Chapter 502: Your Grey Avatar Will Never Flicker Again

"I took the college entrance exam twice, in '77 and '78, and of course I didn't get in either time. When I signed up, I applied to Peking University and Tsinghua. I had a classmate who even applied to Cambridge and Oxford—he didn't know those two schools weren't in China."

"When I failed to get into college, I really was quite upset. A lot of people praise me, saying my narrative language is concise. But actually, I know it's because I don't know that many characters, and that ended up producing a kind of concise style…"

"Many who succeeded in exams later became failures, and many who failed exams became successes…"

Hefei, the Xu family home.

The soft scratching of pen tip against paper kept stirring the restlessness in the young man's heart on this sweltering afternoon; no matter how hard the whirring ceiling fan blew, it couldn't blow away the faintly stirring heart of Xu Song.

On the living room TV, the famous author Yu Hua—who had written works such as *To Live*—was chatting at length with the camera about his past failures in the college entrance exam, trying to ease the pressure for the candidates about to take it.

"Why not invite Han Han? Wouldn't Han Han be even better at relieving pressure? He didn't take the college entrance exam either, and he became famous through writing too. His books even sold like crazy nationwide. He's the same age as us, young people—wouldn't that be more convincing?"

"Exactly, exactly. I've never even heard of this Yu Hua before."

"Forget it. Han Han didn't just skip the college entrance exam—he dropped out before even finishing high school. There's no comparison at all."

"Maybe it's because they got Zhou Yi as the young people's representative? Didn't they say Zhou Yi also filmed this ad?"

"…"

The buddies gathered in the living room, each chipping in with their own comments. Currently in their second year of high school, they were full of anticipation for the so-called third year—anticipating that if they could just hold on for one more year, then once they got into college, they could dive into the ocean like a fish and soar into the sky like a bird.

Xu Song, a second-year high school student who had a very clear grasp of his own studies, didn't think he would fail the college entrance exam and not get into college. He only glanced briefly at Yu Hua's ad without paying it much more attention, and continued chatting and laughing with the friends around him.

Someone who didn't really want to watch the ad pressed the remote to change the channel, but CCTV had more than just one channel under its umbrella…

The moment he switched to CCTV-3, it happened to be playing Zhou Yi's college entrance exam pressure-relief ad.

Switch again, the ad changed again—CCTV-1 had also just finished one rotation of Yu Hua's ad and looped right back to Zhou Yi's public service ad—

"All roads lead to Rome…

"Every question we accidentally answer wrong in the college entrance exam, every major we choose, is actually meant to lead us to meet certain people, to encounter certain things…"

Zhou Yi, who had studied law at Peking University but ended up in the music industry, also came out to speak from his own experience. Xu Song, who was already one of the founders of a Zhou Yi fan forum, had his attention immediately drawn in—

"Hey, Xu Song, have you thought about what you want to study in college?"

"Medicine, I guess. I'm pretty interested in it. After I finish studying, becoming a doctor would mean stable work."

"Aren't you planning to study music? Didn't you say Zhou Yi is your idol?"

"Right, that's why I'm only treating music as a hobby, not planning to study it as a major. Isn't Zhou Yi the same way?"

Facing his friends' teasing, Xu Song straightened his back and replied with sound reasoning: "Look at this ad—didn't he himself say the same thing?"

So many people dream of making it in music every year; he didn't think he had any uniquely gifted talent to stand out from the crowd. If he studied music and didn't make it, his future would be ruined. Better to take the stable path of medicine.

His parents had always told him the same thing.

His friend was just about to speak when a close buddy playing on the computer in his study called out—

"Something happened, something happened! Xu Song, your forum crashed!"

—?!

The moment those words were spoken, the smile vanished from Xu Song's face. He immediately got up and rushed into the study.

As a kid whose family could be called well-off, he had actually gotten into contact with the internet fairly early. That was also one of the reasons why, when his family wasn't home on weekends, a few of his classmates and close buddies would come over to his place to hang out.

