The richest man started taking advantage of loopholes after joining Alibaba.

Wuhan, Optics Valley Software Park, Douyu Live Headquarters.

The air in the command center became thick and sticky.

Ten minutes ago, the place was filled with cheers like champagne being popped, and everyone's face was glowing with the "record-breaking traffic" effect.

Now, that red light has changed.

The real-time monitoring curve on the big screen is no longer a parabola symbolizing wealth, but a nearly vertical red sword.

"Concurrency has exceeded 60 million."

Operations Director Lao Liu stared intently at the red line, his eyes bloodshot.

"It's still rising, with 200,000 new cases every second."

Chen Shaojie stood in the center of the command platform.

The air conditioner was blowing cold air directly at his head, but he felt a cold snake crawling on his back.

That's the sensation of sweat flowing down my spine.

"What about Tencent Cloud's capacity expansion?"

He didn't turn around, staring at the damn number on the screen—68,000,000.

"It's still going through the process."

"What the hell with all the procedures!" Chen Shaojie whirled around, the Evian water bottle in his hand cracking loudly. "Call that vice president surnamed Zhang! Tell him I need the bandwidth right now! Even if you have to shut down their Shenzhen headquarters' office network, you have to switch the traffic to me!"

"Playing..."

Before Lao Liu could finish speaking, a rack-mounted server in the corner of the hall suddenly emitted a sharp beep.

drop----

The sound was like some kind of signal.

Then came the second and third sounds.

The server room, which was originally filled with only low-frequency buzzing sounds, has now turned into a swarm of cicadas chirping incessantly.

That was an overheating alarm, a wail of the CPU core temperature exceeding 95 degrees Celsius.

"The packet loss rate has increased!"

A young engineer jumped up from his workstation, his fingers trembling as he pointed at the split-screen monitor.

"Guangzhou node packet loss rate 40%... Shanghai node 60%... Beijing node... all in the red!"

On the screen, the originally green node indicator lights turned red one after another, as if they had been infected with a plague.

Chen Shaojie rushed to the control panel.

The originally smooth live stream footage—the footage of the all-Chinese RNG team gathering in the mid lane—froze.

In the very center of the image, the blind monk's roundhouse kick had just begun when it froze into a comical sculpture.

Immediately afterwards, the color blocks began to collapse, green mosaics devoured the hero's face, and the audio turned into a bizarre "sizzling" sound.

"Switch to the backup line!" Chen Shaojie roared, his voice cracking.

"I can't connect!" Old Liu slammed his fist on the keyboard in despair, the Enter key flying out of his hand. "The backbone network is completely blocked! It's like cramming ten thousand tanks onto the Second Ring Road during rush hour; the physical network is saturated!"

Physical link saturation.

These six words struck Chen Shaojie like a heavy hammer.

This is not a software glitch.

This is not a code bug.

This is a sanction imposed by the laws of physics.

It's like a water pipe that's only so thick; if you insist on pouring water from the Pacific Ocean into it, the only result will be a burst pipe.

"Bang!"

The main screen in the command center flickered.

The huge screen displaying the live broadcast of the S6 finals suddenly disappeared.

Instead, there was only a deathly silence of black.

And right in the center of the screen, that line of stark white code that strikes fear into the hearts of all internet users:

502 Bad Gateway

The entire hall fell into a deathly silence.

Only the server fans were still roaring wildly, as if mocking humanity's incompetence.

A few seconds later, the silence was broken by the ringing of the telephone.

It's not a phone.

Hundreds of phones rang at the same time.

The customer service department's landlines, executives' cell phones, and even the receptionist's phone all converged into a cacophony of sounds in that instant.

"Mr. Chen... Weibo... Weibo is down."

The public relations manager rushed over with a tablet, nearly twisting her high heels in the process. Her face was deathly pale as she shoved the screen in front of Chen Shaojie.

#Douyu crashed# (Breaking)

Second on the trending list: #Unable to watch S6# (Hot)

Third on the trending topics list: #Go to Yingke# (New)

Chen Shaojie did not check the trending topics.

His gaze passed through the floor-to-ceiling windows and landed on the giant LED screen in Optics Valley Square outside.

They were originally broadcasting Douyu's signal there.

Now, that screen, which covers several hundred square meters, is also completely black.

Thousands of college students gathered in the square, holding inflatable sticks and angrily throwing water bottles at the screen.

Has Tencent Cloud responded yet?!

Chen Shaojie grabbed Lao Liu by the collar, his strength almost lifting the middle-aged man off the ground.

"I...I'm back."

Old Liu's face was ashen, and he let the collar tighten around his neck.

"They said the previous 120% redundancy was based on the estimates we provided. The current traffic is 300% of the estimates."

"To solve this, we must allocate physical optical cable resources across provinces, which requires coordination with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and telecommunications operators..."

"I'm asking you when you'll be better!" Chen Shaojie roared, spitting all over Lao Liu's face.

Old Liu closed his eyes, like a judge pronouncing a death sentence.

"Fastest... four hours."

Chen Shaojie loosened his grip.

Old Liu slumped in his chair, panting heavily.

Four hours.

The S6 finals were a best-of-five series.

Four hours later, the champions had all lifted their trophies, and the audience had all gone to bed.

When you resumed live streaming, were you planning to show everyone recorded videos?

Chen Shaojie felt his knees go weak and his body fell backward uncontrollably.

He steadied himself against the conference table behind him, the cold marble surface digging painfully into his palm.

It’s over.

This time it's really over.

