Chapter 491: Strategic Layout of the Internet

April 18, 2000, Shenzhen.

The rain outside the window fell incessantly, and the traffic on Shen Nan Avenue left blurred streaks of light in the downpour.

In the conference room of Wanxiang Dasha, the atmosphere was even gloomier than the weather.

Li Yaozong sat in the seat his father had occupied for fifteen years, with a thick stack of reports spread before him.

The topmost sheet was a Nasdaq index chart—three months ago it was celebrating above 5,000 points, now it has fallen below 3,500.

"President Li, the United States side collapsed again," Zhou Wenbin's voice came through the speakerphone, with the faint hiss of a long‑distance call. "It fell another 7% today, Internet stocks were essentially halved. Silicon Valley has started laying off staff; companies big and small are burning cash and can't keep it going."

Li Yaozong held the microphone and was silent for a few seconds.

"What's happening over in Hong Kong?"

"Hong Kong stocks were also affected; the Hang Seng fell 400 points today," Zhou Wenbin paused. "But our Wanshang Bank has little Internet assets, so the impact is minor. Some local firms that were chasing U. S. tech stocks are now in a mess."

Li Yaozong nodded, even though the other side could not see it.

"Uncle Wenbin, keep a close eye on things over there. At a time like this, cash is more important than anything."

He hung up the phone and turned to look at the few people seated in the conference room.

Zhang Wei leaned against the chair back, the projector's light reflecting off his lenses; Xu Jiaming twirled a worn steel pen in his hand; He Xiao crossed his hands on the table, his knuckles slightly pale. The three core pillars wore different expressions, but their eyes shared the same thing—concern.

"Everyone heard," Li Yaozong walked back to his seat. "The U. S. Internet bubble has burst. Nasdaq has dropped almost 40% since March."

He paused.

"Someone said the Internet is over."

Xu Jiaming was the first to speak.

"President Li, our Pangu system has nothing to do with the Internet. The tax‑system contract has already been signed—a three‑year deal with stable annual revenue. On the computer side, we're still propped up by Government and state‑owned enterprise orders."

Li Yaozong looked at him.

"Jiaming, do you think this gust won't reach us?"

Xu Jiaming did not answer immediately.

Zhang Wei took over: "The chip side is also fine. Our embedded processors are mainly for DVDs and home appliances; export orders are somewhat affected, but the domestic market is still growing. This year's R&D budget…"

"Budget as usual," Li Yaozong cut him off. "Not a single cent can be missed."

Zhang Wei nodded and adjusted his glasses.

He Xiao could no longer sit still.

"President Li, the automotive side is more stable. The electronic injection engine is already in mass production; our sedans' sales in the first quarter this year rose 30% over last year. Whether the Internet bubble bursts or not, ordinary people still need to buy cars."

Li Yaozong looked at him and suddenly asked.

"He Xiao, do you go online?"

He Xiao was startled for a moment.

"I…occasionally go online."

"What do you do online?"

"I read news, check mail." He Xiao scratched his head. "My mailbox is still 163, free."

Li Yaozong nodded, stood up, and walked to the window.

The rain kept falling, leaving streaks of water sliding down the glass.

"Why are those American Internet companies collapsing?" he turned around. "It's not that the Internet is failing; they were too hasty. Burning cash to chase market share, they burned out of money and died."

He walked back to the table.

"But the Internet itself won't die."

He pulled another report from the folder and tossed it onto the table.

"This is the analysis our Strategic Research Institute did last month. China's Internet users were 8.9 million at the end of last year. By the end of this year, they're expected to exceed 20 million. In three years, possibly over 50 million."

He looked at the few people seated.

"In five years, it could reach over a hundred million."

The conference room fell silent for a few seconds.

Xu Jiaming adjusted his glasses. "President Li, you mean…"

Li Yaozong did not answer directly.

He walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and wrote three words.

Mailbox. Search engine. Web page.

Zhang Wei stared at the three words, his brow furrowing.

"President Li, these… don't really match our core business, do they? Chip, systems, automobiles—we have experience. Internet—we have no experience at all."

Li Yaozong set the pen down.

"Experience can be learned. Talent can be recruited. Time waits for no one."

He sat down again.

"The American bubble burst, but China's Internet is just beginning. Those cash‑burning U. S. companies are dead, but the technology lives on. The engineers who were laid off still have experience and skills. We can enter now and pick up the leftovers."

Xu Jiaming looked thoughtful.

