Chapter 25: The Internet Divine Skill Had This Function Too?
After making sure that the Forest of Magic's basement had no problems, Yu Sheng'an's consciousness returned to his main body again.
He decided to update the Internet.
His internet users had already exceeded ten million after propagating the Internet for more than two weeks. There could be as many as six million people online at the same time during the peak hours in the evening.
The spread of the Internet Divine Skill highly resembled a game of plague in the propagation simulation diagram that Yu Sheng'an drew.
He could clearly see the dozens of lines that originated from Willis City and radiated out toward all the big cities on the diagram.
All the cities where the lines landed would soon have new radiating lines that would spread toward the next level of administrative regions.
The red dots that represented the users started to spread out densely around the radiating lines' landing points!
In a short two weeks time, the Queville Empire already had sixteen red zones, which were the Empire's sixteen big cities!
There were also some red dots that were spread out in the wilderness, forests, deserts and mountains in between those cities, which were either scattered out villages or hunters and mercenaries.
Such a massive number of users had naturally made the Internet's original framework no longer viable.
Especially the forum.
He still remembered he had posted for days without rest to create a boisterous atmosphere for his users when the forum was just set up.
He had almost copied down all the novels that he remembered.
There was no need for him to help with posts at the moment; the forum's activities were already going through the roof.
There were tens of thousands of posts popping up every single second. A simple page refresh and people would forever lose the posts that they had read before.
Such user experiences were definitely not ideal.
Hence, Yu Sheng'an decided to do streaming for them.
He decided to copy Blue Star's Baidu bulletin board by splitting up the forum into dozens of sub-forums according to hobbies, interests, regions and locations. Besides separating the volume and making the browsing easier, this also made a more professional forum.
Apart from that, he had also done some detail optimization for the other features and modules. However, there wasn't much change overall.
Frankly speaking, the features that Yu Sheng'an wanted to add the most were pictures and videos.
But the Contract Divinity only held the power of language and words, so he had to seek other methods if he wanted to add in those features.
All his online classes had a very low sound resolution at the moment.
Fortunately, the people in this world didn't know much, or else he would have been the butt of many jokes.
The Internet that I'm doing now is equivalent to the 2G words era with unlimited internet speed. I still have a long way to go if I want to upgrade to the 3G pictures era or even the 4G videos era!
Yu Sheng'an sighed, feeling a little frustrated.
It took him quite a while before he gathered his wits together and sent all his users an update pop-up. Then, he did the upgrade online straight away.
Immediately, the Internet exploded!
Yu Sheng'an observed that the super boring 2G words era was an absolutely epoch-making innovation to the Queville Empire netizens!
It had become another virtual world in the eyes of many.
People could find out news that happened hundreds of kilometers away from there.
They could also get a grasp on the affairs of the Empire.
There was also the chance to complain to the magical deities and their ruler directly!
But who would have expected that this virtual world could also be upgraded and updated?
This had exceeded many users' understanding.
In many people's understanding, it should have been a super magical tool that belonged to the Deity of the Internet.
Wasn't a magical tool impossible to alter after it was fully completed?
A customer at the "Mage's Hat" tavern suddenly banged onto the table and exclaimed, "Everyone, quickly log on to have a look. The forum has been revised and updated!"
"What's that? Revision and update? What does that mean?"
"Oh my heavens! The forum has been split up into dozens of sections!"
"All the Empire's sixteen cities have their own individual forum!"
"Hahaha, this is great! There's actually a magic forum. Finally, there's a specific place for us to discuss magic."
"Hail the Internet Deity!"
"Damn. There's a forum for ladies too. What can the women chat about? Gemstones? Clothes? Make-up?"
Everyone in the real world immediately began to tell their friends about it.
There were even all kinds of shocking comments on the Internet.
Yu Sheng'an was also shocked to see this happen.
He didn't expect he would cause such a big brouhaha by splitting up the forum.
Would they levitate on the spot when he released pictures and videos?
Yu Sheng'an smiled and opened the Deity's Perspective. He randomly clicked on a user from the Queville Empire's border to have a look.
It was an old man in tattered clothes.
He saw that he did nothing after summoning the Internet's illusory scroll with prayers. Instead, he was weaving something with his head lowered.
Even in the dark, one could see that he was adept at what he was doing.
The rattan strips were dancing around in his hands and soon began to form the shape of a back basket's base.
Yu Sheng'an watched this scene in confusion. Why did he turn on the Internet since he was weaving?
"Stop weaving, old man. Let's sleep early"
An old lady brought a bowl of water over.
The old man took the bowl and drank all the water before he explained and continued to work.
"I'll continue for a little while longer. I'm not tired."
The old lady seemed to know that the old man was stubborn so she didn't continue to ask him to go to bed.
She sat down next to him and helped to tidy up the rattan strips. Suddenly, she said with a moved tone, "Sigh, the Deity of the Internet is indeed a merciful deity. No wonder the mages wanted us to chant his name."
"You got that right. With this thing to light things up, we can weave an extra basket every day and our grandson can eat a quail egg every few days. We have things to look forward to now. Ay, if this had come out earlier, our lives could have been even better than now."
The old man agreed.
Yu Sheng'an was shocked and enlightened as he watched this scene. He finally knew why the old man had summoned the Internet.
He was actually treating the Internet Divine Skill as an illumination tool?
At the same time, the old man's words made him realize one thing.
The Empire actually had a very high illiteracy rate. According to Yu Sheng'an's estimation, it should at least be above 95%. Given the Empire's 60 million population, the number of his active users' estimation were completely overshot and unrealistic.
He had thought at first that the Empire's statistics had a problem and was underestimating the population.
But then he realized that quite a good portion of people were in fact using the Internet as an illumination tool.
However, it made sense when he gave it a second thought. Even though there were plenty of magical illumination tools, peasants were simply unable to afford them.
Once the sun set, not even the big cities had street lamps, let alone rural areas.
Yu Sheng'an sunk deep into thought.
Maybe he could develop a torchlight function. No, he had to develop it!
There were so many potential customers he could grab just by developing a torchlight function. He would have laughed in his sleep if this would have happened on the Blue Star.
He simply had to use what was given to him, otherwise it could always turn around to harm him!
From tomorrow on, no, from now on, I'm going to challenge the light-based magic!
Yu Sheng'an swore in his heart!
In the end, he had only read a book for two minutes before a private message shattered his inspirational emotions completely.
It was a wood-spirit mage apprentice from Felix who had sent him the message. She had sent him an essay about her ideas and suggestions on crop cultivation.
Yu Sheng'an was dumbfounded when he clicked open the chat interface.
The chat bubble with a blue background was extremely long and filled with words. His divinity power told him that it contained 36,263 words.
Oh my! He had only done some preliminary arrangements during the meeting he had scheduled in the afternoon.
Only 12 hours had passed since then and she had actually sent him more than 30,000 words. So, what did this mean?
It meant she did nothing except writing during this period of time.
The core of the matter was, out of the 374 wood-spirit mage apprentices, she was the only one who had sent in ideas and suggestions.
Yu Sheng'an felt, no matter how good her content was, he should reward her based on this attitude alone.
Then, Yu Sheng'an began to read her essay carefully.
Yu Sheng'an was shocked by what he read.