[Ding! The system has upgraded successfully, congratulations! You have obtained an inventory with ten spaces!]
[Ding! The host has accomplished a hidden mission! You have obtained 1000 points!]
[Ding! The host has accomplished a random mission! You have obtained 10 points!]
[Ding! The host has successfully leveled up to the Chi Induction stage of ancient martial arts! You have been awarded 100 points!]
[…]
The system notifications came endlessly after the system finally finished upgrading after three days, and the system spirit woke up after the system recovered to its usual functions, and as soon as it did it was greeted with the incessant notification sounds. [Lili! What did you do in these three days? What happened for the points to jump like this!]
Lisa stopped flipping over the documents and blinked at all the notifications. It had slipped her mind that the system would finish upgrading on that day, but what was the deal with all the notifications?
And secret missions, too?
[Beauty Lisa, the system might have been shut down while I was being upgraded, but you would still be rewarded for the missions you accomplished during that time…But what did you do? You even leveled up on your ancient martial arts!]
“I didn’t do much.” Lisa looked back down and started looking through the documents again, but she was still thinking about the night that she was kidnapped.
Did she level up on her ancient martial arts? She silently checked on the chi and the energy she had and noticed that it was two times more than it had been before. It was true that she was gifted, but she had only stepped into Beginner ten days ago…How did she level up so quickly?
Lisa looked at the papers that had evidence that could destroy the Manoban family ten times over, but all she thought of were the points and her ancient martial arts level.
In any case, she was even more surprised than the system was.
Finally, the system made the only rational conclusion: [Beauty Lisa, you got lucky!]
Lisa: “…”
There seemed to be no other explanation for it, was there?
Lisa entered the virtual space and did her daily missions again as she pondered over what had happened exactly. She had just gotten more than a thousand points from all the system rewards, and she was still reveling over suddenly becoming a whale.
After finishing her daily missions, she suddenly remembered the inventory that the system had gifted her, and she opened it with a single thought, learning that the inventory was exactly like one of a game. There were ten spaces in total and each space could only be used to fill one item, but she could store up to 999 of the same item in a single space.
For example, she could put up to 999 eggs a single inventory space, but if she used a box to hold 999 eggs, she could store 999 boxes with eggs in them in a single inventory space.
Lisa was immediately interested in this new function, and the first thing that she did upon exiting the virtual space was keep everything in the room that she could into the inventory before talking them out again, but her mental power was used up quickly as she did.
[Beauty Lisa, you need to be careful! You need to use mental power when you place items into the inventory and take them out, and the larger the item is, the more mental power it would need!]
The system spirit’s body had become clearer and more realistic after the system upgrade.
After doing everything, Lisa prepared to go to sleep.
The phone vibrated, and she took it out to see that it was an invitation by Rosé to go eat at Xiao Manor the next day.
While the Nine Heavens Group would have its grand opening tomorrow, Lisa had gone through too much in her past life to be interested in such a small event, so she handed the entire project to Jinhee, and thinking of this she replied Rosé affirmatively.
Xiao Manor was particularly lively on that day, a complete contrast from how silent it was usually because Grandpa Xiao had never been one to like that sort of atmosphere, the young master had never been one to invite his friends over, and the young lady of the family had always been aloof, but something was different about that day.
The young lady of the Xiao family had a rare smile on her face, and the workaholic young master seemed a little relaxed, while the master of the manor seemed particularly amiable…
The maid that was in charge of pouring tea was newly hired, and she looked over at the unfamiliar boy and the girl at the stone table in the garden, and just from their silhouettes, she could tell that they were definitely good looking. She started standing on tiptoe to have a better look at them before a strict middle-aged woman spoke behind her, “Little Li, get to work!”
Little Li’s expression became pale from fright before she turned around and headed towards the kitchen. Right as she was about to leave, the girl at the stone table turned her head and their eyes met, and the clear eyes seemed as if they could stare into her very soul.
Little Li didn’t dare to keep looking and immediately hurried towards the kitchen.
Lisa finished preparing a pot of tea and poured one cup for Grandpa Xiao, before asking, “Grandpa Xiao, how have you been lately?”
“I jogged for an hour this morning, you tell me!” Grandpa Xiao chuckled. He had been following the medicine plan that Lisa had prescribed him for a few days, and he had started to visibly become healthier that even his old friend was surprised by how healthy he looked when they met that morning.
