Chapter 66: Total Paralysis

It was 7:05 PM at the North Star Internet Cafe, tucked away in a small alley on North Street in Yangcheng.

The owner sat leisurely at the cashier’s desk, sipping tea and gazing over the nearly full cafe with a sense of immense satisfaction. He reflected on the Tengfei Internet Cafe Management System he had purchased a short while ago; although it had been a bit pricey, the ease it brought to his operations made it feel like a bargain.

Before he had the management system, the evenings were chaotic—he barely had time to take a sip of water. Now, everything was simple: he just collected the fees and activated the terminals, leaving him with nothing else to worry about. When a customer's time was up, the system not only provided a reminder ten minutes in advance but also automatically locked the machine with perfect precision. Gone were the days of arguing with customers over a few minutes, which had occasionally even escalated into physical confrontations.

Just then, two young men walked in. "Boss, open two machines for us."

"Sure. How many hours do you need?" The owner looked up, his eyes scanning the monitors to see which terminals were vacant.

"Two hours. Hurry up, Boss," the young men urged.

The owner glanced at his management console, but his heart skipped a beat. The monitoring screen, which should have been running, was gone. In its place was a standard Windows desktop.

"I distinctly remember leaving the software open. Where did it go?" Puzzled, he assumed he might have closed it by accident. He located the Tengfei icon on the desktop and double-clicked it.

"Huh?" The interface failed to appear. The owner began to panic.

The two young men noticed the delay and grumbled, "Come on, Boss, hurry up. If you can't get it working, we'll go somewhere else. It’s peak hour; if we wait, we won't find a spot anywhere."

Breaking into a cold sweat, the owner stammered, "My apologies, the system is having a small glitch. There are definitely machines available—see those empty ones over there? Just give me two minutes, just two minutes."

With no other choice, he rebooted his computer, cursing the infernal system under his breath and praying that it would be back to normal once it finished restarting. To his dismay, the system still failed to launch.

Two minutes later, staring at the icon, the owner felt like smashing the computer. But to keep his customers, he grabbed a notebook, manually recorded their start and end times, and walked to the corner to turn on the two machines himself.

Once the terminals were running, he noticed the management system was absent from the corner of those screens as well. Looking at his twenty or so computers, he felt like weeping: how was he supposed to track who needed to log off and when?

Perhaps lost in their games, the customers didn't realize the management software had crashed on every machine. Without the system to force a logout, they could theoretically play forever. The owner had no way of knowing their remaining time.

Desperate, he rushed back to the counter and rummaged through his drawer. He needed the contact number for the vendor; he had paid three thousand yuan for this system, and he needed them to fix it immediately.

"I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is currently busy." He tried repeatedly, but the line remained occupied.

"Bang!" He slammed the phone down, staring at his engrossed customers, feeling completely helpless.

The owner’s call wouldn't be getting through, because at that very moment, the same scene was playing out in internet cafes across the country that had installed the Tengfei system.

Countless calls were flooding the 17th floor of the Tengfei Group headquarters in Rongcheng, but the General Manager, Liu Ming, had already gone home for the day.

The two duty officers were overwhelmed; in just ten minutes, they had received over a dozen calls. Having never encountered such a situation, they realized something was dreadfully wrong. One of them immediately dialed Liu Ming’s personal number.

"Mr. Liu, you need to get back to the office! Our management system has failed across the board. We're getting calls from everywhere demanding a fix," the clerk said, voice trembling with anxiety.

"What?" Liu Ming’s shocked voice came through the line, a wave of foreboding washing over him.

Without a second thought, he called the regional sales managers. The news he received made him feel as though he were plummeting into an abyss. Between 7:00 and 7:30 PM, over two thousand units of the software had crashed, paralyzing the operations of two thousand internet cafes.

"Could it be a hacker attack?" Liu Ming, who had some knowledge of computer networks, wondered. The thought seemed impossible, yet it was the only explanation.

Liu Ming ordered all promotional staff to visit the cafes to assess the damage while he rushed back to the office, tasking his newly hired computer experts to investigate.

On the night of March 20, the 17th floor of the Tengfei building remained ablaze with light. Despite a night of frantic effort, Liu Ming and his team could not get the system running.

Looking at the sky turning pale in the east, Liu Ming felt a cold despair. "It's over..."

He could already imagine the scene: thousands of cafe owners surrounding the building, not only demanding an explanation but also compensation for their lost revenue.

Liu Ze was jolted awake in his mansion just before dawn by the phone. The news left him both shocked and enraged.

Hearing the dire consequences Liu Ming described, even the fearless Liu Ze felt a tremor of dread. He jumped out of bed, reached the office in thirty minutes, and confronted Liu Ming. "What the hell is going on? How did this happen?"

"I don't know. The system crashed everywhere at 7:00 last night. The technicians have been at it all night, and we haven't found a solution."

"Slap!" Liu Ze’s fury boiled over. He lashed out, striking Liu Ming across the face and sending him staggering back.

"You've had all night and you've achieved nothing? What use are you?"