Chapter 464: The Secret Code

The person calling was Guo Jingyun, the General Manager of the Internet Department of Dongling High-Tech and also the General Manager of Tianya Company.

Hearing Li Dongling's words, Guo Jingyun also laughed awkwardly a few times. Tianya Net was originally scheduled to go online in the second half of this year, but due to revisions, program modifications, adding new features, etc., it had been delayed until now, and the funding spent had naturally increased quite a bit.

"Mr. Li, rest assured, this time Tianya Net will definitely go online on time. We have already published advertisements for Tianya Net's upcoming launch in many media outlets like *Computer News* and *Computer World*."

"Additionally, we have also started building momentum for Tianya Net on stations like Shuguang, Ma Zhan, and Changcheng!"

Guo Jingyun said to Li Dongling. There was no concept of "Internet water armies" yet, and no one cared about traffic redirection.

BBS sites like Ma Zhan, Shuguang, and Xinyue all belonged to Huido Net, but for new sites, in order to gain popularity, advertising on other sites to pull in people was a common occurrence.

Tianya Net advertising on these sites wasn't considered a violation now, but if it were in later generations, it would be considered "smashing the venue." Major websites would fight like dogs to grab users; how could they tolerate others stealing their people?

"How are the opening activities prepared?" Li Dongling asked Guo Jingyun.

"Everything is ready. In fact, a large part of the opening delay was for these activities. To be honest, the money spent on this is enough to hold a celebrity concert!" Guo Jingyun couldn't help but complain.

"Everyone has worked hard this year. After Tianya Net goes online, give everyone a big red envelope!"

Li Dongling went to the study upstairs and said to Guo Jingyun on the other end of the phone. For the launch of Tianya Net, the Yanjing Tianya Company basically didn't have any holidays this year and had been busy the whole time, just for the launch of Tianya Net.

The night of New Year's Eve was naturally noisy. This year, the Li family's New Year's Eve dinner was set for two full tables. Aside from the bodyguards responsible for security tonight, everyone else, including the wives, drank alcohol.

Watching the Spring Festival Gala while eating the New Year's Eve dinner had somehow become a convention and had become one of the memories of countless people from childhood to adulthood.

Li Dongling looked at Li Zhenlin drinking alcohol, frequently urging everyone to eat more vegetables, and Wang Xiulan, who was bringing food over from time to time. Then looking at Li Dongshan, Li Dongyue, and the others—this scene of the Li family eating the New Year's Eve dinner together was something that had never appeared again after Li Dongling arrived in the provincial capital in his previous life.

"Cheers!"

Li Dongling raised his glass to the Li family, and then everyone raised their glasses for a toast.

Li Dongyue also raised her glass and took a sip, her tongue sticking out from the spiciness. Wang Xiulan patted her daughter's back with amusement and changed the alcohol to sweet red wine—or to be precise, an alcoholic beverage.

This kind of wine was similar to a beverage; one couldn't feel the alcohol at all when drinking it. In reality, it was blended, somewhat similar to RIO wine in later generations.

The price wasn't expensive, and countless people drank it as a beverage. After growing up, it also became the childhood memory of countless people, but no matter how expensive the wine they bought, they couldn't drink that sweet wine from their memories...

The New Year's Eve dinner would last for a long time. At this time, the custom of staying up for the New Year was still very popular, and the Spring Festival Gala was playing on TV.

This year's Spring Festival Gala set up branch venues outside the main venue in Yanjing for the first time, and Xiyuan in the provincial capital became one of the branch venues. He didn't know if Pingyang would have a chance to be a branch venue for the Spring Festival Gala in the future.

The sketch "The Laborer's Adventure" was playing on TV. Yes, that was the source of the "How much is a cup of Palace Jade Liquid?" line, which became one of the most famous secret codes of the Internet era.

After eating for a while, Li Dongling accompanied Li Zhenlin and Wang Xiulan to watch the Spring Festival Gala for a while before he had to go upstairs to the study. There were simply too many calls and text messages; they couldn't stop at all.

To a certain extent, this was also thanks to Dongling High-Tech. Previously, there were no PHS phones; mobile phones were expensive, and mobile phone fees were even more expensive. Everyone's mainstream communication was landline calls, plus a pager that couldn't be contacted in real-time.

So, to tell the truth, the frequency of calls wasn't too high. On one hand, it was a technical issue; of course, the bigger reason was the issue of having a tight budget.

But ever since the PHS phone appeared, mobile phone prices were driven down, and mobile phone fees were also driven down. Calling and sending text messages to offer blessings during festivals became the norm.

Among them, Focus Media was the main force for these blessing text messages. They even specifically built a text message team, racking their brains to think about how to edit blessing text messages for various programs, and then helping users mass-send them. Now, during festivals, Focus Media's text message advertising business could grow by dozens of times...

Li Dongling couldn't be an exception. The text messages he received and the calls he got tonight made his phone almost never stop.

Those who knew Li Dongling's mobile phone number were either internal personnel of Dongling High-Tech, people close to Li Dongling, or figures he had to socialize with. Li Dongling still needed to reply to the text messages from these figures.

Additionally, Li Dongling also called some figures in Pingyang, the provincial capital, and Yanjing, including Gu Xiguang of the State Economic and Trade Commission.

