Chen Hao knew Old Ban could fight, but he had no idea he was this good.
Last time, outside his own home, he had only seen the aftermath and hadn't witnessed the actual process.
Good lord, those street thugs had been crushed as easily as chicks, one after another, all killed in an instant.
He was freaking invincible.
Pang Ban had no idea what Chen Hao was thinking. He pressed several spots on Chen Hao's body.
"It's fine. They're all superficial wounds. Rub on some safflower oil, and they'll heal in a couple of days."
Chen Hao swallowed and pointed at the man who had just slid down the wall nearby. "Is he all right?"
"I held back. He's got a slight fracture in his chest and will have to lie down for a few days!"
Pang Ban helped Chen Hao up and supported him by the arm as they walked out.
When they reached the entrance of the Internet café, they saw the driver uncle hurrying over from nearby.
Pang Ban explained that he had waited outside for a while, and only managed to find Chen Hao because the uncle had come and told him Chen Hao had been taken here.
The uncle quickly came over, looking worried. He hurriedly said, "Let's get out of here. I saw two of those boys run out just now, discussing calling for reinforcements."
With Pang Ban here, how could they dare cause trouble? With this guardian deity present, Chen Hao wasn't worried in the slightest as he limped along.
The uncle continued, "I called the police just now. Once the cops arrive, they'll deal with this bunch!"
Chen Hao's expression changed when he heard that, and he hurriedly urged everyone to leave.
The uncle asked in confusion, "You aren't afraid of thugs, but you're afraid of the cops? What kind of logic is that? Besides, I personally saw those people start it at the entrance and then drag you away. Even if you fought back, that still counts as self-defense."
"Uncle, you don't understand. Times have changed. Nowadays, as long as you fight back, no matter how disadvantaged you are—even if the other side struck first—as long as you retaliate and nobody gets beaten to death, it'll be mutual combat even if the Jade Emperor himself shows up! Drive, drive!"
The car started up and drove away. Chen Hao closed his eyes and thought for a moment before saying, "Uncle, let's leave it at this for today. You don't need to refund the money either. The police might call you later to follow up. Just say you saw it while doing a good deed and called the police. You don't know anything else."
The uncle immediately understood. "Isn't that exactly what happened?"
"Thanks, Uncle. Just drop us off by the side of xx Road."
After returning home, Chen Hao pressed several medicated plasters against his lower back and rubbed on safflower oil, grimacing in pain.
Pang Ban talked about the recent situation at his family's Internet café.
The new computers his big brother had bought for the family a few days ago had arrived, and people had already been hired to install them. The café was now officially operating.
Even after the new computers had been added, the Internet café was still packed, with every seat occupied.
Business was far better than before. Old Ban had also recommended a reliable person to replace him as the Internet café's manager, which was why he had been able to leave.
After listening, Chen Hao pulled out his wallet and counted the money inside.
"Here are five thousand. Take it!"
Pang Ban shook his head and refused. "I have money. You need this more!"
Chen Hao stubbornly put the money into Pang Ban's hand and smiled. "What are you thinking? Use a thousand to buy a phone so we can stay in touch. The rest is for tomorrow's promotion. You can negotiate the exact price. Anyway, the upper limit is one hundred per Internet café."
This time, Pang Ban didn't refuse and accepted the money.
"Since you've chosen to come work with me, I won't mistreat you. Right now, we have nothing and are completely broke, so we'll suffer together. Whatever I have in the future, you'll have too." Chen Hao looked seriously at Pang Ban as he painted a grand vision. He believed they would soon be able to enjoy the fruits of it.
Chen Hao turned on the monitor and refreshed the webpage. In less than a day, the number of private-server reservations had unexpectedly surpassed one thousand. Those thousand people included the results of Chen Hao's promotions in Ice City and Xu Pengkun's promotions in the capital.
Chen Hao called him. "Hello, Big Bird. How are things on your end?"
"Good. There are two days left. Continue tomorrow. Also, be careful. Don't go alone—find a few classmates to go with you. Negotiate if you can, and leave if you can't. Today, on my end—"
Chen Hao gave him a rough account of his encounter with the thugs that day and told Xu Pengkun to be careful.
"Yeah. Do you have enough money? Not enough? Use your personal savings to cover it first. I'm almost out of money here. I'll pay you back with interest!"
"Okay. Keep in touch if anything comes up!"
After hanging up, Chen Hao told Pang Ban what he needed to do the next day: continue promoting the game on-site, replenish the flyers at Internet cafés they had already partnered with, and expand to new Internet cafés.
He wasn't worried about Old Ban's safety at all. With Old Ban's skills, Chen Hao was more concerned about those thugs instead. He hoped they would know better.
The next day,
Pang Ban went out and followed the plan.
Chen Hao held down the fort.
He searched using the keyword "Legend" and discovered that his private-server alliance website ranked around the middle of the third page.
Judging by the habits of Internet users, clicks dropped sharply after the second page.
But it was still better than nothing.
Using the inspiration he had recorded the night before,
Chen Hao's fingers danced across the keyboard. He directly added three statues to the safe zone in Earth City—one each for Warrior, Mage, and Taoist. They wore the very best equipment and held the most dazzling weapons.
He had to show those rookie players what their ultimate ideal looked like. It was time to open their eyes.
Want it? Simple. Spend money!
Chen Hao's current joy came from refreshing the page every so often and watching the reservation count shoot upward. It gave him a tremendous sense of accomplishment.
2048 3284 4396 6180
To be safe, Chen Hao continued optimizing the server's performance.
He started with a stress test, randomly distributing a total of five hundred bots across the various maps and having them move around and cast skills at random.
After observing the various parameters, he found that all the thresholds were within controllable limits.
He then kept increasing the number of users. When eight hundred people were online simultaneously, the thresholds neared their upper limits.
Character movement and actions gradually began to stutter, reaching a level that was barely playable.
When the number of bots increased to one thousand, they could basically only take one step every two seconds. It was unbearably laggy.
Chen Hao didn't dare add any more. He was afraid of directly crashing the server and burning it out. If he brought disaster upon himself, he would truly have nowhere to cry!
When performance problems appeared, there was only one simplest and most effective solution—add caching!
He added client-side caching, having unnecessary requests to the server read from the local cache instead. He then optimized the data volume and frequency of communication along the connection chain to reduce the load on the server.
Several hours later, he finished optimizing the cache and code. To be safe, Chen Hao also added a server overload protection mechanism: a queue!
He ran another stress test. This server could now withstand two thousand people online simultaneously with stable performance!
Once the number exceeded two thousand, the same lag as before would appear.
To ensure a good experience for in-game players, Chen Hao set the queue trigger somewhat conservatively, making the queue appear once the total number of players in the game exceeded six hundred.
In other words, each server had a simultaneous online limit of six hundred players.
By the time everything was done, it was already evening, and Pang Ban returned.
"Did you hand them all out? Did it go smoothly?"
Pang Ban nodded.
"You didn't run into any thugs or anything?"
Pang Ban shook his head.
"Damn, those dogs only bully the weak!"
What Pang Ban didn't mention was that, besides handing out all the flyers, he had also casually stuck promotional flyers at the bus stops and residential compounds he passed.
That was simply the kind of person he was. When given something to do, he didn't just complete it without cutting corners—he found a way to do 120%.
Before going to bed, Chen Hao took one last look at the reservation count.
The reservation count for Greedy Blue Moon Legend had officially broken ten thousand!
Before you continue