Chapter 52: The Turnaround Begins at the Farm

When he saw that Summer Snow had gone offline, the boy closed OO as well, but he was beginning to sense that something was wrong—because of that 00 Farm.

The icon for this software looked almost identical to QQ’s, and with the low pixel count, it was nearly impossible to distinguish 00 from QQ unless you examined it carefully, so the boy had never doubted that he was actually using QQ.

But 00 Farm was a different matter. The name was just prominent enough to be seen clearly.

At first, the boy thought that 00 Farm was just QQ giving a new name to a familiar feature, perhaps for novelty’s sake, but then he remembered his brother mentioning OO earlier that day and realized there was something fishy going on.

He closed the program and pressed his eyes to the monitor, finally making out that the icon was actually a panda, not a penguin, and it said 00, not QQ.

Still incredulous, he pulled up 00’s properties and saw the program’s name confirmed it—it really was 00.

No wonder all his friends were missing from his list; this wasn’t QQ at all. And the reason He Anrong couldn’t add him as a friend was because she was using QQ, not 00.

“But wait, why could my brother use QQ to find He Anrong? He’s using Coral QQ for sure! And he can still see all his QQ friends. Could it be that Coral QQ allows this?”

Curiosity piqued, the boy immediately downloaded Coral QQ and logged into his QQ account, which he hadn’t been able to access for several days.

Sure enough, He Anrong wasn’t among his QQ contacts.

But when he used this QQ to search for Summer Snow’s account, he managed to find He Anrong—only in the search results, it clearly stated: “From 00 contacts.”

“This Coral QQ can search friends from both programs—they’ve merged!” The boy felt he’d made a groundbreaking discovery. Then he noticed that Coral QQ had actually been renamed Coral 00!

“Does that mean my 00 account can log into Coral OO?” The boy immediately tried logging in with his 00 credentials, and something miraculous happened—a prompt appeared: “A QQ account (25110509) is currently logged in on this device. Would you like to merge this QQ account’s information into your 00 account so that all contacts appear together?”

“Such an advanced feature!” the boy gasped. He’d been worried about having to keep both 00 and QQ active because, while he was now friends with He Anrong on 00, all his other friends were still on QQ. Managing two chat apps at once sounded troublesome.

Now, with Coral 00, both programs’ contacts could be displayed together—absolutely perfect!

But a few hours later, the boy discovered he still had to open both applications and run 00 separately.

Because Coral OO didn’t have the 00 Farm feature, and two hours later, when his potatoes were ready for harvest, he had to open 00 to collect them. So he continued to keep 00 running at least until bedtime.

As for what happened to the original QQ, the boy never gave it another thought—he simply didn’t need it anymore.

The next morning at school, as the boy prepared to quietly eavesdrop on his goddess and her friends, He Anrong miraculously walked right up to him with a smile and said, “Good morning, Liu Chuanye!”

“Hello, He Anrong! Good morning!” Liu Chuanye’s heart thudded wildly, almost ready to leap out of his chest.

My god, He Anrong actually came to talk to me of her own accord.

“Um, can I ask you a favor?” He Anrong said with a smile.

“Of course! Just tell me what you need, and if I can do it, I definitely will!” Liu Chuanye replied, utterly defenseless.

“Well, you boys all have QQ accounts, right? Do you know why no one can find me on QQ, and why their QQ doesn’t have 00 Farm?” He Anrong asked, full of confusion.

“I know! I think you must have downloaded OO, not QQ!” Liu Chuanye replied, and immediately felt murderous glares from all around him.

He glanced around and found the entire class of boys staring daggers at him, while many of the girls looked at him with newfound admiration and respect.

Could it be that He Anrong had already asked several others, and only I knew the answer? Liu Chuanye wasn’t stupid—he instantly guessed the truth.

He arrived at school rather late, with only about five minutes until class, while He Anrong always came at least twenty minutes early. She must have already asked the boys who arrived before him, but none of them knew the difference between QQ and 00. In the end, only Liu Chuanye knew the secret.

In fact, there were probably only a handful of users nationwide who truly understood the relationship between QQ, 00, and Coral 00.

This realization made Liu Chuanye even more pleased with himself. No one else knew, but he did—how much more impressive could he be? His status in He Anrong’s heart was bound to rise significantly!

“So, what’s the deal with 00 and QQ?” He Anrong blinked her big eyes and asked, and Liu Chuanye immediately explained, “OO is a newly released chat app that’s very similar to QQ, so you probably downloaded the wrong one by mistake.”

“Also, 00 Farm is a game exclusive to 00. QQ is just for chatting; there’s no farm feature!”

“I see. You really do know a lot—thank you!” He Anrong’s face lit up with a radiant smile. “By the way, since you know so much, you must have a 00 account, right?”

“I do!”

“And you’ve activated 00 Farm?”

“I just did yesterday.”

“Then let’s add each other as friends! I only have three friends on 00 so far—once you join, you’ll be my fourth. My 00 ID is Summer Snow! And let me steal some crops from you while I’m at it!” He Anrong said playfully, sticking out her tongue.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Liu Chuanye nodded enthusiastically, his heart nearly bursting with joy. His goddess was actively adding him—he was truly one of a kind.

But his unique happiness lasted less than five seconds, because He Anrong promptly went to another boy, asking if he had a 00 account, if he could add her as a friend, and whether he’d activated 00 Farm so she could steal his crops.

In the end, all the boys in the class had 00 accounts and had all activated 00 Farm, promising to add He Anrong as a friend that day.

As a result, by the end of class, half the boys had rushed to the internet café, only to find that the café had thoughtfully installed 00 and left it running, so they all created accounts and started their own farms.

Their original goal, of course, was simply to ingratiate themselves with He Anrong—but none of them could have anticipated that this spur-of-the-moment farming would spark such a massive craze.

---

“Boss, here’s this week’s market report!” In the operations office at Tengda, someone handed a market report to the Operations Director.

This was a fixed routine at Tengda—every week, the operations department monitored competing instant messaging products in the market, gathering extensive data and intelligence to help Tengda improve its own products and strike at its competitors.

“MSN, OICQ… Any new moves or features from them?” the director rattled off a dozen names, all popular foreign instant messaging programs.

“No, nothing major this week; just some bug fixes and minor tweaks,” the subordinate replied.

“In addition, five new domestic instant messaging apps launched this week: Xunda, Jishitong, Liaoliao, Handshake, OO…”

“No need to keep reading—those aren’t important. Don’t bother with domestic products; focus all your attention on the foreign ones. Their creativity is something our homegrown companies can’t match. I hear MSN is ramping up in the domestic market, and QICQ is coming, too. Keep a close eye on them—if there’s even a whiff of news, report it to me immediately. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!”

OO?

Not worth mentioning.