Subsequently, Ning Wanke from Hong Kong also called. Just after finishing with Ning Wanke, Yao Luoying called again. By the time he finished the long phone call, Li Dongling saw that it was already dawn.

In the Li family's courtyard, fireworks also began to be set off at this time. Fireworks filled the sky, instantly lighting it up like daylight. Tonight, flowers bloomed for another year.

Withdrawing his gaze, Li Dongling opened the computer in the study. This computer could use dial-up Internet. As for the speed, don't even bother mentioning it, but in this day and age, being able to connect to the Internet was already not bad—what more could you ask for?

It wasn't easy to go online now, and it wasn't easy to enter a website. One needed to enter a URL to enter a website. Li Dongling struggled for a long time before clicking to enter the Tianya Net website, but he didn't get in; it needed buffering.

The reason for the rumors that there were many Internet talents in the early days was mainly because the threshold for going online was very high. One needed a computer, conditions to go online, and also needed to know certain technologies, which invisibly created a threshold.

Looking at the buffering webpage on the computer, if it were in later generations, this situation would probably be checked as a network disconnection to check the router. But in the current day, it was very normal. Li Dongling also waited for a long time before the webpage interface of Tianya Net slowly appeared.

The first thing he saw about Tianya Net was that it was concise—a blue and white page. In the upper left corner, there was the Tianya Net logo. There were no pictures because... they couldn't load.

Li Dongling dragged the webpage, and there was a sense of lag, but in this era, it was already quite "stunning." Compared to BBS forums like Ma Zhan and Shuguang, it was at least the prototype of a website.

On the homepage, there were five major sections: Tianya Tianya Zatan, Tianya Entertainment, Tianya Sports, Tianya Literature, and Tianya Stocks. When Li Dongling clicked on these sections, the sense of lag was more obvious, but this was already the best optimization that Tianya Net could do.

Li Dongling originally thought that there shouldn't be many people at the beginning of the site, but when he clicked into Tianya Tianya Zatan, he saw that it was quite hot. In just this short while, there were already twenty or thirty posts, although most were just spam.

"Is this Tianya Net?"

"Did I post this?"

"This broken website, it's so hard to post. I waited for more than ten minutes before the website refreshed. Posting actually requires registering an account?"

"Did you watch the sketch tonight? I think *The Laborer's Adventure* is the best sketch of this year's Spring Festival Gala!"

As soon as this post refreshed, a reply appeared in less than a minute below. It was clear that someone was squatting on the website and constantly refreshing the page, "People from Guangdong never watch the Spring Festival Gala!"

"A cousin from western Guangdong proves the person above is right."

After this post, people from all over the country began to emerge in the thread.

Li Dongling saw that Tianya Net could browse posts, but to post or reply to posts, one needed to register. It was also simple. There was no email now, and there was no such thing as mobile phone number registration. Just a string of numbers as an account, then set a password, and give yourself a screen name.

The users going online now were all "honest people." There were no screen names like "There are always treacherous people who want to harm me," "Kick the good leg of the cripple," or "The dream of nine hundred million girls." As for screen names like "Don't want to be shameless," they hadn't become popular yet. Li Dongling saw the screen names of users posting on Tianya Net now; they were either literary or a string of numbers, and there were even people using their real names to go online.

After registering, if one was afraid of losing the account or finding it back after being stolen, one could also "bind" a mobile phone number. This required sending a two-yuan text message, and then one could bind the account.

If the account was lost or the password was stolen, how to find it back? Call Tianya Net's customer service, and the background technical department would change the stolen account password back through the server. It was very simple and unadorned, without a single bit of technique—all relying on the strength of the background!

But just for such a registration function, Tianya Net needed to add another server specifically to store data, and the monthly expenses increased by a large amount.

Li Dongling also registered an account and entered "My Account," finding that the page was also very simple, but there was a check-in function and an account level display. After Li Dongling clicked check-in, it showed that he had checked in for one day, and then the level zero account became level one!

This check-in and level function was made by Tianya Net according to Li Dongling's suggestion. These two functions seemed simple, but they could improve the activity and stickiness of a considerable number of users, especially some obsessive-compulsive users—that is, they didn't come to Tianya Net to post, but they had to check in once every day; otherwise, they wouldn't feel at ease for the day.

Li Dongling looked up at the time and saw that Tianya Net had been online for less than half an hour, and the entire website already had dozens of posts scattered around. Behind this, he didn't know how many users were lurking without posting.

For the BBS forums that previously had at most a few or a dozen users like Ma Zhan, Shuguang, and Changcheng, these early Internet users had a feeling of entering a new world when they entered Tianya Net. Sitting in front of the computer screen, communicating in a thread with people thousands of miles away, this kind of netizen who replied in minutes, or even "seconds," was something that couldn't be experienced on those BBS forums in the past.

"Welcome everyone to Tianya Net. I am the administrator of Tianya Net. To celebrate the opening of the site, Tianya Net has prepared several activities. Everyone is welcome to participate actively. Additionally, Tianya Net has some website rules that need everyone to be able to comply with..."

At this time, on the homepage of the website, a new post popped up. It was a post sent by an account wearing an administrator's vest. ===== CHAPTER 465 =====