Chapter Three: This System Doesn’t Seem Like Anything Serious

Li Yunfei’s home was a detached Western-style house. In a small, eighth- or ninth-tier city like Yudong County, property prices were so low it was almost unbelievable. When Li Yunfei’s parents bought this house before they passed away, it cost just around six thousand yuan per square meter. With over three hundred square meters across two floors, the house had cost them about two million.

As he opened the door and stepped inside, a flash of red darted toward him. Grinning, Li Yunfei bent down, opened his arms, and caught the red shadow, lifting it up before his face.

“Honghong, have you been good at home? Did you use the bathroom by yourself?”

A series of soft, coy sounds came from the little beast in his hands. Her fluffy tail swept through the air, and her dazed, adorable expression immediately lifted his spirits.

This was Li Yunfei’s pet fox.

When she was a cub, her fur was the usual reddish-brown, but as she grew, the brown faded and the red deepened. Li Yunfei remembered watching an old animated series as a child called “Fox Spirit Matchmaker.” Since his pet was a female fox, he had named her Honghong.

Honghong was quite different from other foxes. First, she didn’t have that characteristic smell; her fur was soft and plush, like holding a ball of fluff in his arms. Secondly, her temperament was exceptionally gentle. Foxes are, after all, carnivores with a reputation for intelligence—even those raised as pets retain a touch of wildness and can be dangerous if provoked. Moreover, foxes were just as notorious for wrecking homes as huskies. But Honghong displayed none of these flaws. She was gentler even than a golden retriever, got along well with the neighbor’s golden retriever, and never destroyed anything at home.

If there was one fox-like shortcoming she retained, it was the incredible stench of her droppings. Li Yunfei, as her dutiful caretaker, had suffered through this at first, but things improved once he taught her to use the bathroom.

He’d even replaced a toilet in one of the bathrooms with a squat toilet with a deep water reservoir, so her waste would drop straight into the water, suppressing much of the smell.

Li Yunfei had only exchanged a few words with the little fox when, suddenly, that emotionless system prompt sounded in his mind: “Pet beast detected. Bind it?”

Startled, Li Yunfei, still unfamiliar with the system, chose not to respond rashly.

After closing the door, he set down his backpack, cradling the little fox in one arm while scratching her chin with the other. Honghong’s fox face melted into an expression of pure bliss—eyes half-closed, mouth curved in a contented arc, looking for all the world like a Shiba Inu.

The first order of business at home was, of course, to flush away the little fox’s droppings. Carrying her to the bathroom and pressing the flush button, Li Yunfei finally returned to the sofa.

With his pet in his lap, Li Yunfei said in his mind, “Open character panel.”

A soft “swish” echoed in his head—the familiar background sound of opening a character screen in a video game.

A slightly translucent status panel appeared, occupying the left half of his field of vision—clear to see, yet not obstructing the world beyond. The panel was projected right onto his retinas, not actually floating in the air.

The panel was divided into three parts. The upper section displayed a three-dimensional avatar of himself in the center. Slots hovered above his head, at the sides of his neck and torso, by his hands and legs—classic equipment slots whose purpose was immediately obvious to Li Yunfei: for equipping gear.

The lower section showed four attribute bars in red, blue, green, and white. The red and blue bars were both at 100%, while the green was at 35%, and the white at 68%. Red represented health, blue was mana, green was satiety, and white was stamina.

Below these was a fifth bar, currently empty with a value of 0%—clearly the experience bar.

At the very bottom was a row of six icons. Focusing on each in turn, Li Yunfei quickly discerned their purposes—or at least, those of five of them. From left to right: Character Attributes Panel, System Inventory, Skills Panel, Pet Beast Panel, System Shop—represented by icons of a human figure, a bundle, a sword, a beast, and a set of scales. The last icon, however, was pitch black. The system provided no information about it.

He opened the various panels one by one; the left side of his vision shifted accordingly, just like in an online game. The system inventory contained a hundred individual slots, each with cubic storage space.

Upon leveling up, these slots would gradually merge, forming larger spaces to store bigger items. At the bottom of the slots was a coin icon—typically used to represent gold in games. Could this system really store money? Maybe even earn interest?

The system shop, skill panel, and pet beast panel were all empty for now. The shop had fifty blank slots at the top and two more at the bottom; under the left slot was the word “Sell,” and under the right, “Repair.” It seemed he could sell or repair items here.

In the top right corner, Li Yunfei noticed a question mark. Mentally tapping it, a stream of information surged into his mind.

This was an introduction to the God of Slaughter System: “The God of Slaughter System—attain the Way through slaughter, prove the Way through killing, massacre endless living beings, perfect the path of slaughter, and become the God of Slaughter.”

Having read the description, Li Yunfei muttered wryly, “What’s with this overwhelming sense of being in a video game? So this system wants me to kill monsters to level up? Is ‘proving the Way through killing’ really just this literal?”

“But there aren’t any monsters in real life. I can’t just grab a knife and hack my way from South Gate Square to Little North Street!”

He couldn’t shake the sense that this system wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up—perhaps the creation of some malevolent deity. What kind of legitimate system would have you slaughter living beings? Endless slaughter? Come on...

Still, whatever its origins, this system was his key to extraordinary power. Killing could be accomplished through normal means, couldn’t it? Worst case, he’d start a farm or slaughterhouse and rack up experience by the day.

He put aside the question of the system’s origins for now; there was no way to figure it out anyway.

Opening the character attribute panel again, Li Yunfei carefully studied his four attributes.

Strength 14 (10), Agility 12 (8), Constitution 15 (10), Spirit 10 (7).

The values in parentheses indicated the norm for a healthy adult male; the numbers before them were Li Yunfei’s actual stats. As a former field reconnaissance soldier, these physical attributes were to be expected. While the numbers in parentheses represented the average person, athletes, soldiers, police officers, martial artists, or those who exercised regularly would often surpass them to varying degrees.