Chapter 5: The Bedbugs Are All Swarming Together

Given Gu Cheng’s status, he certainly lacked no means of transportation. In fact, when he last traveled from the capital to Tianjin, the SUV arranged for him by Li Guoqing was superior to the small car Liu Feifei’s family provided today. However, since he had originally intended to return to Qiantang immediately from Tianjin and had no business dealings in the city, Li Guoqing had not gone to the trouble of dispatching a vehicle from elsewhere. Under these urgent circumstances, Gu Cheng had no choice but to accept the offer from Liu Feifei and Dong Jie to share a ride back to the capital.

It was already deep into the night when they set off after dinner. With the two young women sitting side-by-side in the back and Gu Cheng in the passenger seat, much potential awkwardness was avoided. Yet, given the circumstances and the presence of the driver employed by the Liu family, Gu Cheng found no suitable opening to explain his well-intentioned lie. He decided to shelve the matter and reconsider it after the New Year.

By the time they exited the Beijing-Tianjin Expressway and merged onto the Fifth Ring Road, it was well past midnight. Liu Feifei insisted quite assertively that the driver must drop Gu Cheng at his destination. "Brother Cheng, where are you handling business tomorrow? Where are you staying? You certainly won't be able to hail a taxi this late. Dong Jie and I will drop you off first."

Gu Cheng thought for a moment and replied, "Zhongguancun."

The Fifth Ring Road was deserted at half-past midnight. With a firm press on the accelerator, the driver sped to Zhongguancun and, familiar with the area, dropped Gu Cheng off at a respectable hotel.

Gu Cheng stayed the night. The next morning, he made a call to confirm that Lei Jun had already purchased his ticket to the capital and would arrive in the city by 11:00 AM. He had scheduled a meeting with his "informant," Fu Sheng, for 11:30 AM at Dadong Roast Duck. With little time to accomplish anything significant and feeling exhausted from recent events, Gu Cheng decided to take a nap after his phone call. He didn't rise until 10:30 AM, showered, and headed to the appointment.

Dadong Roast Duck was originally a state-owned restaurant opened in the 1980s, which had just undergone restructuring last year during the wave of reforms at the turn of the century. Because the general manager and major shareholder was surnamed Dong, the name was changed with a flourish of the pen from "Beijing Roast Duck Restaurant" to "Dadong Roast Duck." Since becoming a private enterprise, the flavor of the roast duck had not necessarily improved, but the menu had certainly become far more diverse. In its state-run days, there were only a few ways to serve duck, such as roast or salt-cured; now, new signature dishes like mustard duck webs, fire-seared duck hearts, and French-style foie gras were introduced almost monthly.

Having spent years at Kingsoft, Lei Jun was very familiar with the Beijing scene. He knew the owner of Dadong and had naturally secured the best private room. Not long after Gu Cheng arrived, Lei Jun and Fu Sheng appeared. After brief introductions, they quickly became acquainted.

"This is President Gu; I don't think he needs an introduction. And this is Xiao Fu, sent by Guoxin Software to cooperate with Zhou Hongyi’s side. A talented young man indeed."

"Nice to meet you, a pleasure."

Fu Sheng was a 24-year-old with only three years of experience in the internet industry, but he looked sharp and possessed significant executive capability. As a transmigrator who had come from the future, Gu Cheng already knew the trajectory of Fu Sheng’s career over the coming decades—how he would follow Zhou Hongyi from 3722 to 361, and eventually to Qihu. Because Zhou Hongyi was too ruthless in making enemies and played by wild, unorthodox rules, Fu Sheng had parted ways before the "3Q War," founding his own company to launch a free antivirus program called "Keniu." However, by the time Keniu was founded, the free antivirus market had already been carved up by Zhou Hongyi. Fu Sheng did not ultimately profit much, eventually selling Keniu to Kingsoft and stepping in as CEO to succeed Lei Jun, who had already left the position.

Gu Cheng’s knowledge of the man was limited to these historical outlines. But the Fu Sheng before him was still just a 24-year-old programmer and project manager. Gu Cheng knew nothing of his life before his rise to fame and needed to re-evaluate and assess this talent. The first step in evaluating a person, besides talent, was character. Thus, after the pleasantries and once the waitress pouring drinks had left, Gu Cheng asked why Fu Sheng had chosen to cooperate with Lei Jun. He did not want Fu Sheng to be a simple turncoat.

Fu Sheng clearly understood Gu Cheng’s concerns. He smiled and said, "I was sent by President Liu of Guoxin Software. President Gu might not be familiar with Guoxin; my former employer is the same firm that invested in Zhou Hongyi’s financing round in July 2000. Later, we saw that Zhou Hongyi’s methods were a bit too wild..."

Gu Cheng felt a shiver run through him and felt a sudden, inexplicable sense of shame. The business Zhou Hongyi was running, including the hijacking and bundling of the 3722 browser assistant, was essentially a protection racket. Its primary form was hijacking the default homepage of internet users across the country when they opened Internet Explorer. Because this was a crucial traffic gateway, major portals and content websites would pay 3722 to increase their exposure. Such dealings were akin to editors at video sites arranging recommendations—wherever there is power, there is corruption. A spot that cost 100,000 on the books might be secured for 80,000 paid privately to Zhou. The related-party transactions of 3722 could well be imagined. The venture capital shareholders who entered late were the ones who suffered most. Such gray-market business was far too easy to manipulate for siphoning off revenue.