"You mean we should hire people?"

"Right," Li Yaozong nodded. "But not ordinary hiring. Uncle Wenbin has already contacted several headhunters in Hong Kong, targeting Chinese engineers returning from Silicon Valley. These people understand technology and trends; now that there are layoffs there, they're willing to come back."

He paused.

"We need to build our own search engine."

He Xiao opened his mouth, but swallowed whatever he was about to say.

Li Yaozong looked at him.

"If you have something to say, say it."

He Xiao scratched his head.

"Li Yaozong, the search engine thing… I've heard it's quite complex. It needs crawlers, indexing, ranking, and that… PageRank? Can we do it?"

Li Yaozong did not answer directly.

He looked at Zhang Wei.

"Uncle Zhang, what do you think?"

Zhang Wei pushed his glasses back and was silent for a few seconds.

"Technically, it's not impossible." His voice was slow, as if processing in his mind, "We can write our own web crawler. The inverted index—we can tweak our database setup to use it. The ranking algorithm… might require dedicated research."

He looked at Li Yaozong.

"But the biggest problem isn't technology, it's data. For a search engine to run, we need a massive collection of web pages. We must first build a sufficiently large web page repository, which requires time, servers, and bandwidth."

Li Yaozong nodded.

"Time can be rushed. Servers can be bought. Bandwidth can be rented."

He looked at Xu Jiaming.

"Jiaming, over at the Pangu system, can we pull a few programmers?"

Xu Jiaming gave a wry smile.

"Li Yaozong, Pangu 5.0 just went live, and there's a bunch of bugs to fix…"

"That also needs to be pulled." Li Yaozong said unequivocally, "The internet sector has a window period this year. Miss this year, and we wait another three years."

The conference room fell into a brief silence.

Outside, the rain gradually lightened, and a line of gray‑white appeared on the horizon.

He Xiao suddenly spoke up.

"Li Yaozong, I understand you want to build email and a search engine. But the web… what kind of web pages are we supposed to make?"

Li Yaozong looked at him.

"Portal."

He Xiao was stunned.

"Portal? Like Sina, Sohu?"

Li Yaozong nodded.

"Right. Sina and Sohu are both listed, but their content still relies on editors stacking it. We can do something different—use technology to aggregate content, create categorized navigation, and make a comprehensive URL directory."

He paused.

"I've already thought of the name: 'Wanshang Navigation'."

Xu Jiaming pushed his glasses back, a spark flashing in his eyes.

"Li Yaozong, you mean we should first use the navigation site to nurture the search engine?"

Li Yaozong smiled.

"Jiaming, you understand this better than I do."

He stood up, walked back to the whiteboard, and drew a line beneath those three words.

"Step one, build email. Free email to attract users first. With users comes traffic, and with traffic comes data."

He drew another line.

"Step two, build the navigation. Categorize and organize useful things online so users can find them easily. A navigation site has a low barrier, is quick to adopt, and can be linked with email."

Third line.

"Step three, the search engine. Once we have a solid user base, data, and mature technology, we'll launch our own search. Not aiming for a one‑shot launch; start with site‑internal search and expand gradually."

He put down his pen and looked at the three people present.

"Within three years, Wanshang must have its own place on the internet."

Zhang Wei was silent for a long time.

He took off his glasses and slowly wiped them with the cuff of his shirt. Li Yaozong had seen that gesture countless times—it appears when he's nervous, thinking, or making a decision.

"Li Yaozong." Zhang Wei put his glasses back on, "The core of a search engine is ranking. In the United States they use PageRank, which looks at link votes. We need our own algorithm."

He paused.

"And segmentation. Chinese word segmentation is far more complex than English; characters are concatenated without spaces. A wrong cut flips the meaning entirely."

Li Yaozong looked at him.

"Can it be solved?"

Zhang Wei thought for a moment.

"Yes. Our Pangu system's input method already has a segmentation module. We can modify it. The ranking algorithm… may require hiring specialists to research."

He lifted his head.

"But there's one condition—this can't be rushed. A search engine is honed over time; you can't just throw money at it and get it instantly."

Li Yaozong nodded.

"No rush. Proceed steadily."

He turned to Xu Jiaming.

"Jiaming, set up the email server on your side first. It doesn't need to be complex; just able to send and receive mail. Use the domain wanxiang., our own."

Xu Jiaming nodded.

"Understood."

The meeting dispersed, and the rain outside stopped.

