In fact, Shen Shao didn’t get much time to think about it, because a moment later a white figure came barreling out of the forest. Before he could react, the figure crashed towards him like a locomotive.

One should never underestimate the explosive power of friendship between women. After the girl slammed into him, Shen Shao felt like he could hardly breathe. If Gu NingZhao and his quick reflexes hadn’t pulled him, Shen Shao would have ended up on the ground.

“Are you all right?” Gu NingZhao gently patted Shen Shao’s back. He didn’t even glance at the girl who fell at his feet. “Does it hurt?”

Shen Shao waved his hand. After coughing several times he looked down at the girl who was lying in front of Gu NingZhao. Shen Shao was about to reach out to help her when he heard another voice behind them. “Shen JiaYue, stop right there!”

Well, since the male lead had already appeared, there was nothing more for Shen Shao to do.

The girl named Shen JiaYue quickly got up from the ground. Ignoring the large patch of mud that stained her light-colored skirt, she put one hand on her hips and pointed the other at the boy’s nose. “This lady isn’t your girlfriend anymore. What are you yelling about? Get the hell out of here!” she scolded.

“You’d better watch your mouth.” The boy reached out and grabbed her by the wrist. His words were full of mockery. “Your parents have been begging my family to invest in their business. If you make so much as a peep, believe it or not, by tomorrow your parents’ project will be over.”

“Why, you!” Shen JiaYue was so angry her face turned red, but she knew her family really was hoping the Xiao family would help. She couldn’t afford to offend Xiao Ji.

“If you want to make a scene move to the side. Don’t block the path.” Gu NingZhao gave the two quarreling people an indifferent glance, as if he were looking at an obstacle in the middle of the road.

“Gu NingZhao?” Only then did Xiao Ji notice the two boys standing next to him, and they were people he knew. He swept his eyes over them. “So Shen Shao’s here too?” he added sarcastically.

Shen JiaYue quickly turned and saw the tall and slender figure of Shen Shao. Although he wasn’t wearing internationally famous brands, his clothes weren’t cheap either. The surprise on her face gradually faded.

Gu NingZhao glanced lightly at Shen JiaYue, then turned back to Shen Shao. “It’s time to go back and get some sleep.”

They were on a small walking path. Xiao Ji stood in the middle, and when Gu NingZhao walked towards him, all he could do was lower his head and retreat to the side. There weren’t many who would dare to mess with the Gu family in the capital. No matter how extremely unhappy he was with Gu NingZhao, he had to hold back somewhat when facing him, unless he didn’t care about everything the Xiao family had built with so much effort.

When the two young men were far away, Xiao Ji saw that Shen JiaYue was still staring at the retreating backs of Gu NingZhao and Shen Shao. He laughed derisively. “What, did you actually fall for the second young master of the Gu family? Why don’t you find a mirror and check if you’re good enough?”

Shen JiaYue gave him a fierce glare. She turned and walked away on high heels.

“What the hell? Just like her mother, what a lousy slut.” Xiao Ji grumbled to himself and left the forested path in a rotten mood. If it wasn’t for that bitch Shen JiaYue he wouldn’t have lost so much face today. If her parents still wanted to get on his family’s good side, it wouldn’t be so easy.

“Shen JiaYue knows you?” As they climbed the stairs, Gu NingZhao remembered the look Shen JiaYue gave Shen Shao. “From what I heard, that family doesn’t have the best reputation,” he said in a flat voice.

“You’re the only person I know in the capital. How could I know anyone else?” Shen Shao said jokingly. “I didn’t think you were the type to pay attention to gossip?”

Gu NingZhao shook his head uneasily. “Someone visited my house as a guest. I happened to hear them talking.”

Shen Shao gave him an “Ah, so that’s it” expression. He changed the subject. “I’m planning to make a portal website in the near future. Do you have any suggestions?”

“A portal?” Gu NingZhao didn’t ask Shen Shao if he had the money. After considering it carefully he said, “It’s a good opportunity.”

Shen Shao smiled. “Then I’ll accept your kind words. In that case I’ll start looking into it seriously. If I become a big success in the future, I’ll definitely tell my biographer to mention you.”

“Thank you,” Gu NingZhao said with a serious face.

His expression drew a laugh from Shen Shao, but it was true that the first step of his new business plan was now decided. When launching a new portal, the initial stages were about the same as constructing a machine that burned money. He had enough money on hand that he didn’t have to worry about that for now. The most important thing was the technology side. Currently, he didn’t have enough personal ability to build a website, so he was focused on the talent he could recruit inside Hua U.

