Chapter 201 - The Overbearing President Takes His Lovable Little Wife By Force~
Translated by Eve
Edited by Serefina
9. The Overbearing President Takes His Lovable Little Wife By Force~
Lu Ting was caught off guard but soon recovered. He nodded. “Yes.”
As soon as he spoke, he heard the system’s notification.
【Ding, the target Xie He’s Favourability Value +10. The current Favourability Value is -80.】
【Lu Ting：Did I hear wrongly?】
【666 was also really confused：No…I also heard that.】
Xie He smiled faintly. He picked up the pendant from the box and rubbed it between his fingers. He then looked up and asked, “Is this your real body?”
Lu Ting nodded. “Yes.”
【Ding, the target Xie He’s Favourability Value +20. The current Favourability Value is -60.】
Reflected in Xie He’s eyes was a smile that wasn’t really a smile. “This is a reward for your honesty.”
He paused and then slowly said, “Actually, after you left back then, I investigated your identity. There are always clues one can follow when someone suddenly appears in this world. However, I later noticed that you were different from the other capturing hosts. Although you had very carefully prepared documents regarding your identity, what’s fake is still fake….You hadn’t transmigrated into a body.”
“Come with me.” Xie He got up and headed outside.
Lu Ting watched Xie He leave. He paused for a second before following suit.
【Lu Ting：Liu zi, does this mean I have a chance?】
【666：Probably…?】He couldn’t read what was going on in Xie He’s mind….
Xie He took Lu Ting back to his house. They arrived at his study on the second floor. Xie He opened up another compartment on the bookcase, revealing thick folders numbered 1 to 100.
Xie He pulled out the first folder and threw it at Lu Ting.
Lu Ting opened up the folder. It was all information on him. His expression changed as he read through them.
Xie He smiled. “Your information is very thorough and clean. Back then, I hadn’t understood what you had done. But now that I know that you have a system, I now know that it must have been easy for you to create an identity from scratch….However, while information can be forged, your tracks in this world can’t. You stayed in this world for ten years. But prior to these ten years, no one knew you. That was the difference between you and the other hosts. Furthermore, after you left, no one saw your corpse….So, I thought that you were a complete outsider, that you hadn’t just possessed a body like those other hosts had.”
Lu Ting’s expression was complicated but he didn’t refute it. “You’re right.”
Xie He’s fingers tapped lightly against the desk. “This was really interesting. I used to think that hosts could only come by possessing people’s bodies. However, your existence negates my conjecture.”
Lu Ting had already decided not to hide anything. He had accepted the situation. Rather than be all secretive, he thought that he might as well tell Xie He everything and let the other make his own decision. All he had to do was reveal the truth.
He smiled and said, “No, that’s not it. Lord God can send any host to any world, not just via the soul-transfer method. It’s just that the soul-transfer expends the least amount of energy. Furthermore, it would decrease the inconveniences met by the hosts during love conquest missions.”
Xie He cocked a brow. “Lord God?”
“Lord God, ah….” Lu Ting’s expression turned cold and his voice lowered. “Lord God is the nickname we give to the main system. In the transmigration world, all of us hosts call it that. You probably already know this. Regardless of whether it’s 444 or 666, although the systems are made of data, they have their own personalities. They are all very high level AIs. Aside from the fact that they have no body, they are very similar to humans. They even have emotions.”
“But Lord God doesn’t have a personality. It oversees countless planes of existence. It’s the strongest AI but it’s nothing but a cold, heartless stream of data. It only abides by its rules. It is able to be fair and calm because it’s nothing but data. It has no emotions or desires. It cannot get angry or be biased….It is completely unfeeling. That is why we call it God.”
Xie He looked at Lu Ting, a faint smile in his voice. “But no matter how perfect that data is, there are always loopholes. That’s why you were able to come back, right?”
Lu Ting sighed and didn’t refute that.
