Chapter 88: The Janitor Lady's Extraordinary Skills

A quick announcement: the novel will be officially launched next Friday. Once it's up, expect a storm of updates—no less than twenty chapters on the day of release. Afterward, the update frequency will at least double. That's why the author needs to stockpile drafts now; moreover, the current free period is a week longer than usual. Please understand, and thank you.

Although he'd told his classmates he wouldn't be using QQ Voice Chat, when nine o'clock rolled around, Liu Chuanye couldn't resist logging onto QQ and trying out the voice feature. To his surprise, not only was QQ Voice Chat unavailable—he couldn't log in to QQ at all.

"It's crashed already?" he muttered in disbelief, then stopped worrying about QQ. He played Red Alert while waiting for He Anrong to come online.

An hour later, He Anrong still hadn't appeared. Having failed to defeat the brutal triple-AI challenge, Liu Chuanye closed his game in frustration, tended to his virtual crops, and tried logging into QQ again, but the result was the same.

"Still down? Didn't OO only crash for twenty minutes at most? How is QQ down for a whole hour?" he murmured incredulously, shook his head, and switched over to play Heroes of the Three Kingdoms 2.

At noon, after filling his stomach with instant noodles, he succeeded in breaking through with Kong Xiu's strategy, headed to Jiangdong to farm and recruit talent. While He Jin and the Yellow Turbans were still locked in battle in the Central Plains, Liu Chuanye had already taken Sichuan and Jiangnan, occupying more than half the map of China and commanding over a hundred generals—a great enterprise indeed!

Just as he prepared to continue his conquest of the Three Kingdoms in high spirits, a burst of music suddenly rang out. Liu Chuanye exited the game to find a classmate calling him via OO Voice Chat.

"Weren't you all planning to use QQ Voice Chat today?" Liu Chuanye answered, laughing.

"Don't mention it, QQ is such garbage—I didn't get to try it even once!" his classmate complained angrily. Unlike Liu Chuanye, who only attempted it a couple of times, this friend had been monitoring QQ all morning, determined to experience QQ Voice Chat.

After three hours, apart from logging in successfully before nine, he only managed to get into QQ one more time, but before he could click the Voice Chat button, QQ crashed and logged him out automatically.

"It's fine—didn't OO crash for an entire night once? Maybe QQ will be fixed by this afternoon," Liu Chuanye said, smiling.

"Let's hope so," his friend continued to rant about QQ.

Meanwhile, at Tengda's headquarters, everyone was slumped in their chairs, despair written across their faces and eyes.

There was nothing else to do—anyone confronted with such a situation would be hopeless.

At nine o'clock sharp, Pony Ma announced the launch of QQ Voice Chat. Everyone was brimming with confidence, prepared for the inaugural traffic surge. Instead, the surge hit them like a tidal wave and completely knocked them out.

In just three seconds, Tengda's eighty-million-yuan server network collapsed. The massive influx of traffic instantly overwhelmed the servers, leaving no time for intervention—the entire server group went down.

"This makes no sense. OO didn't crash in three seconds—how can we only last three?" Pony Ma muttered, while Tony Zhang sprang into action, ordering his team to restart the servers immediately.

Tony Zhang was the most mentally prepared for this, having anticipated such a scenario. He reacted first, swiftly leading his staff through a practiced server reboot. Pony Ma shook off his shock and joined the command.

Few users knew it, but Tengda had set a record: the entire server reboot and relaunch process took only five minutes, far quicker than OO's team. This was the strength of QQ's tech team, accumulated over more than two years.

But no one noticed, because after the reboot, the servers lasted less than three seconds—only two before the renewed flood of traffic triggered a second crash.

The staff could only stare blankly, and after two seconds of uptime, start the reboot all over again.

It was the kind of despair one feels when their computer finally reboots after a freeze, only to crash again at a single click.

"Chairman, we miscalculated. Our servers can't handle QQ Voice Chat's traffic. We must immediately disable the feature or risk shortening our server lifespan with these repeated crashes and reboots," Tony Zhang said soberly to Pony Ma.

"No! Try again! Try again!" Pony Ma refused without hesitation, insisting Zhang keep restarting the servers.

"Boss, it's pointless. The servers can't take it. We need to suspend QQ Voice Chat and wait for a server expansion," Zhang pleaded again.

"I said no!" Pony Ma gripped his mouse tightly. "If we shut down QQ Voice Chat, won't everyone know that our voice feature is inferior to OO's?"

"Boss, it's just a matter of pride..."

"No, it's not just pride. It's about how users perceive QQ and OO. If OO has voice chat and we don't, everyone will think our technical strength is lacking. Do you realize how devastating that would be for us?" Pony Ma said through clenched teeth. Zhang nodded, half understanding, but he trusted Pony Ma's judgment. Gritting his teeth, Zhang ordered his team to restart the equipment again.

This time, during the reboot, Zhang removed all server restrictions, cleaned the servers three times, adjusted computing allocations, even serviced the hardware—he did everything possible.

It took a full hour to reboot the servers.

This time, they lasted longer—about nine seconds, nearly reaching ten.

Then, total collapse once more.

But worse still, one server began to smoke. Upon inspection, several units had been fried; it was unusable and would have to wait for Compaq’s after-sales repair.

How long would repairs take? That depended on when Compaq’s service team could arrive—even if they flew over immediately, it would take at least a day.

"Boss..." Zhang approached Pony Ma, hesitant.

"I know what you're thinking. You don't need to say it," Pony Ma sighed, slumped in his chair. After a long struggle, he finally spoke: "Since we’ve already crashed, keep checking the servers and be thorough. Open them again at midnight."

"What?" Zhang’s mouth hung open. Was Pony Ma out of his mind? He’d just forced Zhang to reboot quickly, and now he wanted to wait until midnight—what was this?

"Our QQ Voice Chat must go online!" Pony Ma said firmly. "Even if it only stays up for ten minutes, that's fine. QQ must successfully launch the voice feature—do you understand?"

"But boss, it's only noon. If we wait until after midnight, what about these twelve hours?" Zhang asked, troubled.

"Just release a notice," Pony Ma sighed. "Say the cleaning lady spilled water on the power supply, causing a total power outage in the server room. We're working urgently to repair."

"Uh... alright..." Zhang opened his mouth, wanting to protest, but realized this was indeed the best solution. He closed his lips, shut down all QQ functions from the backend, activated a single server to support the company website, and published an announcement that would shock the internet for the next twenty years.