Chapter 22: Destiny Is Irresistible

Gu Cheng held the potential of YY Voice Chat in high regard. In another world, even with QQ dominating the market for four or five years, this product managed to emerge from nowhere and capture tens of millions of users. (Although QQ already had hundreds of millions of users at the time, and YY’s peak user base only reached about 10% of QQ’s, its differentiated advantages were clearly significant; it offered specific functional experiences that QQ simply could not provide.)

Moreover, if developed, such a tool would align perfectly with Gu Cheng’s existing product lines. Players of *Legend*, and indeed those of future online games, needed to form teams to level up, coordinate sieges, engage in group PvP, and tackle dungeons. When franticly playing, they certainly didn’t have time to type. Therefore, they needed a tool that ran stably in the background, didn’t require switching windows to chat, and allowed for direct voice communication via a simple hotkey press.

For users of Dingdang.com, music lovers who were socializing with one another couldn't rely solely on typing. If they could send a voice clip, hum a few bars, or share obscure tracks that were hard to describe in text, the quality of their interaction would improve significantly. It could be said that among all chat users, music fans felt the pain of being "limited to typing" the most acutely.

If Gu Cheng could resolve the pain points of these two groups right at the launch of his group chat tool, music and gaming enthusiasts would surely flock to his product. The more he thought about it, the more feasible it seemed. Gu Cheng refined his proposal slightly and handed it to his cousin, intending to have the market research department evaluate its viability.

Pan Jieying naturally entrusted the task to her classmate and close friend, Liu Shuqin. As Gu Cheng’s business grew, the market research department had been upgraded, with plans to establish a "Strategic Research Office" specifically dedicated to studying and refining the whimsical ideas Gu Cheng occasionally proposed, turning them into practical realities.

Liu Shuqin was merely an MBA student with only two years of graduate study under her belt, so she faced the same lack of experience as Pan Jieying. The market research department was already stretched thin and desperately needed fresh, capable talent. Had Gu Cheng not been worried about commercial spies infiltrating his team and leaking his creative ideas, he would have expanded the staff long ago. Fortunately, this specific task was relatively simple, and Liu Shuqin was capable of handling it.

Within just a few days, the market research department delivered its verdict: "Following extensive technical comparisons and objective data collection regarding internet infrastructure, audio chat groups are currently not feasible."

In plain language: the broadband provided by domestic telecom companies and Unicom in 2002 simply wasn't broad enough. Even in Gu Cheng’s home base of Qiantang, which ranked in the top ten of second-tier cities, the penetration rate of ADSL broadband exceeding 1M was less than 30% among netizens. One could only imagine the situation in vast swathes of third and fourth-tier cities and rural areas.

"Due to the internet winter, broadband operators like Telecom and Unicom have no incentive to upgrade networks to increase speeds and lower costs. Meanwhile, mobile carriers have no motivation to enter the market, keeping speeds stuck in the 20KB/s GPRS phase."

"Current mainstream speeds cannot even handle streaming MP3 music with buffering, let alone guarantee lag-free voice communication. It is estimated that it will take six months to a year after the end of the internet winter before the objective environment for lag-free voice chat groups exists."

These analytical points in the report aligned perfectly with historical reality. YY was originally launched in 2004, and the internet winter in that other timeline ended in 2003.

"Is there any way to accelerate the domestic operators' network upgrades? Sigh, my influence is still too small. In front of those giants worth hundreds of billions, I have no leverage at all."

After a brief sigh, Gu Cheng didn't waste energy on such futile thoughts and set aside the idea of building YY for the time being. He issued an directive to Lei Jun to "assemble a team, build up technical reserves, and act when the timing is right," and allocated ten to twenty million in funding to get the team and technology started. Gu Cheng’s current technical research and development strength was somewhat thin; he would poach talent from Ma Teng whenever he could.

***

Gu Cheng never expected that a lever to accelerate the nation’s internet infrastructure would soon be handed to him, entirely by chance.

In mid-May, to prepare for a concert taking place half a month later, he traveled to the East to confirm the preparations on the S-M side. After all, Gu Cheng’s Chengpin Audio & Video Company had agents and artists, but had never held a concert; it lacked professional backing bands, vocalists, and backup dancers, not to mention stage lighting, props, and set design. S-M was a professional entertainment company, and among Gu Cheng’s current partners, they were the only ones with sufficient expertise in this area.

This trip to Seoul felt completely different from previous ones. After all, over a month ago, the distant kinship between the Kwon family and Gu Cheng had been uncovered. Now, not only did Kwon Sun-woo and Kwon Bo-ah know, but the elders of the family were aware as well. Gu Cheng had exchanged ten million RMB to buy a luxury villa by the Han River and obtained a long-term visa for his grandmother, Kwon Young-rye, so she could occasionally return to her homeland for her twilight years. Kwon Young-tae and Kim Sook-young had also visited several times to pay respects to the aunt they had been separated from for fifty years.

For a young, promising, and handsome cousin like Gu Cheng, Kwon Young-tae and Kim Sook-young were naturally extremely satisfied. Had it not been for legal restrictions, Kim Sook-young would have wanted to recruit him as a son-in-law. Thus, Gu Cheng no longer needed to call ahead when visiting the Kwon family in Seoul; Kwon Bo-ah had even given him a key, allowing him to come whenever he pleased.

