Seized by the System

“What? That’s impossible! That Vigilante A’s merely an awakened martial artist, how could he have seen through their disguises?” Hearing his wife’s words, the middle-aged man exclaimed in surprise, “They had the Elder Ancestor’s treasures on them; even the famous ‘Red-Eyed Celestial Gaze’ Hai Cheng couldn’t see through them, nor could Qiao Zishan, who cultivated Morality for 20 years! They even destroyed his Body of Morality with Dance of the Seraphs! How could a mere country bumpkin be so powerful?”

The middle-aged woman spat in fury, “Well Vigilante A is no country bumpkin, I can give you that! He must’ve awakened with the abilities of a famous hero from another dimension, which meant he already had a strong Morality Cultivation Base. That explains why he smiled like a predator cornering their prey, since he was able to sense their demonic aura.

“D*mn it, the two of us only had our minds set on funding the whole thing this whole time, so we didn’t collect information on him to properly. All we did was look at the Truth Department’s reports on him, which made us think that he was merely somebody from a quaint place that had martial arts abilities awakened in him after a few months. We even thought that the justice serving he does daily wouldn’t be enough to form such a strong Morality Cultivation Base.”

“He only summoned the Celestial Dragon Form in the face of imminent danger, so we completely forgot to remind our three daughters. With Qiao Zishan as a preceding example, they must have let the victory gone to their heads, which caused their defeat! D*mn it all!”

“Calm yourself, my dear wife. Let’s not start blaming ourselves, we’ve worked so hard to care for them; practicing Dance of the Seraphs alone already took a lot of effort. They just weren’t careful enough because they thought that all the men beneath the sky could be taken for granted. Their deaths aren’t worthy of being mourned! However, I’m afraid that this has messed up the Elder Ancestor’s plans.” The middle-aged man’s words were laced with fury, but he was still absolving himself and his wife.

Although this middle-aged coupled were furious beyond belief, their tones carried no hint of familial affection, but rather a frustration at their foiled plans.

“What did I say, Elder Brother? I’ve said before that those three women weren’t good business, so you can only blame yourself for not seeing their true identities. You even said the eldest sister wasn’t all that bad. And that’s not all; we chased them all the way here and gathered lots of information on them before we finally found them hiding out in this small ravine. What surprised me was that they while the two younger sisters died, the eldest and most cunning one had managed to escape, only to also be killed by Vigilante A. I thought you would be able to exact your revenge, too. Maybe I have underestimated that Vigilante A after all.”

The delicate voice of a teenage girl could suddenly came up behind the middle-aged couple. Both their faces dropped in shock at the same time.

They slowly turned their bodies towards the source of the sound. On the hillside by them, two people had suddenly appeared out of thin air. .

One of them was a teenage girl, who was leaning against the other, a middle-aged man that seemed to be in his mid-30s. The both of them were looking down at the middle-aged couple with charming smiles on their faces.

“The Pillar of the North! Qiao Zishan!” exclaimed the middle-aged man, his tone laced with fear.

“I couldn’t bring myself to believe you both to actually be demons. As if that weren’t enough, you’ve both eaten humans! When Zi Jiang told me and I refused to believe it, but now that we have it straight from the horse’s mouth, what do you have to say for yourselves?” The older man’s tone seemed to carry a hint of pain.

The middle-aged woman let out a coy laugh, “What are you talking about, Zi Shan? Why would uncle and auntie be demons ¹ ? We were just joking around; eating humans or whatever, how ridiculous. Why would aunty do such scary things?”

Although the words left her mouth, her eyes were suddenly overcome with a shade of glowing red.

Qiao Zishan’s gaze froze before a huge gust of white wind rose up from his body. The white wind shot outwards rapidly, instantly blocking the red light.

The middle-aged woman immediately closed her eyes in pain, before two streams of crimson blood flowed down from her eyes.

Seeing the situation, the middle-aged man spoke up, his voice completely overpowered by fear and disbelief, “How is that possible? Your Body of Morality was destroyed by Shuang Er two years ago. How is it that your Morality is stronger than before now?”

Hearing the middle-aged man’s words made the teenage girl’s eyes flash with vengeance, but it disappeared as soon as it appeared.

“Hmph, you might not believe it, but my brother has a natural talent. He has long since gotten over that Seraph’s Brand your daughter left in his heart. That accident made his Body of Morality grew stronger! Now that those three behind the crime are dead, killing you two would be perfect!” spat the teenage girl.

Qiao Zishan shook his head and patted the girl on her shoulders, “Alright, Zi Jiang. They may be demons, there is no need for you to lie. What she said was a half-truth, I did get over the Seraph’s Brand in my heart, but it wasn’t because of my own effort nor, did I get over it ‘long ago’. But once that monster that left the brand was eradicated by someone else, it disappeared on its own. I must thank that person properly one day.”

“Elder Brother,” the teenage girl wrapped her hand around her brother’s arm and spoke, tone slightly displeased, “I’ve always said myself that these monsters are no good, but those old fellows always say that we can live in peace with them! They even think that the monsters would obey the laws so that we can live in harmony. They don’t know that these monsters only view us humans as food.”

Qiao Zishan shook his head once more, “The leadership has quite a good strategy, but which big tree in the woods are completely spared of a few worms? The strategy from the beginning was to embrace and to unite everything that can be united into a single power to meet the changing of times. Maybe they haven’t necessarily realized their true forms, or maybe they’ve already known the true nature of the demons but don’t want to do anything yet. What we didn’t think of was that they would hide too much from us, even start eating people in secret. Now that is going over the line! That crime is unforgivable!”

