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

Guizhou, 26 degrees north latitude.

Three hundred meters underground, inside a huge natural cave.

The temperature here remains constant at 14 degrees Celsius year-round.

But at this moment, the heat generated by tens of thousands of mining machines operating at full power simultaneously has made the air here hot and restless.

The huge industrial exhaust fans emitted a roar like a jet plane taking off.

hum-

This is the roar of computing power.

0.1 seconds after Wang Jian pressed the Enter key.

An invisible torrent of data surged out of the mountains along a fiber optic cable thicker than a thigh.

It traveled at near the speed of light, passing through the main nodes of Guiyang, leaping across the Yangtze River, and instantly filling the long-dried blood vessels of the fighting fish.

……

……

Shanghai, an internet cafe.

"Damn it, give me my money back! What a piece of junk Douyu!"

An angry young man slammed his headphones onto the keyboard.

His screen had been black for half an hour, with nothing but that damn "502" error code.

Just as he was about to get up to go to the front desk to check out and get off the plane.

The screen suddenly flickered.

There is no buffer.

It didn't spin.

There was no warning whatsoever.

The black screen disappeared instantly, replaced by a screen full of vibrant colors.

That was the scene of the S6 World Championship Finals.

The massive Staples Center is brightly lit.

"Holy crap?"

The young man was stunned. He subconsciously rubbed his eyes, thinking he was seeing things.

It's not just that the visuals have returned.

The image quality... is off.

He used to watch live streams on Douyu, where the so-called "Blu-ray" was actually just high bitrate 720P. There was always a blurry jagged edge on the characters' edges, and once there was a team battle, the picture would become a blurry mass of color.

But now.

On the screen, every acne scar on the face of the mid-laner playing Syndra was clearly visible.

The RGB lighting effects on the keyboard, and even the dry ice smoke floating in the air, all appear to be sharpened.

"First Blood!"

A crisp kill notification sound came from the speaker.

The penetrating power of the sound and the smoothness of the visuals gave him the illusion that he wasn't watching a live stream, but playing a local game.

"It's alive! Douyu is alive!"

I don't know who shouted it.

The entire internet cafe instantly erupted in excitement.

Dozens of internet-addicted teenagers who had been cursing loudly sat back down and put their headphones back on.

"This picture quality... Am I blind? It looks even clearer than when I'm playing games!"

"Is this the server we bought for fifty million?"

"No lag at all! Absolutely no lag whatsoever! The latency is only 12ms!"

At the same time.

The same miracle is unfolding in front of tens of millions of screens across the country.

The previously frozen bullet screen system suddenly resumed operation. The anger and surprise that had been building up for half an hour erupted in that instant, transforming into a massive, overwhelming wall of bullet comments.

Holy crap! A miracle!

[I'm blown away! What kind of god-like picture quality is this?!]

[Weiguang Cloud is awesome!]

[Did you see that splash screen just now? It said it was supported by Weiguang Cloud Technology!]

[Douyu has obviously spent money! Why didn't they do this sooner?!]

The traffic curve began to surge violently.

The data, which had plummeted to rock bottom, took off like a rocket that had been ignited.

Sixty million.

Seventy million.

Eighty million...

The data was fluctuating wildly, but this brand-new system was like a bottomless ocean; no matter how much floodwater poured in, it didn't even cause a ripple.

……

……

Tencent Building, Shenzhen.

39th floor, Cloud Services Business Group conference room.

A deathly silence.

On the huge projection screen, Douyu's live stream was being displayed.

That was a competitor's video.

That was a shameful sight.

Zhang Zhidong, the vice president sitting at the head of the table, had a livid face.

"Has the analysis report been released yet?"

His voice was deep, suppressing the volcano about to erupt.

"It's...it's out."

The technical director tremblingly handed over a newly printed report.

The paper was still warm, but the data on it was chillingly cold.

"We analyzed Douyu's current streaming data by capturing network packets."

The CTO swallowed hard and pointed to a red line on the chart.

"Their bitrate... is only half of ours."

"Half?" Zhang Zhidong looked up abruptly, his eyes sharp as knives. "Are you fucking kidding me? Half the bitrate, and you can get this kind of 4K quality? That defies the laws of physics!"

