Chapter 132 1 to 1

Chapter 132 One to One

"Hey, Mr. Chen's got quite a temper. What's wrong, did the cabbage get infested with worms?" Wu Tao walked around the broken pieces of porcelain on the ground and went to Chen Yizhou's desk.

Chen Yizhou looked up, his voice hoarse: "What brings you here, Mr. Wu?"

Wu Tao didn't reply, but pulled the folder from under his arm and tossed it lightly in front of Chen Yizhou.

"Mr. Chen, stop focusing on farming and look at the sky outside." Wu Tao pulled up a chair, crossed his legs, and said, "Qihang Technology has updated all its systems this morning. QQ groups, QQ email, video chat, QQ Show, QQ membership, and even a parking space grabbing feature."

Chen Yizhou didn't even look at the things Wu Tao brought; Wang Xiaochuan had already told him about these things.

Seeing that he didn't speak, Wu Tao picked up the report and began to announce it over the office like a mantra: "As of 10 a.m., the number of online users on our 5Q campus network has dropped below four digits. This includes fifty test accounts from our own department that were left logged in."

"Wu Tao, are you deliberately trying to make a fool of me?!" Chen Yizhou slammed his hands on the table and stood up abruptly.

"Mr. Chen, you're too kind," Wu Tao said with a smile, without even changing his posture. "I'm here to give you some good news. The more than two million college students you attracted by spending over ten million RMB on red envelopes are now all playing 'parking space grabbing' on HaiNei.com. They're using Sohu's money to recharge Bai Yuhang's account and buy him virtual sports cars and fertilizer. Mr. Chen's 'borrowing arrows with straw boats' strategy not only lent out the arrows but also gave them the boats. Brilliant, truly brilliant."

Wang Xiaochuan, sitting next to him, kept his head bowed low, wishing he could disappear under the keyboard. Old Zhao knew who Wu Tao was, and, holding his goji berry cup, barely dared to breathe.

Chen Yizhou's chest heaved violently as he pointed at Wu Tao's nose: "If you hadn't crammed a bunch of broken machines and a bunch of useless people into my Crazy Vegetable Garden, it would have been online long ago! Would Bai Yuhang even have a chance to catch his breath?"

"Come on, Mr. Chen." Wu Tao's smile vanished, his eyes turning cold and sharp. "The system that Qihang launched at midnight has an underlying logic and technical level that leaves you guys in the dust. Even if I gave you all the servers for the main site, could your few lousy cabbages stand a chance against their real-time group chat and video chat? Your so-called pure social networking is nothing but a fart compared to their product."

Wu Tao stood up and straightened the hem of his suit jacket.

"Teacher Zhang is waiting for you on the top floor." Wu Tao patted Chen Yizhou on the shoulder, his tone laced with undisguised mockery. "Millions of dollars in ammunition, and it didn't even break through Qihang's shield. The Wall Street roadshow is about to begin. Mr. Chen, you'd better think about how to explain to Teacher Zhang how Sohu spent money to be Qihang Technology's cash cow."

Wu Tao's figure, humming a little tune, disappeared outside the door. The office area was silent, and most people stopped what they were doing and stared at Chen Yizhou.

Chen Yizhou slumped into a chair, staring at the horribly precipitous drop in daily active users on the screen. His chest heaved violently. Then he saw Lao Zhao next to him, who was still nonchalantly using drawing software to cut out images. Suddenly, everything went black.

The dream of Zhongguancun's most dazzling internet tycoon shattered into nothingness at this moment.

"President Chen." Wang Xiaochuan stood to the side, looking at Chen Yizhou's appearance, hesitant to speak.

Chen Yizhou abruptly raised his head, his eyes bloodshot, like a gambler who had lost everything. "Go online! Now, immediately, put Crazy Vegetable Garden on the homepage!"

Wang Xiaochuan was stunned, thinking he had misheard. "President Chen, some of the graphic designers haven't finished their work, and the high-concurrency tests haven't even been run. If we force it to go live now, let alone 10,000 users, even if 1,000 people click the mouse at the same time, I'm afraid our service might crash directly."

