Chapter 395 301: Xiaorui, Are You Jealous?

「Day two of military training. 8:00 AM.」

「Outside Secretary Li's office.」

Lin Ruoxi followed behind Xue Rui with a large backpack, her steps light and quick.

She wasn't wearing her military training uniform today. Xue Rui had said she didn't need to attend, and that he was going to take her out and about this afternoon.

When Lin Ruoxi saw the man approach, she quickly called out, "Good morning, Secretary Li."

"Morning, Secretary. Have you had breakfast yet?" Xue Rui said with a smile.

"Yes. Come on in," Secretary Li said, nodding as he went to open the door.

After walking into the office, Xue Rui gently closed the door behind him.

He motioned for the little lass to turn around, then produced the documents he'd prepared. Tucked beneath a stack of the papers was a black plastic bag containing two cartons of cigarettes.

"Secretary, our counselor has already signed off," Xue Rui said, gently placing the items on the desk.

Secretary Li saw the outline of the black plastic bag and instantly understood Xue Rui's intentions.

He glanced at Xue Rui with a smile and subconsciously looked toward the door, only to find that Xue Rui had already closed it. Moreover, Xue Rui was now standing right in front of him, blocking any line of sight from the window.

'Since Xue Rui has been so meticulous, why shouldn't I accept?'

Xue Rui's attitude when asking for a favor was impeccable. His impression of the young man improved even further.

Secretary Li left the two applications for training exemption on his desk and silently placed the rest of the documents and the black plastic bag into a drawer.

Lin Ruoxi blinked. 'We came here to submit documents, so why didn't Secretary Li even look at them?'

'I know the black plastic bag has cigarettes in it, but neither Secretary Li nor Xue Rui mentioned it...'

'They didn't say a word, just acted as if they had a silent understanding.'

'Is this what the world of adults is like?'

"Well, the university actually encourages student entrepreneurship. If you run into any difficulties, you can always bring them to the school."

After signing the papers, Secretary Li was in a good mood and offered Xue Rui a few extra pleasantries.

Xue Rui thought for a moment, then said, "Actually, Secretary, there is one more thing."

Secretary Li felt a headache coming on. 'I was just making small talk, and you really have another favor to ask?'

'With millions in cash flow, what could he possibly need from me?'

"Yesterday, I met a watermelon farmer whose child couldn't afford tuition. It was such a sad story that I ended up buying all of his watermelons. I can't possibly eat them all myself, so I was thinking of giving them away as a treat for the students doing military training. But I'm afraid the school might kick me out..." Xue Rui spun a tale for Secretary Li.

Lin Ruoxi tilted her head and looked at Xue Rui. 'Weren't those the watermelons Xue Rui and I bought at the wholesale market yesterday?'

Secretary Li didn't believe Xue Rui's sob story for a second, automatically ignoring the first half of it.

"Are you sure you won't be charging any money?" Secretary Li asked again. As long as it wasn't blatant commercial activity, it would be fine.

"Absolutely no charge. It won't affect the school's image. I just want to borrow a tent from you. After all, it's scorching hot in the middle of summer," Xue Rui said earnestly.

In reality, what Xue Rui wanted was the college name on the tent. That kind of thing immediately marks it as official school property, and to run an event, one needs a legitimate pretext...

"Alright," Secretary Li agreed with a nod. At least he wasn't asking for funding.

Besides, he had to make a round at the athletic field anyway, so he could supervise Xue Rui at the same time.

With permission granted, by 9:00 AM, Xue Rui's watermelon stand was set up in a corner of the athletic field. He and the little lass each wore a straw hat, looking just like a young couple selling melons.

In fact, this same scene was playing out at military training sites in many other schools. He had contacted student council members at numerous schools in advance, throwing money at them to handle the promotion.

Only upperclassmen with good connections to the school administration could take on this kind of work; otherwise, they'd be quickly chased off campus.

What he and the little lass were building was a campus life service platform, similar to a "confession wall" or an "omnibus wall."

This was 2014, a golden age for the explosion of the mobile internet. Every university student had a smartphone, and their reliance on the internet was growing ever stronger. For instance, when his roommate's foot started hurting, the first thing he did wasn't to see a doctor, but to look it up on Baidu...

But when it came to campus-specific matters, information on the internet was pitifully scarce—not just in 2014, but even in 2024. Only local life service platforms offered any clues.

Some universities already had things like confession walls, but they were all operated on platforms like QQ Qzone, lacking mature operational or monetization models. In the future, they would also be constrained by the limitations of these public platforms.

But Xue Rui was different. He had been involved with this type of project before and knew the profits could be quite substantial. Because the user base was highly targeted, most of the ads were from local driving schools, credentialing agencies, and vendors...

By starting early, he was trying to build his own private traffic. While earning money from these ads, he could also incubate his other products.

The first step was to promote the app. His target users were very specific: the students undergoing military training.

Getting people to install a standalone app was easy—you just had to advertise in various group chats. But getting them to keep it was the hard part. It wasn't just about content; the quality of the software was also crucial.

Back then, most phones only had 16GB of storage, so everyone was a master of managing their space. Data was also ridiculously expensive, though the data plans on campus cards were quite affordable, so students weren't really short on it...

The key was to avoid becoming a "AAA title" like later versions of QQ, a chat app stuffed with a game engine. Otherwise, students would quickly make a choice due to insufficient phone storage.

Therefore, the app had to be small and streamlined. He had the little lass compress the app's installation package, ultimately shrinking it to under 2MB.

To think that the first version of WeChat had an installation package of less than 0.5MB. As someone who had lived through it all, even Xue Rui found it hard to imagine that its size would swell by over a thousand times in a decade...