Seized by the System

After the great green insect had left, Fang Ning called Zheng Dao over and asked him to get information about the Upper Realm from the Dragon Carp.

Being a master in its own right, as the guard of the Dragon Clan’s leader, the koi must have heard plenty of secrets regarding the Upper Realm.

Furthermore, it was one who likes to boast. Fang Ning did not have time to listen to it boasting, so he let Butler Zheng who specialized in communication to handle it.

He knew its personality, so he asked the koi to answer truthfully to Butler Zheng’s questions. Any information with regards to the Whitestone people had to be conveyed especially accurately and in detail without any exaggeration.

After all, the golden koi did magnify the seriousness. The Heliotrope who gave birth to a clan of Whitestone people was definitely an arrogant one who refused changes.

According to the logic of normal people, after being cheated on for several times, they would have changed a target.

It did not. It wanted to follow the woman’s following lifetime, the next, and the next… All in all, all it wanted was to recover its pure, first love.

This was a feat no Earthlings have ever achieved, everyone only had one life…

Fang Ning was impressed by the demon’s perseverance. However, in the abundance of stories on screen and on pages, this infatuation was an indication of the source of many conflicts, problems, and trigger of collisions…

According to Dragon Carp, the Whitestone people might be driven to resurrect their ancestor if they were desperate.

It had destroyed an entire landmass because of being rejected, so it was easy to see its strength, as well as its arrogance and violent attitude. It was a demon, after all.

Fang Ning could not control events that had transpired in the Upper Realm, so he would not pass judgment on the demon. However, if it did resurrect on Earth, it would be encroaching on the System’s land.

Even if the Demon of Unrequited Love was cuckolded for ten other lifetimes, it should still follow the secular rules and laws instead of taking it out at the land. Even deserts had its own inhabitants…

…

After pushing the burdensome task of questioning the koi to Butler Zheng, Fang Ning shut himself inside the System Space. He did not forget he still had two days of holidays.

‘Mission of the Dragon Clan, the danger of the human race, or whatever there are, there’s no use worrying about it now. Hm, I should just have fun for the rest of the break…’

He was justifying that to himself, ignoring the fact that he was using the same justification that the great green insect used.

The System would not think about the missions as well, but different from the lazy Fang Ning, it would think about other things.

[The System is evaluating…]

[The System is evaluating…]

[The System has decided to uphold justice…]

Fang Ning ignored the system notifications that popped up suddenly and fully immersed himself in the game.

This new game that he was playing had so many loopholes that he had to restart after wasting a pretty huge amount of time on it.

Since the Host did not want to do things in his own body, the System did not waste even a second to take it back. It wanted to control the body of Vigilante A and keep the light of justice shining over the world…

A four-way questioning was happening in the living hall of the farmhouse.

A human, two dogs, and a hamster surrounded a koi fish in the center.

The golden koi swam in the fish tank leisurely and said with a smirk, “Whatever you want to ask, you better ask fast. I’ll enlighten you. I remember when I was the guard of the Dragon Clan’s leader, I’ve seen so many powerhouses, what secret would I not know? Just listen to me, you won’t regret it.”

Zheng Dao made no comments and pulled out a thick stack of documents, obviously prepared.

He had the idea of conducting a systemic analysis of the Upper Realm, but the Venerable One had never brought it up, so he was worried.

However, he only collected information in the dark and did not ask any of his three colleagues.

He was a master at cultivating psionic abilities and knew that there were plenty of abilities that can force other beings to keep a secret until it was dispelled.

Now that the Venerable One had finally said the command, he wanted to ask all the questions that he had compiled slowly.

He did not know that it was all because of Fang Ning’s laziness. Fang Ning’s status as a severe procrastinator was certified by the System.

Dragon Carp was still answering enthusiastically in the beginning—answering every little detail, often jumping out of required answers, beginning sentences with “I remember”—Zheng Dao recorded them all irrespective of their importance. After a while, it began to feel exhausted…

‘He wanted me to explain every little detail and compare with the other servants, isn’t that a little too meticulous?’

It kept telling itself that it was new, that it had to appear useful before it could really jump through the Dragon Gate in the future. ¹

Were it not for that, it had already hidden inside the sand to take its nap.

However, its determination could only last for three hours…

At that moment, Zheng Dao was stunned.

The golden koi in the fish tank flipped around, exposing its white belly. It looked as if it was saying “I’m dead, please stop asking.”

He immediately asked, “Brother Dragon Carp? Are you too tired, do you need a rest?”

If Fang Ning had seen it, he would know that the koi was just trying to sleaze off…

Zheng Dao did not know that. He could understand many human behaviors, but not this koi who had just appeared.

At the same time, he was a kind person. He immediately worried whether his questioning was too rigorous that his new colleague was exhausted because of that, so he was really tense.

The yellow dog Xue Ba did not know the koi’s tendency to sleep, but it could tell straight away that the koi was faking it—it has ample experience in that department.

It thought, ‘Hmph, you arrogant goldfish, you don’t even know how lame you are at pretending to be weak, you’re miles behind me.

‘When I was doing that in the dog cage last year to trap Blackie, you weren’t even down here yet. Not to mention, when I was in the Upper Realm, I survived because of how many times I did it that led to my easy life now…’

Smirking, it immediately said, “Oh me, oh my, Blackie, we don’t have to worry about our position in this house anymore. Looks like Brother Carp is going to take its last breath soon. It has an Upper Realm dragon bloodline after all… that bloodline is super precious, we can’t let the body go to waste.

“Let’s inform the Venerable One. It’s not completely dead, very fresh, let’s take this time to cook a fish stew. The gluttonous great green insect went looking for Chef Fang so we will cook it ourselves, in case it took our share away. With such a good ingredient, it must taste sumptuous.”

