System, are you messing with me? - Chapter 25: Chapter 25

Shu Ning sighed in relief after stepping out of the reception room and lingered for a moment longer in front of the closed door until the stinging feeling behind his eyes lessened.
Shu Ning: "God. My eyes hurt. How can those servants stand all that glittering gold? I was only inside that room for a few minutes and I already have blinking spots dance in front of my eyes. Poor Sun Zhilong. I deffinitely don't want to be in his shoes right now."
Alpha: "..." 'Did Host forget, that it was him who brought the Man here? Maybe he should take some skill for his memories next time.'
The System's body flashed in the color of deep yellow for a secont before going back to normal but Shu Ning was too busy rubbing a hand over his aching eyes to pay any attention to it.
Shu Ning: "Well, no matter. Let's go and look around a bit."
Thanks to the General's assistance, the halls and rooms inside of the villa were all thankfully deserted and gave Shu Ning the possibility to freely snoop around without disturbance. That would mean, that he could finish this faster than anticipated and the thought of getting out of that building just a second sooner was a wonderful motivater.
Unfortunately, the villa was very very big and most of the rooms didn't interesst Shu Ning in the slightest, so after ending up in practically every room he could think of without finding the one place he wanted to end up at and wasting precious minutes for nothing, he finally decided to let the System guide him through this labirinth.
Alpha: 'Maybe a skill for his sense of direction would be helpful as well.'
After taking a few turns to the right and left, walking up two flights of stairs and down one and passing through a couple of doors, Alpha successfully found the location of Zhou Feng's chambers.
After walking inside of it, Shu Ning almost let his chin drop open in shock.
It was the largest room Shu Ning has seen so far and he actually didn't think that was possible after knowing about the reception room. But here it was. A chamber as big as a football stadium. With a king sized bed in the center of it that could easily fit ten people, with the wall on the right side being covered by a bookcase filled with romance and martial arts novels, With the rest of the walls hung with posters on antomy, poisones plants and torture devises and with a massive wardrobe behind the bed that could easily fit another king sized bed inside.
Shu Ning: 'FUCKING HELL?'
Shu Ning didn't know how much more time he would get through the General, so he quickly pushed away any further thoughts about the interior of the room and instead went to work on finding anything helpful to his missions.
After looking around the neatly organized room once more, Shu Ning made up his mind to start searching the bookcase on the right side of the room because after closer observation, he noticed some smaler objects fit in between the novels.
Most of them were transparent vials with colorful solutions inside. Blue, green, red, purple and yellow. All stuck between two books of the same color as if to hide them in between. Very badly hidden though, because they could be plainly seen if you just walked past the bookcase.
Shu Ning carefully extracted two of the small containers and inspected it more closely. But without a lable, it was nearly impossible for him to guess at it's content.
Shu Ning: "Have you ever seen something like this? It looks more like colorful water. Can you analyze it?"
Alpha: "Yes, of corse. Do you think those are poison?"
Shu Ning: "Don't be ridiculous. No one is stupid enough to harbor poison in plain sight."
Shu Ning put back the two vial from where he got them and continued his way along the bookcase until he stopped right next to the womans wardrobe.
The furniture already looked gigantic when shu Ning was looking at it from the doorway but now that he stood right next to it, it seemed to be even more monstrous.
The wardrobe was as hight as the ceiling, as wide as a human long and as long as the entire back wall of the room. It was like a walk-in closet completely build out of wood instead of being integrated into the layout of the chamber.
Shu Ning stroke his right hand along the wooden walls of the furniture while he walked along the front of it. The wood felt smooth and slightly cool to the touch and except for a slight dent at the door of the closet, there was no other markings or suspicious bumps at all.
Just when Shu Ning opened up the door to the wardrobe and turned on the lightbulb inside of it by pulling a string that was hanging from the doorframe, the system gave a slight jump inside of his consciousness to grab his attention.
Alpha: "Host. The result from the analysis is out."
Sh Ning: "Show me."
A grey panel appeared in front of Shu Nings eyes with a description of the content from the colourful vials. It was a massive amount of text he had to read and understand but even without much knowledge on the chemicals involved, one thing practically poked him in the eye. Most of the liquits found in the container consist of either Aconitum Napellus, Atropa Belladonna or Buxus Sempervirens.
Shu Ning was pretty sure that he has seen those names before and after thinking about it some more, he also knew from where. Just next to the entrance of this room hung a poster about poisonous plants, he already noticed before, and somewhere on it he knew, he would find those three names.
Shu Ning: "It really was poison. That woman actually presents her secret weapon on a silver platter? How stupid is she? Or is she just confident enough that no one will investigate here?"
Shu Ning rubbed a hand across his face in exasperation before closing the gray screen in front of him again.
Alpha: "I will save the file for you. Anything else I can do?"
Shu Ning: "Make pictures of the posters on the wall. Or wait. Make pictures of every part of the room. And in case I find anything else of interest, then copy and save that as well."#
Alpha: "Understood, sir."
The wardrobe, Shu Ning could finally inspect closer, was very spacey on the inside. There were only a few shelves filled with shirts, jeans and skirts and some dresses hung from clothes racks. The rest of the place was strangely empty save for a rather large box in the left corner.
It was completely black in color with a control panel imbedded on the front that needed a combination of numbers to open.
Shu Ning crouched down in front of the box and inspected it from every angle to find any clue on how to open it. But there was nothing. And it was too big to just carry out of here and break open later.
