A few days later,
Xiao Liu returned to the company and reported for work. He confirmed that the Legend of Greedy Blue Moon had indeed originated in Ice City, but there was no further information.
Seeing that everything above remained calm and his report had not caused the slightest ripple, Zhou Xiao quietly dropped the matter and devoted himself to his routine work.
He had done everything he could. He had not yet reached the point of realizing that he should remonstrate unto death!
Not everyone had the courage to become Wei Zheng. After all, not every boss was Li Shimin.
But a turbulent undercurrent was already flowing beneath Shanda's foundation, slowly eroding its roots.
And Chen Hao, who had already become a top-tier presence within this undercurrent, was currently in the capital.
Apart from meeting up with Xu Pengkun once at the beginning, he had done nothing else these past few days. He had devoted his entire body and mind to the major undertaking of establishing a company.
Chen Hao established an Internet technology company called Century Horizon, signifying that it would dominate the world in the new century!
Its registered capital was ten million yuan.
Its business scope included computer software development, network engineering installation, computer hardware and software, office equipment, cultural and educational supplies, and clothing sales; undertaking the design and production of various advertisements; Internet publishing services for game products; telecommunications services; computer software design and production; and so on. In short, it covered anything related to computers.
Chen Hao set his sights on Guomao as the company's office location.
Guomao, whose full name was the China World Trade Center, was located at No. 1 Jianguo Outer Street in Chaoyang District, Beijing. It stood west of East Third Ring Road, north of Jianwai Street, and south of Guanghua Road. It was a large building complex in Beijing's central business district and an important commercial complex in Beijing.
At this time, Guomao Phase Two had only been completed for three years. It had thirty-nine floors and offered a view over the entire Chaoyang District.
Chen Hao directly signed for the entire twenty-second floor. He signed a one-year lease first, with annual rent exceeding one million yuan, and paid the deposit in advance.
He then contacted a renovation crew and had them move in to begin the work. He required five meeting rooms, with the boss's office next to the finance office. He also designated two areas, one as a gym and the other as a leisure snack area. All the remaining space was to be opened up.
After thinking it over, Chen Hao increased the number of meeting rooms from five to seven. Everyone knew that the hottest place in a company was the meeting room. You had to fight for one!
Of course, Chen Hao specifically emphasized to the renovation company's foreman that while walls could be demolished, the building's load-bearing walls absolutely could not be touched! Otherwise, the renovation company would bear all consequences for any problems that arose!
He also found an engineering supervision company to oversee the construction quality.
For this reason, with the property management office and renovation company present as witnesses, he signed a liability waiver!
The property management office even produced the building's structural drawings left behind by the original developer. Together with the renovation and supervision companies, they clearly marked which walls could be altered and which could not!
There was no helping it. He was genuinely terrified. Could this thing really be demolished recklessly? If the building collapsed, human lives would be at stake, so one could never be too careful! Besides, he could not afford the compensation. It would be billions of yuan. Come~~~ Come on, he was just kidding!
Spring came in 2002, and all living things revived.
In Beijing in 2002, there were only a handful of high-rise buildings around Guomao.
On the twenty-second floor of Guomao, a tall, handsome, and striking young man stood before the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. His view was broad, and Tiananmen could be seen faintly in the distance.
With the vast world before him, Chen Hao's heart rose like the morning sun. His spirits soared. There was so much he could accomplish in this world!
Unfortunately, there was no audience around!
The next day, Chen Hao charged from Guomao to Zhongguancun, traveling from the southeast to the northwest along a diagonal line.
Haidian Street and Zhichun Road became a microcosm of China's Internet era. Over the next twenty years, Yongyou, Sina, Meituan, and Toutiao would all emerge from here. Lei Jun joined Kingsoft, invested in Vancl, and founded Xiaomi. Through decades of ups and downs, he never left this tiny patch of land.
Countless technology entrepreneurs settled here, developed, and then moved away. Over twenty years, fortunes shifted dramatically, from growth to prosperity and then decline and decay. One could say that Zhongguancun represented half the history of technological innovation.
