Reborn in 2000, starting from the university website

At eight o'clock in the morning, the air in the private room was as murky as a dough vat that had been fermenting overnight.

Bai Yuhang was awakened by a burning hunger in his stomach. He struggled to wipe the sleep from his eyelids, and when he looked up, he saw Zhang Jian, Wan Lianghao, and Zhang Qingheng frozen in place. Their faces were almost pressed against the monitor, their postures strange and stiff, only their eyeballs were still trembling slightly.

"What? The server crashed?!" Bai Yuhang sat up straight, stretched, and his neck made a series of cracking sounds like popping beans.

"It didn't crash, but it's gone mad." Zhang Jian didn't even turn his head, his voice hoarse and dry, his fingers trembling as he pointed at the screen, "Sixth Brother, come take a look, did you write a bug in this counter? The numbers are wrong."

Bai Yuhang slid his chair closer.

On the newly embedded CNZZ website traffic monitoring chart, the green curve representing "concurrent requests" was a half-dead, worm-like line before 7:30. After 7:30, it suddenly and without warning stretched into a straight vertical line. The line was so steep that it looked like it was about to shoot out along the network cable, directly breaking through the upper edge of the coordinate axis.

"Ten thousand IPs...twenty thousand IPs..." Zhang Jian stared at the numbers in the lower right corner, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty. "It's only eight o'clock, everyone's just starting work or school, where did so many people come from? The IP addresses are from all over the country, are we being attacked?"

The real-time logs on the right side of the screen scrolled wildly, so fast that they became a blur, making it impossible to see the specific IP address; all that could be seen was a green waterfall.

"Single Love Song, 1400 requests."

"Darkness Falls, Request Count 1240".

"Thank You for Your Love 1999", 1100 requests.

"Sad Pacific Ocean, 960 requests."

"Holy crap, can our servers even handle this?" Zhang Qingheng huddled in a corner, clutching his tattered notebook tightly, his face filled with terror. "It's going to crash, right? It's definitely going to crash!"

"It won't crash." Bai Yuhang glanced at the load balancer data, closed the dizzying log window, grabbed a half-empty bottle of mineral water from the table (whose leftover was unknown), and took a swig. "Nginx is tough. As long as the hard drive read and write speeds keep up, it's not a problem. Our compression algorithm shreds the packets, so the throughput isn't actually that high."

"But this speed..." Wan Lianghao pointed at the bandwidth monitor, his mouth agape. "I was downloading a song just now, and the download speed was 150K/S? Lao Liu, are we in the world of 56K modems? The progress bar filled up in a flash, like it was fake. I even suspected that I downloaded an empty file."

In an era where downloading a 4MB song usually requires finishing a cigarette or even praying for an uninterrupted internet connection, Qihang Music Station's "instant download" experience is simply an unreasonable and overwhelming improvement.

"Because it's fast, it's awesome." Bai Yuhang precisely tossed the empty water bottle into the trash can in the corner. "Today's internet users are used to being tormented by slow internet speeds. This is like giving someone riding a bicycle a Ferrari. Once they've experienced instant streaming and ultra-fast downloads, they'll never go back. That's stickiness."

"Sixth Brother!" Wan Lianghao's eyes darted around, his greedy spirit instantly overcoming his sleepiness. "With such a huge amount of traffic, what do you think about monetizing it... How about we add a five-second 'GG' before each song download? Even a pop-up would do! It's all money! I think that pop-up from Geek Alliance is disgusting, but it's real cash. Even if it's just a penny per click, we'd be rich this morning!"

"Shut up," Bai Yuhang and Zhang Jian said in unison.

"We're raising fish now, not killing them." Bai Yuhang glanced at him. "Adding GG now is like throwing a fly into a freshly served braised pork dish. Once they get used to coming here every morning to listen to music, what we'll hold in our hands won't just be traffic, but the ears of the entire internet. What can't you sell then? Don't be so short-sighted."

Just then, the door to the private room was pushed open with a loud bang.

A gust of cold wind, mixed with the steam from the meat buns, rushed in, instantly reducing the stale smell of smoke in the room. Jiao Liwei led the way, followed by Yang Bo and Liu Jing. The three of them had red faces from the cold, but their eyes shone with an alarming brightness.

"Holy crap! Sixth Brother!" Liu Jing threw a huge bag of steamed buns on the table, his down jacket zipped up, and pounced on Bai Yuhang, his big face beaming with excitement. "Tell me honestly, did you hack into the telecom bureau's backbone network? I just saw Wang Jun downloading songs on the music site at the front desk, and he downloaded them faster than I could pee! I hadn't even unbuckled my belt before the songs started playing!"

"Be civilized, we're about to eat." Jiao Liwei chuckled and kicked him in the butt, then placed a thick manila envelope on the table with a dull thud. "These are the official contracts for the nine internet cafes, as well as the contracts for the bosses Brother Zhao introduced. They're all freshly printed, still warm. Oh, and the one for Lansu is ready too. Everything's prepared."

"Great! I was just saying I was going to buy some steamed buns. I was starving." Bai Yuhang didn't stand on ceremony. He rummaged through the large plastic bag and pulled out a small plastic bag that was still hot to the touch. He tore it open and took a big bite, oil dripping down his chin.

"Is this data real?" Yang Bo pushed up his glasses, looking at the still-soaring curve on the screen. Although he didn't particularly like programming, he was still a computer science student, and the pressure from the data in front of him was very real; the red peaks seemed to be mocking all traditional download sites.

"More real than real gold." Zhang Jian gave up his seat, grabbed a meat bun, and took a big bite. With a loud "Ouch!", the scalding oil splattered all over his hand, making him stomp his feet in pain, but he couldn't bear to throw it away. After a moment, he continued eating as he spoke, "Our technological barrier is built of reinforced concrete. I'm not looking down on them, but those guys in the Geek Alliance, they'll never crack this algorithm again."

Yang Bo didn't speak, but stared at the small "Disclaimer" at the bottom of the page, then glanced at the crazy download numbers, his eyes filled with complex emotions: "Sixth Brother, now I finally understand your tactics completely. You're not just making a website; you're exploiting your extremely poor technical skills to create a legal vacuum. While we're still figuring out how to make that two thousand yuan installation fee, you're already thinking about how to define industry rules. You've really mastered this 'safe harbor' principle. If copyright law is perfected in the future, this will be our biggest bargaining chip."

"No way, by the time the copyright law is actually enacted, we'll have already bought up most of the copyrights on the market," Bai Yuhang said with a confident smile while eating a steamed bun.

Jiao Liwei watched Bai Yuhang calmly eat his steamed bun, and a sense of awe welled up within him. This sixth brother, usually so lazy, could really make a huge difference when he got serious. He even suspected that Bai Yuhang might be backed by some hidden technological family; otherwise, how could a freshman have such a monstrous plan?

"Alright, stop praising me. You're going to flatter me to the skies." Bai Yuhang swallowed the bun in a few bites, casually pulled out a tissue to wipe his mouth and hands, and took out a red brocade box and an inkstone from his pocket.

That's a company seal that was just engraved yesterday.

"We'll definitely have the data; after all, we're a market leader." Bai Yuhang stood up, clutching the company seal in his hand. The coolness of the seal spread throughout his body, making him incredibly alert. "Everyone, get ready, wash your faces, and let's give these contracts a resounding stamp. Then we'll split up and deliver the contracts. We need to let the internet community in Harbin know that Qihang Technology has arrived."