Reborn in 2000, starting from the university website

At one o'clock in the morning, as soon as the elevator doors opened at Hailong Building, Yang Bo was startled by the heat wave and the sound of keyboards hitting him.

After cooperating with the police to complete the statement taking in Chen Yuan's case in Harbin, he flew back to Beijing overnight.

I expected to see a room full of guys with bloodshot eyes when I opened the glass door, but to my surprise, the entire office area was brightly lit, and the entire technical department was working overtime.

The once arrogant Shenzhen tech team now sat respectfully around Zhang Xiaolong and Zhang Jian's workstations, chairs in hand. Zhang Xiaolong typed code on the screen, while Zhang Jian gestured and explained, and the group of key technical personnel from Shenzhen nodded frequently, their notebooks filled with notes.

Yang Bo adjusted his glasses and smiled slightly. The pride of these elites from major companies had been completely absorbed into Qihang by the technological gap.

He didn't disturb the technical department's enthusiasm, but instead carried his briefcase straight to the innermost private office.

Pushing open the door, Bai Yuhang and Jiao Liwei were drawing circles and dots on a personnel form.

"Second brother's back." Bai Yuhang looked up. "Have you heard about Chen Yuan's matter?"

"Three years minimum, no doubt about it." Yang Bo tossed his briefcase onto the sofa, went over to pour himself a glass of water, and gulped down most of it in one go. "Sixth Brother, I brought you some good news this time."

Jiao Liwei put down his pen, leaned closer, and asked anxiously, "What news? Has Fifth Brother gotten into trouble in the Northeast?"

"Troublemaking? Lao Wu is a money-making machine in the Northeast now." Yang Bo pulled out a chair and sat down, his eyes shining with excitement. "You put Lao Wu and Wang Jun in the Northeast, which was the right place. Riding the wave of winning the Blue Speed ​​Cup e-sports competition and making headlines with Qihang Technology, Lao Wu has completely let loose and is going crazy with Wang Jun in the three northeastern provinces."

"Our branch office on Taigu Street is so crowded, the doorstep is practically worn down. Internet cafe owners from Shenyang and Changchun are lining up with cash, begging to join us. In Harbin alone, the number of internet cafes that have joined has exceeded one hundred in just three days." Yang Bo held up one finger. "Old Wu asked me to tell you to wait in Beijing for his good news about preparing for the e-sports competitions in Shenyang and Changchun."

Jiao Liwei clicked his tongue in disbelief: "Good heavens, a hundred families? Old Five's voice would be shattering windows by now!"

"That's not the point." Yang Bo's smile faded, and he leaned forward. "According to the rules you set last time, the franchise fee for a new internet cafe is five thousand yuan. In just a few days, five hundred thousand yuan in net profit has already been transferred into our Harbin corporate account. If Lao Ba sees this bill, he'll probably wake up laughing in the middle of the night."

Bai Yuhang leaned back in his chair, twirling the lighter in his hand, not in a hurry to laugh.

"What about Wang Jun?"

"That kid is even more shrewd," Yang Bo said with admiration. "Wang Jun came to the store as agreed and installed the Qihang Internet Cafe Management System on all the computers in the franchised internet cafes. He also conveniently locked all the browser homepages to our Qihang Navigation. The internet cafe owners even thought our system was useful and could prevent customers from skipping out on their bills. They had no idea that this was equivalent to handing over the entire internet cafe's traffic entrance to us. Fortunately, our navigation page is clean and easy to use. In a few days, he went to Changchun and Shenyang to install it there as well."

Bai Yuhang clapped his hands and laughed: "Great. By monopolizing the entry point from the physical level, we will be the sole rule-makers and primary content disseminators for the next e-sports competition. Anyone who wants to profit from this will have to watch our every move."

Before his excitement had subsided, Yang Bo pulled a few pages of paper from his briefcase and slammed them on the table.

"I'm happy as I am, but right now, I feel there's something we need to do immediately." Yang Bo resumed his legal professional rigor. "Sixth Brother, when I came in just now, I saw Third Brother and Allen explaining the underlying logic to the Shenzhen team. Our current code is a unique secret in the industry. These people just arrived, and they're not settled yet. It's not that we're trying to guard against anyone, but if someone gets any bad ideas, we won't even have time to cry. Look at this, I compiled it on the plane."

Bai Yuhang picked up the paper on the table and glanced at the title.

Qihang Technology's confidentiality agreement and non-compete agreement.

"Second Brother is very thoughtful." Bai Yuhang handed the agreement to Jiao Liwei. "Boss, arrange for it to be printed overnight and for everyone to sign it. Whether they're from Shenzhen or Harbin, treat them all the same."

Jiao Liwei took the document, glanced at it, and hesitated: "What if someone thinks the terms are too harsh and refuses to sign?"

