Chapter 17 Dancing on the Edge of a Blade

"Jinying, Zhiying, go outside and play for a while. Your sister has something to discuss."
The young woman, who had been playing on the computer, shooed her younger sisters out of the room, then fetched a pitcher of cold water and disposable cups, pouring drinks for Gu Cheng and Cherry.
"So, you must be the Gu Cheng that Xiao Che mentioned on the phone? My name is Wen Huiying."
"A pleasure," Gu Cheng nodded slightly, casting a quick, appraising glance at the female hacker before him. She seemed no older than twenty-five—a sign she must have started her studies early.
After a few polite exchanges, Gu Cheng got straight to the point, steering the conversation towards business and presenting the pitch he had prepared on the way over.
"I heard, Sister Wen, that you have some connections in the field and can also launch DDOS attacks. So, I wanted to ask: if I need to remotely mobilize a hundred thousand real IP addresses to visit the homepage and most major subpages of a certain website daily, how much does that cost?"
"A hundred thousand IPs? If that kind of traffic hits all at once, it could crash most of Asia's websites. But if the site's operators respond quickly and block certain IPs, they might weather the storm."
Gu Cheng replied vaguely, "I'm not saying I need to overwhelm them entirely. I'm just asking about the general price to test the waters—my business is about steady, long-term streams. If our first cooperation goes well, I’ll be a repeat customer."
A flash of keen insight flickered in Wen Huiying’s eyes, her gaze sharp and agile. "This kind of deal could have repeat customers? Is your site that big? Do you have that many enemies?"
At this time, botnets were already emerging, but their uses were still mostly limited to sabotaging competitors or committing cybercrimes. Only a handful were used for hacking or anti-hacking, and there was no legitimate business model to speak of.
So, hiring a hacker for a distributed denial-of-service attack was not something one would expect repeat business from. At least, Wen Huiying had never heard of it in her circles.
Gu Cheng’s suggestion naturally aroused her suspicion.
Left with no other option, Gu Cheng adopted a slightly roguish tone. "Let’s just say I’m experimenting with a new model. I have my own channels—you just need to get paid and get the job done. So, will you take it or not?"
"Sister Wen, just help us out," Cherry chimed in, worried that Gu Cheng would hit a wall.
Wen Huiying massaged her temples, her smile tinged with amusement. "Alright, seeing as Xiao Che’s asking for you, I’ll take the job—for a hundred thousand valid, unique IPs, I don’t have enough on hand. I’ll need to partner with someone else. As for the fee, I’ll need to check before quoting you. Can you at least tell me who your target is?"
Gu Cheng hesitated only briefly, then pulled a slip of paper from his bag, listing a web address—the carefully chosen target client he’d selected on his way over, ready to take a gamble.
Wen Huiying glanced at it, a hint of surprise in her expression. "Huangyi? That’s one of the top-ranked portals in China, isn’t it?"
Cherry quickly covered for Gu Cheng. "Ah Cheng is from China, so perhaps there’s some personal grudge back home."
Wen Huiying didn’t press further. She agreed to take the job.
"We’ll run the operation for a week. You’ll prepay this amount into this account. You’ll need to find your own way to disguise the payment," she quoted a price and added, "I won’t be the only one earning from this. I’ll need to borrow botnets from my peers."
Gu Cheng didn’t haggle. With a first-time deal like this, it would be hard anyway.
"I understand. As a friend of Sister Che, you won’t cheat me. A fair price means repeat business. I just want to know—how soon can you start?"
Wen Huiying considered for a moment. "Start? I can get to work right away. Give me a day or two to prepare, and as long as the funds arrive within three days, you’ll see results by the end of the month."
"Deal."
Gu Cheng finished the water Wen Huiying poured for him, exchanged contact details, then took his leave.
He and Cherry parted ways at the subway station, each heading home.
Back in his rented office, Gu Cheng couldn’t help but sigh, "The price of daily active IPs nowadays is absurdly high."
If this were twenty-odd years later, you could find a store on Taobao selling fake traffic for a fraction of today’s prices.

