The internet café was packed, everyone playing single-player games like Red Alert, Counter-Strike, Chinese Paladin, and so on. Some people were simply chatting away on QQ, thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Brian Bolton also caught a glimpse of the netizen next to him, who had a small window open, watching some action-romance short videos.

This was pretty much what online life looked like in 2001.

“Looks like I haven’t even signed up for QQ yet!”

At this time, QQ was just entering a period of rapid growth, with over two million users online simultaneously. Both IDG and Hong Kong’s Pacific Century CyberWorks had each invested $1.1 million to support QQ’s development. It was foreseeable that QQ would soon dominate China’s instant messaging market.

Back then, QQ still had a simple drop-down menu—no QQ groups, no QQ video, no QQ Space, and no QQ games. It just came bundled with a TT browser, plus a feature that let you check the other person’s IP (network address).

Also, it wasn’t even called QQ yet, but QICQ, with the Chinese name “Tencent Online Pager.”

But that was about to change, because QICQ was modeled after the foreign ICQ, and now the parent company of ICQ had already sued for infringement. Unsurprisingly, they lost the lawsuit, and then next year, QICQ would quickly change its name to QQ to avoid further trouble.

To grab more market share, QQ registration was very easy—you could open a webpage and register as many accounts as you wanted.

And at this point, QQ still didn’t have a way to make money. The account numbers were early six- or seven-digit numbers, handed out freely. Unlike later, when even eight-digit numbers became rare, and you had to pay for six- or seven-digit ones.

Taking advantage of the fact that it was still free, Brian Bolton tried registering several times. The first six times, he got eight-digit numbers.

Finally, on the seventh try, the six-digit number Brian Bolton had been hoping for appeared. The number didn’t contain the digit 4, which Brian Bolton disliked, had three 8s, which Brian Bolton liked, and started with a 1. The original account even had a “moon” level.

These leveled six-digit numbers were all previously used accounts that hadn’t been logged into for three months or so, and were forcibly reclaimed by the system to be recirculated.

It was only because QQ wasn’t yet standardized, had few features, and low user stickiness, that many early users abandoned their accounts after getting bored. Or, since the internet was still new, some people didn’t have a strong sense of password security, forgot their passwords, and lost their QQ numbers.

That’s how Brian Bolton managed to snag one.

“Alright, you’re the one!”

Brian Bolton happily wrote down this new QQ number, planning to nurture it well in the future. This six-digit QQ number starting with 1 was definitely a veteran account registered in 2000. In his memory, QQ’s earliest numbers were five digits.

On November 11, 1998, Tencent was founded. In 1999, Tencent developed the instant messaging software QICQ (version 99a), modeled after ICQ. The very first QQ number was the five-digit 10000, which should have been Tencent’s original account. That year, QQ only had 80,000 members, meaning the five-digit numbers hadn’t even all been claimed.

In 2000, QQ broke the 100,000-user mark and started issuing six-digit numbers. That same year, QQ surpassed one million registered users, then ten million. As a result, six-digit numbers disappeared, seven-digit numbers almost vanished, and eight-digit numbers became the mainstream.

By next year, 2002, QQ’s registered users would surpass 100 million, and nine-digit numbers would start to appear.

……

A six-digit number could be called a “fancy number.”

With this fancy number in hand, Brian Bolton was in a great mood. He immediately searched for online users, planning to find a female netizen to chat with. Back then, internet users were still very genuine—if the registration said female, it usually really was a woman, unlike later, when you couldn’t tell what was real or fake.

However, when he was about to add a friend, Brian Bolton remembered that QQ didn’t have video yet, only voice chat. QQ video and QQ groups wouldn’t be released until next year, when QICQ-2000 was renamed QQ and the new version launched.

“No video, what’s the point of chatting?”

So, Brian Bolton decisively set QQ aside and continued searching for information.

Except for a lunch break, Brian Bolton spent the whole day in the internet café, searching for the information he needed. It wasn’t until four in the afternoon that he reluctantly checked out and logged off.

Walking out the doors of Sina Internet Café, he stretched and looked at the newly bought notebook in his hand.

It was already densely filled with all kinds of information—details that were different from what Brian Bolton remembered from before his rebirth: which celebrities had disappeared, which movies hadn’t been made, which songs didn’t exist… who the national leaders were, whether city names had changed… not just in China, but around the world.

All in all, the changes in this world were quite significant, and the treasures waiting for Brian Bolton to discover were just as plentiful.

Finally, Brian Bolton fixed his gaze on one particular page.

On it were the mailing addresses and phone numbers for the magazines “Hot Wind” and “Legend of Today and the Past.”

“I originally wanted to find ‘Wuxia Stories’ and ‘Legend of Today and the Past: Wuxia Edition,’ but who knew these two magazines hadn’t even been launched yet. So frustrating.”

Chapter 006: Add Two More Eggs

Wuxia novels were all the rage over in Hong Kong.