Chapter 124: The Slave

At the other end of the mining camp.

"This is impossible!"
"I clearly acted as a good person!"
"Why would you leave me?"

A miserable cry rose high, then sank into a low moan.

"Sigh, another one has gone mad." The people in the neighboring tents were unfazed.
"It’s nothing. That’s what happens when you rely on external forces. The moment the favor is withdrawn, you lose your composure," one person said, shaking his head.
"True. It’s better to be like us, cultivating honestly; at least our state of mind remains stable."
"So stable that I don’t even feel like cultivating anymore..."

Clearly, they all assumed the wailing man was someone who had grown by relying on an evil entity. There were many such people, and they often ended up as sustenance for those very entities. Occasionally, however, there were those who were all take and no give, eventually being discarded by the entities; after all, there are exceptions to most things.

Lang Sheng finally managed to calm down, forcing himself not to lose his composure further.
"Brother System, I believe I have treated you well. Why must you abandon your brother?"
"You do not possess a heart truly committed to being good; you were merely going through the motions, so I had to leave. You might think that once a system is bound, it will never disappear. That is impossible. Everything in this world will perish; only perishability itself does not."
"I’ll change! Can’t I just change?"
"It is already too late. However, considering your attitude toward reform, I can leave you something."

A golden thigh turning into a golden finger was a stroke of luck within the misfortune.
Lang Sheng gritted his teeth and said, "I will give you the hundred thousand plus mental cores I have accumulated. Take them to help the poor."
"The child is teachable. In that case, I will leave you with a storage space and a shop to facilitate your self-reliance in the future."
"Many thanks for your generosity, Brother System," Lang Sheng accepted his fate.

Once upon a time, he thought he was destined to be the protagonist of destiny. Yet, he hadn’t even walked this path for half a year before it came to an abrupt halt. Such is the cruelty of fate. It does not smile upon anyone; it operates in the coldest of ways. Mortals can only glimpse a sliver of its patterns and attempt minor improvements, never realizing that what they call improvement is merely a futile struggle.

In the end, Lang Sheng received a bracelet with five words engraved upon it: "I want to be a good person"...

Not far away, in the temporary headquarters of the Star Chamber of Commerce, Lin Zhongqing, who was sitting cross-legged in cultivation, overheard everything.

In front of her sat a handsome, debonair, and jade-like man, cultivating opposite her. Having worked frantically for three months, she had gathered a hundred times more spirit cores than Lang Sheng and Dabai combined. After burning through one hundred million points of mental energy, she had finally succeeded in manifesting—or rather, visualizing—Dongfang Yitong.

She had exchanged for a technique called "The Great Freedom Visualization" and then consumed a vast amount of mental energy to mold a physical form for him, the most perfect of bodies. A body without leaks, a vessel of ultimate purity; a being of the heavens, incomparable to any mortal. She slowly finished her technique, her entire being radiating a sacred aura.

"Brother Dongfang, you won’t abandon me, will you?"
The sacred aura vanished instantly, leaving behind only the vulnerability of a female.
"If I hold your hand, and you do not leave, then I shall not leave..." The man opposite her smiled faintly, as if there were no problem in the world he could not solve.
"That’s good then," she leaned in slowly, then looked up and asked, "The Nanling Chamber of Commerce sent people to negotiate with me, offering to serve me as their master if I kill their current backer. Should we agree?"
"That step is too large; it will easily lead to unpredictable results," Dongfang shook his head.
"Then what should we do now?"
"A clever rabbit has three burrows. We need to open branch bases; we cannot shrink back into this single location."
"Mhm, Brother Dongfang is truly wise and sagacious, seeing for ten thousand miles."
"Do not always praise me so. In truth, I am merely standing on the shoulders of giants."

...

Fan Bei retrieved two of the systems, keeping only one. This way, things would be much more comfortable, and there would be less to worry about. Just then, he suddenly heard a series of whispers in his ears. The sounds were strange, impossible to decipher, and made his mind feel hazy.

"Sounds from the Ethereal World? A pity there is no translation; I truly cannot understand them."
With this in mind, he thought about creating a translation system. But then, he reconsidered—resources on Earth were limited, and he had already distributed four. Should he continue?

He called Xiaobai over. It had transformed from a ball into a barbell; the benefit was that it rolled much more steadily. It wasn't like the original ball, which often couldn't hit the brakes.

"Xiaobai, you previously said you migrated to Earth from the depths of the universe, right?" Fan Bei asked.

"Yes. Didn't that big shot behind you tell you?" Xiaobai said with contempt.
Since the system had become a collar, it had developed a "broken jar, broken smash" attitude, finding fault with everything.

Fan Bei did not speak; he simply wrapped the iron ball in mist, and the next moment, ten thousand tons of pressure descended! This was the result of his cultivation—to a certain extent, he had entered the realm of the transcendent.

*Pop.* The barbell turned into a spatula.

"Fine, fine, I'll talk! You guys are all in on it, you all love using violence, a bunch of country bumpkins," Xiaobai said sullenly.
"You refuse a toast only to be forced to drink a forfeit," Fan Bei shook his head.
"Yes, that is what I said before. It took a lot of effort to migrate here."
"You must have migrated from the Ethereal World, right?"
"That’s right. No one could travel the length of the physical universe—billions of light-years—who knows when that would end?" Xiaobai said, feeling miserable, as if recalling a tragic past.
"I see. Then let me ask you: how do you navigate when migrating through the Ethereal World?" Fan Bei finally reached the core question.

Xiaobai fell silent.

Dabai was playing with the collar nearby, making it grow large, then small, wearing it on its neck, then its leg. Seeing the hesitation, it urged, "Just answer what the master asks! Why are you stuttering? Are you still my brother or not? Do you still want to use Brother Ring's space and shop?"

"Fine. The method of positioning is to look at the vitality of life. Every planet has a mapping or projection in the Ethereal World. We can judge the degree of their life proliferation based on these projections. Once it reaches a certain level, we head over," Xiaobai said helplessly.
"Actually, what is the use of you knowing this? Now that the system is gone, all that’s left is a useless collar that can’t evolve. In the end, aren't you still going to be a slave?" it added with disdain.
"You seem to be even worse off than a slave," Fan Bei remarked with contempt.
"Can't help it. Occasionally, there are slave owners who end up worse than their slaves."
"That’s not 'occasionally,' that’s 'often,' isn't it?"
"True. Slaves who suck up to big slave owners can look down on small slave owners."