In the end, Cheng Ran called Yang Xia when she returned home and told her that he was just joking and not to take it seriously.
Sometimes many misunderstandings are caused by words. Some deliberate jokes are harmless, but some unintentional words can hurt people invisibly.
And for some friends who have disappeared from each other's lives for a while, it seems difficult to distinguish the line between a joke and an unintentional hurt.
Cheng Ran certainly doesn't want this "mind" to expand, and as a "veteran", he understands best that if some misunderstandings are not resolved, there may be no chance to resolve them again.
But when Yang Xia answered the phone, his tone was relaxed, unlike the crystal clear look in her eyes at Cheng Ran's home.
Cheng Ran was confused. After he explained it briefly, Yang Xia started laughing.
This smile made Cheng Ran a little confused.
Then Yang Xia's excited voice came from the microphone, "Aha, I finally tricked you. Actually, I'm not angry..."
Cheng Ran: “…”
I give you three seconds to explain or I’ll beat you to death.
"You are allowed to joke, but I am not... Have you forgotten that my acting skills were first-rate when I performed skits at the art festival? Now, I can easily perform the role of being wronged!"
Well, we can still play like this.
After thinking about it, it seemed that when Yang Xia turned around to talk, she was aggrieved, but there was a bit of cunning in her eyes. She actually hid it from me. This girl...
"Of course I know you're not really talking about me, because I'm not like that to you..." Yang Xia paused, then added, "Well, and not only to you, I'm not stingy with all my friends!"
Hearing that Cheng Ran had no follow-up, Yang Xia smiled and asked, "Are you disappointed?"
"What kind of disappointment is that?" Cheng Ran smiled. "If you are nice to everyone, then your kindness is not special and precious enough. Isn't it unfair to those who are especially nice to you?"
Yang Xia was stunned for a moment, "That makes sense. Then I should learn from their advice, change little by little, and only be nice to those who are nice to me in the future. Cheng Ran, are you one of them?"
"Because he is the kind that you shouldn't alienate."
"Haha, I don't think so!"
"… "
"Hey, I was just kidding..."
The two then started chatting.
Previously at Cheng Ran's house, both sets of parents were staring at them, and it seemed impossible to chat. The mothers of both sets were talking about their own embarrassing childhood events. It was like a large-scale rollover accident scene, as if the two were competing to talk about the embarrassing things that happened to their children. If they were one point weaker than the other, they would lose.
With this constant output, there are stories like Cheng Ran plugging his nostrils with an electric plug when he was a child, Yang Xia crying for three days after she cut her eyelashes with scissors, Yang Xia riding a bicycle in elementary school with Cheng Ran supporting her, and then they both fell into a roadside gutter, that cold winter Cheng Ran bought some ice cream for Yang Xia to have a bite first, and it ended up sticking to her mouth, and when she got home she kept flushing it with water until her lips were torn and bleeding, and Cheng Ran, the instigator, was beaten by his parents nearby…
However, it seemed that because of the things their mothers told them, many memories seemed to have been brought back to them. When they talked about it on the phone at this time, they felt a bit sad about the passing of their childhood.
Finally, Yang Xia said, "Cheng Ran, we're going to watch the fireworks during the Lantern Festival after the New Year. Would you like to come with us?"
Shanhai is a tourist city. During the Spring Festival, there is a very famous lantern festival, which was later named the International Lantern Festival. The lantern festival is always prepared in advance, with a venue set up by the lake. Various shapes are made of light boxes, and there are large-scale performances by song and dance troupes. The city government's unified fireworks show is set at a fixed point on the opposite bank.
The fireworks exploded in the sky, and the lantern festival on earth seemed to complement the scenery, becoming a major signboard of Shanhai.
Especially after the success of the Shanhai venue of the International Tourism Festival last year, Shanhai has become even more famous. This year, the number of tourists coming to watch the Lantern Festival hit a record high, including many foreigners.
I liked fireworks when I was a child, but as I grew older, I gradually lost my appreciation for this kind of excitement. But after hearing what Yang Xia said, Cheng Ran, who originally didn't want to go out and just wanted to stay at home, agreed.
…
The Spring Festival of 1999 passed like this. On New Year's Eve, the whole family had a reunion dinner and exchanged greetings. Cheng Bin also came back to celebrate the New Year. Now the whole family knows that Cheng Bin served as the deputy commander of the Lei Wei case and was the number one figure standing at the center of the storm in Chengdu. It can be said that Lei Wei was even brought down by him.
In the eyes of many people, Cheng Bin is undoubtedly a hero.
Of course, everyone in the family was used to Cheng Bin's success, and now when they were eating, they would listen to whatever Cheng Bin said, and would not deliberately ask about some confidential details about the case. However, whatever Cheng Bin said made the whole family feel relaxed and happy, and that was the kind of pride that belonged to standing on the side of justice for their family.
Of course, regarding the deeper content, why Cheng Bin launched the attack on Lei Wei and what happened to Cheng Ran were all properly concealed from his family.
After all, even if we tell everyone now, it will only make everyone more worried about the incident.
