Seized by the System

The people were envious and jealous, yet there was nothing they could do since they had not said anything because of their selfishness before.

Right now, they could only watch as the precious treasure changed its owner.

It was not that no one wanted to agree that this item had appeared because of Qiao Anping and so it should belong to him.

Nonetheless, the other party had helped Qiao Anping eliminate the culprit and retrieve the precious orb. Therefore, now that it was to become the karma that would allow him to be revived, there was nothing they could say to oppose the decision.

Otherwise, Qiao Anping would only die in vain without any chance of revival.

If they insisted on pestering them about this arrangement, then they would end up coming into direct conflict with the other party. However, being in this dangerous World of Spirits and Souls, if they lost the protection of these two powerhouses, one could easily predict their outcome.

In such a short period of time after entering this world, they had already lost more than half of their people. If the situation were to go on like this, there was no way of knowing how many more of them would die.

Fortunately, they had obtained this Nine Transformation Soul Restoration Orb. As long as the orb is fully charged by consuming one million Dan units to fill up, one person could be revived.

Quite a few people had already started to calculate if their previous savings were enough to exchange a million Dan units of magical energy.

When cultivating the Nine Transformation Golden Core Technique, the magical energy gathered by a cultivator, who had achieved the state of the first transformation to gather essence, after a normal daily 8-hour cultivation was equivalent to one Dan unit.

A million Dan units would require precisely the magical energy gathered after a day’s cultivation by one million cultivators who had achieved the first transformation.

Although the value system of the cultivation world was different, the price of the labor force still had a unified calculation method.

A million Dan units was at least equivalent to 300 billion worth of material wealth in the Common Era!

This calculation was based on an average labor worker’s basic wage of 300 dollars per day.

However, a cultivator at the state of gathering essence was like a one-out-of-ten genius among normal humans, so a monthly salary of 9000 would not be a hard thing to achieve for them.

Such an amount of wealth, even if placed in the Common Era, was considered extremely large. Many small countries’ annual GDP could not reach this figure, and if one owned such an amount of wealth, that person would place among the top ten richest people in the world.

In the end, these people realized that, unless it was a country giving them supply, they would never be able to gather the amount required on their own.

At this moment, many of them turned their gaze to Xu Rui.

The human integration plan that he advocated for, where resources were to be centralized and supplied to only a few people, seemed to have been meant to pave the way for this very moment today…

If one were to say that there was no hidden agenda behind this plan, no one would believe it.

Nonetheless, no one would expose it because this hidden agenda was beneficial to them!

While the people were deep in their own thoughts, Vigilante A secretly sent a telepathic message to Bodhisattva.

“Bodhisattva, this orb may be useful to you, but the timing of its appearance is too odd, so you should still be careful.”

Hearing this, the Bodhisattva Spirit King nodded. “I have the same feeling too. Thank you, Venerable One, for your reminder. I’ll be careful with it.”

“In that case, I’d like to ask for Bodhisattva to please take care of these people while I search for the person behind this.”

“Venerable One, please go ahead. I still have some skills that certainly won’t disappoint your request” the Bodhisattva Spirit King assured.

“Very well then. I shall take my leave now.”

Right before their eyes, Vigilante A vanished.

Having learned their lesson previously, everyone did not dare to ask too many questions at the moment. Only their gaze was directed at the Bodhisattva Spirit King.

“The Venerable One has gone to find the cause of this disaster. He’ll be back very soon. Everyone can just remain where you’re standing, and try not to move around. I’ll be here to keep an eye on things.” Bodhisattva calmly explained.

After a while, a long “ugh…” moan could be heard.

Sitting on the ground, Monastery Master Ma who had been on the brink of death was finally stirring awake, barely managing to make a sound.

“Master Ma, are you okay?” asked a medical personnel beside him.

“I’m okay. What’s just happened? Where am I?” Old Master Ma was trying his best to keep his eyes open.

The medical personnel quickly recounted what had happened just now in a low voice.

“So it was the Venerable One who had saved our lives. Ah, you children, how can you be so unaffectionate? At the end of your cultivation process, do you really plan to become like one of those heartless and unscrupulous immortals in the myths? That, however, isn’t the true path of cultivation!” Old Master stubbornly held onto his remaining strength as he reprimanded the young people before him.

The rest of them lowered their faces in silence.

Afterward, Old Master Ma pushed himself to stand up before cupping his hands in obeisance at Bodhisattva. “Regarding what happened just now, I’m terribly sorry for not being able to speak up earlier for both Venerable Ones. I humbly ask for your understanding. These children have just begun their path of cultivation, so they may not know the gravity of their behavior. Please don’t blame them too much.”

“Haha, no harm done. Nobody is perfect. How can anyone be without mistakes?” Bodhisattva comforted. “However, your warm heart and thoughtfulness are admirable. I heard that your only son had suffered a tragic death. If there’s anything I can help you with, please let me know.”

A hint of joy appeared in Old Master Ma’s eyes. He had asked the Venerable Dragon God some time ago to find his son’s soul after his death in the Land of Sanguinity. After a period of conservation, the soul had slowly started to take its shape.

