If Jiang Li was still awake, the half-hearted job done by the system would have made him laugh out loud already. But anyway, when 12 hours pa.s.sed, everyone in the room was just suddenly woken up from their sweet dreams by Zhan Rong"s scream. Not. When the girl woke up from her sleep and escaped the shackles placed upon her by drowsiness and confusion, it was nearly 5 am. Her body which had nearly broken down from the days of stress and tenseness made her sleep more than three hours than normal.
She stared blankly at the wall upon being greeted by a floating screen containing everything announced to her by the system yesterday.
[Name, Zhang Rong... Age, 21… Good day. This is system 025 speaking.]
[I hope you can hear me clearly. If not, well... it doesn"t matter. The system provides a speech-to-text conversion service for your eyes convenience.]
It turned out the thing was so lazy to repeat what it said before she slept and just created a panel for her to read. The drastic change of att.i.tude, if seen by the real host, would have puzzled him greatly.
But Jiang Li would not be waking up any time soon so his reaction would be for later.
[By the way... Congratulations! You successfully cleared the horror survival game, h.e.l.l-Level Dungeon: Den of Devils!]
[Main reward: Nothing, or rather, no more haunting from the Dungeon BOSS, Li]
[As the first person to suggest leaving the most dangerous area of the forest, you are declared the MVP of your batch.]
[Congratulations on being the MVP!]
[Unconditionally receive the reward.]
[Host, would you like to bind with it now?]
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.
.
The three dots that followed seemed to be there on purpose to show an interval, most likely to wait for a reply. But did she say anything?
[Alright! Thank you for your affirmative response. System has successfully loaded.]
[And congrats again! You"re now bound to the "Ghost Petting System"!]
Zhan Rong reread the information flas.h.i.+ng before her eyes for a couple more times, digesting the details as much as she could, and formulating several hypotheses in her mind to explain why she was seeing things.
Moments later, she rose from the bed while looking at her companions who were still hugging their pillows and blanket tightly. Her expression then darkened. If her guess was correct, the boys next door were also in a similar situation. There would be no one for her ask.
"Forget it. I"m too p.i.s.sed off at everyone to talk to them."
For a minute, she marveled at the panel that followed her wherever she went. Even at the bathroom, it was an odd sight seeing something that was not reflected by the mirror. She then checked her body if any weird item had been put on her. In some fiction works, there were characters like that who pa.s.sed out for an unknown reason and then woke up in a deserted island with a watch or a bracelet put on their wrists.
Her circ.u.mstance was different. But didn"t she just experience something so unbelievable before arriving at this town?
The announcement from the hi-tech holographic panel gave her that vibe. It was already quite a challenge for her to keep her cool.
"If some organization is really experimenting on me without my knowledge, if I have to, I"ll approach my old man to punish them." Her expression warped in irritation.
However, even after twirling several times in front of the bathroom mirror, she found nothing of that sort. Her body was alright too. The slight fatigue was of no worth mentioning since it was obviously due to her nightmarish days in the forest.
As for the floating bluish screen, it automatically disappeared when she got p.i.s.sed off and yelled in her mind for it to get out of her sight. Zhan Rong was rendered speechless by that. She had to admit, while the thing looked cool, she was truly disturbed by the fact that she had no idea where it came from and what was going on. She couldn"t sigh in relief even after the panel went away.
"That suspicious thing said that place is a dungeon, huh?"
Several minutes were spent on browsing for the experiences of the other hikers and tourists regarding that forest. She became more restless when she confirmed only they had escaped from the village alive. It made her wonder if the reason why there was no record about that the evils of those villages was this dungeon-thing or something else.
Feeling so anxious, Zhan Rong took off her bathrobe and changed into a clean set of clothes. Her bag still had two clean sets due to them not having the leisure to change clothes when they were busy running away.
Next, she picked up her belongings and phoned her nanny. A good thing before she washed up yesterday she had charged her phone"s battery. When the call connected, she was able to instruct the person on the other line to send a driver to her.
Copies of pictures she took from the village were sent to their chat group.
Afterward, without saying goodbye to her friends who seemed to be planning to sleep the whole day away, she set out for the capital.
On the road, she didn"t forget to stop by a famous temple and ask the abbot there to hold some cleansing ceremony for her.
The door to the temple was open and smoke could be seen coming from it. Not long after, a voice rang.
"Hmmm. Miss, we"re halfway done and actually, I didn"t feel any bad elements around you. While I can see that you have gone through something horrible, your fortune is good. Perhaps in your previous life, you have acc.u.mulated quite a good amount of karma which allowed you to survive the most recent calamity," said the skinny monk to her slowly.
The kind-looking man wore a brown robe that covered almost his whole body apart from the s.h.i.+ny wrinkled head and bony hands. He was sitting cross-legged on a mat. Standing behind him were two kids who seemed to be his a.s.sistants or disciples.
The kneeling Zhan Rong lowered her head to hide her frown. Not long after, she asked the bald abbot. "Forgive me for finding it hard to believe, abbot. But I really feel like I"m still haunted. I won"t ask for you to perform the cleansing again. But would it be alright if I take another fortune stick?"
The monk stared at her for a moment then nodded. He pushed the decorated cup containing flat incense-like sticks towards the girl. The latter looked intently at the red-painted ends of the sticks before reaching for the cylinder and shaking it.
"It"s a different verse than the one you got from the pre-ceremony, but the meaning is almost the same. Miss, you don"t have to worry about bad fortune anymore. At least not in the foreseeable future."
A gentle smile formed on the face of the monk while holding the book on hand and looking at the number on the stick that dropped out of the red-painted cylinder.
The bald man added, "In actuality, my reading said you"ve have benefited from the calamity and gained the best reward. It may be something spiritual or a lesson from the experience itself. If you don"t mind, can you tell me what happened to you in the past few days?"
Zhan Rong"s lips twitched. "I"d rather not share it, master. Sorry."
If she could she would have told the person about the escape and the weird thing floating before her every time she thought of the word "system".
But probably the girl had had enough of the divination and realized a true Maoshan sect disciple should be who she should seek out.
"Where"s that best reward?" The thought caused her to shake her head.
She bid the monk a goodbye and stood up.
It so happened that when she was just a few meters from the road, the driver from her home finally arrived which meant she would no longer have to use public transportations.
"Miss, I"m glad to see you back, " the driver greeted while opening the door of the black car for her. "How"s the trip, this time?"
Although her smile froze for a couple of moments, Zhan Rong managed to say in the end, "It"s quite... memorable."
The driver laughed. "It"s nice to hear then. Mr. Fan and your other friends must have taken care of you on the trip. They told me they have researched for days about the destination before inviting you."
Zhan Rong almost rolled her eyes. "It"s I who took care of them. If I only knew it would be that dangerous, I would have arranged for some bodyguards to follow me. It"s my fault for thinking nothing will go wrong or no one will target me for not many knew I am that man"s daughter."
"As usual, take me back to the villa near the university." After nodding, she said, no longer continuing the previous topic.
The middle-aged man dressed neatly in a suit raised his head, "The villa? Uhm, Miss, it"s been two weeks since the master has seen you. When he heard you"re back, he wants you to join the dinner with the family tonight. Won"t you consider dropping by?"
Zhan Rong threw her large bag on the backseat. Before entering, she turned to the driver and saw the unreadable expression from his face.
After thinking it through, she indifferently answered, "No."
She flipped her hair and took her seat, "Mr. Zhan is busy so it"s definitely hard for him to get quality time with his family. An outsider like me should be sensible and not barge in. And it"s not like I need his attention and money to survive."