He had indeed exploited a loophole in Lord God’s rules. That was the only way he had been able to persuade Lord God and get it to enter a contract with him. That was the only way he had been able to return.
【666：I really admire him a bit. How much more has he guessed?】
Lu Ting slowly said, “Have you ever wondered what kind of existence your world is?”
Xie He said, “A fantasy world created by the humans of your main world?”
Lu Ting said, “Yes. All the secondary planes are imaginary worlds created by the humans of the main world. They are movies, novels, cartoons, or maybe even dreams, drawings or legends…all created by the humans of the main world. Anything can become a secondary plane. It is only the main world that possesses the power to create secondary planes. It is the origin of all planes….There are also many stories in your world, but none of these are capable of becoming new planes of existence.
“And the goal of us hosts, who hail from the main world, is to destroy these worlds. We call it ‘completing the worlds.’ Through this, we allow Lord God to take back the energy from these secondary planes and remit it back into the main world. It keeps the main world stable and superior to the rest. If we let the secondary planes spawn uncontrollably, it would one day affect the balance of the main world and the consequences would be severe.”
“I know.” Xie He smiled. “It’s more or less what I had thought. And experience points— they represent a world’s power, don’t they?”
Lu Ting nodded. “Yes. Experience points are the unit of measurement set to gauge a world’s energy. In Lord God’s eyes, everything is just energy. Lord God’s first rule is to take back as much energy as possible and remit it to the main world. Its second rule is to abide by its own programming. The third rule is to eliminate any and all threats.”
A pensive look appeared in Xie He’s eyes. “However, there’s a condition that has to be fulfilled to take back the energy from a world, isn’t there? For example, for Lord God to take back my world, it needs my love.”
“We call that the ‘key point’. It’s the criteria needed for completion.” Lu Ting said, “These secondary worlds have their own rules that they follow after they are created. Lord God cannot take them back directly. If it were to forcibly destroy these worlds, it would waste too much energy. Therefore, unless it thought that your world was too dangerous, it would not use destruction as its means. It would use its regular method of dispatching a host from the main world. The host would then complete their mission. If they succeed in completing the world, the world would lose its right to be independent and Lord God would be able to easily take it back. As for your world, your love is the key point in deciding whether Lord God can take back this world. That’s because you are the primary protagonist of this world and this world is a romance world.”
Xie He laughed. “That’s also more or less what I had guessed. Is my world a romance novel, show or film?”
Lu Ting dry-coughed. “Novel.”
Xie He cast his gaze down. Because his world was a romance novel and he was the primary protagonist, the moment he gave away his love would also be the moment he gave up his world’s control over itself. Lord God would then suck up his entire world and return the energy to the main world.
“But after I defeated a hundred hosts, Lord God thought that my world posed enough of a threat.” Xie He said plainly, “That was why Lord God wanted to kill me regardless of any cost.”
“It was because your world had upgraded.” Lu Ting looked solemn. “Your world was originally the lowest rank—rank E. But after you defeated a hundred hosts and stole portions of energy from them, your world became a D-ranked world. In Lord God’s eyes, you had become a bug that had to be eradicated. Lord God would never permit the emergence of a second SSS-ranked world like ‘Dream of Death.’”
When Lu Ting said ‘Dream of Death’, despite having experienced countless terrifying worlds, fear flashed through his eyes.
666 also felt its data tremble when it recalled it.
Lu Ting fixed his expression, calming back down. He smiled. “It’s the number one legend in the transmigrating world. In the beginning, ‘Dream of Death’ had also just been an ordinary E-ranked world. It was a dream from a human of the main world. It was a really weird dream….There were only two colours in that world: black and white. There was no time or space in there. In the beginning, no one took that world seriously. Lord God also hadn’t sensed the threat it had posed.
