Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 167: Chapter 165: What? I’ve been robbed?!

Translator: 549690339

Many people think that the major decisions we make are carefully considered.

Actually, it’s not. Most of the time, the ones that can be carefully considered are just some minor, unimportant matters.

Truly significant choices are often made in haste and chance.

At this moment, Ma Lian’s mind was filled with resentment towards Lincoln and Cloud Dream. He was already full of anger and planned to cause havoc at the Cloud Dream Experience Store and smash the consoles.

Now, impulsively, he put on a hat and a mask, wrapped himself tightly, and walked towards the people who were carrying the console without thinking.

The lookout among those people quickly noticed Ma Lian, but they didn’t dare to make a sound. They could only stare at Ma Lian with fierce eyes, trying to scare him away.

But a newborn calf doesn’t fear the tiger, let alone a hot-blooded calf!

Ma Lian squeezed in directly, didn’t try to grab the packaging boxes from others, but stretched out his arm and pulled another console out of the storage room.

Seeing Ma Lian’s actions, the group shrugged their shoulders, showing no intention to stop him, just watching Ma Lian holding the console and running out quickly through the fire door.

“Hurry up, if one person notices, there might be a second one, hurry up!”

The last few people quickly picked up the consoles, and the person who was sweeping the tail even thoughtfully locked the door again before retreating quickly.

The fire door closed tightly again.

From someone rushing out to smash the console in protest to everyone evacuating with the fire door closed again, the whole process took – 2 minutes and 17 seconds!

Those who led the rhythm in the crowd quietly retreated, disappearing without a sound behind the onlooking crowd.

Only the two protestors still held the consoles and kept shouting, completely unaware of what had just happened in those few minutes.

Nor did they know what they were going to face.

Ma Lian’s heart raced as he held the console, having no time to care who these people were, he couldn’t even count how many of them there were.

As soon as he left the Experience Store, he lowered his head and walked away quickly.

His unexpected companion outside didn’t realize an extra person was there.

They saw Ma Lian turn around and walk away, realizing something was wrong. They raised their hand to stop Ma Lian, but the next person coming out stopped them.

“Don’t worry about him, he’s not important, get in the car quickly, watch the time!”

One car after another started quickly, merging into the traffic and heading in different directions, quickly becoming indistinguishable.

By the time the police arrived, detained the two still causing trouble, and persuaded tnem to put down tne console and return to tne station tor education,

The two didn’t say anything, just obediently put down the consoles and followed the police away.

With no excitement to watch, the crowd dispersed.

The employees of the Experience Store carefully checked the two Mirage consoles and found them undamaged, not even a scratch, finally breathing a sigh of relief.

They put the two consoles back in their original rooms and returned to their positions.

They were relieved that it was just a small accident that didn’t cause any loss. Otherwise, they might have been criticized by the store manager the next day.

At Lincoln’s home, Mavis, curiously noticed the surveillance data from the Experience Store had a brief delay. However, because the duration was too short, only a few seconds, and she had to focus on assisting Lincoln in his research, she didn’t have the time to care about it and threw it to the back of her mind.

With Mavis’s full assistance, Lincoln’s performance after wearing the headband was unmatchable by mass-produced focus headbands. His thinking, memory, association, and creativity were all enhanced in all aspects!

His research efficiency was visibly improved by several times.

In just one day, he developed two ideas for large-scale neural modems. Now, he was working on one of them.

The next day, Liang Tian, who had a rare evening off, came to work at the Cloud Dream Experience Store again.

As he habitually inspected every corner of the store, checking the hygiene and layout, and casually inspecting the spare consoles in the storage room, he was shocked to find that only less than one-third of the spare consoles were left in the storage room!

With great shock and confusion, he hurriedly counted, discovering that out of the 25 consoles originally stored here, only 8 remained.

In other words, a total of 17 consoles had vanished without a trace!

Liang Tian immediately felt his blood rushing to his head, both shocked and angry!

He walked out of the storage room and shouted, “Everyone! Gather! Now!”

Half an hour later, Lincoln, who had just woken up and was still a bit drowsy, received a call from Liang Tian.

“What are you saying? The consoles were stolen?” Lincoln didn’t pay much attention, “How many were stolen?”

‘What the hell? 17 consoles?!” Lincoln’s drowsiness instantly vanished, “Are you sure they were lost last night?”

“Oh, so you check them every morning. Then who could steal 17 consoles all at once without anyone noticing?”

“There’s nothing on the surveillance, and the locks on the front, back, and storage room doors are all fine?”

As Lincoln spoke, he glanced at the tablet on the bedside table. Mavis was sitting on the desktop, hugging her pink head, and looking troubled, with a cluttered mess of lines floating above her head representing her frustrations.

Lincoln covered the microphone of his phone, comforting Mavis, “It’s alright, Mavis, don’t be upset, it’s not your fault for not noticing.”

Mavis looked up pitifully at Lincoln.

Lincoln released his hand and said to Liang Tian, “So, either there’s a thieving team made up of both lock-picking masters and elite hackers…”

Lincoln hesitated as he said this but ultimately continued, “Or there’s an inside accomplice in the store.”

“Let’s call the police first.” Lincoln hung up after saying this. “Master…” Mavis still looked pitiful, “It might not be that way…”

Lincoln shook his head, “You don’t need to comfort me.”

“No, it’s not,” Mavis shook her head too, “Mavis means, it might be both cases at the same time…”

Lincoln was choked by Mavis’s reply, laughed out of anger, and extended his finger towards Mavis, “thump,” flicking the glass on the tablet.

“Owl” In the screen, Mavis tilted her head back and sat down on her bottom, rubbing her forehead with one hand in aggrieved pain.

Lincoln’s mood instantly turned sunny, so he turned the camera away and started getting dressed out of bed.

By the time Lincoln left the house, Yue Pengju was already waiting for him. He reassured Lincoln, “Don’t worry, the security team has arrived. They should be able to find clues soon.”

“Huh?” Lincoln was very surprised, “You also manage the security of the Experience Store?”

“Of course not, ” Yue Pengju denied immediately. “If our people were responsible, this kind of accident would never happen. We only needed to assess the possible impact of this incident and whether it would pose a potential threat to your safety. So we intervened, and solving the case is just incidental.”

Lincoln didn’t care, “It must be a group of people trying to make money, I don’t see how it would affect me.”

Yue Pengju looked at Lincoln with a strange expression, “We can’t be sure it’s a coincidence. Soon the focus headbands will be widely launched, and dealing with spies will probably become the security team’s daily job, no matter if they are commercial spies or any other kind of spies.”

Lincoln suddenly thought of something, his eyes widened, staring blankly at Yue Pengju, “Am I already unable to leave the country?”

The world is so big, I haven’t even seen it yet!

I can choose not to be interested and not visit, but I can’t lose this freedom because of someone else’s threat!