Right after he finished speaking, Qiao Zishan’s eyes glinted dangerously.

Hearing what Zishan said made the middle-aged man laugh aloud before he spoke, not a care in the world, “What a joke. So what if we’ve eaten a few humans, we were never a single race in the first place! You humans aren’t any better, killing our relatives as you please. Although they all had potential, they lacked the intelligence to make up for it. You must remember to protect the other weaker ones; you’re afraid they’ll go extinct, but you’re also helpless against them.

Qiao Zijiang was stunned after hearing the middle-aged man’s words. When she spoke up, her eyes narrowed, “Now I know now just demonic you both are…”

The middle-aged man smirked, “Try finding out for real.”

“There aren’t many creatures that can overcome humans and yet gain intelligence during this time, when the vitality of the land is being restored. Your entire Bai family descended from awakened rat demons, which means you have the natural talent of hiding. Once the Truth Department was established, the Bai family, being one of the famous Cultivator families, sent people in immediately to establish an important presence by contributing a lot to the department. You lot must have influenced a lot of decisions within the department; bribery must have happened too, or you wouldn’t have survived until now,” said Qiao Zijiang with confidence.

The middle-aged man wasn’t surprised in the slightest, “Hmph, you are as smart as they say. It’s no wonder they call you the female Zhuge ² of the Qiao family. They weren’t wrong.”

Hearing this, the teenage girl stole a glance at her elder brother. Noticing the lack of change in his expression, relief overtook her.

A brief moment later, Qiao Zijiang once again expressed her confusion, “How weird, your family has always been cautious and conscientious in the Truth Department. Your family has set a lot of great merits and you’ve earned the praise of a lot of people; your future had endless possibilities. Even with the restoration of vitality and the widening of the gap between humans and demons, nothing much would happen to you even if you revealed your true nature. At worse, the higher-ups would probably not give you promotions. Why are you trying to ruin yourselves?

The middle-aged man laughed dryly before continuing, “Hmph, and you’re saying that our path is strayed if our ideal isn’t that of the humans’? We’re our own family and clan, why would we want to submit to the humans!? When we first arrived, we accepted your world with open arms because we thought that you humans really would embrace and accept all that you could. We even thought you humans some basic Cultivation Methods, or we wouldn’t have gained your trust. But as your powers grew weaker, the arrogant people in the Truth Department increased in number; and with that increase also came the increase of people with prejudice towards us demons. At the rate this is going, we might be hated and beaten everywhere we go, so what’s wrong with saving ourselves while we can?”

Seemingly affected by his words, Qiao Zishan’s Body of Morality started shrinking in size.

Seeing the situation, Qiao Zijiang realized that the other party was trying to manipulate them. She couldn’t see the flaw in his logic however, and couldn’t come up with a good rebuttal.

All she could say was, “Elder Brother, don’t be bluffed by him. No matter what, it doesn’t change the fact that they ate humans!”

Qiao Zishan’s Body of Morality finally stabilized and stopped shrinking upon hearing those words.

The middle-aged man couldn’t hide the disappointment in his face as he scolded, “D*mn you and your intelligence!”

Seeing the disappointment reflected in the middle-aged man’s face, Qiao Zijiang couldn’t help but feel a hint of pride. She regained herself quickly, though, “Wait, why are you spouting so much nonsense? Sh*t, they’re escaping, Elder Brother!”

“You are indeed smart. We can’t defeat the Body of Morality now, but rats are the best at hiding. If you have what it takes, you’re welcome to find us!” exclaimed the middle-aged man mirthfully. He gripped his wife tightly as they shape-shifted into giant rats before ramming beneath the ground. The hard rock was like tofu to them as they disappeared without a trace into the ground.

The pair of siblings immediately rushed behind them.

As it turned out, the middle-aged woman had used magic to dig a deep tunnel in the ground while they were busy quibbling.

Qiao Zishan controlled his Body of Morality to scout out the tunnel but to no avail. He shook his head as he said, “There were already tunnels dug out long ago deep down below. They extend far and wide, so they didn’t choose this place for nothing.”

“Madam Bai was more cunning than I’d heard. Sure enough, even a simple resting place needs to have an escape route. We’ve carelessly let them escaped, and we can’t exactly weed out the Bai family with audio recordings. God, this is so frustrating,” grumbled Qiao Zijiang as she kicked the ground.

…

While the Qiao siblings were vexed over letting the Bai husband and wife escape, an imposing silhouette sprang out from behind them silently. The silhouette rushed across the hills and ravines, as if in pursuit.

The System Space.

The System spoke up, “They were saying so many things I could barely keep up. As for you, why didn’t you let me attack just then? Killing those two red-named monsters would be perfect, it would give me so many experience points…”

Fang Ning answered then, “The information we got was priceless. That was too deep of an ocean for us to swim in anyways. We should just live an honest life of practice. I don’t want to get pulled into their business only to find out I can’t escape!”

“I don’t care about all those, all I know is that those two monsters cannot split up. If they do, we’ll have to let one escape. We won’t be so lucky to get an Ally notification each time. If we do have to do that, it’ll be on you, then I’ll deduct the loss from your Mission Rewards.”

“You really don’t know how to look at the big picture. Deduct it, see if I care…”

“Then it’s no Internet for a week!”

“No! I won’t let even one escape!”