As Vigilante A left, Fang Ning noticed that the Super Boss on the System Map was still immobile. It remained in its hiding spot, and showed no signs of attacking.
The System urged Fang Ning to start preparing to farm it just in case the monster runs away if they took too long.
After Vigilante A left, Gui Er and Gui Qi seemed to still be busy. That was until they both heard a cough, which made them visibly relax. They stopped their busy antics to turn towards the source of the cough.
The source of the cough was a frail, stout, old man with a common face. He had appeared before them effortlessly.
Once they noticed his appearance, Gui Er and Gui Qi immediately bowed in greeting, "Greetings, Elder Ancestor of the Bai family."
"Forego the formalities; you both are the Elders of the Association of Spirit Kings. That was excellent acting just now, Vigilante A didn't see through either of you at all. He really is an incredibly emotionless character; he was eavesdropping the whole time you both were speaking, and no matter what you all said behind his back to provoke him, no matter how many secrets of this world you both divulged, his expression remained unchanged and his heartbeat remained the same. I was watching and listening the whole time.
"Although the tone he used to berate you both was strict, his emotions were as calm as waves; there wasn't even a hint of anger. If I hadn't verified it myself, I would've never believed that somebody could be as emotionless as him. For that, I thank you both."
Gui Er smiled as he spoke, "You're being too kind, Elder Ancestor. Since our clans have decided to become allies, this is but a small matter."
"Haha, this is no small matter. You both are no match for him, and yet you dared to help me with this task. I, Bai Yunsheng, will remember this favor and will repay it in due time. As for those rat corpses, you are both free to do as you please with them. Rest assured that the Bai family will do nothing to harm you."
Gui Er and Gui Qi's faces shifted into ones of elation; although they had spoken with a lot of gusto just now, these corpses belonged to the descendants of the Bai family's Elder Ancestor. Without his permission, how could they dare to turn them into Zombie Puppets? That would be a crime even worse than digging the graves of the Bai family's ancestors.
Gui Er spoke up first, "Thank you Elder Ancestor. There really wasn't a lot of danger for us; that Vigilante A can't harm innocents. Gui Qi and I have never taken a human being's life and neither have we committed many evil deeds. Even if he were to get angry, the most he could do was to beat us up. The worst would be to kill us with a single move, but the chance of our souls being destroyed in the process is very low. Besides, we have Buddha as a backup, so if that were to happen, we could just become Spirit Cultivators."
Gui Qi added, "Such a pity he didn't get angry, though."
The Elder Ancestor understood what Gui Qi was implying, but only smiled and shook his head in answer.
Gui Er once again voiced his suspicion, "Elder Ancestor, even if that Vigilante A was emotionless to a fault, you had three chances to kill him. One was when he first appeared, the second one was when he stopped to eavesdrop on us, and the final chance was when he turned to leave. By my calculations, you had a 90% chance of successfully killing him each time. Why didn't you do so?"
A ghost of a smile graced the Elder Ancestor's face as he said, "Your calculations are wrong, I had a 99% chance of success each time. However, every time I wanted to act, I stopped at the last second ."
"Why was that so?"
The Elder Ancestor shook his head as he answered, "If you both can figure out the answer, then you definitely have a future full of potential. For now, we stop here. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, so let's bid our farewells."
Right after he finished speaking, the Elder Ancestor disappeared without a trace, leaving Gui Er and Gui Qi behind.
Gui Qi asked, "Second Elder Brother, did you understand what that old man said?"
Gui Er sneered in answer, "Hmph, that old man was pretending to be profound while I was pretending to be stupid, which was why I hadn't exposed him then and there. It was obvious he couldn't guarantee that he could kill off Vigilante A. He was clearly waiting until after his clan had been crowned as gods so he can finally crush Vigilante A."
Gui Qi immediately exclaimed in awe, "You're so wise, brother. You saw through everything the old man said. But if that's the case, his request of purposely letting Vigilante A overhear our conversation beats his purpose. Wouldn't exposing his plans also expose his weaknesses to Vigilante A?"
"That's the old man's true sinister plans."
Gui Qi mulled the answer over but still come to understand it. He once again asked, "Why is that so?"
Gui Er nodded his head, "He had but one goal for doing so, which was to deliberately lead Vigilante A into believing that there was only one way to success, which was to let another clan be crowned as gods too. But Vigilante A's personality would never allow him to lead a clan towards that goal. In the end, he would have forfeited his current advantage and the outcome would be as plain as day."
Gui Qi finally understood everything, but then he raised a question once again, worry lacing his tone, "What if Vigilante A instead decided to put down his wall of arrogance and enter the underground caverns himself? If he decides to take that course of action and went around attacking the giant rats to find out the foundation of the clan, then stopping the Bai family from being crowned as gods, wouldn't that make things worse?"
Gui Er hadn't spoken much for the past half of the day, and although his expression under then mask couldn't be seen, his aura certainly turned more aggressive.
Before Gui Qi could ask another question, he was kicked by Gui Er into the sandy ground as Gui Er scolded him, "You and your questions!"