Li Yaozong stood alone by the window, watching the sky far away, freshly washed. Shenzhen's skyline was especially clear after the rain, like a child just out of a bath—clean and vibrant.

He recalled the sentence his father said before leaving.

"The 21st century is the age of the Internet. We can't fall behind."

At that time he didn't fully understand. Now, he gets it.

Footsteps sounded behind him.

Li Yaozong didn't turn around.

"Uncle Wenbin?"

Zhou Wenbin's voice carried a smile.

"How did you know it was me?"

"At this hour, the only one who could rush back from Hong Kong is you."

Zhou Wenbin walked to his side and also looked out the window.

"I heard what you just said from outside the door," he said, "Yaozong, you're bolder than your father was back then."

Li Yaozong shook his head.

"It's not about daring. It's about having no choice."

He turned around.

"My father handed the conglomerate to me; I must keep it alive. Chips, systems, cars—those are the roots, and must be protected. But merely protecting isn't enough; we must also look ahead."

He paused.

"The Internet is that road ahead."

Zhou Wenbin looked at him.

The 32‑year‑old young man had in his eyes the same look his father had during the financial crisis.

"What do you need me to do?" Zhou Wenbin asked.

Li Yaozong thought for a moment.

"Over in Hong Kong, help me keep an eye on technical staff returning from the United States. Whether they work on search, systems, or networks, as long as they can get the job done, invite them over for a talk."

He paused.

"Offer good compensation, no empty promises."

Zhou Wenbin nodded.

"Also, Uncle Wenbin," Li Yaozong said, looking at him, "you have extensive contacts in Hong Kong; help me find out if there are any companies doing Now we need to output lines: English segmentation that want to sell. Small companies are fine, as long as they have the technology."

Zhou Wenbin was stunned for a moment.

"You want to acquire?"

Li Yaozong nodded.

"Time waits for no one. Building from scratch is too slow; better to buy something ready-made. Even just a team, as long as they have experience, will do."

Zhou Wenbin looked at him for a few seconds, then suddenly smiled.

"Yaozong, you really have grown up."

In the evening, Li Yaozong returned home.

The osmanthus tree in the courtyard was in bloom, and its fragrance drifted into the house in waves.

He came to the study doorway.

He pushed the door open, turned on the light. The purple clay tea set still sat on the desk, and the *Zizhi Tongjian* on the bookshelf remained in its old spot.

He walked to the desk and sat down.

That chair had been sat in by his father for twenty years. He sat down, and it fit perfectly.

On the desk lay a sticky note, in his father's handwriting:

"Yaozong, when faced with indecision, think alone; don't follow blindly. What the majority follows isn't necessarily right; truth is held only by a few, and those who make money aren't the majority either."

He smiled, folded the note, and slipped it into his pocket.

Then he took a document from the drawer.

It was a "Internet Concept" handwritten by his father at the end of last year. Only three pages, the script a bit messy, but the ideas were clear:

"In the next ten years, the network will change everything. Wanshang must keep up, but not blindly follow trends. Start with email, then navigation, then search. Step by step, move steadily. Don't rush, but you can't stop."

After reading, he placed the document back into the drawer.

He stood up and walked to the window.

Outside, Shenzhen's night was lighting up. Ten Battalion Commander' lights dotted the sky like stars. In those lit windows, countless people were working overtime, striving, dreaming.

He recalled a phrase his father often said.

"This city is built from dreams."

Now, it's his turn to stack them.

Early the next day, Li Yaozong went to the Nanshan R&D Center.

Zhang Wei was in the lab, tapping the keyboard at several servers. Seeing Li Yaozong enter, he looked up.

"Director Li, you arrived just in time. I spent the whole night thinking, and the search engine matter now has some clues."

Li Yaozong walked over.

"Tell me."

Zhang Wei pointed at the code on the screen.

"We can start with a small crawler to grab some news sites for practice. Once the data accumulates, we can expand gradually."

He pulled up a diagram.

"This is the architecture I envision. The web spider handles fetching, a cleaning module removes noise, a segmentation module tokenizes, then we build an inverted index. During retrieval, we first query the index by terms, then sort the output."

Li Yaozong looked at the diagram; although some parts were unclear, the overall process was understandable.

"What about the sorting algorithm?"

Zhang Wei shook his head.

"This is the most troublesome. We need enough user behavior data first, so we can train a ranking model. At the start, we'll use simple algorithms—like ranking by keyword frequency, then adding a bit of time weight."