This is not just an accident.

This is a collapse of trust.

For live streaming platforms, the S6 finals are like Singles' Day for e-commerce.

What will users do if your server goes down on Singles' Day?

They will uninstall you without hesitation and then join your competitors.

"Data... Inke's data..."

Chen Shaojie's voice was hoarse, like that of a dying old man.

A marketing employee nervously switched to a third-party data monitoring platform.

On the screen, two curves are staging a breathtaking scissor-like difference.

Douyu's active user curve shows a precipitous vertical drop.

That's because tens of millions of users closed the app in disappointment.

The curve representing Inke is rising straight into the sky at an angle that defies the laws of physics.

That was a refugee crisis.

Tens of millions of angry netizens, shut out by Douyu, are like a flood bursting its banks, rushing madly into the only refuge.

"Are they stuck?" Chen Shaojie asked, clinging to his last shred of hope.

If tens of millions of people flooded into Inke at the same time, their servers should have crashed.

If everyone explodes, then the law will not punish the masses; it is an "force majeure."

The employee did not say anything.

He silently took out his phone and opened Inke.

The volume was turned up to the maximum.

"Faker! Faker's in! Deadly crowd control! RNG is in danger!"

The commentator's passionate voice was crystal clear, without a single stutter or lapse.

On screen, the team battle effects are as dazzling as those in a Hollywood blockbuster.

Even the trajectory of each magic missile was clearly discernible.

The barrage of comments was so dense and fast that the text was impossible to read, but the screen remained as steady as a rock.

"Holy crap! Inke is amazing! It doesn't lag at all!"

"The video quality blows Douyu out of the water! I was fooled before!"

"Douyu is trash! I've uninstalled it!"

"What kind of cutting-edge technology is Weiguang Cloud? It's amazing!"

Chen Shaojie stared intently at the phone screen.

This is not just about smoothness.

This is blatant showing off.

The fact that it can maintain such Blu-ray quality under the impact of tens of millions of concurrent users shows that Inke's bandwidth reserves are not only sufficient, but even... unfathomable.

Sudden.

A "GG" icon popped up on the phone screen.

That was a pop-up window that Inke had just launched urgently.

Black background with white text, minimalist style, only two lines of text:

[Thanks to Weiguang Cloud for providing exclusive technical support]

Sometimes, the right choice is more important than hard work.

"Snapped!"

Chen Shaojie snatched the phone and smashed it on the ground.

The tempered glass screen shattered instantly, the phone bounced, and slid to the corner of the wall.

"Lin Che..."

He squeezed out those two words through gritted teeth.

It was hatred, and it was fear.

He finally understood.

That young man mining in a karst cave in Guizhou, that poor guy whom he mocked on social media for "going back to delivering packages," was not playing with fire at all.

He's digging a hole.

He already knew that Tencent Cloud would reduce redundancy for the sake of its financial reports.

He knew all along that S6 would see a surge in traffic.

He was like a patient hunter, spreading out his net and quietly waiting for someone to stumble into it.

"Mr. Chen, the investors are on the phone..."

The secretary walked over with another phone in her hand, which was trembling.

The screen displayed "Sequoia Capital".

Chen Shaojie looked at the phone as if it were a ticking time bomb.

If I accept it, how do I explain it?

He explained that he ruined a multi-billion dollar project in an attempt to save on bandwidth costs.

If we don't accept... Douyu's valuation will be halved by tomorrow morning.

The board of directors will immediately initiate impeachment proceedings to get rid of him.

A dead end.

This is a true dead end.

Don't answer.

Chen Shaojie waved his hand, looking as if he had aged ten years in an instant.

He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and pressed his forehead against the cold glass.

Outside the window, the lights of Optics Valley shone brightly. Countless young people were cheering and enjoying the game.

But all of this has nothing to do with Douyu anymore.

unless……

Unless someone can conjure up 5T of backbone network bandwidth out of thin air and directly connect to Douyu's data center.

In China, only three companies can do this.

Telecom operators? Those are state-owned enterprises. Once the approval process is complete, S7 will have already started.

Alibaba Cloud? That's Tencent's arch-rival. Jack Ma would love to see Tencent fail, he would never save it.

Only one store remains.

That company that owns hundreds of thousands of mining cards, monopolizes several ultra-large data center nodes in Guizhou, and has just proven its strength... Weiguang Cloud.

Chen Shaojie felt a wave of nausea and vomiting in his stomach.

Help?

Should he ask Lin Che, whom he had trampled underfoot, for help?

This is worse than killing him.

But in the command center behind him, the incessant alarms, the bright red monitor screens, and the ever-decreasing user data were torturing him every second.

Dignity, or survival?

For a capitalist, this is never a choice.

With trembling hands, Chen Shaojie pulled his personal cell phone from the inside pocket of his suit.

His fingers slid across the contacts list, his fingertips becoming slippery from sweat.

Finally, he stopped at a name.

[Lin Che]

This number was exchanged at an industry summit six months ago.

He saved it casually at the time, without even adding a full name in the notes, just randomly typing "Lin".

Because in his eyes, this young man would soon disappear from the industry.

Who would have thought.

Six months later, this number has become his only lifeline.

"call……"

Chen Shaojie took a deep breath; it was a mixture of the smell of ozone and the scorching air in the computer room.

He closed his eyes and pressed the dial button.

beep...beep...beep...

The waiting tone in the receiver felt like a tap on his heart.

You absolutely must accept it.

Do not turn off the device.

Do not block them.