Gui Qi's entire mouth was filled with sand so he couldn't speak; he knew his think tank of a brother wasn't very eloquent and was now angry from shame, so he didn't turn around and wrapped his hands around his head.
After Gui Er kicked him, a brief moment passed before he seemed to understand something as he opened his mouth to speak, "From where can you find completely infallible plans! How can you expect to achieve great successes without first taking big risks! Would Vigilante A really allow himself to dig through a rats' nest? Besides, he can take on a few of them, but do you have any idea just how many rats are there inside a rats' nest? If you had spent more time learning things on the Internet instead of licking people's boots, you would know! You idiot, get out of my sight!"
Hearing this, Gui Qi immediately summoned his own spirit servant and left hastily.
Gui Er watched Gui Qi leave before he took off his mask, a smirk hanging off his lips. He then turned to look at the rat corpses, a greedy glint in his eyes. Was he really ineloquent? He had did everything just now on purpose because he wanted to make it difficult for Gui Qi to ask for the rat corpses from him.
The System had never thought of going into the underground caverns himself to kill the rats or to destroy their foundation, it was so inefficient it was scary. It would also never ask for another clan to be crowned gods, it was busy urging Fang Ning to prepare to farm the Super Boss.
Previously, when they were about to face a Boss, Fang Ning only did three things: pee, drink tea, and eat instant noodles. However, he was doing none of those things now.
Fang Ning spoke up then, "Farming that Boss would take three months, can your replacement mechanical puppet achieve your level of cooking in that amount of time? My business is booming right now and it's finally starting to gain reputation nationwide, so I'm not letting it go to waste. That fifty million you got a few days earlier was but windfall money, I doubt it'll happen again."
"If it wants to learn my skills, it'll have to be upgraded. And this time, using experience skills alone won't be enough."
Fang Ning was shocked, "The upgrade last time already needed my hair, blood, and nails amongst other things. Will the upgrade this time need something from my body again?"
"Yes."
Fang Ning mulled it over before closing his eyes as he spoke through gritted teeth, "Alright, as long as it isn't my hips or my penis. You can take anything else, just don't kill me or paralyze me."
"I just need ten pounds of your fat, why are you so nervous?"
"Sh*t, you didn't say it clearly, so why is my nervousness to blame?"
Fang Ning looked at his bulging stomach and immediately felt relieved.
With a look of indifference on his face, Fang Ning then said, "Alright, do your upgrading."
A System Notification appeared then.
[ The System upgraded middle-level mechanical puppet, five kilograms of fat components and two hundred thousand experience points were consumed.
Middle-level mechanical puppet has successfully been upgraded into a high-level mechanical puppet.
Functions possessed now include: perfect disguise, long-range control, high-level conversation abilities, high-level action imitation abilities. The System has chosen to let the mechanical puppet inherit one Life Skill: Culinary. ]
Fang Ning spoke first, "Alright, that's much more reassuring. You don't have to keep coming back to make seasoning anymore and it'll be easier for the chefs to cook too. Occasionally controlling it from afar is good enough, but we should come back once in a while to reverse our identities. This thing really is getting more and more valuable, so we should take care not to wear it out. Although two hundred thousand experience points isn't a lot, since I can get it back by farming one monster, I don't have much fat on my body."
"You don't have to worry about that. When I take over your body, I'll feed it more and your fats can grow…"
"D*mn it, I don't want to become fat. Besides, Vigilante A keeps shape-shifting into a dragon nowadays, so the laws of mass don't exactly apply anymore. There's no point in getting some flesh on me to support his body. Besides, nobody knows where all that food he's eaten has gone either."
"I can explain that, if you have the patience to listen to me talk for two days and three nights…"
"Forget it, there's no point in me caring about that, you can worry about it yourself. I've been so exhausted these past couple of days, just worrying about this Super Boss alone has tired me out… I'm going to get some rest. You have three months to farm that Boss, so I'll also use this chance to farm for my character in the video game I'm playing so that it can gain a few levels."
The System threatened, "Disconnecting in 3, 2,…"
"Wait, I just thought of something. Is the Aggro equipment crafted from the giant spider from before done yet? Just in case you don't have enough Aggro to use."
"It's not done yet. It hasn't even been long since I started crafting it. Do you think crafting rare equipment is easy? It's not like the games you play where paying some money gives you a whole bunch of equipment…"
Fang Ning immediately felt dreadful, "Doesn't that mean I won't be able to rest when we finally farm that monster? That means I have to figure out a way to maintain Fury Mode? That's three whole months straight!"
"Which was why I told you to figure out a way."
Fang Ning grit his teeth and racked his brain for ideas, before he finally spoke in a painful tone, "Alright, I'll go bring those cuckolding novels I accidentally read long ago, as well as those heart-wrenching novels here. If I read one book every day for three months…"
"Will that work?"
"It definitely will! Even thinking about those novels now makes me angry! All I want is to bury those fellows that dug all those underground pits!"