Some borrowed the computer, some came to watch the big color TV, and some even came just to touch the piano and other instruments.

And precisely because he had gotten into the internet early, Xu Song, who had done a fair bit of private tinkering with the thing, had even taken first place in the Anhui division of the iFlytek Cup National Middle School Web Design Competition back in 2001.

That year, he was only fifteen.

His outstanding computer talent made him a standout surfer of the new internet era. And because of his solid, hands-on technical skills, after becoming a fan of Zhou Yi and joining the fan group, he had a sudden brainstorm and, together with a few others, created a small forum and blog exclusively for Zhou Yi fans.

The few of them, running the whole thing purely out of love, had always kept this little corner of the internet going. Xu Song had never imagined that one day his tiny, no-name personal website would be targeted and attacked.

"Move aside, let me see who's got nothing better to do and is coming to cause trouble."

Although the childhood dream of building a computer system more badass than Windows had grown more distant, Xu Song had by no means given up his skills as a programmer—except after a furious clatter of typing, his expression gradually turned strange…

It seemed… it was simply because there were too many people?

"What's going on? Why did the traffic suddenly spike like this?"

"Seems like it's because of Zhou Yi's new ad. A Han Han fan got into an argument with one of the accounts on our site, and then the other side brought people over…"

"…"

The whole thing started when a Han Han fan happened to wander into their little corner. He'd originally just wanted to stir up some trouble and vent his frustration about CCTV not inviting Han Han but inviting Yu Hua instead. But he got provoked by a Zhou Yi fan who said, "For young people we've got Zhou Yi, no need to bring in Han Han."

Completely ignoring the fact that this was actually just a place where Zhou Yi fans were amusing themselves, the moment words were exchanged he went straight on the attack, and even brought along reinforcements…

After catching up on the whole story with the other founders, Xu Song transformed into the god of pulling the plug—he directly kicked out all those Han Han fan accounts that had come to curse, and along the way added a moat to the site's posting and commenting functions.

And then… Xu Song began leading the charge!

In real life, Xu Song was quiet and gentle; online, Xu Song threw heavy punches!

In an era when being able to assemble a computer and install a system already qualified you as a folk-level master, Xu Song's entry-level programmer skills could already be called the talent of a young prodigy. Not to mention that the ones coming to cause trouble this time were Han Han fans, whose idol hadn't even finished high school before dropping out.

With both sides' fans being students, it was no exaggeration to say Xu Song was a god of dimensional-reduction warfare.

"What's Han Han's education, what's Zhou Yi's education? Shut your mouth!"

"Keep yapping and your account's done for!"

"If you've got the guts, leave your QQ number!"

"…"

After single-handedly taking out several Han Han fan strongholds over nine consecutive days, Xu Song, who had caused not a single ripple in any corner of the internet, led his troops home in glorious victory.

Other forum members who had just finished the college entrance exam heard about it and were baying to teach those people a lesson. Xu Song, now honored with the title of Captain of the Han-Hunting Squad, enjoyed a nonstop stream of flattery through the ethernet cable—

The feeling was, to put it mildly, quite wondrous to him.

And what struck him as even more wondrous was that, right after he finished his one-stop counterattack of kicking people, silencing them, and blowing up their accounts, on the very first day after the college entrance exam ended, every QQ user logging into QQ received a pop-up window—

*Zhou Yi's new song! Your grey avatar will never flicker again, not even a simple greeting…*

Mm…

Xu Song, who had indeed turned quite a few account avatars grey these past few days, pushed up the glasses perched on his nose bridge. For some reason, he felt a strange, guilty twinge—as if he were being watched.

And reporters from major newspapers and periodicals had long been eyeing this commissioned song that Tencent had specially invited, after all, this was the first time Zhou Yi had written a promotional song for an internet company's product.

On June 10, Zhou Yi's new song "Gray Avatar" officially went live!

(End of this chapter)