Seized by the System

Chapter 1076: Negotiation

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

This matter, which seemed very troublesome to Fang Ning, appeared to be rather simple according to the crab people’s public opinions online.

These crab people were indeed a civilization with technology that surpassed the Earth. They were very clear-headed, and could easily notice the gap in the power levels of both parties.

The ignorant knew no fear. The more a person knew, the more timid he or she would be.

These people knew very well why they should be wary of the interstellar travelers.

The humans from Earth might not have been as powerful as they had imagined them to be, for it had been less than thirty years since these humans had been in contact with the Era of Mystery. In terms of officially entering the Era of Mystery, it had been less than ten years.

Nonetheless, the real opponent that they were currently facing was, in fact, the unfathomable Sir System.

This feeling of relying on someone else’s power to intimidate others was truly a great one.

Thus, it made sense why so many people had tried to grab a spot in the mission quota places. These people seemed to know that, with the help of the Great Venerable Dragon God, as long as the other party was not half-witted, they would never refuse this relocation request.

Soon after, the Heavenly Book informed Fang Ning and said, “Master, the decision-makers of this planet want to negotiate with us. These are the contents of their wireless broadcast to outer space.”

Dear respected humans from Earth, we hope to communicate with you face-to-face in order to confirm the concrete details of our relocation. As for the meeting place, we’ll let you decide.”

Based on these contents, the decision-makers were clearly not turning down his request to relocate their civilization, but were planning to start their preparation work at once.

Those who wished to achieve certain things would naturally find ways to accomplish their goals.

“Okay, let’s go back then. We’ve more or less settled our business here. I didn’t expect them to be so cooperative.” After Fang Ning had satisfied his curiosity, he happily returned to where the Azure Dragon was alongside his Heavenly Book baby.

After entering the System Space, the Heavenly Book baby said to Sir System, “System Daddy, the mission executioners from the platform are hoping that you can open the portal to them and also become the witness to the negotiation.”

“Sure, where’s the venue?” Given that Sir System had agreed to receiving the remuneration, it was pretty active in playing its part. After all, it would soon receive a long-term income of one trillion points of magical energy.

“Let’s set the meeting place at the Malevolent Planet,” Fang Ning suggested after pondering over it for a while.

“Oh right, I’ve seen the announcement from those mission candidates. They had the nerve to ask for two trillion magical energy points as payment from the other party. Aren’t they using my guise to earn some benefits for themselves then?” Sir System brought up another matter.

“You’re really stupid. Don’t you know how a negotiation works? If you’ve really requested for only one trillion, what should you do when the other party disagrees? During a negotiation, you must always start with a higher price and then work your way down,” Fang Ning said irritatedly.

“Duh, how can I not know that? What I meant was, these weak little crab people might agree to it. When the time comes and they really have to transfer a total of two trillion points as the technological transfer fee, what should we do then?” Sir System retorted.

“That’s out of our hands. You’ve already agreed to receiving one trillion points as remuneration. As for how low they can negotiate the price, it depends on their own abilities. You shouldn’t be envious of that,” Fang Ning comforted.

“How despicable these stupid intermediaries are. The next time I take the field personally, I’ll never let them take advantage of the situation,” Sir System said furiously.

“Well, you’re the one who shirked from this responsibility and passed it to me because you didn’t want to do it yourself, so who can you blame now?” Fang Ning said straightforwardly. “You’re only excited now that you’ve seen the benefits of this. How does this sound anything like a hero?”

“I’m in the wrong, Mr. Rich Boss. You’re right to reprimand me,” Sir System admitted.

“Uh, that’s a rare sight. How are you being so meek now...” Fang Ning said in surprise.

“What can I do? You know best,” Sir System said glumly.

“Stop talking nonsense now and quickly go open a portal on the Malevolent Planet. Keep up your efficiency. I’ll mark the specific location for you,” Fang Ning ordered.

...

The Malevolent Planet was a planet with a comet-like orbit in the crab people’s Solar System, and its orbital path had a high possibility of intersecting with the orbits of the other bigger planets.

That was why it was called the Malevolent Planet by the crab people.

Its orbital period around the crab people’s sun was three years.

In every round of orbit, there would be a chance of it crashing into the Mother Planet and Planet Number Two of the crab people. Therefore, in this particular cycle of civilization, they had invented a reusable space shuttle. By using this free space shuttle service, they could move back and forth between their Mother Planet and Planet Number Two every three years.

Such a length of time was tolerable in terms of interstellar traveling. Back when humans were still in the Age of Discovery, a year’s time could only allow a person to travel around the world once. One could only make one round-trip at the east-flowing Golden Waterway in a year.

At the moment, in the skies above a planet with a third of the size of the crab people’s Mother Planet, an enormous creature could be seen approaching.

