Chapter 957: The Fighting Spirit Aroused by the First Roll of Drums, Depleted by the Second, Exhausted by the Third

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

This was a tough battle, and the fan leaders on both sides were ready and waiting. Actually, Father Chen had already contributed a lot to the monthly votes last night and had even campaigned for votes for Wet Nurse in every major book forum. Very quickly, however, he realized that this was easier said than done.

In less than half an hour, all his posts were banned, and keywords to do with voting were cleanly erased. Father Chen was well aware that this for the most part was due to Zhu Ge’s people playing tricks. As a veteran guru, Zhu Ge had strong connections with the bosses of many literary forums, given the publicity he gave their works.

Zhu Ge had been at the height of his momentum back then. One phone call and the promise of some benefits helped to suppress Wet Nurse , and in turn helped him save on some of the costs in the monthly votes battle.

“Super Chen!” Father Chen looked at him and said very solemnly, “Don’t tell your mom about this!”

Super Chen: “…”

Wang Ling: “…”

As expected, every man’s pain was the same.

Spending money actually wasn’t the most important thing; the most important was that this was his secret stash. All two hundred thousand of it thrown in to support his idol… How much electricity could this love generate? It was no less than Pikachu’s Thunderbolt.

If the matter of him stashing money away was found out, this would be the true lightning strike from heaven.

Once his woman got angry, that oppressive strength was no less than that of the Heavenly Dao Calamity.

Wang Ling had possessed Wang Xiaoling’s body; although he had altered events in Super Chen’s memory, Wang Xiaoling still had her own consciousness. She was a more quiet and well-behaved girl, and a little more withdrawn because of her family background, which couldn’t be changed in a short period of time.

However, Wang Ling could clearly feel the changes in her mindset. Since coming to the dojo, she and Super Chen had become closer.

If this followed a novel setup, Wang Ling felt that Wang Xiaoling was most likely the main female character in Super Chen’s life…

With no training today, Father Chen order two curry omelet rice takeouts for Wang Xiaoling and Super Chen, and the two of them ate quietly on the side.

While on Father Chen’s side, the battle had officially kicked off.

“Count the number of people who are currently online.”

Father Chen took some deep breaths to adjust his frame of mind, and started to lead the fan leaders of Wet Nurse into battle. “The fighting spirit is aroused by the first roll of drums, depleted by the second, and exhausted by the third”– their momentum at the very beginning was hence the most important.

Father Chen knew it would be a tough battle to topple Guru Zhu Ge – when all was said and done, Father Wang’s fans were limited in number, nor did he have a professional marketing team to help promote his book; he lagged far behind Zhu Ge in all aspects.

But a person should always have a dream!

What if it came true?

“I counted them last night. We currently have five groups with a total of eight thousand people. There will be a little more at night; this early in the morning, there are just over four thousand people online. Numbers peaked at over seven thousand last night.” A man wearing a sports bandana around his bald head reported the situation.

Later, Wang Ling would learn that this person was also a veteran reader who had been a website member for over twenty years. Called Lin Gang, he was also part of the first batch of fans who were the earliest to support Father Wang’s “Wang Situ” pen name.

Among the leaders of the sub-groups, Lin Gang’s group had the most people, and was almost full to bursting. With a cap of two thousand people per group, the number of members in his group always hovered at over 1990 people or so, and practically all of them were active users.

“Mm, let’s get started. How many accounts do you have?”

“We counted in the group yesterday, and so far we landed over four hundred accounts.”

“Only four hundred…” Father Chen frowned — compared with the total number of group members, this was too little.

But Father Chen could understand. In the end, a reader’s account was a more personal thing, and it was very devoted of these people to offer up their accounts.

“I’ve already set up the software for the account logins; you can import them in bulk, and the IP addresses will also be changed automatically. But there’s a limit to how many monthly votes each account can cast for a particular book each month. Subscribers can only give five votes at most, and we can only send red packets after that…” Lin Gang said.

“Not good… Wang Situ is going to drop out of the top ten!” At these words, the other group leaders clicked open the ranking list for a look, and cried out in alarm.

He had still been in the top five last night!

Father Chen also clicked open the ranking list for a look.

Indeed, the situation currently didn’t look good. The gap in votes had widened since last night. Zhu Ge’s Shameless was now sitting at number one with thirty-six thousand votes.

On the other hand, Let Go of That Wet Nurse by Father Wang, under the pen name Wang Situ, was currently ranked tenth, with nineteen thousand votes.

The ninth novel had over twenty thousand votes.

And the eleventh novel was very close behind Father Wang.

Father Chen knew that this would be tough to deal with, but there was no going back at this point.

“There’s no other way, we can only give it a go first. Even if we can’t get first place, we have to at least secure a position in the top three.” Blue veins popped out on Father Wang’s forehead; he was actually rather angry. As a veteran reader on the website, it was very clear to him whether or not something fishy was involved for there to be such an obvious gap in votes on the ranking list.

Although they didn’t have many accounts on hand, these were all legal accounts borrowed from fans. In the end, however, only a small number was willing to lend them their accounts.

As Lin Gang said, there was a limit to how many votes each account could give.

In terms of sales alone, Wet Nurse was number one online, while Zhu Ge’s Shameless was about to drop out of the top ten in the sales chart. However, he had a lot more monthly votes than Father Wang.

Experienced readers were well aware of the reason behind this.

The other party had definitely turned to some online marketing setup…

It had an enormous amount of accounts which were far more powerful than those which Father Chen and his group had borrowed from their fans. Furthermore, this agent hacked some accounts to give monthly votes or subscribe, and then log off. There were times when many readers would access their accounts only to find that their book coins, monthly votes or recommendation votes had mysteriously decreased – this was the very reason.

…

Thus, after collecting fan accounts and funds, the first thing Father Chen did was to give a ten thousand yuan red packet.

This was to draw all the attention on the website.

A sticky announcement about the gift went up on the website. There was also a treasure box reward whereby readers could scramble for a huge sum of book coins given away in red packets of varying amounts.

This was when there was the most number of people.

Father Chen uploaded a pre-written post campaigning for votes on Father Wang’s behalf in the comments section. Although Zhu Ge had used marketing tricks to spread a lot of negative information on Father Wang’s Wet Nurse in the last few days, Father Chen said nothing about these lies and slander.

His announcement was very sincere; it didn’t try to sell a sob story nor try to be witty; this was the very first step in the campaign for monthly votes.

Father Chen and his group had talked it over with Father Wang online earlier on.

One chapter update for every one thousand monthly votes.

This was Father Chen’s condition.

Out of two hundred thousand yuan, Father Chen spent ten thousand yuan first to draw the attention of everyone on the website.

And now…

The real battle for monthly votes finally began in earnest.