If he could use the Nine Transformation Soul Restoration Orb to recreate his body, his son would be able to gain perfect cultivation proficiency. This would really turn out as a blessing in disguise.

He expressed his deepest respect. “Even if I had to lay down my life, I can never repay the grace of both Venerable Ones. From today onward, if there’s anything I can do for you, please don’t hesitate to tell me.”

“Old Master, please don’t feel that way. You should rest and recover for a while,” Bodhisattva said warmly.

At this moment, the group of young people watching this scene could not help feeling their hearts and minds being moved.

It turned out that, among these top-level cultivators, it was not a world entirely cold and without human affection…

The kind of ecosystem that resembled a dark forest was at least not applicable to the current situation.

Quite a few of them originally expected Vigilante A to keep the precious treasure for himself by acting out a classic case of killing others to get the treasure, and then remain standing on his moral high ground.

No one expected him to be a real hero and give it away to the just Bodhisattva. With his way of doing things, what else could they say?

This type of reality caused some of them to undergo quite a paradigm shift.

Humans were high-level animals created by the environment. It was in their nature to seek the advantages and avoid the disadvantages. No matter how much they had been influenced and altered by their environment, even until now in the Era of Mystery, this feature would never change.

If in a society, doing good deeds was beneficial and could bring much convenience, then people would naturally do good. On the contrary, if doing good deeds would cause one to shed blood and tears, wasting one’s time, and bring more inconvenience, then it wouldn’t matter how much and how well the idea of doing good was promoted, for people would tend to go towards self-protection. Then, no matter how harshly the moral gentlemen criticized that the moral of the public was degenerating day by day, it would never lead to any improvement…

…

At this moment, Vigilante A was slowly flying across the skies of the World of Spirits and Soul, carefully searching through every river, every grassland, and every mountain ground beneath him.

Although there had been many incidents before this, Sir System would not forget their real objective for entering this place, which was to find high-quality seeds of malevolent spirits.

This was also why, when it heard Fang Ning asking to sacrifice existing stock, it became furious.

Great, after entering, they had not even earned money but needed to pay and leave. How could this be tolerated?

Unfortunately, what disappointed Sir System was that all the places below seemed to be mostly in ruins.

Most of the land was directly exposed and had no sign of Yin Energy. Only some Yin places that were strategically located showed some Yin Energy gathering there.

Under such circumstances, even if there were any high-quality seeds of malevolent spirits, they would have starved to death!

After all, the World of Spirits and Souls should be the place where Yin Energy gathered and transformed, so its concentration level should be unusually high.

Right now, in a situation like this, it would seem that what many had said before about “the Upper Realm losing its vitality and being on the verge of destruction” was not unfounded and exaggerated, neither was it a fabrication of lies, but an iron-like fact.

Sir System searched for treasures on the outside while Fang Ning inquired from the green-skinned frog.

“Little Frog, aside from the Death Substitute Technique and those who have died enough, are there any other ways to leave this World of Spirits and Souls?”

“Master, just like the last time, you’ll just have to discover a specific world order,” the green-skinned frog happily replied.

“Oh, for the Order of the World of Deadly Souls last time, it was to stay in the remnant of Death’s soul. Then, for the Order of the World of Spirits and Souls, it should be to stay on the body of the Spirit Lord. Well then, at the end of this, is there really no way of avoiding a confrontation with the Spirit Lord?” Fang Ning asked worriedly.

“What Master said is right. All the worlds in the Upper World and their corresponding orders have, in time, been refined by the dominant figures of each world. It’s only by defeating them, or when they willingly hand over their world, that gains control of it,” the green-skinned frog said.

Fang Ning immediately began to worry and pondered by himself.

In the previous battle, although Sir System had won, it was not true victory, since the intention of the other party was mainly to stall Vigilante A, who had the strongest combat abilities, in order to harvest the others.

In reality, they had already achieved their objective with the death of Qiao Anping, who was the backbone of their combat power, as well as the loss of many more of their special combat forces.

The other party’s strategic goal had already been exposed. The fact was that big strategic goals as such usually could not be concealed for long. Once the action began, it would eventually be seen through.

After all, this was not a fifty-episode romance drama where the main male and female characters would find out in the last episode that they were siblings…

The Spirit Lords wanted to harvest the powerhouses of humankind, and extract their flesh and vitality for the World of Spirits and Souls that was close to collapse, so as to extend its life!

Meanwhile, the powerhouses of humankind were prompted by the Heavenly Axiom to obtain the Order of the World of Spirits and Souls by eliminating the Spirit Lords in order to perfect the Earth’s Mysterious Maxim.

Both parties had their needs. Between them, just as when one asked a tiger for its skin, conflict was inevitable.

Right now, the World of Spirits and Souls was doing slightly better, but the bounds of Earth had not yet suffered any serious injury, and its commanders still remained.

Their next step would decide which of them was truly the winning side.

However, Fang Ning had a faint feeling that the Spirit Lords’ intention was not that simple, for they were definitely not short-sighted like Sir System.

“You should just focus on thinking about the overall situation. Why would you secretly poke fun at me?” Sir System suddenly said with malcontent.

“You should just focus on finding malevolent spirits. Why would you peek into my thoughts?” Fang Ning was just as discontented.

“…”