"That's the problem."

The CTO's voice carried a hint of desperate awe.

"They used an encoding format we've never seen before; it's not standard H.265, it must have been modified."

"and……"

"We detected that every frame of their footage was enhanced in real time by AI."

"AI enhancement?" Zhang Zhidong was stunned.

"Yes, it's like... it's like there's an invisible photo editor who, in milliseconds, meticulously retouched every frame, sharpening blurry areas and brightening dark areas."

The technical director took off his glasses and rubbed his bloodshot eyes.

"Mr. Zhang, this requires computing power."

"Massive, terrifying computing power."

"To achieve this with tens of millions of concurrent users, even if we moved our upcoming 'Tianhe-3' supercomputer over, it might not be able to handle it."

"unless……"

"Unless they have hundreds of thousands of high-performance GPUs working simultaneously."

Hundreds of thousands of GPUs.

This number was like a heavy blow, shattering the pride of all the Tencent elites present.

They always thought that Weiguang Cloud was just a makeshift operation mining Bitcoin in the mountains, a nouveau riche speculator.

until today.

Until this moment.

They were horrified to discover that the makeshift team was holding the nuclear button.

In this war of live streaming technology, Tencent Cloud has not lost.

It's a dimensional reduction attack.

The cavalry company was crushed by an armored division.

"Mr. Zhang..."

The marketing manager spoke cautiously, pointing to the bottom right corner of the screen.

In order to fulfill the contract, Douyu was forced to add a semi-transparent watermark.

[Technical Support: Weiguang Cloud]

"Now Weibo is full of discussions about Weiguang. Some people are saying... in the future, the underlying code of the live streaming industry will not belong to Ma, but to Lin."

"Snapped!"

Zhang Zhidong slammed his hand on the table and stood up abruptly.

"Meeting adjourned!"

He strode out of the conference room, his back view looking particularly disheveled.

He knew that after tonight, Tencent Cloud's dominant position in the live streaming field would be cracked with an irreparable flaw.

……

……

Wanliu Academy, Beijing.

The match is over.

On the screen, RNG's Nexus shattered.

The members of the Korean team SKT jumped up and cheered, and golden rain fell.

The all-Chinese team lost.

The live chat was filled with wails of grief, and countless fans were heartbroken.

But Lin Che's expression remained calm.

He doesn't care who wins the game.

Because no matter who wins, the biggest winner tonight is Weiguang Cloud.

He glanced at his phone.

The long string of numbers in the bank account balance is shining brightly.

It's not just Douyu's 50 million.

Just now, Principal Wang's Panda TV also sent me a transfer receipt.

Thirty million, reserved for exclusive bandwidth for S7 next year.

Even Zhanqi Live and Longzhu Live, which have always maintained a tough stance, sent tentative cooperation emails.

This battle.

Weiguang Cloud, stepping over the corpse of Tencent Cloud, was crowned king.

"Boss, that's it."

Shen Nan walked into the study, holding a thick stack of letters of intent, his face beaming with undisguised elation.

"After tonight, we will have a monopoly on 80% of the high-end cloud service market in the live streaming industry."

"Those investors who rejected us before are now calling us nonstop."

Lin Che did not speak.

He reached out and pressed the power button on the remote control.

Nourishes—

Four huge 4K screens turned off simultaneously.

The room fell into darkness again, with only the dim yellow glow of the fishing lamp remaining.

"Shen Nan."

Lin Che's voice rang out in the darkness, carrying a weariness after a great battle and a hint of barely perceptible boredom.

"Book me a plane ticket to Shenzhen."

"Shenzhen?" Shen Nan was taken aback. "What are we going there for? Tencent probably wants to tear us apart right now."

"No."

Lin Che turned around and looked out the window at the quiet streets of Beijing in the early morning.

"That's the next battlefield."

"Live streaming is just the appetizer."

"A true feast..."

Lin Che's gaze pierced through the darkness, as if he could see a vast, slumbering empire thousands of kilometers away.

"This is just the beginning."

He picked up the empty wine glass on the table, whose ice had long since melted, and gently tapped it against the air.

"Respect computing power."