Chapter 131: Chapter 130: On Sustained Operations
In his temporary office at the Magic Cinema, Zog scrolled through Weibo with satisfaction.
Events that could capture the attention of the entire Continent were rare, so out of the 50 topics on the hot search list, 26 were related to Frozen, which dominated the top 10.
Of the remaining trending topics, 12 were about the Northern Domain and Ice and Snow Paradise, and another 10 were related to other works by the Zog Group.
Only two were unrelated to Zog: #PopesOfficialVisit# and #WildDragonBeastFattened100lbsByVillagers#.
The number one hot search, #Frozen#, was followed by a small flame icon with an abbreviation for the word "Explosive."
The entire topic was trending off the charts.
The second hot search was "Let It Go."
The most surprising was number three: Little Deer. The clip of the reindeer transforming into a human during the livestream had sparked widespread discussion.
In reality, Little Deer still couldn’t transform his clothes. The transformation shown during the livestream was actually accomplished with the help of a Transformation Mage backstage.
Thankfully, their coordination was a success, preventing Little Deer from...exposing himself on stage.
Everyone was debating whether he was a Druid or was using some kind of magic like the Transformation Technique.
As a rare profession in the cities, Druids were shrouded in mystery for most people.
Finally, a user named "Muscle Casting" offered a conclusion: Little Deer was a Natural Shifter.
Muscle Casting was a well-known magic popularizer in the forums’ knowledge section, so his words carried a lot of weight.
’A quality user.’ Zog used his own super account to give him a like.
Zog was ninety percent sure this person was Soron, especially after seeing his personal signature: "The Most Handsome Hunk in Twin Tower City."
"Boss, the Priest from the Deer Spirit Tribe has arrived," his assistant said, entering the office.
"Good. Please show her in."
The Elder Priest walked into the office in a bit of a daze. She still hadn’t quite accepted this sudden turn of events.
The Deer Spirit Divine Remains were being forcefully stuffed full of faith coming from all directions.
Obtaining so much faith was a good thing, a grand occasion unlike any before. It was just that the sheer scale of it, which she couldn’t comprehend, made it all feel unreal.
"I’ve fulfilled my promise. You should have more than ten thousand believers by now, right?" Zog said to the Elder Priest.
"Far more, yes. But... will these believers continue to pray to the Deer Spirit?" the Elder Priest asked worriedly.
She had been through this once before. When the Deer Spirit Social Circle first launched, it gained a large number of believers in a short time, but none of them stuck around.
"In the current situation, they will. As long as Weibo can keep their interest, they will be devout believers of the Deer Spirit," Zog replied.
Anyone who’d ever dabbled in god-making knew that to get enough faith, you needed more than just a large base of believers; you also needed them to pray frequently.
And only believers who were so devout they bordered on fanatical would pray for no particular reason.
For most people, prayer was a somewhat transactional affair.
A useful god was a good god.
Otherwise, who had the time to pray just for fun?
This didn’t include using a god’s name as an interjection, like "Gods," "Heavens," or "Oh my Goddess."
Up until the livestream of the Frozen premiere interview, from a utilitarian perspective, the Red Middle Rune was far superior to the Deer Spirit Rune.
This was because the entire social circle was divided into three major sections: chat, Weibo, and forums.
The chat function, destined to have the highest traffic, was reserved by Zog for his own Divine Remains.
The forum allowed accounts from both systems, and its user profile highly overlapped with gamers, so everyone was used to connecting by praying via the Red Middle Rune.
Only Weibo was specially reserved for the Deer Spirit.
However, over the past month, Weibo had been in a state of being completely dispensable.
Besides the professional chat companions from the Northern Domain posting fake photos, practically no one used it.
This left the Deer Spirit in the awkward position of having a base of believers but no one who actually prayed.
Until today.
Weibo welcomed its most loyal users: the fandoms.
Although for the overall community environment, fandoms were comparable to a swarm of the Insect Race passing through, the upside was that when there were Gold Coins to be spent, they truly spent them, and when there was something to pray for, they truly prayed.
"But they don’t revere the Deer Spirit," the Elder Priest said after browsing the situation on Weibo.
These people were just posting lines in the "super topic" threads.
"The queen is so beautiful."
"Queen, freeze me."
"The sisters getting their sweet moment at the end, heck yeah!"
"The snowman is so cute, how can I get one?"
"I want to go to the Ice and Snow Castle!"
"I want to pin Little Deer down, rub his antlers roughly, and watch the tears well up in his eyes."
To be honest, they were very different from her understanding of what believers should be.
The actors under the Zog Group had all registered their own accounts on Weibo early on.
These accounts were specially managed by copywriters poached from various gossip papers.
They shared a carefully curated "daily life."
Audiences were intensely interested in everything about these actors who were at the height of their fame.
Through the celebrity effect, they cultivated a habit among users who weren’t interested in the games themselves and didn’t frequent the forums to post their opinions and browse hot topics on Weibo.
Of course, the stars could post things themselves, but everything had to be reviewed by the management team first.
Once an artist signed a contract, their public image was no longer just their own—it was company property.
Hoping to see a star’s truly authentic daily life on Weibo was probably impossible.
However, Zog didn’t force all his actors to do marketing on Weibo; there were some who were unwilling.
For example, Raul.
As the current leading actor of Zog Film Studio and an inspirational model of rising again after hitting rock bottom, any news about him could boost the sales of entertainment newspapers.
If he wanted to, he could instantly become the person with the most followers on Weibo.
The management team had designed a persona for him as a family-life blogger, sharing interesting stories about his life as a single father with his daughter, Marin, who was also an actress.
But Raul refused. He didn’t want his and his daughter’s lives to receive excessive outside attention. As an actor, it was better to focus on performing.
Zog respected everyone’s personal wishes. Not everyone wanted to earn money from traffic, after all.
Fortunately, after the premiere of Frozen, the popularity of the other actors also skyrocketed, propping up the current level of buzz.
"Forget about whether they’re reverent or not. Just tell me, do you want this faith or not?" Zog said.
The Elder Priest hesitated for a long time, as if this was shattering the values she had held her entire life.
"I want it," she finally chose to compromise.
"Well, since you’ve now gained far more than ten thousand believers, shouldn’t you also pay a correspondingly greater price beyond just the card illusions?" Zog said, rubbing his claws together slyly.
"The tribe is willing to do everything in its power," the Elder Priest, being a straightforward person, replied without any haggling.
"It’s not that serious. How about your entire tribe joins the Weibo management team?"
"Management refers to...?" the Elder Priest asked, not quite understanding.
"It just means banning prohibited content on Weibo, organizing some events, and handling various miscellaneous tasks. You should be able to handle it easily. Someone will teach you."
"It certainly doesn’t sound difficult, but why us?" the Elder Priest asked curiously.
"Because you can communicate directly with the Deer Spirit and have it perform the operations. If a god wants believers, it has to do some work itself, right? Otherwise, we can only have Illusionist Mages operate it through magical models, which is very complicated."
The Zog Group was going to be short on Illusionist Mages for the foreseeable future.
And the Deer Spirit was basically an intelligent big data system; it would be a waste not to use it.
The Elder Priest gave it a try. It was similar to when she had previously used the Deer Spirit’s power to make prophecies; she could have the Deer Spirit modify content on Weibo.
"Yes, no problem," she said with certainty.
"Excellent. Then how about we test it right now? Go ahead and push the ’Northern Domain Tourism’ topic to number three on the hot search list."
"Huh?"
"What ’huh’?" Zog said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You didn’t actually think the hot search list was fair, did you? We’re going to make money off it in the future."
