A Junior Schoolmate Came to Deliver a Xiaolingtong

No. 2 Middle School had very old boys' and girls' dormitories, with eight students to a room. A year's lodging only cost 120 yuan.

It also had newly built boys' and girls' apartments, with four students to a room, private bathrooms, and washing machines. A year's lodging cost 720 yuan.

Tao Xue lived in a four-person girls' apartment.

After dinner, Tao Xue returned to her apartment to pick something up—the Xiaolingtong she had bought at noon.

Fatty, her roommate, crunched on potato chips and said, "Xue Yao Mei'er, don't you already have a cellphone? Why'd you get another Xiaolingtong?"

"I bought it for someone else," Tao Xue explained.

Fatty teased, "Don't tell me you bought it for your boyfriend? Spit it out—which class is he in?"

"I'll tell you later. I've got something to do. Bye-bye." Tao Xue couldn't be bothered to say more and skipped out the door in a few quick steps.

She headed straight for Class 11 of Senior Year Three. When she reached the doorway, she poked half her head inside to look around.

Like a thief.

"Excuse me, does anyone know where Chen Guiliang is?" Tao Xue asked openly as she walked to the front row.

It was still early, and only a dozen or so students were in the classroom. At her words, they all turned to look at Tao Xue.

Xu Haibo, who was working on problems, said, "He's probably in the dorm doing laundry. What do you need him for?"

Tao Xue ran over and sat at the desk in front of Xu Haibo. "Something urgent. Which dorm does he live in?"

"The boys' dormitory. Girls aren't allowed inside," Xu Haibo reminded her kindly.

Tao Xue smiled. "Senior schoolmate, could you show me the way and help me deliver something while you're at it?"

"Sure." Xu Haibo was also curious what this pretty junior schoolmate wanted to give Chen the Hero.

The two left the classroom side by side and headed for the boys' dormitory.

Along the way, Xu Haibo asked, "What's your name, junior schoolmate? I think you've been to our classroom before."

"My name is Tao Xue. I'm in Class 10 of Senior Year One."

Xu Haibo glanced at the Xiaolingtong box in her hand. "You're not delivering a Xiaolingtong to Chen the Hero, are you?"

"Oh my, you figured that out?" Tao Xue giggled.

Xu Haibo grew even more curious. "Are you close with him?"

Tao Xue thought carefully. "We're relatives."

My brother's friend's nephew—after a few twists and turns, that counted as relatives.

Going by seniority, I'm even his elder. When I see him, I'll make him call me Auntie.

Haha, I'm a genius!

After chatting for a while, they arrived at the entrance to the boys' dormitory.

The dorm building stood on a slope, with its main entrance between the second and third floors. Entering brought them to a stairway landing; upstairs was the third floor, while downstairs was the second.

The dorm supervisor's office was on the second floor, and the supervisor could see everyone entering and leaving through the main door just by looking up.

"You wait outside. I'll call Chen the Hero out," Xu Haibo said at the dormitory entrance.

Tao Xue secretly glanced down at the supervisor's office and saw an old man eating noodles, not paying attention to the entrance at all.

She crept over on tiptoe and quickly went up to the third floor from the landing.

The dorm supervisor didn't spot her.

Tao Xue stood in the third-floor hallway and patted her chest repeatedly.

That was so thrilling!

Xu Haibo hurried after her. "Why did you come in? If you get caught, you'll be disciplined."

Tao Xue smiled like a little fox. "But I didn't get caught. Senior schoolmate, hurry and lead the way."

Xu Haibo could only take her to Room 302. They passed several boys along the way, all of whom gave them strange looks.

Xu Haibo felt a little guilty, yet strangely proud, as though he were taking his girlfriend back to his dorm room.

Tao Xue, meanwhile, kept looking around. Whenever she saw a dorm room with its door open, she curiously peeked inside. "Wow, so this is what boys' dormitories look like."

Xu Haibo was curious about the girls' dormitories too. "Are your girls' dorms different?"

"I don't know. I live in the girls' apartments, four people to a room... Ah!"

Tao Xue let out a scream. In the dorm room they had just passed, there was a boy wearing nothing but underwear.

She immediately covered her eyes.

Only then did Xu Haibo remember that some boys were rather uninhibited.

Wearing underwear was already decent enough. Some guys came back from the laundry room after showering without wearing anything at all.

Xu Haibo led Tao Xue to the door of Room 302 and told her, "Don't go in yet."

"Okay." Tao Xue stood there and waited.

Xu Haibo pushed the dorm door halfway open and shouted inside, "Anyone not wearing clothes or pants, get dressed! There's a girl here!"