"Those who don't sign, those who hesitate, settle their accounts immediately and leave, with an extra month's salary to cover travel expenses." Bai Yuhang's tone was calm, yet it revealed an undeniable ruthlessness. "On a ship that sets sail, there should be no hidden dangers. All new employees will be handled according to this rule from now on."

"Okay, I'll get right on it." Jiao Liwei took the documents and quickly left the office.

At 2 a.m., the office area of ​​Hailong Building was still brightly lit. Jiao Liwei, carrying a stack of newly signed confidentiality agreements and non-compete agreements, passed by the CEO's office and gave Bai Yuhang a "done" gesture.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the technical department's office area was extremely tense.

Zhang Xiaolong sat in front of the main control computer, with Zhang Jian pulling up a chair to sit next to him. Liu Zhi and several key technical personnel from Shenzhen stood behind them, their eyes glued to the screen, their palms sweaty.

The merging of the QQ communication protocol and data communication model code has officially begun.

This update aims to reduce server load, affecting only the backend communication code. Zhang Xiaolong and Zhang Jian suggested hot copying and hot restarting. During service interruptions and restarts, users will experience a brief delay of about twenty seconds in the foreground, but this is imperceptible in actual use if everything is normal.

"Allen, the environment is working out, should we push it?" Zhang Jian asked.

Zhang Xiaolong nodded, his fingers on the keyboard, and decisively pressed Enter.

Lines of code started scrolling wildly across the screen.

Liu Zhi swallowed hard. This was a platform with millions of users, equivalent to changing the engine of a car traveling at high speed. If something went wrong, netizens across the country would be cursing him tomorrow.

"Mr. Zhang, shouldn't we do a grayscale test first?" Liu Zhi couldn't help but ask.

"No need." Zhang Xiaolong didn't turn around, staring at the progress bar on the screen.

Zhang Jian turned around and grinned: "Old Liu, don't worry. Allen and I are more stable than the load-bearing walls of our house."

The progress bar has reached 100%.

"Service restart." Zhang Xiaolong typed the last command.

A dozen pairs of eyes turned in unison, staring at a monitor next to them that was specifically designed for pressure monitoring.

Originally, due to the surge in traffic before the May Day holiday, the CPU load rate was already approaching the red line of 80%, and memory usage was also about to peak.

At the moment of restart, the load curve showed a brief drop.

Liu Zhi's heart was in his throat, and he gripped the back of the chair tightly with both hands.

Immediately afterwards, a massive data stream was reconnected.

In the center of the monitoring screen, a red line representing the load did not rebound from the bottom and surge as Liu Zhi had expected. Instead, it plummeted like a deflated balloon.

30%...20%...finally, it stopped steadily at a low water level of around 17%.

Meanwhile, the concurrent processing volume metric curve on the other side showed a crazy, step-like jump, increasing more than tenfold.

The office area, with its forty or fifty people, fell into a deathly silence, broken only by the hum of the computer case fans.

Liu Zhi rubbed his eyes hard and leaned close to the screen to confirm.

"Holy crap..." Liu Zhi finally blurted out a full-blown Chinese curse after holding it in for a while, "This is totally illogical!"

The technical backbone from Shenzhen behind him was also in an uproar.

"The load dropped that much? Yet the throughput went up?"

"This isn't optimization, it's like they've given the server an alien engine!"

Zhang Jian leaned back in his chair smugly, crossing his legs: "Old Liu, are you convinced or not? Who was just saying they were going to spend 600,000 to buy twenty servers?"

Liu Zhi blushed, but surprisingly did not refute. Instead, he looked at Zhang Xiaolong with shining eyes: "Mr. Zhang, you have to explain the underlying scheduling of asynchronous I/O and the data compression and distribution to us later. This thing is amazing."

Zhang Xiaolong adjusted his glasses and said calmly, "Changing the queue mode is a routine operation; it's mainly because President Bai's data compression algorithm has been a backup plan."

Jiang Shuo, who had been standing silently in the back row, came over at this moment, habitually holding a calculator in his hand.

"Third brother, you just said that this saves us twenty servers?" Jiang Shuo pushed up his glasses, the lenses reflecting the light.

"Of course, according to Lao Liu's previous plan, the starting price is 600,000," Zhang Jian said.

Jiang Shuo immediately turned to look at Bai Yuhang behind him, his eyes shining: "President Bai, 600,000! Does this count as the profit saved by the technical department for the company?"

Bai Yuhang was amused by him: "Sure. What, you want to give the tech department a bonus?"

"I'll give it to them! I absolutely have to!" Jiang Shuo was unusually generous for once. "Tomorrow's breakfast, I'll personally pay for it for the entire company!"

Everyone burst into laughter.

Watching the group of laughing and joking around, Liu Zhi's airs of a workplace elite completely vanished. The traffic surge crisis of the May Day Golden Week was effortlessly crushed in lines of code.

Only then did he truly realize just how terrifying the power of the ship he was on really was.