After successfully choosing a name, it was time to select an avatar.
"Huh, has QQ's avatar library been upgraded? There are so many avatars to choose from, much better than before!" the boy exclaimed, seeing a large number of handsome and beautiful avatars instantly appear.
"Right, this QQ data loss might be because of a major update that introduced bugs!" The boy, being somewhat knowledgeable about computers, made a final plausible inference.
"But the avatar loading speed is too fast, has my internet speed actually improved?" At the same time, the boy noticed that avatars loaded extremely quickly, unlike before when it took over ten seconds for a single avatar to load, forcing him to use only the default ones.
All the avatars here appeared instantly, with no waiting required. This internet speed was comparable to that after 2010, making the boy marvel and praise Tengda's rapid technological advancements.
What the boy didn't know was that these large avatars were directly built into the installation package, stored as local files on his computer, thus incurring no delay.
Some might ask, didn't we just say the installation package was too large and would affect user download experience? Wouldn't so many avatars make the installation package even bigger?
Not at all. Firstly, these avatars had undergone specialized compression. Three hundred avatars were only about 5MB in size, which wasn't excessively large.
Secondly, these 300 local avatars were not included in the network download version of the installation package. That version only had 30 local avatars, keeping the entire installation package size within 10MB, even smaller than QQ's.
Only the CD-ROM version of the installation package came with all 300 avatars. After all, it was a CD-ROM, allowing for as much content as desired without network limitations.
The boy began to carefully select from the avatar list, browsing through them one by one. Finally, he was satisfied and chose a picture of a Charmander as his avatar.
Actually, the boy preferred Gyarados, but unfortunately, only the starter Pokémon, along with Eevee and Jigglypuff, were available as elf avatars.
After officially logging in, the boy discovered that his account data had indeed been cleared. All his previous friends were gone, leaving only an empty friend list.
But that didn't matter. The boy eagerly opened the friend search function and searched for "Xia Tian De Xue". Only one username appeared.
"Why would there be a duplicate name? Isn't this the only ID?" the boy muttered. He looked at the picture and confirmed it was indeed an Eevee avatar. Then, mustering his courage, he added the girl as a friend.
Since he had overheard the information, he dared not reveal his true identity and pretended to be a curious stranger.
To his surprise, the other party quickly accepted his friend request. Without the barrier of identity display, the boy's shyness disappeared, and he actively initiated conversations, quickly exchanging over fifty messages.
"Sigh, I don't know why my friends aren't adding me yet, even though they told me to download QQ!" Xia Tian De Xue said with some distress.
"Perhaps Tengda's system is having issues; they often do this!" the boy replied. Since He Anrong genuinely had no other friends to chat with, she continued to chat with the boy. They ended up talking for two hours until her mother, unable to bear it any longer, burst in with a feather duster, forcing the boy to reluctantly end the conversation.
The next day in class, the boy listened intently and heard He Anrong complaining to her friends again that they weren't adding her. However, He Anrong's friends all cried foul, saying they had searched for He Anrong, but there were over six hundred people named "Xia Tian De Xue," and none of them had the Fire Eevee avatar.
"What's going on?" the boy wondered, recalling the strange behavior of QQ yesterday. He then went to an internet cafe to find his older brother, who was attending university and working part-time as an internet cafe manager, to clarify the matter.
"QQ crashed yesterday? Even friends and profiles had to be re-added? Others can't find her as a friend, but you can?" His brother was also a bit surprised. He worked one day every three days, so he wasn't very clear about yesterday's situation.
So, he double-clicked QQ on the manager's control host.
"Brother, why is your QQ different from mine!" the boy noticed some differences in the QQ icons.
"Oh, this is Coral QQ, it's an auxiliary software for QQ that has a positioning function and can show who is invisible or online. It's very useful!" his brother explained. However, he then noticed that his Coral QQ had started a version update.
"Hmm, Coral QQ is updating? And it's a major version? Wait a moment, I need to synchronize it to all the sub-terminals!" his brother said hastily. As is widely known, once an internet cafe computer is shut down, all its settings and data are restored. This is to prevent internet cafe computers from retaining too much user information, which would make them increasingly sluggish and slow.
However, various software and programs are constantly updating, so one of the important tasks for internet cafe managers is to continuously update these software and programs on the main host to ensure all sub-terminals use the latest versions.
Due to its unique convenience, many internet cafes, in addition to installing the normal QQ, also install Coral QQ.
This update took a considerable amount of time, almost ten minutes to download, which was slightly strange.
However, these issues were quickly forgotten. Self-updating through the client client would not result in an incorrect update. After the update was completed, his brother logged into his QQ account.
"Brother, why do you have all your friends, but I've lost all of mine!" the boy asked, confused to see all his brother's friends still there.
"Who knows? Maybe your computer has a problem!" his brother said dismissively. Computers these days could have all sorts of strange problems. Although his younger brother's issue was strange, it wasn't entirely out of the ordinary.
"Let me see how many 'Xia Tian De Xue' there are!" Then his brother typed in the name "Xia Tian De Xue"...
"Hmm, there's indeed only one name!" his brother chuckled. The results list only showed one "Xia Tian De Xue" user, and no other names.
"Strange, are her girlfriends all lying to her? They didn't search for her at all?" the boy said incredulously.
"My dear little brother, you don't understand. The little thoughts women have among themselves are different from us men. My girlfriend and her roommates, all eight of them, have divided themselves into more than a dozen different small cliques. We men will never be able to figure out what's going on in these women's heads!" his brother said, speaking from experience.
Neither his brother nor the boy knew that Coral QQ had actually become Coral oo. Moreover, unless one directly entered the other person's QQ number, the search results for the friend list would not display any QQ accounts; it would only display oo accounts. As a result, over time, many people's Coral QQ friend lists would become filled with oo friend accounts.