“But slowly, people realized that no hosts had been able to leave that place alive. Every host that had entered that place had died. Not even their souls had been able to escape. That world kept sucking the power from the hosts’ souls and strengthening itself. It started to upgrade….In the end, it had risen from an ordinary E-ranked world to a SSS-ranked world that would strike terror in any host. Any host that died there would be transformed into a part of the dreamscape. When there was no living being inside, they were like statues. But as soon as a living being entered, the souls that could not escape would transform into terrifying evil ghosts and kill anything alive. They would turn any living person into one of them. Because more and more hosts died, the difficulty kept rising. In the end, it was a nearly-impossible-to-escape place. It’s strength was already high enough that even Lord God’s hands were tied.”
666 didn’t speak. Although Lu Ting spoke in a very carefree tone, what he didn’t tell Xie He was that they had gone to that world and taken on that mission.
That world had left a huge psychological shadow on 666. This was because that world had been strong enough to cut off the system’s connection to the outside world. The two of them had been trapped in that horrifying black and white dream world— where nothing else was alive and everything dead wanted to kill them— for twenty-six years…. There had been so many times where 666 had thought that they were done for, that Lu Ting would die, that he would be unable to return to the main system, and that they would completely fall apart. Therefore, he had encouraged Lu Ting every day without stop, telling the other that he had to come out of this alive. He had reminded Lu Ting that Xie He was still waiting for him, that he had to hold on.
Who would have expected that Lu Ting would actually make it out alive? The requirement for completion had been escape. As soon as someone escaped alive, Lord God would be able to take back its energy. In the end, Lu Ting had managed to destroy that world because he had clung onto his obsession so tightly.
Lu Ting said, “Your world is still very weak. Lord God can still erase it. However, if your world were to one day become strong, like ‘Dream of Death’, not even Lord God would be able to deal with you. Therefore, after your world upgraded, Lord God immediately realized the threat your world could possibly hold. That is why it stopped sending hosts into your world. It was because it was a meaningless action—it would just be sending you free energy.”
“As such, Lord God had decided to erase your world to eliminate the threat.”
Xie He wasn’t afraid. Instead, he looked intrigued. he asked, “My world upgraded? If I kept upgrading it, what would happen?”
Lu Ting shrugged. “I don’t know. No one can predict it. Perhaps you’d become immortal. Maybe you’d become the BOSS of your world and would gain the power to kill any hosts that came to your world. You could probably engulf them and strengthen yourself. Once your world is strong enough, hosts’ deaths would be permanent. Let me put it simply. Right now, if hosts die in your world, you’re only able to take less than ten percent of their energy. But if your world was a S-ranked world, you’d be able to take a hundred percent of their energy and ensure that death in your world meant actual death for them….That is to say, the higher it gets, the harder it will be to capture you. The consequences will become even more dire as well.”
Xie He nodded. “I’ve always been wondering why they didn’t pay a price despite dying. Now I understand. It’s not that they didn’t pay anything for it, it was just that the price was really small. It wasn’t enough to endanger their lives.”
Lu Ting said, “Yes. Regardless of whether one dies or chooses to leave the world, a host will be deducted some experience points. It’s because Lord God needs to waste some energy in order to help them leave the world. This energy is all taken from the host’s experience points.”
Xie He smiled in comprehension. “Lord God is truly cheap. It won’t take even the smallest loss. It sells things in the system store at such high prices but gives so little when we sell things. You hosts are its workers and it thinks of ways to make money off of your hard-earned experience points with its shop.”
Lu Ting looked helpless. “Its raison d’etre is to take back as much energy as possible from the secondary planes.”
“That’s indeed Lord God’s style. You can see it just from the rules it has set. Forget everything else and just look at love conquest worlds. Once a conquest is over, you have to leave within three days….Just from this, you can deduce Lord God’s goal.” Xie He said, “It hopes that the host will do everything they can to complete the mission and increase efficiency. It doesn’t want hosts to indulge in love. If it didn’t have this restriction, the hosts might end up really falling in love and choose to stay in those worlds. That would slow down the rate at which Lord God can reclaim worlds. But with this restriction, hosts would refrain from falling for real because they know that they can’t stay for long. They would just want to complete the mission as fast as possible and leave. This will make the capture target lose sooner and therefore allow Lord God to reclaim that world more quickly.”