He paused.

"When we have more users later, we'll gradually optimize."

Li Yaozong nodded.

"How many people are needed?"

Zhang Wei thought for a moment.

"Give me ten programmers first; three months, and we can build a prototype."

"I'll give you twenty," Li Yaozong said, "Three months, I want to see a searchable engine that can run."

Zhang Wei was stunned for a moment.

"Twenty? Xu Jiaming's side…"

"I'll handle the Jiaming side," Li Yaozong patted his shoulder, "The search engine is the group's ten‑year strategy. If you need people, give people; if you need money, give money."

He paused.

"Uncle Zhang, my father said you are the best at fighting hard battles. This time, we still have to rely on you."

Zhang Wei pushed his glasses back, silent for a few seconds.

Then he smiled.

"Alright."

Three months later, July 2000.

Wanshang Navigation went live.

There was no launch event, no advertising, just a tiny link added on the login page of Wanshang Mailbox.

"Wanshang Navigation—Surfing the web starts here."

The page was simple: a search box at the top—using Baidu's site search. Below were a dozen categories—news, sports, entertainment, finance, technology, lifestyle… Under each category were the most frequently used website links.

Li Yaozong sat in his office, watching the backend traffic data.

Day one, three thousand clicks.

Day two, eight thousand.

Day three, twenty thousand.

Xu Jiaming pushed the door open, smiling.

"Director Li, the mailbox users are growing fast. This week we added eighty thousand registrations; total now exceeds three hundred thousand."

Li Yaozong nodded.

"What about the navigation?"

"Navigation's traffic has already surpassed the mailbox," Xu Jiaming handed over a report. "Average user dwell time is seven minutes, longer than expected."

Li Yaozong looked at the report, silent for a few seconds.

"Jiaming, tell me, are we doing this too late?"

Xu Jiaming thought for a moment.

"It's a bit late. Sina and Sohu are already listed, NetEase has risen too. But…" He paused. "Late doesn't mean no chance."

Li Yaozong looked at him.

"What do you mean?"

Xu Jiaming pointed at the report.

"Look, our user growth curve is steeper than expected. What does that indicate? It shows the market still has room. Many people aren't online yet, many have just gone online and don't know where to find things. Our navigation hits that need perfectly."

He pushed his glasses back.

"Director Li, I think we chose correctly."

October 2000.

Wanshang Search went live.

It's still that tiny search box, but a line of text underneath changed:

"Wanshang Search—Find what you want."

Li Yaozong stood in the R&D center's server room, watching the few humming servers. Zhang Wei sat at the console, fingers tapping the keyboard.

"Director Li, give it a try."

Li Yaozong walked to a terminal and typed three characters into the search box.

"Wanshang."

Pressed Enter.

In 0.3 seconds, the results appeared.

First result: Wanxiang Group official website.

Second: Wanshang Navigation.

Third: Wanshang Auto.

Fourth: Wanshang Mailbox…

Li Yaozong scrolled down; there were over two thousand results, all from pages they had crawled themselves.

He turned his head, looking at Zhang Wei.

"Is it usable?"

Zhang Wei pushed his glasses back, smiling rarely.

"It works."

In the R&D center, a restrained cheer erupted.

Li Yaozong did not cheer.

He simply walked to the window and watched Shenzhen's nightscape.

In the distance, atop Wanxiang Dasha, that lamp was still lit.

He knew his father, wherever he was now—on some mountain or by some river—must also be looking at something.

Perhaps it was the stars, perhaps the moon, perhaps merely the lights of distant homes.

But he knew his father would certainly hear this news.

"Dad," he said in his mind, "our search engine works now."

Late at night, Li Yaozong returned home. He sat at his desk, opened a drawer, and took out the three pages his father had written.

He read them again.

Those scrawled characters, those plain judgments, those simple plans.

All were correct.

He recalled another sentence his father said before leaving.

"Yaozong, remember—opportunity belongs to those who dare to imagine, and also to those who can endure."

He placed the three pages back into the drawer and gently closed it.

Outside the window, Shenzhen's night was very quiet.

In the distance, a few lights were still shining.

He knew that was the direction of the Nanshan Research and Development Center.

Under those lights, there were still people working overtime, debugging, and optimizing.

And tomorrow, there would be new users, new searches, new data.

This road has only just begun.

He stood up and turned off the floor lamp.

In the darkness, he looked at the city beyond the window and softly said:

"Dad, I will endure."