At this time, e World did not yet exist, and Dinghao Mall had not opened either. Only Hailong Electronics City stood out.
Chen Hao directly rented a poorly managed, half-abandoned factory near Netcom Company and signed a three-year long-term lease.
He planned to turn it into a professional server room!
He called his older brother and asked him to help contact server suppliers.
These past few days, Chen Hao had been running back and forth between Zhongguancun and Guomao. From a distance, he looked just like a foreman who knew how to repair computers!
Old Ban remained in the rented house in Ice City, continuing to serve as the director of the daycare center, while his older brother did nothing but work and check on the server room outside of his job.
Xu Pengkun was still attending classes and could only come over to help occasionally.
Chen Hao now felt as though he were doing the work of three people by himself.
With his older brother making the introductions, he spent the remaining time meeting suppliers from well-known foreign companies such as IBM, Cisco, and EMC. After a comprehensive comparison, he signed a server procurement contract with EMC, which offered the best value for money, at a café in Zhongguancun. He purchased ten sets, totaling one hundred of the latest blade servers, for nearly ten million yuan in total. He paid the deposit in advance, with delivery scheduled for the beginning of the following month!
EMC, or Eanxin in Chinese, was founded in 1979. It was also a long-established American information storage technology company, primarily engaged in information storage and management products, services, and solutions. Although it was not as famous as IBM, its servers' quality and performance were nearly on par.
Besides the excellent value for money, there was another important reason. In his previous life, his older brother had jumped directly from IBM to EMC. A few years later, EMC was ultimately acquired by Dell for 67 billion U.S. dollars. At the time, his older brother, nearly forty, was laid off by Dell on the grounds that he was over the age limit. No wonder they were brothers—even their endings were the same!
Fortunately, foreign companies were still quite decent. They had given his older brother N+3 severance pay, allowing him to part amicably with his former employer.
Unlike the small private company Chen Hao worked for, where a dispute over N+1 severance had gone all the way to labor arbitration and dragged on for more than half a year before he received the compensation he was owed.
After returning to the hotel that evening, Chen Hao still had to remotely monitor and direct the operations of The Legend of Greedy Blue Moon. Even the donkey on a production team was not this exhausted.
After finishing a day's work, Chen Hao lay on the hotel's soft yet firm bed and suddenly came to a realization. He now had only two wishes—not how much money he would earn or how many companies he would own. First, he did not want to end up like he had in the past, with gray hair and a bald spot at thirty; second, he wanted to avoid dying suddenly and live to the age of seventy!
After waking up, Chen Hao immediately switched to shirking mode. He sighed. Damn it, I was reborn once and still had to suffer like this? The habit of doing everything personally is an illness. I need to change!
He went online, searched directly, and spent money to find another engineering quality supervision company.
As long as the money was paid, he could immediately relax. He would find someone to oversee the quality and only inspect the final result.
After spending a day, he finalized the construction plan and renovation requirements for the professional server room and finished communicating them to the three parties. He sent them to his older brother to review, and his older brother immediately pointed out several details. Everything was settled. Finally, Chen Hao asked about the construction period. It would take about a month.
Chen Hao shook his head and directly increased the price by twenty percent, requiring the construction team to finish the work no later than the end of the month!
After everything was settled, Chen Hao let out a long breath. This was much better. Spend money to buy peace of mind. Why save it~
At the entrance to the construction site, the workers behind him were working feverishly. Chen Hao finally felt that he could slow down a little, but fatigue instantly swept over him. When people were tired, they easily began to miss home.
He realized that he had been away for more than a month and had not even called home. That was a little hard to justify. Chen Hao took out his phone and dialed home.
The call connected.
"Hello? Mom~"
Chen Hao immediately held the phone far away. Even without speakerphone, the voice coming from it echoed in every direction, full of domineering force.
"You little brat, you finally remembered to call! I called you twice, and your damn phone was turned off both times. I thought you'd been kidnapped! #&*#￥...&@￥"
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