Reborn in 2000, starting from the university website

Chapter 127 Military Order

Sitting next to Chen Yizhou, Wang Xiaochuan wished he could bury his head in his collar, swallowing back the words he wanted to say.

He's a pure tech geek, but not a fool.

This wasn't a meeting; it was a battle of gods, using him, a nobody, as cannon fodder. He'd truly seen firsthand the cliques and blame-shifting prevalent in large corporations today.

He secretly glanced at Wu Tao, his mind racing with doubts.

The ten seasoned veterans he sent wrote code that was a jumbled mess, like uncultivated raw noodles. Add to that a few broken servers that were spinning like tractors, and it would be a miracle if they could even run high concurrency.

But he dared not say it; the atmosphere in the meeting room was too oppressive, and he didn't even dare to breathe, for fear that the fire would spread to him.

Chen Yizhou sat to the right of Zhang Chaoyang, his face turning pale and then flushed, his back teeth grinding together.

He stared coldly at Wu Tao across from him, knowing exactly what was going on.

Wu Tao gave him a broken machine and a senior technician who made him drink three sips of goji berry water to write two lines of code, which seriously slowed down his progress.

But now he's swallowing his bitter pill, at a disadvantage, and can't continue to complain to Zhang Chaoyang, otherwise it would only make him, the newly appointed vice president, seem incompetent.

"Enough!" Zhang Chaoyang slammed his hand on the table, making the teacup lid rattle.

The meeting room fell silent instantly.

"I spent twenty million US dollars, not to hire you guys to put on a show!" Zhang Chaoyang stared at Chen Yizhou, his eyes cold and sharp. "I don't care about the process, I only care about the result. The Nasdaq roadshow team is about to leave. What data are you going to show them? Your broken, downed servers? Are you going to talk about how Sohu does charity work, paying college students to farm on other websites?"

Chen Yizhou's face turned pale and then red. Being reprimanded in front of so many senior executives, he, as the newly appointed vice president, completely lost face.

He suddenly stood up, his hands braced on the conference table, his eyes bloodshot.

"Mr. Zhang, this was my oversight. I underestimated Bai Yuhang's technical capabilities." Chen Yizhou gritted his teeth and made a solemn pledge. "Give me three more days! I'll personally lead the team to rewrite the underlying architecture and get twenty more of the latest servers. Crazy Vegetable Garden must be online in three days. I guarantee it, we'll bring all the users from overseas back to our 5Q campus network, with profits!"

"Fine!" Zhang Chaoyang stood up abruptly, making the final decision. "I don't care what methods you use, I'm only giving you two days. After two days, Crazy Vegetable Garden must be on the homepage of 5Q Campus Network! Sohu's site-wide pop-up ads will drive traffic to you on time. Chen Yizhou, this is your last chance. Get the data back on track immediately!"

Chen Yizhou straightened his back and loudly accepted the order.

"Mr. Chen has guts." He led the applause twice. "Let's wait and see if Mr. Chen's crazy vegetable garden can produce gold for Sohu before the big test on Wall Street."

After a few scattered applause, Wu Tao picked up his teacup again, blew on the floating leaves, and a barely perceptible sneer appeared on his lips.

Wang Xiaochuan looked down at his toes.

His mind flashed through the underlying code of Qihang Technology, which could be described as a work of art, and then he thought about the temporary technical staff he had recruited and a group of group veterans who were sipping goji berry water and discussing what to eat after get off work.

She sighed softly.

A few minutes later, the meeting finally ended.

Wang Xiaochuan followed Chen Yizhou out of the conference room, the back of his shirt already soaked with sweat.

He glanced back at the heavy mahogany door of the conference room, feeling a pang of bitterness in his heart.

Trying to take a bunch of scrap metal and challenge someone's printing press head-on is bound to lead to some kind of embarrassing embarrassment in two days.

The temporary office area for 5Q Campus Network is located on the second floor of the Sohu Network Building.

When Chen Yizhou came down from the top-floor conference room, his face was as black as the bottom of a pot.

He strode into the office area, loosened his tie, and slammed his fist on Wang Xiaochuan's desk.

"Stop! Everyone stop!" Chen Yizhou glanced around at the aging team, who were slowly typing away on their keyboards. "Manager Zhang only gave us two days! In two days, 'Crazy Vegetable Garden' must be on the 5Q homepage!"

Wang Xiaochuan's brows furrowed into a knot.

"President Chen, rewriting the underlying architecture and making high-concurrency contingency plans in just two days is completely against the principles of software engineering." Wang Xiaochuan glanced at Lao Zhao, who was leisurely blowing on the thermos cup next to him. "With the equipment that President Wu provided to us in the server room, even if it were replaced with new equipment, and—and with our current manpower, we absolutely don't have enough time to write the code from scratch."

"Who told you to start typing from scratch?" Chen Yizhou slammed his hands on the table, his eyes bloodshot. "Dig! Dig directly from the source code of the HaiNei.com!"

Wang Xiaochuan was stunned.

"Just copy it directly? Mr. Chen, do you mean to copy the entire UI interaction and underlying logic?"

"Yes! Pixel-perfect copy!" Chen Yizhou gritted his teeth, slamming his fist on the table. "Forget about coding standards! They call it Happy Farm, we'll call it Crazy Vegetable Garden! They grow cabbages and radishes, we grow them too! The 'steal vegetables' button, the fertilizer, the watchdog—rip them all down exactly! At most, we'll have the graphic designer change the dog's fur from yellow to black!"

The office area was quiet for a few seconds.

Wang Xiaochuan found it somewhat absurd; he was a person with a technological fastidiousness.

"Mr. Chen, this is a key project that Sohu is heavily promoting. They haven't even changed the text and interaction for the 'vegetable stealing' game; they've just given it a new skin. If users spot this after it goes live, where will Sohu's reputation be?"

"Can saving face buy retention?" Chen Yizhou interrupted him bluntly. "What we need now is to boost data in the shortest time! As long as we keep users on the 5Q campus network and force-feed them with Sohu's site-wide pop-ups, we can get this game hooked! The rules of the internet are: whoever has the most traffic is the legitimate one! What does Bai Yuhang, a mere kid, know about an ecosystem? Once we leverage Sohu's traffic to grow the market, and users get used to playing here, who cares about the fate of the domestic and international networks!"

He turned and pointed to Old Zhao, who was holding a bowl of goji berry water.

"You guys, forget about concurrency! Take a one-to-one screenshot of the HaiNei.com page and give it to the graphic designer to copy! XiaoChuan, you and your team connect the front-end and back-end interfaces. No matter how bad the code is, as long as the front-end works and users can open the page to play the game, you've passed!"

Old Zhao slowly swallowed the water in his mouth and smacked his lips.

"Mr. Chen, working non-stop for three days straight is really taking a toll on my cervical spine. The doctor said I need to rest regularly. What about the overtime pay—"

"If you get this done, your bonuses will double this month! If you fail, you're all fired!"

Chen Yizhou threw down a harsh remark, turned around, strode into his private office, and slammed the door shut.

Wang Xiaochuan looked at the beautifully designed page of Qihang Technology on the screen, then glanced at Lao Zhao next to him who had already started slowly opening the Windows Paint program to take a screenshot, and rubbed his temples helplessly.

Trying to compete with someone else's money-printing machine using these old hands and scrap metal, and then copying it pixel by pixel.

This isn't about seizing market share; it's clearly planting a time bomb on Sohu's servers.