On the planet, there was a base much like how the humans had once built their base on the moon.

The base was used as a cabin to transport supplies and relevant personnel to Planet Number Two.

When Fang Ning saw these, he became very impressed at how these people were almost the same as humans with regard to their imaginations and execution methods.

Fang Ning knew that when humans were preparing to launch their rockets or spaceships, they would fully utilize the centrifugal force of Earth’s rotation in choosing a launch site, so that they could save as much fuel as possible and lower their cost.

At present, crab people in spacesuits were coming out, one by one, from the buildings on the Malevolent Planet, raising their heads to look at the sky.

It was currently daytime.

They saw a gigantic claw descending from the sky.

The claw was also almost covering the entire sky.

Behind the claw, they saw a touch of azure, but were unable to make out the shape of it.

Then, a huge door emanating golden rays appeared on the ground and could be seen from afar.

“The humans have come!”

The crab astronauts had already received a notice about this, and were aware that the negotiation meeting place was somewhere nearby.

Soon, the astronauts had climbed onto the planet base’s shuttle and were quickly driving toward the huge door.

Then, they saw that the claw was gripping the door and moving it toward them.

A few moments later, both parties met.

The astronauts instantly brought the planet base’s shuttle to a stop before tottering over with their heads raised to witness this cosmic miracle.

Some of them had tears flowing down their faces, not because they were moved by this scene, but because of the blinding golden rays...

It was just too bright for their eyes.

The astronauts adjusted their oxygen masks, and then began a discussion among themselves.

“When are the humans coming?”

“Should be anytime now.”

“I feel so emotional. Tell me, how are we supposed to maintain a calm appearance?”

“This incident happened too unexpectedly, and we’ve never received any provisional training as well.”

“We’ve all read many science fiction novels before. How did the characters receive the aliens in the novels? The most important thing is to avoid any misunderstanding, so let’s put down our weapons first.”

“They know our language, so there probably shouldn’t be any misunderstanding here.”

“We must be the first to come into contact with extraterrestrial beings. This is going to be a historical moment. We’re going to be famous.”

“Hush, the humans are coming.”

Following these words, a few dark spots came into view through the golden door.

Upon closer scrutiny, they appeared to be some weird animals that walked on two legs. There were more than ten of these creatures walking over.

“Hey, they don’t seem to be wearing any spacesuits?” One of the crab astronauts noticed this difference first.

“They’re scary indeed. This place has no atmosphere, and it’s daytime on the Malevolent Planet right now, which means that the temperature outside should be no less than 180 degrees. How are they able to endure these?”

“This isn’t scary. Compared to the claw that appeared earlier and this portal before our eyes, the fact that they’re not wearing space suits — or even if they showed up in front of us naked — doesn’t surprise me at all.” A naturally optimistic crab astronaut tried to lighten up the mood.

Meanwhile, the twelve representatives from the Alliance of Justice and Order’s platform were also communicating with each other through spiritual telepathy.

“What is it? Are they stunned at the sight of us?”

“Yes, most of them are in shock, although a few brave ones aren’t showing it on their faces. It’s a good thing we didn’t let those Pond-level cultivators come along. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve this effect.”

“Okay, as we’ve discussed before, we have to maintain our sense of mystery and might, and then display a certain level of communicability. We must never expose our background. Only then will we be able to complete this Epic-level mission.”

This was a situation of fighting a wolf with a flex stalk, where either side was afraid of the other.

The crab people did not know that, without the support of the Great Venerable Dragon God, these humans in front of them would not have the ability to travel across stellar systems. In fact, the humans were also forbidden from using violence against them.

Nonetheless, if both parties were to enter into conflict, these twelve humans would still be capable of destroying the crab people. After all, these creatures from the Era of Technology, compared to these humans from the Era of Mystery, were like a strong offensive group of players that had very weak defense.

While technology had the power to destroy an entire planet, it could not be used to protect the person using it, much less to shield the person from even the slightest damage caused by a spirit.

However, the problem was that these twelve people were all from the AJO platform, so they had neither the excuse nor the right to use violence to coerce the other party into moving away from their own stellar system.

After all, no matter how one looked at this situation, the crab people had the natural right to live on their birth planet.

Thus, these twelve people had to use various means of assistance, juxtaposed against this particular atmosphere, to convince the other party to relocate of their own accord.

They should neither use violence and threats, nor could they be solicitous without any apparent reason. Instead, they should present themselves as the savior of the crab people, so they had to maintain a good balance between those two methods.

It would be best to carry a professional attitude, especially this was the basic idea that formed their “road construction” plan.

‘We have no evil intentions toward you, and we’re not interested in taking over your planet. It’s just that you’re in our way right now, but we’re open to reasoning with you. That’s all.’