"If this continues, do you think we'll still have a thousand users?" Chen Yizhou gritted his teeth, his voice forced out. "Our daily active users have dropped below four digits! Even a system outage would be better than this half-dead state! Get the framework up and running first, let President Zhang see what's there!"

Old Zhao, sitting at the next workstation, stopped scrolling and timidly raised his hand. "President Chen, I've only peeled half of the cabbage leaves, and the watchdog of HaiNei.com, its fur hasn't been changed to black yet, and its grinning expression is still—"

"Change it my ass!" Chen Yizhou slammed his hand on the table, making Old Zhao's goji berry cup shake. "Just use the original image! If the dog hair is yellow, it's yellow; if it's baring its teeth, it's baring its teeth! Just paste it up exactly as it is, one-to-one!"

Wang Xiaochuan's brows furrowed deeply. "President Chen, this is a pure pixel-perfect copy. They didn't even have time to change the UI or the copy. If Qihang Technology finds out, we'll likely face serious legal trouble."

"Trouble? Does Sohu have a legal department just for show?" Chen Yizhou loosened his tie. "You remember this: as long as we can get the users back from HaiNei.com, even if we get sued, that's a problem for later! Saving the website is the priority right now!"

He stood up, hastily straightened his wrinkled suit jacket, and his eyes revealed a ruthless determination.

"I'm going upstairs to see General Manager Zhang right now. I'm making this clear: when I come down, Crazy Vegetable Garden must be prominently featured on the homepage of 5Q Campus Network!" Chen Yizhou pointed at Wang Xiaochuan and Lao Zhao. "If anything goes wrong, I, Chen Yizhou, will take full responsibility! If you can't deliver, you two are fired today!"

After saying that, Chen Yizhou strode out of the office area, his leather shoes making a dull thud on the floor, and headed straight for the elevator.

The office area fell silent again.

Old Zhao picked up his goji berry cup, took a slow sip, smacked his lips, and turned to look at Wang Xiaochuan.

"Mr. Wang, we've all become useless. Are we even going to continue writing this code?"

Wang Xiaochuan looked at the messy, unfinished product on the screen, then glanced at the direction Chen Yizhou had disappeared in, and rubbed his temples in exasperation.

"What's the point of writing anymore? There's no time left." The usually refined Wang Xiaochuan suddenly swore. At this point, he had no choice but to pull out a chair and sit down. "Didn't he want it to be exactly as it is? Just rip all the materials from HaiNei.com and upload them. If the server crashes, it's his problem. Anyway, the vice president will take care of it if the sky falls. Once it's done, just put it online."

Upon hearing this, Old Zhao happily put down his cup.

"Alright, I'm good at this. Copying and pasting won't strain my neck."

Old Zhao gripped the mouse, skillfully clicked the screenshot button on the HaiNei.com page, and then selected "Paste" to save it in the drawing software.

The seasoned veterans nearby, who were very obedient and perceptive, all stopped their pretentious typing on the keyboard and came over to watch.

"Mr. Wang, the picture of this dog is saved with a background. When we put it on our webpage, there will be a white border. Is that okay?"

"Old Zhao pointed at the screen."

Wang Xiaochuan turned his head to take a look and instantly felt his blood pressure rush to his head.

On Lao Zhao's screen was a guard dog that had been taken from HaiNei.com exactly as it was. Because it wasn't cleaned properly, there was a conspicuous white border around the dog's body. Putting it against the background of a green vegetable garden, it looked extremely out of place.

"President Chen said, one to one, exactly as it was." Wang Xiaochuan leaned against the partition and said weakly, his tone revealing a numb sense of resignation. "White edges are fine, just consider this dog blessed with Buddha's light."

Old Zhao wrinkled his nose and nodded in deep agreement: "That makes sense. May the Buddha's light shine upon us and protect our server room machines so they don't crash too soon."