When they got back to their dorm room, Shen Shao tossed over the things Wang Hao asked him to pick up. Then he dove into studying programming again. Even if he wasn’t capable of building it right now, that didn’t mean he would stop trying. If he didn’t give it his best shot, he’d never succeed at anything in his life.

After researching stock market trends for a while, Gu NingZhao couldn’t help looking over at Shen Shao. He was nibbling bread and reading a coding book. There was nothing elegant about his appearance, but Gu NingZhao couldn’t help thinking this serious-faced Shen Shao was extremely attractive.

Just like when he was most in need of help and Shen Shao led him by the hand through a crowded marketplace. Back then Shen Shao’s body was small and thin, but he possessed the spirit of someone who respected and cherished life.

Ever since then, he asked people to check how Shen Shao was doing in school, how he fared on his exams, whether anyone at home was giving him a hard time. The more he saw of Shen Shao, the more he felt this kind of person deserved happiness and a better life.

Xiong Gang set a bowl of washed raisins in front of Gu NingZhao. “Hey Gu NingZhao, want some?” 

“No. Thanks.” He never ate anything sweet at night.

Xiong Gang had gotten used to his personality long ago and didn’t mind. He moved the bowl to the table and waved at Shen Shao and Wang Hao. “Let’s have some raisins.” As for the other two, as long as something was edible, you didn’t have to ask. Just give a shout and there were no worries anything would go uneaten.

After eating a bit, Shen Shao decided this variety of dried grape was pretty good. He chose several large ones and sat down beside Gu NingZhao. “These are some tasty raisins. If you don’t have any, you’re going easy on that kid Xiong Gang.”

Gu NingZhao looked down at the raisins in Shen Shao’s hand. He put one in his mouth. After spitting out the skin and seeds, he nodded. “Mm, it’s delicious.”

“Told you. Xiong Gang’s such a picky shopper. He doesn’t buy much that isn’t good.” Smiling, Shen Shao picked out a few more big raisins from the bowl and put them on Gu NingZhao’s desk. “Since you like them, have a few more.”

Wang Hao looked at the small, wizened pieces that were left for him and silently shoved two into his mouth at once.

Now that Shen Shao had decided to build a website, he began to work hard. Not only did he have to gain an understanding of how websites operated, he also needed to recruit talents in all related fields. Fortunately he had enough money to pay a decent salary. These days the competition wasn’t that fierce, and it was still relatively easy to attract workers.

It was also good that he had experience from his previous life which told him which types of website designs were most suitable for the current market and would attract the largest audience.

A platform for microblogs, music, photo albums, news, even a few small games to entice people to log in every day. After the site officially launched, Shen Shao also invited various celebrities to register an account in order to increase the site’s popularity. He promised them the website would do its best to promote them.

In fact, when he first invited celebrities to sign up, he didn’t get anywhere. But after Gu NingZhao registered his blog, many of the young elites in Beijing who were close to the Gu family also made an account. After they started using the site and found it pretty enjoyable, they invited their friends to join them.

After these people opened accounts, Shen Shao didn’t have to worry about artists and singers. They followed the trend to please their company execs or backers, and that attracted a lot of fans to register in turn.

But all this was far from enough. In order to further increase visibility, Shen Shao spent money on entertainment newspapers and magazines with good sales to sponsor win-win articles for artists on his site. They had titles like “XXX published a blog post on the Chuangfeng website and got millions of hits in just a few days”, or “XXX released a new song on the Chuangfeng music platform and got more than 100,000 plays after just two days”. As for how accurate these numbers were, only Shen Shao knew.

At present, it was trendy in mainstream media to talk up the decline of China. Shen Shao asked some sharp and humorous writers to write blog posts on his website to argue with these people. He also invited some newspapers to republish these articles. No matter how many people agreed or disagreed, the popularity of the site was greatly boosted by these methods. No one could argue with results.

Being able to accomplish these things came down to several factors. Having Gu NingZhao as his roommate helped a lot. Wang Hao also contributed a great deal. In the end Shen Shao gave them two percent of shares. Although they were both rich enough to not think much of getting a sliver of such a tiny company in an insignificant industry, Shen Shao insisted on giving it to them.

Friends might help each other out of generosity, but you couldn’t take that for granted. It was the least he could do to demonstrate his gratitude for their kindness.

First semester of their sophomore year soon began, and when Wang Hao entered the dormitory, he was shocked to see Shen Shao there. “Shen Shao, did you work overtime every single day of your summer vacation?” Wang Hao put down his suitcase and walked over to him. “Wow, why do you look so skinny?”

Shen Shao yawned. He rubbed his eyes, which had large dark circles. “Summer is a key period for promotion, so I’ve been a little busy. Now that the company is on track I can relax more.”

