Free Web NovelChapter 154: Chapter 152: Gaining Steam
To appease or to ban, that is the question.
Zog stared at the various posts on the ’Feilin Life’ forum and fell into deep thought.
"May you be reborn in the Northern Domain."
"You love your homeland so much, but does your homeland love you back?"
"Is it that hard to admit the Northern Domain is better?"
"Healthcare in the Northern Domain is completely free. Seeing a doctor costs nothing at all."
And you know what, that last one was actually pretty spot on. Healthcare in the Northern Domain really was free.
The average education level of the Northern People was so abysmal that Masié would have felt right at home. As a result, doctors were, to be blunt, nonexistent.
Besides, limited by the level of biochemistry, modern medicine hadn’t been invented yet. Even if there were doctors, they couldn’t compare to a Healing Technique.
Priest Professionals almost exclusively served the nobility, making it virtually impossible for an Ordinary person to get medical attention.
Minor illnesses you tough out; major illnesses you leave to fate.
When you were at your wit’s end, you could try your luck with a Witch Doctor. But these Witch Doctors were not legitimate Shaman Priests; they were just charlatans performing hokey rituals.
At best, it offered some psychological comfort.
To change the plight of the commoners who couldn’t get medical treatment, the nominal Lord of the Northern Domain—and now the actual head of Winter City’s urban management brigade—Figxin, paid out of his own pocket to hire some people who claimed to be doctors.
To treat the commoners for free.
However, they were actually just quacks who only knew how to write a few prescriptions with minor health benefits. No matter what the illness was, they would just randomly pick one of those few formulas.
It wouldn’t kill you, at least.
Eventually, everyone in the city knew what those few prescriptions were and made up a limerick about them to sing for fun.
This spirit of finding joy in hardship was still quite admirable.
The content on the ’Feilin Life’ forum was mostly like this. You couldn’t say it was all fake, but it had a knack for cunningly twisting things from a skewed perspective.
Those promotional articles about the Northern Domain that Zog had published in the newspapers, while raising the Northern Domain’s profile, had also cultivated a group of more radical "believers."
He could only describe this bunch as believers. He could understand being a paid troll, but doing this kind of thing for free? They could give the most fanatical religious zealots a run for their money. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
Compared to the professional writers under Zog, the stuff they wrote was just as good, if not better, because this bunch was even more shameless.
Wordplay is truly a magical thing.
For example, if the content was "Woman trapped, calls police before phone dies," the headline would be "Woman With Dead Phone Calls Police."
You’d have to be full of malicious intent to come up with something so absurd.
After thinking it over, Zog ultimately decided to ban them. The risk of it backfiring was too high.
Once more and more people discovered the Northern Domain wasn’t as great as they hyped it up to be, the public opinion backlash would come.
Zog walked out of his lair, shook his body, and brushed off the fried dough stick crumbs that had fallen all over him.
Yes, he had eaten breakfast in a place that would make any mother want to smack him: his lair.
"What are you off to do?" Furin asked, her posture a complete stranger to decorum.
This was her true nature. The image of Lady Furin back in Twin Tower City was purely an act. free𝑤ebnovel.com
All for the dignified and solemn reputation of the Golden Dragon clan.
Now, as long as Furin didn’t have to go out, she was too lazy to even change into her human form. After pretending to be human for decades, she had returned to her dragon form and discovered that not wearing clothes was actually pretty great.
"I’m going to work," Zog said with a straight face.
"Work?" Furin asked, confused. "But your vacation isn’t over yet, is it?"
"It is now. Because I love my work. The public opinion on social media needs me to save it. If I don’t go make money, what will we eat!"
Zog declared in a voice like a news broadcaster, his small, red body seeming to grow a few sizes taller.
"Bullshit! You have enough money to last you until you die!" Furin lunged at him, baring her teeth and claws. "You just don’t want to have a Dragon Egg with me!"
"I’m still young," Zog said, turning to run.
"Young my ass! A normal Dragon would have been dead long ago at your age!"
But Zog chose to tune out Furin’s nagging entirely.
He flew to the Factory office in a flash.
Phew—
Sitting in his chair, Zog let out a long sigh of relief. He’d never missed work so much.
"Boss, when did your vacation end?" asked Assistant Zor, who had been managing the Northern Factory’s affairs for the past few days.
"Just now," Zog said. "Notify the Social Circle operations team. Have them prepare a draft of rules for prohibited content.
"As for the specific rules... let me think. But first, ban the forum called ’Feilin Life’."
"’Ban’ means?" Zor asked. He had never heard the word ’ban’ before; he only knew of ’sealing’, but how could you ’seal’ a forum?
"It means deleting that forum entirely. The admin, co-admins, moderators, and so on—disable all their accounts," Zog scratched his head and added, "Also, pause the submissions to the newspapers for now. We’re going to adjust our article writing strategy."
The Northern Domain’s profile had been raised enough now. There’s no need to use those clickbait, half-truth advertorials anymore. It’s too easy to cultivate some weirdos that way.
It’s time to use some legitimate promotional methods.
The best kind of propaganda doesn’t need any crooked tricks, but it demands a high level of writing skill.
If we could produce a literary masterpiece in the Northern Domain, something truly timeless, our fame would be secured for centuries, if not millennia.
"Did anything important happen while I was away?" Zog asked.
"An eyewitness reported seeing two Dragons pass through the clouds a few nights ago. Subsequently, someone heard a dragon’s roar and felt an earthquake from the forest to the northeast. They suspect a battle between High Level Dragons occurred near Winter City. Should we investigate?"
Assistant Zor said calmly.
"Er, no need. I know those two Dragons. They’re friends of mine. They just like to roughhouse when they’re bored. It’s nothing to worry about, hahaha..."
Zog said awkwardly.
Zor peeked at his boss. He felt something was a bit off, but he knew not to ask questions he shouldn’t. Professionalism!
"Another thing. War Axe has internally recommended another card game."
"Who? War Axe?" Zog wasn’t thrilled to hear that name.
War Axe was a loyal subordinate, but his taste in games was, to put it mildly, awful.
Ever since the channel for getting a bonus for internal recommendations was established, War Axe had been quite active in pushing several games.
Outrageous. That was the only word to describe them.
He even designed a face-slapping contest himself. The event consisted of two contestants taking turns slapping each other to see who would give out first.
Given the rather obvious first-move advantage, War Axe thoughtfully added another rule: the second player could choose to add small accessories to their hand, like little nails and such.
It not only determined victory and defeat, but also life and death.
"Yes, but this time is a little different," Zor said, who was clearly aware of what kind of unspeakable things War Axe considered games. "Mr. Karaman was also involved this time."
"Karaman? In that case, I can take a look." Zog had originally planned to reject it outright.
A moment later, the documents and a gameplay video for *Ferin Chronicles* were delivered to Zog’s desk.
He chose to watch the video directly. A good game was one whose gameplay you could basically understand just by watching. Playing a game wasn’t like doing academic research; if it was too hard to understand, it was likely to be niche.
After only a few minutes of playback, Zog suddenly slammed his hand on the table.
"My god, this is S-tier!"
