"On July 19, 216, at 3:00 a.m., the final match of the Dafu Cup between Daliang Prefecture and Daxia Prefecture will be prophesied."
"The prophesied results will be divided into three parts: regular time, overtime, and penalty shootout."
"The results of the three parts of the prophecy will be released respectively at 12:00 noon on the 15th, 12:00 noon on the 17th, and 3:00 a.m. on the 19th. Please stay tuned."
"In addition, a 'Thousand Crowds' platform lottery will be set up."
"If you comment, repost, and follow this 'Thousand Crowds' account, you will have a chance to win the full prophecy gift package."
"The lottery will be held at 9:00 p.m. on the 16th and 18th. I will draw two lucky fans during these two time periods and send them the full prophecy gift package of the Dafu Cup final results!"
After editing and checking for any errors, Jiang Feng clicked the publish button. Once it was finished, he edited the match results and set them to be sent out at specific times before going to sleep.
...
As Jiang Feng slept, the 'Thousand Crowds' platform was bustling with activity. Those who had witnessed the accuracy of the prophet's predictions began frantically reposting Jiang Feng's new 'Thousand Crowds' post. Everyone wanted to increase their chances of winning the lottery and invited their friends and family to repost as well.
Some even went as far as to create multiple accounts to join the reposting army. Many well-known bloggers with large followings, such as football pundit Lao Lei and Daxia Prefecture's star player Wu Lei, also joined in.
Thanks to this, Jiang Feng's 'Thousand Crowds' post reached unprecedented levels of traffic, breaking all previous records. Within half an hour, the reposts and comments had surpassed 210,000 and were rapidly approaching 300,000. The likes had already exceeded 400,000 and showed no signs of slowing down.
All this added fuel to the fire of Jiang Feng's 'Thousand Crowds' post, pushing its views to over a million before most people had even woken up.
The data was looking good, and Jiang Feng's post was becoming a sensation.
However, Jiang Feng was still oblivious to this as he slept.
...
By noon, Jiang Feng had woken up and checked his 'Thousand Crowds' account. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the first prophecy had been posted on time.
"During the regular time of the Dafu Cup final, Daliang Prefecture and Daxia Prefecture drew 1-1."
The short sentence sparked a new round of discussions on the 'Thousand Crowds' platform. Jiang Feng was still unaware of the post's popularity, as he didn't usually check his account right after waking up.
However, this time, since it was the first time he had set a timed post, he was a bit worried. So, after waking up, he checked the post's stats and was surprised to see that he had gained over 160,000 new followers.
"Wow, I had only 160,000 followers before going to bed. Did the lottery really work that well?" Jiang Feng marveled at the sudden increase in followers.
He then checked the other data on the 'Thousand Crowds' platform, such as the reposts, comments, and views of the prophecy post. He was puzzled to see that the conversion rate was much lower than before, and the growth rate of views had slowed down significantly in the four hours he had slept.
He wondered why this was the case but couldn't come up with an answer. He decided to look at the comments on the post to see if anyone had any insights.
Little did he know that if he had set the lottery to have ten winners, his follower count would have doubled. The low winning probability had discouraged many newcomers who had stumbled upon his post through push notifications or search results. However, they were unlikely to comment on the post about being discouraged.
"So Jiang Feng was destined to not find the answer to the first question in the comments. However, he found the answer to the second question in the comments of his most loyal fans who had been following his 'Qian Zhong' movements closely. 'I looked at the 'Qian Zhong' hot search rankings and with three million heat, the Prophet can definitely make it to the top twenty! Why can't I find it in the hot search?' 'It did make it to the hot search just now, but for some reason, it disappeared.' 'Do I need to even think about it? It must have been limited and removed from the hot search by Qian Zhong. @Qian Zhong Assistant, come out and explain!' '@Qian Zhong Assistant, is this the right thing to do? Come out and explain quickly!' '@Qian Zhong Assistant +1...'"
"Jiang Feng saw that these 'Qian Zhong' comments had started appearing four hours ago. He realized that his 'Qian Zhong' dynamic browsing volume had stagnated since then. 'It seems that someone higher up has already taken action. They moved quickly.' Jiang Feng had already anticipated this, but he didn't know the exact time and attitude."
"However, it seems that the approach was more gentle than that of Donghai City. Although both sides did not take direct measures to ban everything at the beginning, the Donghai City government started by controlling the direction of the wind, while the higher-ups took action by limiting traffic flow."
"Thinking of this, Jiang Feng felt somewhat helpless. 'But traffic control is only a temporary solution. Once the results of this prophecy are verified one by one, traffic will naturally explode with the change of the wind direction. Unless...' Jiang Feng suddenly thought of a possibility."
(End of chapter)