Xie He shut his eyes. He had more or less guessed all of this already. He was just confirming his conjectures today. Because he had continuously defeated those hosts and strengthened himself, Lord God could no longer tolerate him. It thought that Xie He would become a threat if he was allowed to continue on like this.
He only had two choices: he could die or he could use the escape medicine and become independent of this world. With the latter, he would no longer be a protagonist that held the fate of the world and would thus no longer affect the development of the world. That was equivalent to eliminating the threat.
【Ding, the target Xie He’s Favourability Value +20. The current Favourability Value is -40.】
Xie He slowly opened his eyes, a faint smile appearing within them. He looked at the nervous Lu Ting and said, “I have one last question.”
Lu Ting immediately became even more nervous. “What is it?”
Xie He asked, “What’s the name of my world?”
Lu Ting’s expression twisted. He, who had never had any reservations in saying anything, suddenly felt too embarrassed to say it out loud. For a long time, he didn’t speak.
Xie He looked at him teasingly, “Didn’t you decide not to hide anything from me anymore?”
【Lu Ting：I don’t want to hide it. I just think it’s really embarrassing….】
【666：Eh, I mean even if you say it, it should be Xie He that feels more embarrassed….】
【Lu Ting：Now I’m even less inclined to say it.】
【666：If you don’t say it, all your effort will go to waste! 】
【Lu Ting：……】
Lu Ting coughed. “I have the original copy. You can look at it.” He had 666 exchange for the original work before he carefully handed it over to Xie He.
It wasn’t a very thick novel. There were huge words imprinted on the cover: “The Overbearing President Takes His Lovable Little Wife By Force.”
It was an 18+ rated smutty novel from XXX novel website on earth.
Xie He read through the pages carefully, full of interest. The story was about the love between the wicked, charming, overbearing president named Xie He and a girl named Ruan Xiaoxuan. The story followed a simple dogblood formula. Every chapter, they papapapapa’d. Xie He forced the female lead. It was a story of angst and hurt. All sorts of things happened between them. Every day, Xie He didn’t do anything proper and just spent all his time focused on love…. Right, there was also the supporting male lead, Xie Xi. He also liked the female lead. There were all sorts of scenes of bloody slaughter where he fought over the female lead with Xie He. The entire novel was a brainless, Mary Sue-ish novel where everything went well for the protagonists. Xie He was the primary protagonist.
Xie He was really into it. He would also occasionally read passages out loud. His voice was deep and refined. “Xie He pushed Ruan Xiaoxuan onto the bed and sized her up with his wicked, unruly eyes. He said, ‘If you dare meet with other men again, I’ll lock you to this bed and make sure you can’t go anywhere else. Only I can satisfy you…’”
【666：I can’t do this anymore. It’s too awkward.】
【Lu Ting：……】
Lu Ting also felt awkward. He stared at the sky and stared at the ground, but he couldn’t look at Xie He. He was trying to break the awkward atmosphere when he heard Xie He suddenly ask, “Hey, Xie Xi’s my rival in love here. Were you enlightened by this novel? Was that why you came up with that rotten idea?”
Lu Ting: “Eh….”
Xie He closed the book. He chuckled, his voice suggestive. “Say, didn’t you take the female lead’s place? What do you think…Lovable Little Wife Lu?”
【Lu Ting：I just knew it would be like this….Just kill me, please.】
【666：……】
The author has something to say:
I’m making up nonsense with a straight face. 23333
Eve: Cracking up at Lu Ting’s embarrassment. RIP.
sere: this one chapter is my entire reason for living AHHAHAHHAHA even though the first half was info dump this last part is just hilarious