Seized by the System

The days and nights went by, and it was finally mid-August.

Fang Ning was finally bored of surfing the net.

The internet no longer satisfied his need for entertainment, and he was lying down in the internet café like a piece of salted fish.

The internet was no longer filled with gossip and breaking news of celebrities. Instead, videos on survival tutorials were dominating the front page of every outlet on the web.

This also led to the upward trend of survival streams on all live streaming sites.

Those videos fronted by Mr. Bear were considered classics, and people were constantly digging them out from the grave and reposting them online.

Recently, the most watched video series online was one with the title “Building a Survival Camp from Scratch”.

Fang Ning had watched a few videos in the series. The videos were simple yet filled with knowledge. What they were trying to demonstrate in their videos was to use basic materials easily obtainable such as wood and rock and guided the viewers on Paleolithic tools to Neolithic tools, followed by the Feudal eras…

All in all, a normal human with basic IQ and the patient to finish all ten plus videos would learn something useful.

They would learn how to start a fire from branches, building a wooden crib, creating tools, boiling water, cooking rice, pottery, making bow and arrows, hunting, land trimming, farming…

The video also taught about blacksmithing, but first they would need to find an ore mine.

Other than medical related tutorials and special care for fever and cold, the rest of the tutorials were filled with useful content.

With such educational videos and the upward trend in survival videos, the views came flooding every time their videos were uploaded, and they gained thousands of fans through the series.

However, Fang Ning never found them interesting.

He himself already had three basecamps where he could hide from the world; the System Space with a large stockpile of food, the Draconic Arcane Realm with a farm, as well as the Morality City that was still under construction.

Besides, with the help of Sir System and the support of multiple powerhouses, he had no use of those primitive survival skills.

He was a typical sarcastic human who never used his common senses… ¹

All he wanted was the latest novel, the latest anime movies, and the latest video games.

Unfortunately for him, these things he wanted were slowly disappearing from the world.

MMORPGs were shutting down their servers, and online novel updates were halted. Single-player games websites were also not putting out any more creative games into the market.

All of these were because of the huge reduction in customers.

Even though the world was facing the biggest threat it faced, its chaotic level was greatly reduced with the Dragon God standing in the front line. Everyone knew that they would remain safe with a little bit more effort than they previously did.

However, who in the right mind would have the time and mood to play instead of trying to survive?

Many people took their entertainment away and returned to reality, focusing on preparing for the worst.

They would at least buy a few boxes of instant noodles even if they were poor.

Yes, the Dragon God promised that the sky would not fall, but he never said the sea wouldn’t rise to the level that it would drown everyone…

As days went by there were more and more news about the increased sea level. Tall waves were hitting the coast even before the moon went away, and multiple coastline cities had shut down their beaches for safety.

That was why people were busy stocking up dried food to prepare for when the flooding starts.

Try to buy 51 bowls of instant noodles by then?

You might not even get a single one.

In this instance, some innocent bystanders were affected by troubles unrelated to them.

Fang Ning was one of the affected people. Even when both his internet connection and power supply were working perfectly fine, he no longer felt entertained as his sources of joy were slowing disappearing.

After a moment, he stood up from boredom and said to a person who was cultivating, “Give me your body.”

System Notification: [The System has given control of its body to the host]

Fang Ning felt satisfied but confused at the same time.

“Why are you so obedient today?”

“I am always a nice system that follows orders.”

“You are only nice towards yourself, and you only trust your own orders. You must be eyeing my money again,” Fang Ning mumbled to himself while he regained control over his body.

He walked out of his bedroom to the farm villa.

The air was fresh and the sky was clear.

The environment was something rare in Qi City.

Since the start of the new era, most of the long-standing companies in the nation shifted their focuses and their men-power towards vitality-based industries.

While the vitality-based industry had their cons, they would always be better in their cleanliness aspect compared to traditional industries.

Fang Ning took a few breaths of fresh air before walking around the farm.

Suddenly, a farm worker in his forties walked toward him in a cowardly manner.

Fang Ning didn’t felt threatened… What could possibly go wrong under the watchful eyes of Sir System?

He looked at him for a moment and remembered.

This man was Master Luo Xingrong, the one in-charge of maintaining the gardens around the villa. They both had small talk a while ago.

Fang Ning was not bluffing when he said his memory was so great he could remember every book in a library. ²

He asked, “Master Luo, what’s wrong?”

That worker heard him called his name and immediately relaxed before his eyes got teary.

He couldn’t believe that the Dragon God, who was so high up in everything compared to him, somehow remembered his name even though they had only met once.

The man rubbed his teary eyes and said, “Hero, I have something in my mind but I feel like it’s hard for me to say it.”

Fang Ning waved his hands and replied, “Go ahead and don’t worry about it.”

Master Ruo held his hands and said, “I have a request. I hope to bring along my wife and kids to this farm… Of course they will not stay for free, you can deduct from my pay directly.”

Fang Ning understood him as he said his mind.

‘I knew it. How is it possible for the people to feel safer about the return of the moon even though the Dragon God had stepped up?

‘While the youngsters are learning survival skills from the internet, the older ones were more comfortable with trying to find help through their connections.

‘And where else is safer than the home of Vigilante A?’

Fang Ning thought about it and nodded, “Easy. You can talk to Butler Zheng about the necessary arrangement.”

Master Ruo thanked him and left.

Fang Ning looked at his back as he left and sighed.

He realized that compared to the majority of people, he was really fortunate, yet why was he still so ungrateful about everything?

But without his novels and video games, how happy could he be…

‘Should I create my own specialised team to satisfy my needs?’

That was not the first time Fang Ning thought about spending his money in secret to create a novel or video game tailor-made for him.

