Zhuo Ge's toy store was busier than ever these days.
Thanks to Blazing Yoyo King being free to publish and repost without licensing fees, the only places that didn't carry the comic now were the few "serious" newspapers.
The comic even gave rise to a wave of fan creations, sparking the start of a long-form comic boom.
Starving artists, caught in a frenzy of competition, began innovating their drawing techniques, and even the concept of storyboarding was starting to take shape.
The artist behind Blazing Yoyo King even put up a sign outside the shop reading: "Representative Work: Blazing Yoyo King."
As the comic's popularity spread, the age range of yoyo players became more diverse.
At first it was just kids dragging their parents in. Later, teens showed up. Then people in their twenties.
There were even some parents who claimed they were buying for their kids—but were clearly the ones obsessed with playing. This type usually strutted in, loudly announcing things like:
"Our kid wants the Speed Demon yoyo."
Totally understandable. In this world, toys were still seen as things only children should enjoy. Adults were expected to have "more serious" concerns—simple joys weren't allowed.
"Wow, baby, you're walking already! What reward do you want from Daddy?"
"Oh? A yoyo? You like the Speed Demon? Red or blue?"
"Both? Well, just this once…"
Zhuo Ge watched a man pushing a stroller deliver this smooth little skit.
Bro… isn't that a bit much?
The Speed Demon's huge. You telling me your under-two toddler can hold that thing?
Zhuo Ge rolled onto his back. He hadn't even done much recently, but still felt mentally exhausted.
That's just how it is being the boss. Employees can pour their hearts into work, follow orders, and sell with a smile—but the boss has to think about everything else.
Like, for instance, what's for dinner.
He couldn't say this world lacked good food. After all, he'd survived years on raw meat. His dragon stomach could digest pretty much anything.
But still. Something was missing.
Ahhh—
He really missed Chinese food.
Sweet and sour pork, candied milk tofu, braised pork knuckle… heck, even a big bowl of spicy hot pot would do.
No! Stop thinking about it—any more and the tears would start leaking out his mouth.
Use magic. Learn something. Distract from the hunger.
Earth, water, fire, wind. The four basic elements. Primary elemental formations… elemental arrangement rules…
Wait a minute!
Hunger brought clarity. Zhuo Ge suddenly realized—magic was basically a base-4 language.
Different types of magic used different instruction set architectures. The various magical "schools" that branched from them? Basically different kinds of high-level programming languages.
No wonder every school kept screaming that they were "number one in the world."
They weren't mages—they were coding nerds!
In his past life, Zhuo Ge had been a game developer—the kind players cursed daily. But he actually had a background in engineering.
Not computer science, but he had studied programming. Knew a thing or two about microcontrollers.
Suddenly, magic lost its air of mystery. It felt… familiar.
And thanks to his dragon memory—almost photographic—he could read base-4 strings like they were plain text.
After reading through the original "divine scripts" used by major godly systems (basically their instruction sets), he came away with two big questions:
First, why was modern magic so limited in scope? Surely its potential was much greater. It couldn't just be because the locals lacked imagination, right?
Second, why wasn't there anything like an Internet—or a magic-net?
In this world, magic was hard to learn because everyone's spell models were personal and non-transferable.
If a student wanted to learn a new spell, their teacher couldn't just copy over a prebuilt model—they had to build one from scratch themselves.
And once you built a model, you could cast the spell freely.
So essentially, every magical "programmer" in this world was reinventing the wheel—every single time.
And not just any wheel. One they had to carve by hand, with no code editor or syntax checker.
How inefficient was that?!
It was like…
Zhuo Ge had a thought that terrified even a dragon.
Something was suppressing the development of magic in this world.
"All right, little friends and big friends! Zhuo Ge's Toy Store is closed for the day. Come back tomorrow, okay?"
Aisha's voice snapped him out of his thoughts.
Forget it. He'd shelve that mystery for now.
Instead, he wanted to try building some spells of his own—and he'd need Aisha's help.
Sure, he could read divine runes, but that didn't mean he could use them to build functioning spell models.
Writing in machine code wasn't the same as writing in a high-level language.
The latter was like cooking in a modern kitchen.
The former? Still cooking—but first you had to start a fire by rubbing sticks and smelt your own cookware from raw ore.
So he'd need Aisha's school's "high-level magic scripts."
As for creating his own magical language from scratch… that was a math problem. And math? You either knew it, or you didn't. No forcing it.
After locking up, Aisha slumped into a chair like a deflated balloon.
Selling stuff was tiring. Selling to kids? Soul-crushing.
"Can you show me the runes your school uses?" Zhuo Ge leaned over.
"Huh?" Aisha sat up with great difficulty.
"I want to try magic."
"What?" A red alert went off in Aisha's brain. Oh no. Was he about to realize her minor illusion tricks weren't worth the 25 silver she was getting every month?
"I'll give you a raise—match tuition at a magic academy."
Red alert canceled. Excellent Employee Mode: Activated!
As it turned out, Zhuo Ge really did have talent. In a few hours—plus a dinner break—he'd mastered the basics of illusion magic runes.
They had steak. It was… fine. But no match for a good beef stew with potatoes.
First-rate city, huh? Not a single spice worth mentioning—no star anise, no bay leaves, no cinnamon. Not even decent substitutes.
Zhuo Ge drafted his first spell model.
"Can you check if this looks right?"
With no editor to highlight errors, the only option was manual debugging.
"Technically it's fine," Aisha said, "but you won't be able to cast it."
"What do you mean?"
"You can't channel mana that way. I don't think dragons can either. At least, I've never heard of it."
Zhuo Ge understood. Magic wasn't just a software issue—it had a hardware component too: the caster's body. That explained the limitations in magical effects.
"Is there a way to run a spell model, without needing a caster? Like, a virtual environment where the spell doesn't do anything in real life?"
He wasn't sure if Aisha would even understand what he meant by "virtual."
"Of course!" she answered without missing a beat. "Illusion mimicking. You can use illusions to simulate the effect of a spell model—it won't do anything real, but you can see it. Most people don't bother, though."
"Seeing is good enough!"
Zhuo Ge felt like he'd just found the key to a new era.
Aisha quickly created an illusion based on his draft.
A line of text floated in the air.
"Hello, world."
"What's that?" Aisha asked curiously.
"That," Zhuo Ge said, "is the future."
For the first time since arriving in this world, Zhuo Ge was genuinely excited.
"But… why does it say 'Hello, world'?"
"Because," he grinned, "it's the most ceremonial way to begin."