, his few hundred yuan in cash had been transformed into an entire inventory full of top-tier gear. If they sold it all, he would have effectively turned five hundred into five thousand—a tenfold profit!

Chen Ye was slightly surprised by Weng Jilin's composure and clear-headedness, though he felt mostly gratified. With a buddy who had both financial backing and a good head on his shoulders, combined with the memories he had brought back from his previous life, how could he possibly fail to make money?

For a brief moment, he even debated whether he should abandon his plan of marrying into Jiang Xin's money and just comfortably ride his buddy's coattails instead. Making a living with his best friend wasn't a bad way to go at all. But on second thought, he decided he wanted the best of both worlds.

Before his reincarnation in his past life, he truly hadn't realized he had such a reliable brother at this stage in his life, which was why he had only focused on securing a rich girlfriend. But looking at it now, he could grab one with each hand—he wanted it all!

"It's good that you understand. I haven't played this game, so I don't know any resellers. If you have connections, contact them now. We need to sell this bag of gear as quickly as possible. Otherwise, the moment your account gets banned, the few hundred yuan you invested will go right down the drain," Chen Ye instructed clearly.

"Don't worry, I'll look for someone right now!" Weng Jilin nodded vigorously. He turned back around, sat down, and opened up QQ and various forums to start hunting for Dropped City resellers.

Because his family was well-off, he had gotten a phone and a computer at an early age, allowing him to gain exposure to these things much sooner. The other kids who came out to the internet cafe to play games were genuinely just there to play games.

"Make sure you do the trade offline in person if possible. When the time comes, remember to call and let me know. I'll go with you," Chen Ye added another word of caution. "And make sure you use a burner account to contact them."

He needed to ensure they made this quick cash without a single hitch. And aside from this initial sum, he intended to use this short-lived bug to make another fortune. He was going to wring every last drop of value out of this glitch without breaking the law.

"Don't worry, man, I'll definitely call you!" Weng Jilin nodded, then went back to tinkering with the forums. Tomorrow noon at the very latest—that was the strict time limit he had set for himself.