Tenfold Plan

"Son, come drink your milk. It's good for your calcium."

Wu Xiuhua pushed the door open and walked straight in, carrying a glass of milk which she set on the desk.

"I'm already six feet tall. You think I'm short on calcium?" Chen Hao closed his notebook, unconcerned.

"I heard us Easterners are calcium-deficient our whole lives, regardless of age. We're not like foreigners, who grow up drinking milk, eating bread, eggs, and steak until they're built like little piglets. How could that be the same? Drink it, now."

Gulp, gulp, gulp. He finished it in two swallows and casually wiped his mouth.

"Hey, there's a towel right there. You're so sloppy. I wonder what girl would ever fall for you." Wu Xiuhua complained, but her eyes were full of affection.

"There are tons of them. The girls who like me could line up from our internet cafe all the way to our house."

"Keep bragging. You're already a sophomore—have you started dating at school?"

"Of course not. What girl would ever like me?"

"Uh, are you trying to piss me off on purpose?"

Seeing that his mother looked ready to smack him again, Chen Hao hurriedly turned serious. "Really, there isn't anyone. I plan to establish my career before starting a family. How can a man have a home without a career?"

"That's not necessarily true. The two don't conflict. If you meet a nice girl you like, remember to bring her home."

"Yes, ma'am!" Chen Hao gave her a mock salute.

Wu Xiuhua raised her hand again, and Chen Hao quickly shut his eyes and lowered his head.

The next moment, Wu Xiuhua merely stroked Chen Hao's head gently.

"I don't know why, but I suddenly feel like you've grown up. My eldest son is the best. You'll definitely amount to something someday."

Chen Hao kept his head lowered, his expression hidden, his voice low. "Mom, I must've made you worry a lot before."

"It wasn't too bad. I've kept track of everything I spent on you while raising you. Once you start working and making money, pay me back with interest."

"Huh?" Chen Hao stared at her in astonishment. What happened to loving mother and filial son?

"What do you mean, huh? One hundred for making me angry, three hundred for stealing money to go to the arcade and getting beaten by me, one thousand every time your teacher called me to school—I've got every expense recorded. All together, it's at least a hundred grand."

"I think you were telling the truth when you said I was picked up from a garbage dump."

"Well, not exactly."

"Don't tell me I came free with a phone top-up? Or got downloaded online?"

"How did you know?"

"I knew it! All right, all right, I need to think about my Tenfold Plan. Good night!"

"Can't you tell your mom just a little?"

"No."

"Really not?"

"Really not!"

Wu Xiuhua walked out indignantly, muttering, "I went into a filthy, stinking garbage dump and endured mosquito bites and ant stings to carry you home, then raised you with my own blood, sweat, and tears."

"Mom~"

"Changed your mind?"

"I love you!"

Wu Xiuhua stood still for a moment without turning around. "Brat, get to bed early. Don't stay up too late!"

"Okay!"

Chen Hao had already forgotten the last time he had told his parents that he loved them.

He wouldn't miss the chance again.

After turning thirty, he had gradually begun to miss his parents' nagging and reminders.

Being reborn was wonderful!

Day one of the Tenfold Plan.

Chen Hao had a little over five hundred yuan left from his college living expenses. Just now, he had extor—no, borrowed a thousand yuan from Xu Pengkun for temporary use. After all, you couldn't catch wolves with empty hands. He had to put in some capital.

He first took a look around the largest nearby supermarket and chatted with the owner. They reached an agreement, and Chen Hao paid a deposit.

Then he went to the internet cafe. Old Ban sat behind the counter reading a copy of Computer Repair in Practice. In the corner was a stack of books, from Computer Assembly and Maintenance and Computer Troubleshooting Skills to Inch Force. Other than computer manuals, they were all some kind of "martial arts Secret Manuals."

Old Ban had bought all of them himself. He didn't play games, only occasionally performing hands-on practice to verify what the books said.

What boss wouldn't love an employee who ate grass and produced milk? Especially when the grass was bought with the employee's own wages.

Chen Hao first turned on a computer, took a USB drive from behind the counter, returned to his seat, and fiddled with the computer for a while.

He interrupted Old Ban's studying because he needed him to run an errand.

Chen Hao pointed at the picture on the computer, whispered a few words into Old Ban's ear, pulled out the USB drive, then took five hundred yuan from his pocket and handed it over along with the drive.

"Understand?"

Last night, the boss had called to say Chen Hao would be managing the internet cafe for a few days, without explaining why.

Now that he heard the assignment, Pang Ban didn't understand the point of it. Though he was curious, he said nothing.

He took the money, put on his down jacket, and stuffed the book he had been reading into his backpack.

"Go early and come back early."

Pang Ban nodded and headed out.

Chen Hao watched the shop and cleared out an area behind the counter.

He shut down the computer he had just used, disconnected all the cables one by one, carried the computer over to the counter, and began assembling it.

He powered it on.

For a long while, it didn't reach the Win98 startup screen.

Instead, it froze on a string of English text.

Chen Hao looked at the prompt and immediately understood.

He held down the power button on the computer case and forced it to shut down.

He had probably moved the tower too roughly just now, causing poor contact with the memory stick.

He opened the case, removed the memory stick, and took out

an eraser from the toolbox.

He pulled out the memory, rubbed its gold contacts to remove the oxidation layer, blew on it, and plugged it back into the motherboard.

He looked at the capacity: 256 MB.

Tsk, tsk. Such a tiny capacity. He remembered that in a few years, these little things would skyrocket in price. A bunch of scalpers would turn into computer chefs, tossing anything into the wok—first memory, then hard drives, and finally graphics cards, riding the wave of virtual currency. Graphics card prices shot straight into the sky like rockets. Absolute animals.

Some people bought the highest-end graphics card available at the time, used it for a year, then resold it. Guess what? They sold it for double the price, got a year of use out of it, and still made nearly ten thousand yuan. Could you handle that?

Later, virtual currency crashed for a while and mining farms began shutting down in waves. The scalpers weren't worried at all, since countless gamers would still prop them up. After that, players spent thousands or even tens of thousands on a decent graphics card while trembling with fear that it might be a refurbished mining card. Those poor gamers—damn, playing a game was way too hard.

He powered it on again, and one minute later, it successfully entered the desktop.

He first checked the computer's configuration:

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 (P4) 2.4 GHz

Memory: Kingston 256 MB DDR

Graphics card: Colorful GeForce2 MX400

Hard drive: Western Digital 40 GB, 7200 RPM

For an internet cafe at this time, this setup was considered pretty decent.

Since internet cafe membership systems hadn't appeared yet, it was simple—nothing more than adding, deleting, modifying, and querying data. What was so difficult about that?

Why not just write one? If it took him more than a day, then his past life as a full-stack engineer had been a complete joke.

Chen Hao downloaded various programs—Java, MSQL, and the corresponding IDE software—and set up the environment.

For a while, all that could be heard was Chen Hao typing on the keyboard and clicking the mouse.

He began writing the login and registration module.

Clickety-clack, tap tap tap.

Logging out and settling the bill.

Billing module.

Clickety-clack, tap tap tap.

Lunch.

Statistics module.

Clickety-clack, tap tap tap.

A few curious players came over to watch for a while. It was all English; they didn't understand it, but it looked impressive enough to make their scalps tingle, and they all retreated in defeat.

That afternoon, two men carried three shelves upstairs, interrupting Chen Hao's clickety-clack spellcasting!

He had them arrange the shelves neatly in the open space beside the counter.

Then he directed what items were to go on each shelf, sorting everything by category and arranging it neatly.