Chapter 22: New Version Iteration

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Beside him, Li Ya and Zhang Wenjing stared in astonishment at how decisively and swiftly Li Ping’an bargained. It was worth noting that just moments ago, the shopkeeper had steadfastly refused to sell anything for less than 350 yuan. Yet, as soon as their elder brother arrived, she immediately dropped the price without hesitation.

Li Ya quietly mused that next time they went shopping for clothes, once she finished selecting, she would definitely call on her elder brother to haggle for them first.

At this moment, she had no inkling that by the time the next shopping trip came around, their lives might have changed dramatically—perhaps to the point where they wouldn’t need to fuss over such small price cuts anymore.

………

Time flew swiftly. Two days later, the days leading up to the Lunar New Year had arrived.

During this period, Li Ping’an worked tirelessly like a relentless machine, putting in endless overtime day and night.

Finally, he successfully completed the development of both the speech input and speech output modules for the artificial intelligence system, adding a more convenient and intelligent interactive feature to the Pet Sprite software.

Meanwhile, exciting news arrived from his old classmate, Li Nan.

“Ten adorable pet images in various formats and three theme design sets are all in the compressed file. Boss, you can check them out when you have time,” Li Nan’s message was filled with anticipation.

Upon seeing this message, Li Ping’an simply replied with a single word: “Okay.”

He quickly downloaded and unzipped the files, then began carefully reviewing the contents.

After a thorough inspection, he realized that although the results were not quite the ideal state he had envisioned, considering the cost, overall they were satisfactory.

For the same amount of money, this was the quality that current university students could produce.

“I’ve transferred you the full 2,100 yuan,” Li Ping’an said without hesitation after confirming everything was in order.

Li Nan, who had been anxiously watching the message window, felt a great weight lifted from her heart the moment she saw the transfer notification and let out a long sigh of relief.

Though they were old classmates, they had not been in contact for three years.

In an era where trust was scarce and borrowing money was easy but repaying was difficult, she had been genuinely worried that Li Ping’an might refuse to pay after acceptance.

Moreover, since this was not a formal commercial contract but a private commission, she had no certainty about receiving her payment smoothly.

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Fortunately, Li Ping’an proved to be honest and trustworthy—not a big fraud.

He simply inspected the work briefly before promptly settling the payment, which deeply comforted her.

After receiving the funds, Li Nan immediately transferred 450 yuan to the student responsible for designing the theme UI. She then gazed at her remaining balance in the account with a broad smile, feeling overjoyed.

“1,650 in my pocket!” she muttered excitedly.

Earning such a handsome sum in just a few days was something Li Nan hadn’t dared to dream of a few days ago.

At that moment, she silently resolved that Li Ping’an, a person with boundless potential, was a “big asset” she intended to cling to, hoping to seek more cooperative opportunities in the future.

In this way, as an intermediary, she could also earn more money.

After receiving the images and theme UI design plans from Li Nan, Li Ping’an was acutely aware of the time pressure—the Lunar New Year was only two days away. He dared not slack off for a moment and immediately devoted himself wholeheartedly to front-end development.

In just a few days, the Pet Sprite software experienced an extraordinary surge in development momentum.

Its download volume had already surpassed 100,000 on various major platforms.

Even more impressively, the total user count skyrocketed past the one million mark like a rocket.

Watching these ever-rising figures, Li Ping’an’s eyes sparkled with excitement and enthusiasm.

To him, these numbers were not mere statistics; they were stacks of gleaming silver coins.

He vowed silently that before the New Year, even if he had to forgo food, drink, and sleep, he would spare no effort to complete the next version’s iterative development flawlessly.

Then, taking advantage of the peak period during the New Year holiday, he would release the update and earn the first pot of gold in his life!

From that point on, Li Ping’an fell completely into the grip of a workaholic, neglecting sleep and meals, fully immersed in the world of code.

The mundane necessities of life were left entirely to his sister, Li Ya, to manage.

Watching her elder brother work almost maniacally, Li Ya’s eyes were filled with concern and worry.

At that moment, she suddenly felt that making so much money wasn’t so important after all; she only wished her elder brother good health and a long life, hoping he wouldn’t damage his body through excessive labor.

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One day later, after countless rounds of repeated testing by Li Ping’an and several good brothers from Dormitory 602 assisting with multiple tests, he finally confirmed there were no major issues.

He then uploaded the installation package to various smartphone manufacturers’ app store platforms and submitted it for review.

If all went well, the update should pass approval before the New Year.

In the new version’s design, Li Ping’an carefully selected two of the cutest and most popular pet images—cats and puppies—as the primary mascots of Pet Sprite.

The skins for these two pet images would require a paid purchase.

After half an hour of deep thought and careful consideration, Li Ping’an decided to set the price at 18 yuan per skin set.

He knew well that this price needed to balance user acceptance with the software’s profitability—a delicate equilibrium demanding caution.

Furthermore, considering the data “memory” storage issue for Pet Sprite, the new version offered users two different options.

The first option continued the approach from the first version: data would only be saved locally on the user’s device and not uploaded to the cloud.

The drawback of this was obvious—if the user uninstalled the software, the local data would be automatically deleted by the phone’s system, and all the “memories” accumulated by the Pet Sprite would be lost.

The second option allowed users, in addition to local storage, to manually enable cloud synchronization.

This would upload data to cloud servers for backup.

To realize this feature, Li Ping’an invested heavily in purchasing cloud servers and corresponding data protection services to ensure the safety and stability of user data.

However, he also understood clearly that while cloud servers offered convenient storage and backup, they still carried some risk of data loss.

Therefore, he planned that once school resumed, with a fixed office location and sufficient funds, he would promptly purchase his own servers.

By storing these precious data on his own servers, he could minimize data risk to the greatest extent.

P.S.: Handsome guys, the month is ending and the monthly votes are about to expire. Your little brother here is humbly asking for votes~~