“Boss, you’re a genius,” agreed the black dog as it dashed toward the kitchen. It looked like it was going to prepare the tools to cook the koi.

The black dog thought, ‘Ol’ Yellow bullies me a lot, but it was not really discriminating me after all. It even thought of me last time so that I could pull my own string.

‘This wicked koi, however, is so arrogant and just kept flaunting its superiority. Best if we cook it now.’

The golden koi overheard that and immediately flipped over. Its black fisheyes turned around as it blew a few bubbles. It asked rebelliously, “Who’s dead? I just wanna look at the starry sky and think about my future. I am in really good shape. My powers are gone, but my superior dragon bloodline is still there. I have a really impressive vitality, how would I be dead?”

It was yapping away as it leaped out of the water and struck a few poses to display its strong and healthy fish torso…

Now that it was powerless, if it could not make Zheng Dao trust it and was believed to be dead, it would not have any chance against these two dogs.

“Come back, this guy is fine,” Xue Ba called out to the black dog with a slight sadness on its face. “It’s a pity Daqing did not have the patience and left early. If it were still here, no one would be able to constrict it now that master went out to uphold justice. This koi would have died for real just now.”

The black dog stopped and turned around with disappointment written all over its face…

The hamster was lying on the table and nibbled at a chestnut. It did not seem to have noticed its colleagues bouts of power play, its face stoic…

That was how the really-good-shape, impressive-vitality Dragon Carp stayed up all night with Zheng Dao…

…

The second morning, a golden koi was found lying on the sand in the fish tank with its belly flopped upward. Its face was one that said, ‘Just kill me’.

‘Dammit, it’s the first time ever that I had to stay up all night like this. I got careless. Didn’t expect the yellow dog to have the smarts. I will take the opportunity to nap if there is a next time. The cunning yellow dog would never be able to tell because my eyes look like they are open asleep or awake…” Dragon Carp schemed and blew a few bubbles into the water as it fantasized. In the end, it giggled smugly…

Zheng Dao did not have time to worry about his colleagues’ power play. He was busy in his study, trying to rearrange all the information before sending it to the Venerable Dragon God through QQ.

Seeing the long report, Fang Ning felt guilty after playing for a whole night felt guilty.

‘There are so many things that I didn’t do until now, luckily the System doesn’t care about this stuff, so I was never exposed.’

He made a silent conviction to himself to focus on information collection. He would give more powers to Zheng Dao and Anderson so they could fully utilize their subjectivity and initiative…

He put aside his game and finally did some proper work in the two days of break.

He read the information that Zheng Dao sorted out in detail and had finally had a basic grasp of the state of the Upper Realm.

He understood why the inhabitants of the Upper Realm would descend onto Earth. The Upper Realm was faced with a catastrophe where vitality was disappearing rapidly. The environment worsened all of a sudden, and the yield of vitality crops dropped year by year. Many noble clans had started to face the crisis of food shortage.

If they did not want to risk descending, they could only give up on their powers and cultivation base so they would return to being a regular being. That was a difficult choice on any count.

At the same time, he understood the huge difference in power of both parties. It would have been an understatement to describe it as an atomic bomb and a match.

Thankfully, the universe in which Earth was in was boundless, its Maxim tenacious. Before it turned into a Vitality Universe, if the inhabitants of Upper Realm wanted to descend onto Earth, they would have to sacrifice heavily.

The sooner they descended, the bigger their sacrifice. The truly powerful ones would depend on their rich accumulations and attempt to delay their descent. After all, the cultivation gets harder as they move up the rank, so the more they could retain, they would try to retain.

Because of that, capable clans’ descent crisis was still far away, but for the Whitestone people, it was an urgent matter.

Fang Ning kept reading and rereading their information, attempting to remember every single detail in the report.

…

After finishing his reviews and deliberated for a while, Fang Ning’s two-day break had finally come to an end.

He stretched and sighed deeply. “Aside from their ancestor, the Demon of Unrequited Love, these Whitestone people are really a respectable clan. They are all sincere and honest, they live by their own power, they were not complicit with other Heliotropes or any of the more villainous clans. They are really powerful, but they never enslave or exploit regular inhabitants, which was why the Heliotropes look down on them. Technically, they are the purest Heliotropes, but they were excluded in most, if not all, of the major decisions among the Heliotropes.”

The System said, “Oh, since you’ve said that, they should be perfectly good people. I guess I don’t need to get involved and waste my time.”

Fang Ning disapproved. “You naive child. The anger of an honest man is one of the most fearsome things in this world. Especially so when this world doesn’t treat its honest men well. After their descent, they will be faced with suffering and hardships. Keep your eyes peeled, we need to find them as soon as they have descended. I need to send Zheng Dao over and prepare them mentally. The society of the Upper Realm believes that ‘might is right’, they are relatively simple in that regard, the societies on Earth are much more complicated than that.”

The System said, “Good point. If we do that, it would aid in preventing the Demon of Unrequited Love from being reborn. If it destroyed Earth, where else would I get experience points?”

Fang Ning said helplessly, “I knew you would say that, you heartless bastard… You’re really miles behind the ancestor of the Whitestone people. Dragon Carp is right. It had done wrong things before, but it’s also really faithful, that’s determination. Its only shortcoming was that it’s too straightforward and too honest. No wonder he could give rise to a people with honesty built in them with its demonic body. Don’t underestimate this demon’s might.”

The System replied. “Sure, I’ll go find them. I’ve read Zheng Dao’s report too. He recorded their appearance in detail, so as soon as they appear on Earth, I will be able to find them immediately.”

Fang Ning nodded. “That’s right. If Earth no longer exists, I’ll no longer be able to stay where I am, and you won’t be able to farm your experience points, that’s a lose-lose situation.”