Reborn in 2000, starting from the university website

Open the intranet of Kaihang, and an inconspicuous game icon appears in the left navigation bar. The first one listed has a ridiculously corny name—"Happy Farm".

The gameplay is extremely simple: cultivate the land, buy seeds, water, weed, and harvest crops. But this seemingly boring farming game hides the ultimate social weapon that Bai Yuhang verified in his previous life—"stealing crops".

In an internet cafe in Beijing, Li Lei, a sophomore, originally just wanted to log onto the domestic network to see if the girl he had a crush on in his class had updated her social media, but he casually clicked on the game "Happy Farm".

"What the hell is this? Growing cabbages?" Li Lei clicked the mouse a few times, cleared the land, planted the seeds, and found that it would take several hours for them to mature. Bored, he clicked randomly and opened his friends list on the right, where he was surprised to find a small hand icon next to the class beauty's name.

Upon clicking in, I saw that the radishes in the class beauty's field were just ripe.

A prompt appears on the screen: Do you want to pick it secretly?

Li Lei's hand trembled, and he clicked "yes".

A few seconds later, his QQ icon flashed in the bottom right corner of his computer. The class beauty's avatar was jumping around wildly: "Li Lei! You actually stole my radish! You just wait, I'll steal yours in the middle of the night!"

Li stared at the screen, nearly flipping off his chair with laughter. Normally, he struggled to even speak to the class beauty, but now, just because he stole a virtual electronic radish, they were chatting instantly? This interaction was absolutely amazing!

In less than a day, this viral spread swept wildly through internet cafes, college students, and white-collar workers across the country.

Users were surprised to find that they could not only grow their own vegetables, but also casually steal vegetables from the farms of their QQ friends and other online friends.

In just one day, to prevent their own crops from being stolen, or to time their stealing of their crush's cabbage, users who would normally log off after chatting started glued to their screens. Noting down the ripening times of their friends' vegetables and setting alarms to get up in the middle of the night to steal them became common practice for countless netizens.

User engagement and online time showed a bizarre exponential surge within just two hours.

This highly interactive social web game was a game-changer for internet users in 2000; nobody had ever seen anything like it before.

On the sixteenth floor of Hailong Building, in the large conference room where the game development team was conducting closed-door development.

Wan Lianghao, sporting dark circles under his eyes, was as excited as if he'd been injected with adrenaline. He pointed at the constantly changing number of online users on the wall, then slammed his hand on the whiteboard, startling the person who had been looking down.

"Guys, did you see that? The data has exploded in just two days! The farm is a complete success!"

The forty-odd programmers, artists, and product managers below were also red-eyed and yelling along.

Wan Lianghao picked up a marker and drew a dense schedule on the whiteboard.

"The farm game is just the appetizer! Boss Bai has a lot more in store for us. Happy Parking, Happy Match, Spot the Difference, Zuma Match—all of them need to be launched on schedule! Our game department will be the sharpest traffic-harvesting scythe from now on!"

On the other side, in a private office for an executive.

Su Muqing was holding a coffee and looking at reports when her phone on the table suddenly started vibrating wildly.

As soon as the call connected, the voice of Mr. Wang, the marketing director of Bird Mobile, came through, his voice trembling with both sobs and elation.

"President Su! What on earth did you do?! Our official website just crashed!"

Immediately afterwards, Lenovo, Wahaha, Coca-Cola, and other companies that were among the first to launch on Google Play received a barrage of calls. From 2 a.m. when Google Play was fully rolled out until 10 a.m. the next morning, in just over twenty hours, the terrifying click rate from tens of millions of young users on the internet overwhelmed the meager server bandwidth of these traditional industrial enterprises like a tsunami.

While urgently calling the telecom data center to add server resources, the clients were also giving Su Muqing a rambling report on the situation. Their websites had received numerous inquiries from netizens looking to place wholesale orders or join their agent networks.

