Chapter 164: Research
The silence that blanketed the lake in the aftermath of the celestial fury was heavy, thick with the lingering scent of ozone and the weight of a thousand unspoken questions.
The spectators hovering on the distant sky, patriarchs of ancient families, sovereigns of nations, and masters of hidden sects, stared at Shen Haoran in a collective, paralyzed daze.
The visual was etched into their souls: a youth, yet to even touch the threshold of the Spirit Ascension Realm, standing atop a simple kiosk while staring down a Heavenly Tribulation that would make a Supreme Emperor’s heart skip a beat.
Even with the aid of the Supreme-grade artifacts, the sheer gall, the monumental courage required to remain standing while the heavens tried to erase his existence, was beyond the comprehension of most.
He had survived...no, not just survived, he had dominated the trial, turning a divine execution into a personal training session.
"Alright, everyone, the show’s over," the First Enshrined Elder declared, his voice cutting through the stupor like a cold blade.
He stood with his hands behind his back, his expression a mask of professional stoicism, though his eyes betrayed a deep, inner turmoil.
"Please return to the hall. The festivities will continue, but our Young Master will be resting now. He has had an... eventful evening."
At his command, the crowd began to shuffle back toward the Grand Hall of a Thousand Stars, though many stopped to steal one last, lingering look at the figure on the lake.
Even the First Elder couldn’t resist a final glance as he thought back to his own disciple, a youth he had once believed could surpass him and eventually touch the peaks of the Shen lineage.
’What drug was I taking when I thought of that?’ he wondered bitterly.
Comparing any normal genius to the boy standing there was like comparing a candle flame to a supernova.
He shook his head, a wry, self-deprecating smile touching his lips, and led the rest of the Enshrined Elders back to entertain the guests, knowing the political landscape of the Empire had just shifted ten degrees on its axis.
Back on the floating kiosk, the atmosphere was considerably less formal.
"A... amazing! Young Master Shen, you... you were like a god out there!" Luo Mingye excitedly exclaimed, her initial terror replaced by an explosive, manic energy.
She lunged forward, not for Haoran, but for her friend Xia Mengyao and grabbed her by the shoulders, her eyes wide and sparkling.
"Young master, can’t you reconsider my proposal!? It’s a marry-one-get-one-free deal! I come with a top-tier sword-master and the best zither player in the world!"
"Mingye... Kya!" Xia Mengyao tried to protest, her face flushing a deep crimson, but she let out a distinctly girlish squeak as Luo Mingye shamelessly reached out and began to playfully rub Xia Mengyao’s massive, soft chest.
"See!? See!?" Luo Mingye shouted, turning her head to look at Haoran with a triumphant grin. "She is even bigger than me, and with her sword training, she is incredibly flexible! I’m telling you, Young Master, you won’t find anyone with better ’assets’ or more ’talent’ in the entire Tian Yuan Empire! It’s a bargain of the century!"
"Mingye! Stop it! Not in front of the Young Master!" Xia Mengyao hissed, her hands flying up to cover herself, her cool, sword-master persona completely shattered by her friend’s antics.
Shen Haoran watched the display, the cold, lethal intent of the battle fading into a genuine, amused smirk.
The absurdity of the situation after facing a near-apocalyptic lightning storm was not lost on him.
"You know what, Mingye," he said, his voice smooth and amused. "I might actually reconsider. A ’buy-one-get-one’ deal of this quality is rare even in the entire Imperial Capital."
Luo Mingye nodded frantically, her emerald green hair swaying with each movements. "Yes! Yes! You absolutely should! We’re very low maintenance, I promise!"
Xia Mengyao sighed. What low maintenance? Doesn’t that make them sound cheap?
But of course, she just remained silent
But at that moment, the amusement in Haoran’s eyes quickly sharpened into a serious, analytical light as he stepped back into the center of the kiosk, his mind pivoting back to the revelation that had nearly brought the world down on them.
Luo Mingye and Xia Mengyao noticed the change in his expression quickly, and they stopped goofing around.
"You know, that was one piece of incredibly useful information, Luo Mingye. A ’System,’ huh..." Said Haoran as he paced the small space, his golden eyes reflecting the calm lake.
This was a concept he had encountered before, but it remained one of the most elusive and dangerous variables in his worldview.
