Seized by the System

Ren Ruofeng was distracting himself with the documents by peering into the mirror. During working hours, he always had fun doing that.

Suddenly, the floor-to-ceiling window in his office opened wide and a person entered.

Who else could it be other than Vigilante A who never used doors, opting instead for windows?

Ren Ruofeng set down his mirror immediately and pretended to look at his documents intently as if he did not notice the arrival of Vigilante A…

Fang Ning thought, ‘Ol’ Ren, you’re such a bad pretender. I’ve used this trick plenty of times myself.

‘However, I don’t have to call him out on it. I’m not his boss, why do I need to be the bad guy here?

‘If he dared to attend to his personal business during office hours, Hu will shout at him.’

Fang Ning pretended to cough, reminding Ren Ruofeng that he had arrived.

“Oh, Venerable One, you’re here. Please have a seat. Zhang, serve shade… I mean, serve tea. Use the new Da Hong Pao ¹ .”

Ren Ruofeng stood up and greeted Fang Ning as if he had finally noticed him.

“Save your tea. I have something to discuss.” Fang Ning sat on a couch on the other side.

Ren Ruofeng swiveled his chair around and listened to Fang Ning.

As he took in Fang Ning’s suggestion, he was astonished as the expression on his face changed several times.

‘When all is said and done, he’s the Venerable Dragon God!

‘His ambition is as large as the universe, and his goal is unrivaled by anyone in the world!

‘Setting up a Nets Above Snares Below for the Heavenly Axiom to defend against the evilness that is threatening the world? Just how expansive is his vision?’

Ren Ruofeng had taken part in setting up China’s Nets Above Snares Below. He knew full well the difficulty in the procedure.

Those were many stressful days and sleepless nights, as well as the chaos that happened because of a miscalculated parameter. He remembered the days when half of his head had gone gray that were only solved by consuming countless expensive haircare products.

They had to first investigate the leyline nodes in China—which took three years—and only by connecting to the leylines can they sense the star mansions in the sky that took three extra years.

Finally, when they were able to connect the leylines and the star mansions to form the Nets Above Snares Below, it took them yet another three years.

A total of nine years and the congregation of all sorts of variables later, they had finally finished the Nets Above Snares Below with great difficulty.

However, Vigilante A wanted to build a massive Nets Above Snares Below for the Heavenly Axiom, the difficulty they faced before was nothing compared to what they were about the face.

After he deliberated, he asked a key question.

“Venerable One, the Nets Above Snares Below that we have now could only cover China. I wonder, what would be the ideal size you wish to cover?”

‘Probably the entire Earth,’ Ren Ruofeng thought as he asked the question.

‘Perhaps even the moon. This project is large. Without the time frame of a few hundred years, it was impossible.’

However, he did not know Fang Ning was the one controlling Vigilante A at the moment.

Furthermore, he did not know that Fang Ning had already thought of himself as the chief strategist and had wanted to pretend to be bad*ss.

‘Sacrifice a strategist and hope that the servers could run normally!’

That was the general consensus of the programmers in their company.

Due to the crazy requirement of the System, they had already lost control of the stability of the System and could only pray for the best.

Now that Ren Ruofeng asked him, Fang Ning answered with only two words.

It was as if the two words were magical, Ren Ruofeng sprung to his feet in shock.

The prized bronze mirror was knocked to the ground, clanking loudly, but Ren Ruofeng did not even notice it.

“Milky Way…”

It took Ren Ruofeng a while to come to his senses.

He had always prided himself of being calm to the point of immovable by the eight winds. His romantic tribulation earlier had only strengthened him.

However, the two words took him by surprise. Staring at Vigilante A with a stunned look, a literary passage appeared in his mind.

‘Dragons can enlarge and shrink themselves, and they can rise and hide; When they are large, they could summon clouds and control fog, when they are tiny, they could obscure themselves; When they rise, they could soar between worlds, when they hide, they could conceal themselves in the waves of the ocean.

‘Doesn’t this describe the Venerable Dragon God perfectly?

He was only a normal vigilante just some time ago, catching thieves and taking cover in the urban jungle.

A year after that, he had already expanded his vision to the Milky Way!

If he remembered correctly, there were more than one hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, and the Solar System was only one of it…

It was a long while before Ren Ruofeng could calm himself down and ask, “Venerable One, you are talking about THE Milky Way? The one human scientists talked about and not other entities?”

It was hard for him to accept the suggestion.

He would rather believe that Vigilante A was using Milky Way as a codeword for another place.

However, Vigilante A’s answer crushed his tiny hope that it was another place.

“That’s right, THE Milky Way. Earth revolves around the sun, which is subsequently revolving around the Milky Way. I want to expand the Heavenly Axiom’s Nets Above Snares Below to the entire Milky Way so that the Milky Way would revolve around Earth in the future…”

Fang Ning said ambitiously after deciding to bootlick his Axiom Daddy so he could earn more Heavenly Merit Points.

The moment Fang Ning finished, Ren Ruofeng could see swirls of silver light wafting out of Fang Ning’s back.

‘A heavenly sign appeared, could it be that it had been approved by the Heavenly Axiom?’

Ren Ruofeng was clever and understood heavenly mysteries, so he got it immediately.

What did the sign symbolize?

He understood it very well.

At the moment, he could only swallow with difficulty. He stared with an expression that could only be described as disbelief.

Vigilante A was expressionless as if he had just said something unremarkable.

Meeting his gaze for a long silent moment, Ren Ruofeng finally submitted to Vigilante A.

‘Looks like the descendants of Ren family would need to work our asses off…’

Unbeknownst to Ren Ruofeng, Fang Ning had already hidden his spirit inside the System Space in that instance.

