Chapter Fifty: Diligence

“Impressive! Compared to Lang Sheng, this new host has truly surprised me even more!”

Outside, the wind howled with ghostly force; the weather had shifted abruptly from the sweltering heat of midsummer to the biting cold of winter. Deep into the night, Fan Bei lay comfortably in bed, wrapped warmly in his quilt, turned on his side and gazing at the ethereal tome, The Father of Systems.

“Mental Power: 39,723.75.”

After creating the Butler System, his mental power reserve, which had dropped to “9,242.15,” soared back up, increasing by nearly thirty thousand, and now approached forty thousand in total. This meant the other party had spent over thirty thousand units of mental cores in one go, absorbing over fifteen hundred himself, while the vast majority had been offered up to him by the system…

Compared to Lang Sheng, this was another big spender. Moreover, the new host had entirely changed his previously precarious financial situation—no longer would Fan Bei need to worry about bankruptcy.

“Current Total Mental Power Income: 491.6 per day.”
“Current Total Mental Power Consumption: 110 per day.”
“Active Hosts: 3.”

Checking the system logs, he found that the host’s spending frequency was remarkably stable. Over a thousand related entries indicated that, on average, a transaction occurred every dozen seconds. For such powerful individuals, the feedback from such refined mental power was unprecedented.

The urgent desire to enhance their strength compelled these top experts to rapidly expend the vast reserves of mental cores they’d accumulated. After all, in the wasteland, potential meant little; what mattered was the power one held at that moment.

Absorbing gradually through formulas could yield a much higher rate, but the process was far too time-consuming; not to mention, mixing the formula alone would take ages—absorbing once every ten seconds was simply a fantasy.

Finally, Fan Bei came across a new entry.

“Host Lin Zhongqing has broken through the bottleneck of mental strength and reached the Gold Rank.”

He was taken aback. Though he knew this new host was formidable, he had been unaware of the specific attributes. Perhaps The Father of Systems was not high enough in level yet, and the control over the systems it issued was still weak. For instance, he only knew Da Bai’s attributes if the latter chose to reveal them.

On page five, the Butler System page displayed only limited information:
“System: Butler.”
“User: Lin Zhongqing.”
“Usage Time: One day, nineteen hours, thirty-five minutes.”
“Current System Status: Stable Operation.”
“Current System Income: 470.25 mental power per day.”
“Current System Consumption: 5 mental power per day. Since income exceeds expenditure, a share must be provided to the host. The remitted amount is (500–5)*0.95 = 470.25.”

And then there were the thousand-plus system logs, which Fan Bei now subconsciously ignored.

Unlike before, he had now browsed most of the books Lang Sheng had traded and learned from their records how the outside world categorized human power systems.

Because of “spirit matter” and the existence of evil spirits, everything was centered around two metrics: “mental strength” and “mental essence.” Everything else was secondary. No matter how strong the body or how numerous the guns and cannons, if one’s mental strength wasn’t high enough, even a lowly evil spirit could be deadly. Conversely, with enough mental essence, even the loss of a body might not preclude one from becoming something unknown.

The classification was simple, modeled after the evil spirits themselves, ranging from “Unranked” to “Bronze”—“Silver”—“Gold,” with three sub-levels in each rank.

The standard wasn’t the total amount of mental power possessed, but whether one could control spirit matter to penetrate the corresponding metal. If one could control spirit matter to pierce gold—even just a millimeter—despite having only a few dozen points of total mental power, they’d be Gold Rank. On the other hand, even with thousands or tens of thousands of points, if they could only pierce bronze, they remained Bronze Rank.

While seemingly counterintuitive, it was clear: the former was like a steel needle, the latter like tofu. No matter how small, a steel needle could pierce any amount of tofu, while a mountain of tofu could never break a steel needle.

If a Bronze Rank wanted to defeat a Gold Rank, they’d have to “grind an iron pestle into a needle”—wearing down the opponent’s golden needle entirely to win. But no one would attempt this, for humans also possessed the attribute of “morale.”

Now, with the system’s help, Lin Zhongqing had suddenly advanced to Gold Rank. While Fan Bei didn’t know how difficult that was, it was certainly impressive. He had yet to see an evil spirit capable of directly breaking through golden defenses; if he had, he’d be long dead.

Typically, evil spirits would manipulate spirit matter to corrode physical reality, slowly wearing away the gold plating until it became gold dust. After all, gold wasn’t invincible—it melted at just over a thousand degrees, and strong acids like hydrochloric, sulfuric, nitric, and phosphoric could slowly corrode it, with aqua regia as its nemesis. Additionally, it could be crushed into powder with physical force, and its malleability was one of its defining features.

But to pierce it directly with mental manipulation of spirit matter required extremely strong mental essence.

This was why Fan Bei had survived so long—his daily work was the constant repair and maintenance of those damaged layers of gold and silver plating…

...

Bronze Fortress.

Unlike Fan Bei, huddled deep within his shelter, Lang Sheng—the host of the “Good Person” system—was out with his brothers, fiercely hacking their way through the area.

He wore only a half-suit of golden armor; after all, while full-body gold armor offered maximum protection, it was far too cumbersome.

The sinister wind raged as streaks of ashen white spiraled through the air.

Lang Sheng struck out with a fist at a diving streak of gray-white. It vanished instantly, leaving nothing to fall in its place.

“Hmph, nothing dropped—what rotten luck.”

He muttered this offhandedly and lunged at the next target.

Those swirling entities in the air were nimble, small, and incredibly fast; ordinary people would be hard-pressed to cope. But to his senses, they seemed sluggish, for he was not seeing them with his eyes, but perceiving them with his mind.

“Boss, there’s a big one over here—just Bronze Rank 1, fifty meters out, due—”

“Alright, I’m on my way.”

Lang Sheng was now exceptionally diligent. Since fully activating the system, he could rapidly refine his inner world simply by completing large numbers of mental core collection tasks.

Compared to the old, troublesome methods of cultivation, now all he needed was to devour mental cores.

Originally, only the land around that Bronze-rank plant was bronze in nature, but now the entire field nearby had undergone bronzification.

At this rate, as long as the supply of mental cores kept up, in a few months he might reach Silver Rank!

When the tide of evil spirits struck in the past, he’d clear them out and collect mental cores only if it wasn’t too dangerous and his home stockpile was sufficient, mostly going through the motions.

After all, laziness is human nature—even with full knowledge of the benefits, one simply doesn’t want to move. It was perfectly normal.

Besides, the drop rate was abysmal; getting one drop for every ten kills was extraordinary luck, and one for every twenty or thirty was more typical.

He sprinted to the location reported by his subordinate and saw the giant creature. It was over three times the height of a man—a true behemoth, crawling forward in a way that inspired dread.

But so what?

Staring intently, Lang Sheng focused his mind and threw a punch. A beam of red light burst forth from his fist—tighter and more concentrated than ever—piercing straight into the left side of the behemoth.

In the next instant, the colossus dissipated into nothing, leaving behind a fist-sized, ashen-white core.

“We’ve struck it rich this time, Boss! Looks like luck’s on our side; this wave of evil spirits has a lot of big ones, and the drop rate is high!” Several of his companions gathered around, all laughing and offering their praise.

Only, their voices were muffled and raspy behind their masks.

“Indeed, we’re going to be rich,” Lang Sheng replied loudly, but his laughter was utterly different from the laughter of the others.