This seemed to be a secret shared by Cheng Ran, Cheng Feiyang, and Cheng Bin.
Cheng Qi was very proud of his uncle. When talking about the anti-gang storm in Chengdu, he heard everyone in school talking about it and was terrified. However, he could not tell his classmates, roommates and friends that Cheng Bin was his uncle. That would make him feel suffocated!
Cheng Bin reached out and scratched his hair and smiled.
Cheng Qi's Lianzhong platform now has over 10,000 people online at the same time, and the number of registered users has grown rapidly to 200,000. Cheng Qi now has 50 to 60 people on hand for technical and online marketing, as well as promotional staff who rely on accompanying players to attract players. Of course, jobs like accompanying players to promote are all part-time staff with high mobility. However, even so, the monthly expenses still require 100,000 yuan. This is an extremely terrible expense at present. Fortunately, there is still income from board games, which can make up for the losses in this area.
Cheng Qi wanted to talk to Cheng Ran several times, but he didn't have the chance. It can be seen that Cheng Qi is still quite arrogant, especially as a typical example of college student entrepreneurship, he has received a lot of praise in school. Of course, it is said that he failed a lot of courses this year, and the college counselor was so angry that he called his home and told Cheng Qi not to focus on entrepreneurship all the time, but to focus on studying.
However, Cheng Qi's opinion on this is that the counselor is rather pedantic, the type who studied so hard that he became stupid and stayed in school. In fact, even if he studied like his counselor, how much money could he make from a fixed salary for a lifetime? Could it be compared to the amount he spends on maintaining the website in a year
Of course, if we just look at it from the perspective of making money, Cheng Qi has his reasons for this idea. After all, he has seen such a scene in advance. Although he is in college, one foot has already stepped into the society. As a member of society, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in and out every month, how can he really have the patience to return to the life of a college student and concentrate on studying those textbooks that may be of no use to Cheng Qi.
Finally, Cheng Qi couldn't hold it in any longer and said to Cheng Ran, "Although there is income from the sales of board games, I always feel that this website is a bottomless pit. It consumes countless money every day, and it is still growing. I am worried that if this continues, our board game business will be ruined."
Cheng Ran knew that Cheng Qi probably thought of himself as the eldest brother, and was too embarrassed to ask his younger brother about everything. He couldn't afford to lose face, and he didn't want to be looked down upon by his younger brother.
Cheng Ran smiled and said, "Are you suffering from the lack of a profit model?"
Cheng Qi nodded and said, "I tried using advertising, but found that... the effect was minimal."
It would be strange if it worked.
Nowadays, when people come across a website, the first profit model that comes to mind is to attract advertising sponsorship. In fact, there are not so many advertising sponsors. Even for portal websites like Xie Qian’s Tonglang, the biggest source of profit now comes from selling software, not advertising.
This is true for portal websites that rely on providing content to gain traffic, let alone a chess and card game platform like you.
It's like everyone is here to have fun, and you come out and say let's watch an ad first. The response you get is probably "I don't care what you do."
However, the loss of hundreds of thousands a year was also the reason why Cheng Qi could not feel at ease. Although the sales revenue of board games was even higher than this, the feeling of wasting money was still too uncomfortable.
Cheng Ran asked, "How many people are online on average per day? What's the growth rate?"
"The average number of online users is about 10,000. It took us three months to grow from 2,000 to 10,000 online users, but we can't look at it that way. We are more inclined to look at the ratio of registered users to online active time. Now we have 200,000 registered users, 10,000 online every day, and this number of online users increases by about 60,000 to 70,000 every month. It is estimated that in a year, the number of users can reach 1 million, so the number of online users every day will be 100,000."
Cheng Qi said this.
Cheng Ran nodded. Although Cheng Qi's algorithm had problems, it did not stop him from using it as an example. He said, "Let's estimate it this way. Based on this development, one year later, the average number of people online 24 hours a day will be 100,000. That means that every day, Lianzhong's users will be online for 2.4 million hours. How much is the current dial-up Internet fee per hour?"
Cheng Qi didn't understand. "It varies from city to city and region to region. For example, in Chengdu, it's four yuan an hour. In Shanhai, it seems to be six yuan an hour."
In the early days of the Internet, dial-up Internet access was charged by the minute, which is why many people would rather go to an Internet cafe to surf the Internet. Not only are computers expensive at home, but a day's Internet access is also a huge expense.
"So let's do the math. On average, China Telecom charges five yuan per hour. With 100,000 of our users visiting our app every day, that's 2.4 million hours. China Telecom can earn 12 million yuan in phone fees every day."
Cheng Ran said, "When the time comes, you can go to Telecom and tell them that Lianzhong is out of money and will soon go bankrupt. If Telecom doesn't give you a share of the phone bills, Telecom will lose 12 million every day if you go bankrupt. I believe they will give you a share."
While Cheng Ran was talking, Cheng Qi was actually racking his brains to think of many ways to make a profit.
But until Cheng Ran saw the light through the clouds, his expression remained stunned.
“Is this even possible?!”
He felt that not saying the word "fuck" was already a very restrained act in front of so many elders in the living room.