Chen Guiliang was hanging up laundry.

Liu Zhihong and Yang Hao were playing Chinese Chess.

Xie Yang was lying on his bed reading a novel.

The other three were at the basketball court.

"They're all dressed," Xu Haibo said after getting a clear look inside, then turned to Tao Xue. "Come in. It's fine now."

"Ta-da!"

Tao Xue provided her own entrance music, hopping into the dorm room as she did so.

The people inside were utterly baffled.

Why was there a girl here?

Chen Guiliang put away the clothes pole. The sight of this Literary Girl made his head ache. "Why are you here?"

Xie Yang no longer cared about his novel. He abruptly sat up to watch the excitement, feeling a little sour inside. Chen the Hero really has luck with women. As if Bian Guanyue wasn't enough, now a pretty underclassman has chased him all the way to the dorm.

Liu Zhihong and Yang Hao stopped playing as well. They pretended to focus on the chessboard, but kept sneaking glances at Tao Xue.

"This is for you." Tao Xue handed over the Xiaolingtong box, looking rather proud. "I went and bought it myself at noon today. Everything's already set up, and there's plenty of credit inside. Call as much as you want."

Chen Guiliang was completely confused. "Why are you buying me a Xiaolingtong?"

Xu Haibo, Xie Yang, Liu Zhihong, and Yang Hao were all stunned by what Tao Xue had said.

A pretty underclassman had come to the boys' dorm to give him a Xiaolingtong, and had even loaded it with enough credit for Chen Guiliang to call freely.

This was ridiculous!

Xie Yang twirled the stylish hair over his forehead, thinking, Is my hairstyle not handsome enough? Why hasn't a girl come after me like this?

Tao Xue placed the Xiaolingtong on the table. "My brother asked me to give it to you. He said it's inconvenient to contact you otherwise."

Chen Guiliang immediately understood. "Your brother wouldn't happen to be Tao Chenggang, would he?"

"Smart."

Tao Xue snapped her fingers.

Chen Guiliang jokingly complained, "Your brother's pretty stingy. He doesn't even know to give me a cell phone. Xiaolingtong reception is terrible."

Tao Xue laughed. "You really don't treat yourself like an outsider."

"We're business partners, not outsiders." Chen Guiliang had never been particularly reserved when it came to taking advantage of something.

Tao Xue said, "Your Uncle calls my brother Brother Gang. Doesn't that make you a generation below me?"

"If you say so." Chen Guiliang did not care.

"Then you should call me Auntie. You can call me auntie too." Tao Xue seized the chance to take advantage of him. She found it amusing.

"Aunt Tao," Chen Guiliang actually called her that. As he opened the box and took out the Xiaolingtong, he said, "You can agree to it if you're not afraid of shortening your lifespan."

"Yes!"

Tao Xue agreed without hesitation, then pondered what to call Chen Guiliang. "Good... hmm, nephew?"

Chen Guiliang said, "Hello, Old Lady Tao."

Tao Xue angrily corrected him, "Not old lady, that sounds awful. It's auntie, Auntie!"

"Okay, Old Lady Tao." Chen Guiliang deliberately teased her.

"Hmph!"

Tao Xue pouted.

Seeing how adorably pouty she looked, Xie Yang screamed So cute! in his heart, feeling as though he was about to fall for someone else again.

Tao Xue said, "My brother asked you to call him. I already saved his phone number in it at noon."

Chen Guiliang opened the Address Book and found two saved numbers.

One was labeled Tao Chenggang, while the other was labeled Tao Xue.

Chen Guiliang left the dorm building to make the call. The signal would be better outside, and he could avoid his roommates as well.

He walked as close to the faculty housing area as he could, since there was a Xiaolingtong signal station set up there.

Tao Xue quietly followed him out. As she passed through the main gate, her heart pounded in fear, worried that the dorm supervisor would catch her red-handed.

Xie Yang followed out of curiosity too.

Xu Haibo, meanwhile, went back to the classroom to work on problems.

Chen Guiliang got through, though the signal was still a little poor. "Hello, President Tao. Thanks for the Xiaolingtong."

"Haha, we're friends. No need to say things like that," Tao Chenggang said with a hearty laugh, apparently in a very good mood. "And don't call me President Tao. Just call me Brother Gang. As for your Uncle, the three of us can address each other however we like."

"Sure, Brother Gang has the final say." Chen Guiliang looked at Tao Xue and deliberately emphasized the words "Brother Gang."

As expected, Tao Xue was unhappy when she heard it. She huffed and silently sulked at her own brother.

Tao Chenggang said, "I've already hired people to make the private server, but there's been a little accident with the dungeon."

