Chapter Fifty-Five: Bestowal

Fan Bei exchanged a few perfunctory words with Xiao Bai, not saying much more. He left the living room, not to practice meditation as usual, but hurried to the study, where he opened “The Father of Systems” and turned to the “Good Person” system page.

“Show all the host’s skills,” he thought.

A prompt appeared on the page:

“There is a significant strength gap between the system creator and this system’s host, but the system’s trust level with the host is high. Most skills may be viewed, but cannot be freely extracted.”

Noting the prompt, Fan Bei discovered a new secret of the book. The new parameters, “system trust level” and “skill extraction,” were important concepts to record in his diary.

After the prompt vanished, the page no longer displayed dense logs, but instead revealed the skills currently possessed by the host—Lang Sheng.

The skills listed were few. Of those, only “Bronze-Level Meditation” and “Wolf Might Exorcism Fist” had truly been mastered by the host. Fan Bei had already purchased these techniques, and the system creation page displayed them accordingly.

For the former, the practice progress was marked as “Perfected”; for the latter, it was “First Realm Perfected.”

This was expected. Scientific data indicated that for an ordinary person to master a skill to the expert level generally required ten years, or ten thousand hours of study and training. For Lang Sheng to have reached expert proficiency in two disciplines likely resulted from both a demanding environment and his own natural talent for physical prowess—his robust build was testament to that.

Fan Bei focused his mind on the “Wolf Might Exorcism Fist.” Instantly, detailed information appeared on the page.

Insights, experiences, lessons painstakingly earned by Lang Sheng—all were presented in both written and animated form, every nuance faithfully rendered.

A little figure practiced boxing on the page, accompanied by narration…

Indeed, the idea Fan Bei wished to test was precisely with this martial art.

This fist technique could discern the weaknesses of evil spirits and shatter them. It had once saved Fan Bei’s golden patron; though its skill rating was low—only bronze tier—it was of immense importance to him.

After Da Bai awakened and the second and third systems were granted, Fan Bei no longer feared a deficit of mental energy, so he set the fist aside and focused instead on meditation to strengthen his spirit.

His new idea was that when using “The Father of Systems” to activate the “Purification” skill, if he targeted only the weak point of an evil spirit rather than the whole, the energy consumption would be vastly reduced.

This fist technique could perceive the weaknesses of even silver-tier evil spirits. Against such foes, reserves of tens of thousands of mental energy points should suffice to purify a weak point.

If his experiment succeeded, he could maintain the mission, have Lang Sheng continue to advance and develop higher levels, while he himself acquired the host’s insights and experience directly from the system.

As the saying goes: “The predecessor plants the tree, the successor enjoys the shade; the forerunner clears the path, the follower walks with ease.”

With this in mind, he opened the “Butler” system page to check the skills possessed by its host, Lin Zhongqing, hoping to find something better.

But he knew well that this was unlikely.

Sure enough, another prompt appeared:

“There is too great a level gap between the system creator and the host. The system’s trust with the host is very low. None of the host’s skills may be observed.”

Since he was already checking, he didn’t spare Da Bai’s dog system either, repeating the same operation.

“There is a certain power gap between the system creator and the host, but the system and host share complete trust. All of the host's skills may be observed and freely extracted.”

Well, Da Bai was still the best. Silly or not, he knew where his bread was buttered. Despite being tormented by his system sibling before, he could trust quickly. Evidently, low intelligence in a host had its benefits.

No wonder, on the system creation page, whenever Da Bai learned a skill—like “Mystic Scent”—it was instantly displayed, while after binding with Lang Sheng and Lin Zhongqing, nothing similar happened.

Wait, was Da Bai really this much stronger than me?

Fan Bei was suddenly struck by this new realization, feeling a heavy pressure and an even greater urge to test his new idea.

He left the study and went out to the agricultural zone, finding a patch of open ground.

Unfortunately, unlike meditation, martial arts couldn’t be hacked…

But, wait—this time he had tens of thousands of mental energy points in reserve. Couldn’t he use “The Father of Systems” to grant himself a skill directly?

After all, awarding a host a brand new skill out of thin air only cost about a hundred thousand points—just that…

With this thought, Fan Bei quickly turned to the system creation page and focused his mind: “Grant me the Wolf Might Exorcism Fist at the perfected realm.”

A new prompt appeared:

“Directly granting skills and knowledge may exceed the body’s limits and cause soul collapse. The system creator cannot be directly granted any skills or knowledge; these must be learned through personal study.”

He understood now—his previous idea was flawed. It was possible to cheat and acquire skills and knowledge instantly, but there was risk. If a host collapsed, another could be found, but “The Father of Systems” would not allow its sole creator to take such foolish risks.

Knowing this, he chose to learn the skill himself.

Luckily, Lang Sheng trusted the Good Person system and had allowed his skills to be unlocked.

Fan Bei could review all of Lang Sheng’s cultivation insights, the entire practice process rendered in animated form on the page.

With such a convenience, it was as though he had a master who held nothing back, and could avoid all the detours his predecessor had taken.

To master any technique to its peak, to truly grasp its essence, without a guide, one would inevitably take countless wrong turns—often making the difference between success and failure.

After an afternoon’s effort, he felt his proficiency had greatly improved, and his understanding of the first realm had deepened considerably.

There were three realms: “With the heart, guide the fist; all evil becomes apparent,” “Where the eye sees, the fist reaches,” and “Fist, heart, and eye as one.”

Previously, he had only reached the introductory stage; during the fight with the tomato monster in the cold storage, he had vaguely sensed the first realm, seeing a faint white line when the creature self-destructed, and thus landed the killing blow.

Now, with Lang Sheng’s firsthand experiences, in just one afternoon, he felt he had grasped the essence of the first realm—what remained was practice and real combat.

He believed that after enough practical training, he would truly master this realm. Next, it would be up to Lang Sheng to continue blazing the trail…

So he quickly set out a short-term plan in his diary: practice boxing in the morning, study computer science in the afternoon, and meditate at night.

…

Such days continued for seven days, until the 25th, when the merchant caravan from Silver City appeared outside the gate once again.

During those seven days, he hadn’t strictly followed his plan—not for lack of discipline, but because he was constantly interrupted by all sorts of unexpected tasks.

He replaced the computer hard drive once, maintained the shelter management system twice, swapped out spare parts for the generator, shut down the current unit and started the backup… All these trivial but necessary chores took up about two days in total.

Chef He could handle many tasks—cooking and cleaning went without saying. He now also patrolled the shelter, patched leaks, inspected the agricultural area, gathered food…

Da Bai also helped, though most of the time he was chased outside by Iron Ball Xiao Bai to clear out evil things in the valley, so he didn’t do much of the odd jobs.

But some tasks neither helper could handle, such as repairing various mechanical devices.

Chef He didn’t understand them and had neither the energy nor the interest to learn. Da Bai was interested in machinery, but Fan Bei didn’t dare let him get his paws on them.

Other tasks, Fan Bei wouldn’t delegate at all.

For example, the shelter’s core systems were too important, and Chef He knew nothing about computers.

These unexpected tasks made him all the more eager for the arrival of the Silver City merchants, and today, at last, they had come.

His voice over the intercom was filled with unmistakable delight.

“Welcome, welcome! I’ve been waiting for you, Manager Xie. I’m so glad you’ve finally arrived.”