It could not be helped. His boasting this time was too much to be contained.

A system notification had rung in his head. [The Host had wished to set up Heavenly Axiom’s Nets Above Snares Below to cover the Milky Way and make Earth’s Heavenly Axiom the center of the universe. The Heavenly Axiom approved of it and granted 30,000 Heavenly Merit Points. The current total of Heavenly Merit Points is 30,001, with 29,900 points being frozen until the project has started. P/S: If the wish is not fulfilled in 1,000 years, heavenly retribution will destroy the Host’s spirit.]

The System said coldly, “Hmph, talk about being immortal and being a shut-in forever… We could’ve lived many thousand years after we’ve become a true dragon. Now, thanks to you, we only get to live another thousand years…”

Fang Ning could not retort. ‘Sorry, Sir System…’

The System did not stop there, it sighed and said, “A dragon who could only live a thousand years. Long San will definitely laugh at us once he found out.”

“A thousand years is not a short time and ten thousand years is too long a time. We’ll just have to brainstorm a little bit more. We could probably finish it if I work overtime.”

Fang Ning was sprawled on the couch and tried to misdirect the conversation.

“I will not make you work overtime. This is your own mess to clean. I know how wide the Milky Way is. Maybe you have some other cheat codes that you hid, now’s the time to show it. There might not be a chance later…” said the System unemotionally.

The System Space which had been maintaining a constant temperature and humidity abruptly turned into a dry frigid winter…

Fang Ning’s teeth chattered. The System had simulated all sorts of intonation before, but it had never scared Fang Ning that much.

“Can you not? Didn’t we already earn thirty thousand Heavenly Merit Points? Even though we can only use a hundred of them now, we could just farm Zhi Nan with that, can’t you see how much experience points that would get us?”

Fang Ning tried his best to calm the System down and to distract it.

He could not not calm it. Without Sir System, even if Daddy Axiom gave him a hundred thousand years to complete the task, he would still not be able to finish it.

He would not have the persistence to do it. His procrastination would get the better of him, and he would start putting it off for another time. When time was up, it would be the end of him and the System.

“Hmph, I’d rather not. Experience can be saved up slowly, but how do you complete this thing you invoked?” asked the System, still emotionless.

Fang Ning churned his brain with regret. He had overestimated himself.

‘I only wanted to boast a little, but this whole thing happened in the end.’

He thought it would be fine to boast a little more than he could achieve. At worst, he could give them a little discount in the end, doesn’t everyone do that?

His previous company had always marketed more than they had done. When it was shown to the clients, the clients would always discover that they did not have the functions they wanted.

It was a problem easily solved. The clients already paid them a huge sum of money to use their system so they could not have changed to another company last minute.

With some mediation, they would come upon one solution, which meant that the programmers would rush to add a similar function to what was asked, so the quality of the product was imaginable.

Fang Ning tried to think of a way to fulfill his boastful hogwash and found it to be hard.

…

At the same time, on the other side of the ocean, in a high-tech factory.

The production lines were moving and the workers were working hard. Even though the end of the world was coming, they still had to eat, so they had to continue working.

Zhi Nan was inspecting the machines one by one in the company of Claudia. He would occasionally ask the accompanying technicians technical questions.

His questions were so in-depth and professional, the technicians had found it tricky to answer, but they were impressed all the same.

After all, just by judging the questions one asks, people could determine whether the asker understands the industry.

Zhi Nan was in the middle of a question when he stopped and turned to the west. Frowning, Zhi Nan did not say anything.

In that direction, it was China.

A few moments later, a smile appeared on his face.

“Heh, Fang Ning, you’ve cultivated my Demon Singing Buddhist Mantra and had become so full of yourself, you even made such a huge wish!

“Even if you have the true dragon with you, you want the Heavenly Axiom’s Nets Above Snares Below cover the Milky Way? You want the Milky Way to revolve around Earth! What a daydream. I say you wouldn’t be able to do it even if you have a hundred million years, let alone a thousand…”

“I want to see how you would be bitten a thousand years later!”

Claudia stared at the demon lord with her mouth hanging open. He was so excited, it was the first time she heard him speak an entire monologue at once.

‘It sounds like his nemesis had been destroyed?

‘Could it be Vigilante A?

‘If it is, then that’s great!’

…

After Fang Ning had done some thinking, he had some ideas on how to interpret the situation that happened.

He explained to the System calmly, “Don’t worry, Daddy Axiom wouldn’t give us an impossible mission. If my wish was approved by it, that must mean it believed that I can achieve it.

“Otherwise, there are many people who made even more exaggerated wishes, I don’t see them getting the Heavenly Merit Points. The Heavenly Axiom must know that they were only bullshitting without the ability to complete it, so it didn’t approve of their wishes.

“I have you, our might is unforeseeable, so it approved of my wish. That means we have a chance of completing the wish.”

“Aren’t you only bullshitting as well? In the end, I would be the one who cleans up after you,” sneered the System. “No negotiations, bring out your game book and give me the several tens of millions of experience points it earned in the Paradise Realm.

“You’re right, I do have one way to help you with this, Daddy Axiom knows me very well.”

System Notification: [The System caught the Host’s wordplay and asked for boons.]

“Uh… I knew you’re not human and can’t be angry for real. But you’re so convincing just so you can trap me? Can we just have a little more trust between us?” Fang Ning said sadly.

“Deal, or no deal?” said the System again, coldly.

“Deal, deal immediately.” Fang Ning had no other choices. Boasting felt good, but it landed him in a pinch.

Now that his weak spot was held by the System after making such a blunder, he could only ask his game book to pay off his debt…