That day at the S-M company, Kwon Bo-ah had just finished a rehearsal with the newly debuted six-member group "DBSK" (the sixth member being Han Geng) for the songs they would perform at the concert. Gu Cheng, who was visiting, joined them on stage to walk through the steps and gain a rough understanding of the concert's flow. He was set to perform six songs, and the difficulty was naturally different from his guest appearance with Kwon Bo-ah in Tokyo's Roppongi the previous year. Coordinating with the band, sets, and lighting required attention, and Gu Cheng, lacking stage experience, still had much to learn with humility.

It was late at night when the rehearsal ended. S-M provided dinner, but Gu Cheng didn't want to eat there. Since Kwon Sun-woo had driven over to pick up his sister, Gu Cheng was more than happy to tag along. No one at S-M dared to gossip; the management atmosphere there had become slightly more relaxed, as the core staff now knew that Gu Cheng and Kwon Bo-ah were relatives, and that Bo-ah viewed Gu Cheng only as an older brother.

The ride was quiet. Upon arriving at the Kwon residence, Gu Cheng was a guest, so he simply chatted with Kwon Bo-ah while waiting for dinner. Kwon Bo-ah was a culinary novice and couldn't cook—a lifelong weakness of hers. She had only just finished her first year of high school, and she didn't understand many of the topics Gu Cheng found interesting, so their conversations always drifted back to music.

Having not seen Gu Cheng for over a month, Kwon Bo-ah began to vent the moment she caught him. She poured out all sorts of trivial grievances: being locked in an ice house for half a day while filming the "Inter-Love" MV and catching a cold afterward; or dancing intensely for over ten hours while filming "Valenti," leaving her unable to move her legs the next day. She also took the opportunity to boast with a bit of quiet satisfaction that the sales of the *Valenti* album were a tier or two higher than *No.1* from the end of the previous year, likely contending for a top-three spot on the Oricon annual charts.

Historically, *No.1* sold 1.3 million copies in Japan, while *Valenti* sold 1.9 million—a significant jump. Now, due to the expansion of promotional channels and the hype surrounding the *Atlantis Princess* incident last year, *No.1* had actually sold over 2 million copies. Meanwhile, *Valenti*, bolstered by the *Inuyasha* theme song "Every Heart," the theme song for *Autumn in My Heart*, and the *Snow Flower* version of "Inter-Love," was a collection of masterpieces. With these added factors, selling three or four million copies in the Japanese market in a single year would be easy. As long as she didn't clash with Utada Hikaru at her peak, she could basically crush any other diva; she didn't even fear Ayumi Hamasaki or Namie Amuro.

Gu Cheng also learned from their chat that Lee Soo-man of S-M had begun shifting promotional resources to debut "DBSK" precisely because the *Valenti* album had cemented Kwon Bo-ah’s status as a legend. The company was also planning to capitalize on the popularity of *Inuyasha* and *Autumn in My Heart* in China by selling the new album on Dingdang.com in the near future to open up the Chinese market.

Gu Cheng naturally had no objections to this; after all, three-quarters of the profits from the Chinese market went to him, while Lee Soo-man and the other East-Asian shareholders only earned a small portion. His only request was to adapt the theme songs of those two hit dramas into Mandarin versions; as for the other songs, the original lyrics could remain.

Gu Cheng patiently listened to Kwon Bo-ah’s boasting and pouting. Once she had vented, he couldn't help but stroke her hair and tease her affectionately, "I didn't realize you were such a complainer. You used to be so quiet—never complaining about hardships or boasting about your successes."

"You're my brother now! Complaining to you, boasting to you—isn't that only natural?" Kwon Bo-ah pouted in a spoiled, arrogant way, looking as if it were a matter of course. "I used to be too lazy to complain. Anyway, whenever you complain to someone, they just respond by complaining back, as if not 'out-complaining' them means you aren't working hard enough. What's the point of that? It's too hypocritical. That concept of 'de-arming' you mentioned to me back then—it's actually really fitting when I think about it now."

Gu Cheng was quite surprised by this explanation. He hadn't expected Kwon Bo-ah to have such a distinct personality—since everyone else felt the need to pretend to be hardworking, she chose not to conform.

As she said this, she seemed to remember something and sighed, "Out of all my friends, you're the only one who never tries to 'out-complain' me when I vent. It feels so good—so I've decided, I'm only going to vent to you from now on."

Gu Cheng was amused by this and started spouting nonsense, "That’s what I call the true nature of a hero—a real man of character does as he pleases. It's enough that I don't pretend to be pretentious; you want me to pretend to be hardworking? No way! I’ll tell you the truth: my success is because I’m a genius, something that can’t be learned no matter how hard you work."

Kwon Bo-ah, who was eating fruit-flavored yogurt while chatting, nearly choked from laughing. It was impossible to find anyone as arrogant as Gu Cheng anywhere in the East.

"What are you two chatting about? You're laughing so hard. Time to eat. It's just a hotpot made from frozen ingredients, don't mind it."

Kwon Sun-woo, who had been listening to them joke around, came to notify them that dinner was ready. The two washed their hands and sat down at the table to start dipping the meat. Kwon Sun-woo dropped a few slices of marbled beef into the pot, and as if remembering something, asked Gu Cheng, "Ah Cheng, have you heard the two pieces of business news?"

Gu Cheng replied casually, "Go ahead and tell me. I have so much going on, how could I keep track of everything?"