He thought of Lin Feng, the youth with the Sect System whom he had spared and brought into the Shen Clan’s fold.
At the time, it had been a gamble, a decision to see if a "protagonist-type" character could be harnessed by a villain like him.
And the decision to spare him and bring him under his influence actually turned out to be a masterstroke!
As the owner of a Sect System, Lin Feng has been gathering or attracting protagonist type characters into his sect, giving him and his sect massive amounts of luck.
But because Lin Feng owed most of his early resources to Haoran, and even happily became a subordinate force of the Shen Clan, the immense luck generated by his system and his students was effectively feeding back into the Shen Clan’s karmic bank.
In other words, he was now a farm for providence.
"However ...Ye Fang is different," Haoran mused aloud. "A ’Diary System.’ One that rewards the user for documenting the future... or perhaps rewriting it."
Indeed, according to the novels that his cousin had read, there are two types of diary system.
One is a diary system that rewards the user simply by writing whatever they like on the diary, and the other is someone who will write fake scenarios and the system would alter reality to make them ’real’, either by directly changing the world or giving the user rewards related to whatever the user wrote.
This was a golden opportunity.
Unlike Lin Feng, who was a farming sla—..ahem, an ally, Ye Fang was a variable he could dissect and study.
He could send the boy to his aunt, Feng Yuyan—the Empress of Forbidden Creation, and with her mastery over the laws of biology and soul-weaving, she could pull Ye Fang’s spirit apart thread by thread.
If they are lucky, they could finally research the origin of these "Systems"—to find out why they were so ridiculously overpowered and whether they were tools of the Heavenly Dao or something from the "wider world" Shen Daiyu had hinted at.
"Anyway, Mingye," Haoran said, turning back to the girl. "You said you have a physical copy of this diary? Can you show it to me?"
Luo Mingye held out an empty hand, her palm flat and open.
"It’s right here," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "But for some reason... only I can see it. To everyone else, it’s just air."
Haoran leaned in, his golden eyes narrowing.
Beside him, Xia Mengyao also peered at the empty space, her brow furrowed in confusion.
They felt nothing.
No spiritual fluctuations, no spatial distortions, no residue of ink or paper.
To their senses, Luo Mingye was holding absolutely nothing.
"I can sense it."
The sudden, cold voice caused the two girls to jump and cup their hands in immediate, instinctive respect.
Just then, Chu Xueyu, Feng Yuyan, and Leng Shuang appeared in the kiosk as if they had been carved out of the shadows.
Haoran turned toward his aunt, Leng Shuang, who had been the one to speak, and was staring at Luo Mingye’s empty palm with an intensity that made the air around her crystallize.
"You can sense it, Aunt?"
"Hm." Leng Shuang nodded, her golden eyes glowing with a faint, metallic light. "It exists on a higher plane of reality, layered over our own. And a mysterious, ancient force, likely the system she mentioned, is controlling its visibility so that only the ’Reader’ can perceive the script. It is anchored to her soul, I believe."
Out of the three sisters, Leng Shuang possessed the most profound understanding of time-space matters.
Her Dao of Tyranny wasn’t just about strength; it was about the conquest of dimensions, and she had spent centuries jumping from one dying realm to another, conquering worlds that existed in the folds of the void.
Although amongst those worlds she conquered, only twelve were actually recognised, since the others were incredibly weak.
She had once even famously entered a black hole’s singularity to gain enlightenment on the "Zero Point" of gravity and had even kickstarted a localized Big Bang in a pocket dimension just to observe the birth of time and space.
"This is excellent research material," Leng Shuang stated, her voice devoid of emotion but her eyes showing a spark of scientific hunger as she looked at Haoran. "I will borrow this ’Ye Fang’ you’ve captured. If his soul is tied to a higher-dimensional archive, I will find the link."
Haoran nodded without a second thought. "Alright. You can do whatever you want with him, Aunt. Just... try not to kill him immediately. If his soul extinguished while the ’System’ is still active, it might trigger another, even larger Heavenly Tribulation to protect its host. Keep him in a state of living death until you’ve extracted the core."
"Understood," Leng Shuang replied, her hand reaching out into the empty air where the diary supposedly sat, her fingers causing the space to ripple like water.
The hunt for the "Dogs of Heaven" had just gained its first laboratory specimen.