"Heavenly Book Spirit, recover the Crested Fire Python."
Zhou Yi walked over to the fire python's corpse and gave the Supreme Heavenly Book an order. With a wave of his hand, the enormous corpse vanished.
"Phew..."
Letting out a long breath, Zhou Yi ripped off the clothes that had been burned to a ruin and hurled them heavily to the ground.
"Heavenly Book Spirit, shouldn't you explain this?"
The brush with death just now had left Zhou Yi furious. He had nearly been screwed to death! What the hell kind of exchange was that?
"Please calm your anger, Your Majesty!"
The Heavenly Book Spirit gave a bitter smile and hurriedly apologized to Zhou Yi. "Your Majesty, this matter... is a long story!"
"Then make it short."
Until he figured out what had gone wrong, Zhou Yi did not dare use this "Supreme Heavenly Book" again.
"Your Majesty, the prototype of the Supreme Heavenly Book was obtained by the Dao Ancestor from a world beyond the heavens. This item originally belonged to a great demon. After the Dao Ancestor slew that demon, he brought the prototype of the Heavenly Book back to this world."
The Heavenly Book Spirit bowed to Zhou Yi and began explaining. "The Dao Ancestor reforged the Heavenly Book prototype into the Supreme Heavenly Book."
"However... because the original host of the Heavenly Book prototype was a member of the demon race, even though the Heavenly Book is now under your control, the system never deleted the original host's racial data."
At this point, the Heavenly Book Spirit smiled bitterly. "As a result, when you exchanged for experience skills, the system added the experience skills that should have belonged to the demon race to you as well. So..."
"Is that how it was?"
Zhou Yi stared in disbelief.
That explanation did make sense. Even though it had been reforged by the Dao Ancestor, no matter how profound his cultivation had been, he probably did not know much about something like the system. He simply had no idea about racial data or anything of that sort.
So... I could only count myself unlucky?
Zhou Yi was so depressed that he could not speak for a long while.
"Has the problem been resolved now? There won't be any more blunders like this in the future, right?"
"Rest assured, Your Majesty. The system made a serious error just now and has already corrected it, updating the host data. There will be no more problems."
The Heavenly Book Spirit gave Zhou Yi his assurance, then offered compensation.
"Your Majesty, the system error caused you inconvenience. The system has corrected the data and will adjust all exchanged experience skills for free. Do you agree to the correction?"
"Fine!"
His head was full of demonic beast experience. It was truly enough to screw someone to death. Zhou Yi shook his head helplessly. "Correct it!"
As soon as he spoke, a cool aura seeped into Zhou Yi's mind and corrected the two experience skills he had exchanged for. Every bit of experience and every skill was readjusted based entirely on Zhou Yi himself.
"Correction complete."
A moment later, Zhou Yi shook his head and opened his eyes.
Breathing in the fragrance of the soil, watching the dappled light spilling through gaps in the leaves, and listening to the wind whistling in his ears, Zhou Yi felt as though he had gained an entirely new understanding of the forest.
Every piece of information he sensed gave him an instinctive feeling of familiarity, without the slightest awkwardness. It was as though he had personally experienced everything in the forest before.
"Fine. At least nothing went wrong this time."
Zhou Yi let out a great sigh of relief, finally putting down his unease.
"Of course nothing went wrong. Zhou Yi, kid, this time I really didn't screw you over."
Seeing Zhou Yi accept the correction, Li Yu also breathed a sigh of relief. The defective product had finally been fixed. At least he had preserved the noble integrity of an honest merchant.
Well, if Zhou Yi ever found out, he would definitely spit in Li Yu's face.
Selling something this deceptive and still calling yourself an honest merchant? Integrity? Your integrity was already lying on the ground!
Fortunately, none of that happened.
"Let's keep hunting and gathering spirit herbs!"
After testing the readjusted experience skills, Zhou Yi found no further problems, and much of the frustration in his heart faded away.
His proficient woodland survival experience and stealth experience allowed Zhou Yi to move through the forest like a fish in water. Before long, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the grand cause of killing monsters and leveling up.
"Fine, I managed to muddle through it."
Li Yu's old face reddened as he lightly shook his head. "System, from now on, use the human race as the standard for all similar issues. After all, the overwhelming majority of future hosts will be human."
"Command received."
The system's rigid voice remained as flat as ever. Li Yu had long since grown used to it.
"Zhou Yi has already started killing monsters and leveling up. He'll grow stronger soon enough. Then my quest will... Huh?"
At that thought, Li Yu suddenly cried out in surprise. "System, my quest was to create and sell a system. The system has already been given to Zhou Yi, and he paid for it with the Bodhi Tree. By all rights, this quest should already be complete, shouldn't it?"
"Initial Quest completed. Submit?"
"Damn it. The quest was completed, and there wasn't even a notification? I had to submit it myself for it to count as complete? Did it have to be this underhanded?"
Li Yu's eyes widened, and he was left completely speechless.
The system's intelligence was far too poor, wasn't it?
There had been a problem with experience extraction, and it did not even proactively notify him when the quest was complete. Such a rigid system barely had any intelligence at all.
However, if the system truly possessed high intelligence...
With such immense power and high intelligence, it would become rather difficult to control.
What if one day, the system's intelligence suddenly developed the desire to turn the tables and become the master...
At that thought, Li Yu shuddered all over. Lower intelligence was better. Hmm, no intelligence would be even better.
"Submit the quest!"
Since the quest had already been completed, of course he had to submit it.
"Initial Quest completed. User permission increased."
"Permission?"
Hearing the word "permission," Li Yu remembered that the User Profile listed his permission as only Level One.
"System, what exactly does this permission mean?"
"Permission represents the user's degree of control over the system. The higher the permission, the more functions the system unlocks. Once permission is sufficient, the user may formulate system rules independently."
"So that's what permission means?"
Li Yu nodded. "I can formulate rules myself? Hmm, not bad. Not bad at all."
Li Yu was extremely satisfied with being able to formulate rules himself. Following someone else's rules could never compare to making his own.
"What functions do I have now with Level Two Permission?"
"New system function: Mall Dimension activated. A Mall Dimension space may be opened at a location designated by the user."
"Mall Dimension space? A space completely under my control? This..."
Li Yu was overjoyed. This was truly a huge profit. The system had really delivered this time! It was not screwing him over at all!
"Right, about how large is this space?"
"User permission is Level Two. A Mall Space with a radius of twenty kilometers may be opened."
"A radius of twenty kilometers? Four hundred square kilometers? That's not small at all! Nice, very nice!"
Li Yu could not help bursting into laughter.
I recommend a friend's book, My Talent Can Level Up. It's a good book, so interested readers can go take a look.