Su Muqing leaned back in her chair, took a sip of coffee, and spoke in a nonchalant tone, but her words were chillingly menacing.

"Mr. Wang, the server crash means GG is working well, which is a good thing. This is the level of traffic we're handling now, you'll have to get used to it."

The client executives on the other end of the phone gasped, unanimously declaring, "President Su, we're truly impressed! We're going all in on Qihang from now on! A tight deal! Anyone who dares to challenge us, we'll fight them to the death!"

Jiang Shuo, who had been listening intently from the office next door, grinned so wide his mouth almost reached behind his ears.

He looked at the constantly changing GG click history in the background, then switched to the background of "Happy Farm".

To prevent users from stealing their crops, they began frantically recharging virtual currency to buy "fertilizer" and "watchdogs." Watching the ever-increasing flow of recharge funds, Jiang Shuo's eyes turned red.

"President Bai!" Jiang Shuo stormed into the office carrying a calculator. "This isn't a website, it's a money-printing machine! We're not only making money off our clients, we're even starting to steal our netizens' pocket money!"

Wan Lianghao and Zhang Jian also squeezed into the office to report on the resounding success of the game section and GG section after their launch.

Bai Yuhang leaned back in his swivel chair and burst out laughing, a rare occurrence for him.

"Well done." Bai Yuhang tapped his fingers on the table. "Go find the boss and arrange for all the brothers involved in the development to receive version update bonuses. Also, arrange shifts so everyone can take turns on paid leave. This tension has been too high; it needs to be eased."

The office area outside was filled with revelry, but Zhang Qingheng kept the door locked in the small conference room at the end of the corridor.

His eyes were bloodshot, and empty coffee cans were piled on his desk. He was reorganizing Facebook's framework code, constantly learning and absorbing the architecture left by Bai Yuhang, and trying to independently complete all the front-end pages. The noise outside seemed irrelevant to him; his mind was only on the other side of the ocean, his own battlefield.

Far away in Washington.

Shi Hongchao and Shirley sat in an upscale coffee shop. Shirley had finished her work at the Ministry of Finance, and the laptops in front of them were displaying the terrifying updated data from HaiNei.com.

Looking at the almost vertical traffic growth curve, Shirley's hand holding the coffee cup stiffened slightly.

"Incredible social stickiness," Shirley murmured to herself.

Shi Hongchao leaned back on the sofa, a smug smile on his face, and replied in fluent American English, "Shirley, now you should believe that when CEO Bai said he was going to overturn Silicon Valley's tables, he wasn't joking, right?"

Shirley put down her coffee cup, her eyes sharpening. "I'll expedite the registration process as quickly as possible. I can't wait to replicate this storm in North America."

Meanwhile, in Room 805, Building 13, Huaqing Jiayuan, Beijing.

Wang Xing sat in front of the computer, looking at his virtual vegetable garden on the screen that his classmates had stolen clean, and dejectedly released the mouse.

This system of social interaction, which so thoroughly understands human nature, completely shattered his last shred of hope.

"We can't compete domestically anymore." Wang Xing stood up, scratching his hair in frustration. "Qihang has already saturated the market. We can't waste time here. Studying abroad is out of the question; we don't have the time. I need to ask my father for some money and go to the US as soon as possible. Since we can't compete domestically, I'll go to Europe and America and become Qihang's partner to foreigners."

In an unassuming apartment in Silicon Valley, across the ocean.

Chen Yizhou held the latest data report in his hand, his face ashen.

This move by HaiNei.com has pushed ChinaRen to the brink of collapse, and its status as the world's largest Chinese community forum is now in serious jeopardy.

"We can't wait any longer." Chen Yizhou slammed the report on the table, gritting his teeth. "The negotiations with Sohu must be accelerated. As soon as we get Sohu's investment, the first thing we should do is talk to Qihang Technology about acquisition or equity participation. Even if it costs a fortune, we must buy Qihang and give ChinaRen another boost. Otherwise, we won't even get a taste of the benefits."