"What accident?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Tao Chenggang explained in detail, "There's no problem with the dungeon maps. We can copy other official maps and modify the monsters a little. But dungeons allow multiple players to enter while remaining isolated from regular maps, so we need to strengthen interactions inside them and synchronize player states and monster behavior. First, we need to rent better servers. Second, we need to develop a Dungeon Manager."

"Is developing the Dungeon Manager difficult?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Tao Chenggang said, "I found an expert who graduated from a postgraduate program at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. His name is Luo Xiaoping, and he currently works at a state-owned enterprise. Luo Xiaoping also brought in a friend who graduated from the University of Electronic Science and Technology. They initially asked for thirty thousand, but I negotiated them down to twelve thousand. They said the Dungeon Manager wouldn't be hard to make, but the development time I gave them is too short, so there might be bugs. I told them to get it done quickly. Once it's finished, I'll have people repeatedly run the dungeons. If we find bugs, we'll report them for fixes."

"That works too." Chen Guiliang asked again, "Do we need to cooperate with internet cafes in different places?"

Tao Chenggang said, "Of course we do. Those big gaming forums all have internet cafe alliances, openly or secretly. 17173 has the biggest internet cafe alliance, but that forum has just turned into a portal site, so it wouldn't be convenient for them to openly promote us. We can only make our own posts to contact them. As for forums with the most internet cafe private servers, 17577 is still the one to watch. That's where we need to focus our promotion."

"How much of a cut do internet cafes usually want?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Tao Chenggang said, "It isn't fixed. It depends on the situation."

He explained further, "Normally, internet cafe owners buy private server frameworks, set up the servers themselves, and make money selling equipment. But this time, we aren't selling the framework. We're only letting them install it in their internet cafes. The owners aren't very interested in that, and only a few Internet Cafe Managers have contacted me."

"The Internet Cafe Managers are bypassing the owners to earn some pocket money?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Tao Chenggang said, "Yes. Those Internet Cafe Managers often do that. They help private server operators install games in internet cafes, and they're satisfied if they can earn a few dozen yuan in commission per day. But they ask for a high cut. Some even opened by demanding thirty percent."

"How much did you negotiate them down to?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Tao Chenggang said, "It varies. The highest cut I agreed to was twenty-five percent. I had no choice; they refused to budge. The lowest, I got down to fifteen percent. As for internet cafes here in Longdu City, I contacted the owners directly."

"Do we need to visit every internet cafe one by one?" Chen Guiliang asked.

Tao Chenggang smiled. "Did you forget that I run an internet cafe myself? Some major cities already have internet cafe associations, and Longdu City is preparing one too. Although the local association hasn't been established yet, most of the internet cafe owners have already had drinks together."

Chen Guiliang asked, "How many internet cafe owners are willing to cooperate?"

"Twenty-one are willing so far, and I'm still calling around," Tao Chenggang added. "But they don't care about those small commissions and won't actively help us promote it. At most, they'll let their Internet Cafe Managers install the private server, and even the commission will be left for the managers to earn themselves."

Without Tao Chenggang's connections, it would have been extremely difficult for Chen Guiliang to handle even the internet cafe partnerships alone while running a private server.

Chen Guiliang thought for a moment and said, "Brother Gang, we can start promoting it on the major gaming forums now."

"Promote it now? The early promotional costs might be substantial," Tao Chenggang said.

Chen Guiliang explained, "Not by paying the forums to promote us. Organize people to make posts yourselves. At first, don't directly promote the game. Take the players' side—complain about all the problems with current private servers and curse Shanda's official Legend servers. Then organize people to reply to the posts yourselves, stir up the discussion, and make netizens relate to it. After that, use a bet as an excuse to keep speaking from the players' perspective and swear that we'll make a private server that doesn't sell equipment. Only in the two days before the game launches should we naturally pay the private server forums for promotion."

After thinking a little more, Chen Guiliang added, "Right, once the posts gain traction, we can provide daily written updates on the private server's development progress. That'll build anticipation among potential players, making them feel as though they made this private server themselves! Mm... nurturing. We need to give them a sense of nurturing it. Our private server should be like a child they watched grow up with their own eyes!"

"That's a good method. You really do have plenty of clever ideas," Tao Chenggang said approvingly. "If we do it this way, we'll basically be one of the players. We're the private server's biological fathers, while the players are its godfathers. It'll be perfectly natural for godfathers to spend money taking care of their son."

"Haha, exactly." Chen Guiliang liked dealing with smart people.

(Thanks to BrL and Yuxian Qitian for their Alliance Leader rewards.)

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