However, he got bored rather quickly.

He felt that those things that he spent money to create lacked a sense of eagerness and freshness. For him, it was easier to find a great product in a collection.

‘D*mn it. Even the Dragon God cannot calm the heart of the people.

‘What else can we do to bring the people back to the time when they were living in harmony?’

Fang Ning was busy worrying about things he shouldn’t be worrying about.

…

“Any suggestion on how to make those people outside shut their mouth? Get them back to work in their factories?”

Inside the headquarter of the Special Affairs Joint Investigation Bureau in New Netherlands, USA.

Chief Hook was having a headache trying to solving similar problems.

The sounds of objections were appearing outside the headquarters.

Fortunately for them, their headquarters was a highly secretive unit, so those voices were not aiming at them.

Their neighbor  ³ somehow managed to use the natural disaster as the backdrop for their demonstration. Regardless of whether their actions were beneficial or not, at least they managed to save themselves from chaos.

However, that was not the case for the USA.

They knew that as they always denied the existence of the Dragon God, he would never help them in the future, and their only hope for survival lied within the hands of the government.

After a month of waiting impatiently after China completed their prayers towards the Heaven, they still failed to receive any news from their own government regarding any thoughtful measurements. Everyone was getting annoyed as the days went by, and their feelings finally exploded like a volcano.

Every day they gathered and demonstrated to force the government into coming up with a plan that would provide the light in the darkness in their fight against the approaching danger.

Most of the related authorities decided to deflect the questions and frustration towards Chief Hook as they felt that the issue naturally fell under special affairs.

‘All of them have no idea the difficulties we are facing here. Everyone should just wait for their time to come at home. Don’t they know that they cannot avoid death even if they constantly make a fuss in the streets?

‘How are we supposed to save everyone in our country when there’s bound to be some death?’

Chief Hook frowned as he thought about it. He opened the report sent to him by his underling.

“Mars Biosphere Plan Number 3”

“Dream on!”

He threw the report into the bin immediately after he read the title. He paused for a moment.

“Wait a minute. We might fool those demonstrators with this along with some recent information, while also securing some funding for us,” Chief Hook had a plan.

…

A few days later, a few renowned TV stations in the USA concurrently played the speeches of multiple scientists.

“Although the Eastern Dragon God promised to keep the sky above us, the sea level is still increasing at an alarming rate every day. We have clear evidence to prove our point, so I don’t know what good did he do actually?” An old professor shook his head while he spoke.

“I am guessing that he is just bluffing. He must’ve headed home and sleep after examining the moon without getting much done,” another younger scholar commented.

“We cannot put all our hopes onto some magical creature that lies. We, the people of USA, need to work together. We have the most advanced technology in the world, and we are going to repeat our Moon-landing accomplishment. However, our target this time is Mars! We are going to replicate the living condition and ecosystem of Earth on Mars!” A third middle-aged expert yelled with his arms held high.

“So long as we can all move to Mars we can completely ignore whatever happens to Earth. We shall recreate our glory days like when we won the Second World War. Oh my, I am over my head. I am sorry. What I meant to say is that by doing so, we can continue to pass the torch,” the old professor apologized on screen.

That video quickly spread through the internet like wildfire.

It was followed by negative comments and mocked by knowledgeable internet users.

“Flying to Mars? Wouldn’t it take half a year even with the fastest space shuttle we have right now? How many people are you planning to send up since the danger is arriving in a year time?”

“Even if we don’t talk about our transportation problem, the USA had failed twice in previous years when trying to execute the same plan. What’s worse is that those two times happened on Earth. Don’t you think we are going to fail even more miserably if we try this on Mars?”

The government of USA almost immediately pushed out the news to target those negative comments online!

“We have successfully discovered a local realm with a special characteristic! This realm has two exits. The first within the USA, while the other one is on Mars!”

Attached to the news were snapshots of the realm, as they knew people wouldn’t believe them without any substantial pieces of evidence.

One of the doors was situated on a plain field somewhere inside the USA.

The other side of the door was left opened in the middle of a red desert. An astronaut walked out from the door and looked around the place which didn’t look like Earth.

“What?!” Many people were shocked as they saw those pictures!

Most commoners had little to no knowledge about such realms.

The upper society of USA somehow decided to push this news out to the public in order to calm the people down, and their action did lead to cheers and parties among the commoners and media outlets.

“What is a realm?”

Columnists were concurrently writing articles with all the information gathered from the net and upload those onto their sites for their viewers to enjoy.

A realm was a special space that was similar to dimensions described in science fiction movies.

Some of the realms already discovered prior had the temperature, sunlight, and living conditions similar to Earth, and was thought to be sharing those condition with Earth.

However, every realm had their own special properties. Realms normally had a higher concentration of vitality as well as stronger demons residing inside them.

They also had multiple entrances and exits, but most of those were on Earth.

It was rare for a realm like the one in the USA to be connected to another planet like Mars.

Some of them were thinking even further and wondering if there were some other realms that had exits at a further distance than Mars?

If that was the case, wouldn’t it be possible to bypass the trouble with light-speed traveling and realized the dream of space traveling?

Many citizens of the USA started cheering as they found their light in the darkness.

Suddenly, the incoming danger no longer felt important to them.

They felt that at least they could all escape to Mars when the time arrived.

At that moment, all of them forgot to think about the lack of water and soil on Mars, as well as the issue with farming and plantation.

Chief Hook felt relieved after analyzing the reports sent to him. He finally managed to solve the toughest obstacles he was facing, which is to fool his people.

The realm was real, and it was true that realms can have two doors. However, he was uncertain that the other door really led to Mars, but so what? So long as he managed to settle the people down right now, no one would remember such news happened in a few years.