So the only way to get to it's content was through the correct combination that they of course didn't know.
Alpha: "Try her birthday. Humans love using their birthday to lock things."
Shu Ning was skeptical about that but tried it anyway. Nothing.
Shu Ning: "It still doesn't open."
Alpha: "Maybe her brothers birthday, or the day she met the Male Lead?"
Still nothing.
Alpha: "Then... Her phone number? The date of her first mission?"
Shu Ning sat down on the ground and pulled his legs up to sit more comfortably while trying out different kind of combinations but none of them seemed to work.
After the thirtieth try or so, Shu Ning grew frustrated at the entire thing and punched in the last numbers he could think of. The date of Zhou An's death.
With a faint click, the lock on the box opened and the heavy lid was automatically lifted.
Shu Ning: "..." 'I want to kill that woman.'
Alpha: "..." 'How much did the Protagonist hate her brother?'
Shu Ning raised his head over the corner of the box and started rummaging around. Most of the content was useless to him, so he didn't bother with it and instead searched further below all that knick-knacks.
After searching around for a while and discarding every object that turned out to be uninteresting after closer observation, his finger tip brushed across something soft but solid and with a few more tuggs, Shu Ning pulled the object out of the box.
It was a hand sized book, covered in a brown and furry cover that just screamed of mysteries. Especially because there were three locks instead of one to keep others from opening it. This time though it needed keys and not numbers.
Shu Ning unconciously rubbed the soft cover of the book with his fingers while he fiddeled with the different sized locks on the side. They wouldn't open easily because of the specially hard matierial they were created from, so brute force wouldn't work in this case. The only other method he could think of was lock picking, but for that he needed to take the book back with him.
System: "Hey Host. Something fell out just now. Look, there."
Shu Ning was so caught up in his own thoughts that he almost didn't notice the flutter of a piece of paper falling out of the book if it wasn't for the warning of the System. But luckily, he had Alpha's assistance at all time, so with just a quick grab at the paper, they could both see what was on it. And once they comprehended what they saw, they were both immensely surprised by it.
It was not just any piece of paper Shu Ning held in his hand now, but a very tiny picture. On it were two people, a happily smiling girl and a sickly pale boy, standing side by side while holding hands. They looked both very young, maybe only 7 years old, but it was still easily to tell that it was Zhou An and Zhou Feng. And against everything Shu Ning thought he knew about the protagonist, the siblings looked to be very close.
The sudden yelling of voices and the banging of doors from somewhere from downstairs ripped Shu Ning's eyes off of the siblings in front of him and instead he quickly took in the state of the room. Thankfully, none of the objects seemed to be out of place, so it was hard to tell that someone searched around this place.
Another high pitched yell sounded from below, this time followed by the trampeling of footsteps. The noises too close for comfort and definitely drawing closer.
So with a heavy pounding heart, Shu Ning quickly stored his findings inside of his system space and hurriedly made his way out of the bed room again. He ran along the lengthy hallways and down a flight of stairs to meet up with the hurrying entourage that were following behind a yelling Zhou Feng.
"Why didn't you keep taps on Yang Quan? What is the use of keeping you all around, if you can't even watch a single person. This is all you had to do. And now? That guy was wandering around my house for hours without any escorting. So useless."
Zhou Feng had her fist tightly clenched at her sides and spat out every word with all the hatred that was building up from the past few days. Her voice was already slightly rough at the edges from the constant raging she was doing.
At her side was of course Wu Kang, trying in vain to calm her down and almost tripping over his own feet because he hadn't let the woman out of his sight. And behind those two were all of the servants from this villa jogging after them to keep up, being on the receiving end of the Protagonists disappointment.
"Have I missed something?"
Shu Ning almost immediately spotted Sun Zhilong at the very end of the chain and fell into step right beside him, an obviously fake innocent expression on his face.
The Man looked slightly amused at this and curled the edges of his mouth into a slight smile.
"I guess you have what you need?"
Shu Ning smirked widely and a mirthful glint appeared in his eyes.
"I have found some useful things, thanks to your assistance. I owe you, sir."
Sun Zhilong's mouth twitched at it's corners and he had just opened his lips to give a reply, when Zhou Feng suddenly stopped in her tracks to whip around and increduously stare at Shu Ning's direction. The servants only barely managed to avoid running into her.
"Yang Quan. Where did you just come from? Just coming to my house like this. Did you think there won't be consequences?"
Wu Kang laid a calming hand on the womans back and threw a disaproving glance at Shu Ning as well. This was the first time the two of them stood eye to eye like this and neither of them felt like breaking eye contact first to admit defeat.
"Yang Quan. I hate you a lot. Bullying a commrad like this is not the way to go about things. You need to learn your lesson, so I challenge you to a duel right here, right now."
"A duel? Why should I accept that? I won't get anything out of this."
"If I win, You will appologize to Zhou An and demote yourself to a mere foot soldier."
Shu Ning rolled his eyes at Wu Kang and raised an eyebrow in question.
"And if I win?"
"That will be unlikely, but if, by any chance, you do win, you can ask for something as well."
"Then I want you to grovel in front of me and ask for forgiveness."
Wu Kang clenched his teeth in anger but still nodded in agreement. In his opinion, there was no way such a wannabe soldier and weakling could beat him in a milion years.
"And the General will be witness to our duel."
The Protagonist and Male Lead suddenly paled and looked at the General in wide eyed horror as if they just remembered his presence at all.