However, these were not the primary reasons for Gu Cheng’s shame. The main reason was that Guoxin Software had entered in July two years ago! At that time, Gu Cheng, who was just seeking his initial capital accumulation, had actively approached Zhou Hongyi to help him inflate traffic data and deceive investors on valuations. In other words, Gu Cheng had been an "accomplice" in this very affair. Fortunately, Fu Sheng was sent by Guoxin, and Zhou Hongyi was not foolish enough to reveal that he had faked figures for Gu Cheng before Fu Sheng’s former masters had arrived. Thus, Fu Sheng remained ignorant of this deeply buried secret.

Gu Cheng’s skin was not thick enough to remain indifferent. After a moment, he steadied his slightly rattled nerves, took a sip of corn juice, and successfully convinced himself: "This is only to be expected; they are insiders in the financial and investment circles. If they couldn't see through the traffic fraud I orchestrated, that is simply their lack of skill."

Lei Jun, who knew the inside story, understood Gu Cheng’s discomfort and immediately diverted the conversation to cover for him: "Xiao Fu, President Gu already trusts you. Let’s get to the point—what exactly is Zhou Hongyi plotting lately?"

Fu Sheng hesitated for a moment and said, "Recently, he..."

...

While Gu Cheng, Lei Jun, and Fu Sheng were meeting in secret at Dadong Roast Duck, at the 3722 Company in the Zhongguancun Entrepreneurship Building, Zhou Hongyi—known in the industry as a troublemaker—was meeting with a visitor from the East with two of his most trusted confidants.

"Mr. Park, it’s a pleasure to cooperate. Let's settle it this way: I’ll give you a 15% revenue share, and all rights to 'Legend of Blood' in China will henceforth belong to me. This condition is no worse than your indecisive '30% net profit share.' I am a straightforward man, and I am doing this for your own good, so you don't have to come back and calculate profit margins with me later, which would be awkward for both of us."

As Zhou Hongyi finished speaking, an interpreter immediately translated his words for the international guest. Had Gu Cheng been present, he would have been shocked to recognize the man opposite: it was Park Young-kwan of EMADE Entertainment, with whom Gu Cheng had officially broken ties four or five months prior.

At the time, Park had attempted to extract 5% of the sales revenue from the Chinese version of *Legend* as "technical service fees for subsequent R&D upgrades." Gu Cheng had refused without hesitation, stating that Park was not worth the price. Gu Cheng then took a small portion of that money and gave it to his loyal and infatuated subordinate, Che Lizi, tasking her with recruiting talent to complete the development and upgrade of *Legend*. After all, in the second half of 2001, China was full of unemployed programmers and graphic artists. Che Lizi, as the project manager, was more than capable of handling the task.

After the fallout, Park Young-kwan had gone down a dark path, first attempting to cooperate with Kim Young-min, the director of S-M Entertainment who held compromising information on Gu Cheng’s early days, to force Gu Cheng into submission. When Kim Young-min tried to frame Gu Cheng, he was brilliantly countered and ended up in a detention center for a week on suspicion of attempting to molest a minor, Jessica Jung. Although Kim was released without charges, he was abandoned by his backers and driven out of the entertainment industry.

Gu Cheng had wanted to deal with Park Young-kwan then, but Park was discreet and had committed no overt crimes, leaving Gu Cheng with no evidence. Park, having no reputation to speak of, was like a dead pig unafraid of boiling water. Of course, bringing someone to justice requires evidence, but with the right connections, one could make life miserable for someone even without proof. Once Gu Cheng discovered Park was the mastermind behind Kim Young-min’s plot, he leaked this information to the Kwon family. Since Kim’s actions risked collateral damage to BoA, the star of S-M, the Kwon family naturally harbored deep resentment toward Park. Following the promotion of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs to a ministerial-level roving ambassador in October, BoA’s father was also successfully transferred to the position of Director of the External Exchange Division of the Ministry of Culture.

Consequently, Park Young-kwan’s EMADE company was subjected to inexplicable surprise inspections and crackdowns almost every month. Games that others would have rated R13 were marked R19 for EMADE. With his only profitable business in Korea under official pressure, his capital began to dry up.

However, no matter how difficult things became, Park Young-kwan endured and managed to develop a knock-off version of "Legend of Blood"—his final bargaining chip for revenge against Gu Cheng. This product could never pass the review of the Chinese Ministry of Culture or the Press and Publication Administration, so legal operation was impossible. His only option was to find a powerful partner in China with deep ties to the gray market and let them take the lion's share of the profits. By sheer coincidence, he found Zhou Hongyi, who also had a grudge against Gu Cheng and whose network of underground distributors perfectly matched the official channels of *Legend*. Almost all the account-theft syndicates and malware groups in the country were Zhou’s subordinates. All of these people used Alipay to trade stolen equipment and immediately cashed out. Thus, wherever the official *Legend* network spread, Zhou’s subordinates followed.

In seeking out Zhou Hongyi to be the kingpin of his bootleg private server, Park Young-kwan had found his match.