“You’ve been working too hard.” Wang Hao’s mood was a bit complex. He wasn’t the same as Shen Shao. His family owned a mine and he was the only son. Even if he sat around and did nothing, his parents would never be able to spend all their money. Shen Shao was in a completely different situation. He had no father, no mother, and no backers. But he started his website with a ruthless expenditure of energy, and he did a good job. As one of Shen Shao’s friends, he saw the physical toll first hand.

All year, Shen Shao was sometimes busy until midnight. Every month he had a huge phone bill, and as for missing classes….

Well, the thing that puzzled him the most was how someone with such a high absenteeism rate got such excellent grades and even scholarships. With someone like that around, life was tough for normal people.

“I pulled an all-nighter, so I’m going to lie down for a while. Help me out and bring me back something to eat at noon. Thank you.” After Shen Shao said this, he climbed into bed and lay down.

Wang Hao opened his mouth, but when he saw Shen Shao’s thin face, he decided not to say anything. After changing the bedsheets, he turned on his computer and began to play some games.

Shen Shao’s company had released a game called “Striving for Home” and it was pretty entertaining. Wang Hao’s crafting materials were almost ready to be collected, which meant he could build a luxury villa.

Thanks to the success of the Chuangfeng portal, some game development companies began to cooperate with Shen Shao’s company. If they hosted their games on Chuangfeng’s platform, the site could charge a fee or split it with the game company.

Shen Shao’s in-house team had also developed some simple web games, but all this was still in its infancy. Compared with big online games, web games had lower system and server requirements. The cost of research and development was also less than that of complex online games. Shen Shao wanted to use web games to drive traffic to the site, then use site traffic to drive people to the games.

Although he had a lot of ideas, Shen Shao couldn’t do everything he wanted in just one year. The fact the website was able to do this much already greatly exceeded his expectations. He felt satisfied. He glanced at Wang Hao sitting in front of the computer playing one of his games, then yawned, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

The first thing Gu NingZhao did when he opened the door to the room was to look at Shen Shao’s bed. Seeing him asleep under the blankets, he motioned to the bodyguards behind him not to come in. He walked up to Wang Hao and asked in a low voice, “What’s wrong with Shen Shao?”

Wang Hao stood up and walked with him to the door, following him into the hallway. “Shen Shao was up all night. He fell asleep not long ago.”

Gu NingZhao frowned when he heard this. He knew Shen Shao had been extremely busy recently doing a lot of things to improve the popularity of his portal. Especially in the last few months, Shen Shao was like a trapeze artist flying around. Gu NingZhao had helped to introduce some people to him.

Thinking of this, he said to Chen Zhang behind him, “Tell the cook to make a pot of medicinal soup every day and deliver it at noon.”

Chen Zhang nodded, adding, “It’s too late for that today. Why don’t you have someone pick up some takeout?”

Gu NingZhao nodded. He pointed to the two bodyguards behind Chen Zhang. “Set those things down and go take care of it.”

“But your bed…”

“Go,” Gu NingZhao repeated calmly.

Seeing this, Chen Zhang and the other two bodyguards couldn’t argue. They carried the things into the dormitory and immediately turned around to leave.

Gu NingZhao walked into the dorm room and looked at Shen Shao who was sleeping soundly. He sat down quietly and opened a book, waiting for Shen Shao to wake up.

Six hours later…

Shen Shao was remaking Gu NingZhao’s bed while looking with disgust at the pillow stuffed into a strange shape in the corner. “NingZhao, I think you should let your bodyguards do this in the future.”

Gu NingZhao: “…”

“You just aren’t cut out for trivial details like this.” Shen Shao pinched two corners of the quilt and shook it out sharply. The heavy cloth that was originally crushed into a ball suddenly became obedient.

The breeze from the quilt gusted directly at Gu NingZhao’s face: “…”

Shen Shao helped Gu NingZhao neatly make the bed. Then he jumped down from the upper bunk, clapped the dust from his hands, and sat down to finish the last remaining half bowl of soup. “This is really good.”

Gu NingZhao finally found a reason to open his mouth. “As long as you like it.”

His eyes fell on the neat and tidy bed, and the corners of his mouth curved almost imperceptibly.

TL Notes:

Transliterated names, places, and titles—new in this chapter:

this lady – 老娘 – lǎoniáng – my old mother / I, this old woman / my old lady (colloquial)

Xiao Ji – 肖季 – Xiào Jì

Chuangfeng – 创丰 – Chuàng Fēng – “To create abundance/greatness”

Striving for Home – 为家园奋斗

Cheng Zhang – 陈章 – Chén Zhāng