But then again, the scale of botnets, the size of the internet user base, and the competition among peers two decades later would be on a whole different level compared to the year 2000.
After all, this might be the first time in human history that someone is using a botnet to inflate daily active IPs as a metric.
The ones who dare to eat crabs first always pay a higher price.
A salute to innovation.
…
The next day, Gu Cheng wired the deposit from his company account, taking care to disguise it with creative bookkeeping.
His profit scheme was already clear:
Before making a move, he had done his homework, searching for the Chinese internet giant most desperate to boost its daily active IPs, and settled on Huangyi.
From the news, the biggest Chinese tech companies at the moment were the "Three Musketeers": Souhu, Sina, and Huangyi.
Souhu and Sina were already listed on NASDAQ—only Huangyi had yet to go public.
Strictly speaking, Huangyi was preparing for its IPO.
According to official announcements from NASDAQ, Huangyi had entered its final pre-IPO disclosure phase and would go public on June 30, 2000.
That left just over two months.
In other words, if Huangyi’s daily active IP numbers could make another leap in the next two months, then before the opening bell on June 30, the primary underwriters in New York would raise their bids for Huangyi’s shares, allowing Huangyi to raise more capital on NASDAQ.
(Note: The stock market is divided into the primary and secondary markets. Retail investors trade in the secondary market; the primary market is open to brokers. When a company goes public, shares don’t go directly to retail investors—multiple institutional brokers bid for underwriting rights, then resell to the public on listing day.)
Therefore, Gu Cheng was almost certain: at this critical juncture, Huangyi’s boss, Ding, would be willing to pay for anything that could boost the company’s valuation.
His role would be as the bridge to enable this new business model.
He would buy cheap traffic from hackers with botnets, mark up the price, and sell it to Boss Ding.
This business would not last long—at most two or three months before others in the field figured out the secret.
Gu Cheng himself had no botnet resources; in essence, he was merely a middleman between hackers and internet tycoons.
So, after the first big deal, profits would rapidly decline.
Hackers with botnets would eventually cut out Gu Cheng, dealing directly with major websites.
Then the industry would evolve into "individual botnet owners selling directly to buyers, with no middlemen skimming profits."
Within half a year, there would be no money left to make.
Because by then, the "daily active IP" metric would be as overrun as "daily PV" had been in the ALEXA ranking system—flooded with fakes, becoming worthless until ALEXA upgraded its traffic evaluation algorithm.
Gu Cheng foresaw this trend clearly.
That’s why, from the outset, he positioned this business as a one-off deal to earn his first bucket of gold.
…
Once Wen Huiying began her preparations, Gu Cheng busied himself with further planning and researched the real market rates for renting botnets from hackers.

At the same time, he monitored Huangyi’s data fluctuations on ALEXA daily to ensure results.
Besides that, he needed to compile and analyze the data into a report, getting ready for the materials he’d need when he returned to China for a showdown with Boss Ding in a few days.
Managing all this alone was no small feat. Several days slipped by quickly.
Sure enough, by the end of the month, ALEXA’s April rankings showed an unusual uptick in Huangyi’s daily active IPs. Notably, many accesses now came from Eastland IP addresses.
Huangyi didn’t have a version in the local language, and Eastlanders were unlikely to browse Huangyi for news—they’d stick to NAVER.
These IPs could only be the result of Wen Huiying’s paid traffic.
Gu Cheng decided it was time to use this as leverage and request an audience with Boss Ding.
He booked a flight from Incheon to the capital for April 30.
But before returning home, Gu Cheng had one more small matter to settle.
He needed to reconnect with Kwon Soon-woo, whom he’d met in an internet café weeks ago.
Two weeks prior, when negotiating with Park Young-kwan of WEMADE, he had already used "Chief Kwon’s son" as a scare tactic—something Park would want to verify in the future.
So, Gu Cheng had to touch base with Kwon Soon-woo and win him over as an ally to back up his story.
On another front, many of Gu Cheng’s upcoming transactions would require a company with smooth cross-border payment capabilities to move funds.
He only had about half a million in working capital at his disposal.
If the traffic deal with Boss Ding were to last two months, given Huangyi’s scale, the total turnover would be several million at least—Gu Cheng’s small operation couldn’t handle that kind of advance funding.
Clearly, he’d need Huangyi to settle accounts every week or two.
This meant his company, registered in Eastland, and his hacker resources, also based there, would have to handle large sums of cross-border payments—without any shipments or customs declarations to justify them.
In 2000, China’s foreign exchange reserves were not as abundant as they would later become, and capital controls were strict.
Large unauthorized foreign payments could easily attract the attention of regulators.
So, Gu Cheng had to find a company dealing in software or service imports and exports as a front to launder and transfer the funds.
Otherwise, Boss Ding would have to turn to underground money shops.
But Gu Cheng would rather go to Kwon Soon-woo himself.
Through Kwon’s copyright import-export agency, they could disguise Huangyi’s payments as "copyright import fees," slipping past foreign exchange controls.
And in doing so, Gu Cheng could also show off his growing business to Kwon, giving him more incentive to back up Gu Cheng’s story when Park Young-kwan came asking.
Gu Cheng’s actions now were much like a con artist telling Bill Gates, "I’m the vice president of the World Bank—please let me marry your daughter," and then calling the World Bank president to say, "I’m Bill Gates’ son-in-law—let me be vice president."
How many more months would he have to keep dancing on this razor’s edge?