He was certainly satisfied with this friend of Rosé’s and practically treated Lisa as his granddaughter. If it weren’t for Rosé blocking him, he would have probably accepted the girl into Xiao Manor and started treating her like a treasure.
“You know about tea too?” Jimin felt as if there was some sort of magic at work as he looked at her hands working on the tea under the sunlight, and he couldn’t even avert his gaze.
“I’ve been practicing ways to show off all my life, you see.” Lisa smiled and poured a cup for Jimin, before talking to Grandpa Xiao again. “Have you been having trouble sleeping lately?”
It was normal for an old man to have inadequate sleep so even Grandpa Xiao himself didn’t really mind it because his health had become better, but as he looked at the girl and remembered how magical she was, he couldn’t help but ask, “Did you…See any problems?”
Lisa smiled and changed the subject, and Grandpa Xiao didn’t pursue the topic anymore, instead starting to ask them about how they did on the national finals.
It was already an extremely rare event that Rosé would invite her friends to Xiao Manor, so her brother was quite serious about receiving the two as well as possible, while Rosé herself stood there in the kitchen as she watched the chefs and helpers work on their meal.
She knew that they weren’t as good as cooking as Lisa was, but all she could do was to make sure that they cooked the best they could so she continued to keep an eagle’s eye on them, but it seemed as if it had the opposite effect.
After everything was done, Rosé looked at the dishes that looked quite delicious and called the people in the garden to get to the dining hall to eat.
Jimin skipped over behind Rosé and asked, “Rosé, are you avoiding me? Do you have any complaints about me?”
“You’re just buy-one-free-one, the door is right there.” Rosé glanced at him.
“Hey grandpa, look at Rosé! She wants to drive me away!” Jimin immediately went over to Grandpa Xiao and complained, and the older man made a serious expression at Rosé before chuckling good-naturedly.
He was glad that his granddaughter had such good friends.
“We hired a new chef lately who’s good with making simple dishes that taste delicious and fresh, you guys try it!” Rosé steered Lisa to the table as she explained.
Lisa glanced at the dishes on the dinner table—Fried pork, celery stir-fry, goose wings with onion and oyster sauce, cucumber with steamed eggs, chestnut with sweet-sour pork and beef stew with tomato and yam, and it truly looked like quite the feast.
Lisa’s clear eyes squinted coldly, and a smirk made its way onto her face.
How smart, even she was almost fooled.
Grandpa Xiao had already started eating, but because he couldn’t eat anything too heavy, there wasn’t a lot of oil added to the dishes. He started with a small bowl of beef stew and started reaching his chopsticks towards the sweet and sour pork before he was stopped by Xiao Sheng.
Upon seeing a glance from the young master, the butler quickly used chopsticks to place a chestnut into Grandpa Xiao’s bowl, making the latter smile bitterly as he looked at the chestnut.
“Grandpa Xiao, eat some of this.” Gu Xiqiao used her chopsticks to take some cucumbers for him and pushed his bowl with the chestnut in it to one side. “Grandpa butler, you know about traditional Chinese medicine, right? Judging from how you knew the quality of the ginseng root I brought here last time.”
The butler nodded and replied, “That would be correct, Miss Lalisa, I learned some from a traditional Chinese doctor because Master Xiao wasn’t healthy in the past.”
Lisa looked at Rosé that was reaching for the cucumber with boiled eggs after she had eaten a goose wing, and reached over and held her arm in place, her expression frigid. “If that’s the case, why didn’t you know about foods that have properties that combat each other?”
The combination of goose with egg would damage their digestive system, while the other combination of foods on the table like peanuts and cucumbers as well as beef and chestnut would be detrimental to health too if eaten together. They must have already had many of these sorts of meals in the past, had he not realized that something was amiss?
“This…” The butler’s expression changed as he looked at the dishes on the table, and he couldn’t respond for quite a while.
After she said this, the table was plunged into silence. Rosé and Jimin that trusted Lisa the most immediately put down their chopsticks, while Xiao Sheng took out his phone, his expression becoming serious.
“It still taste quite good, let’s eat.” Grandpa Xiao was silent for a bit before he spoke again.
If the foods couldn’t be eaten together, they could just eat one or the other.
Everyone there was smart, and they immediately knew that Grandpa Xiao didn’t want to have the person behind this to be alerted, and they all took their chopsticks and started eating again. Thankfully, Jimin started joking and lightening the mood, or else a bystander would be able to see that something was wrong.
Rosé was in a bad mood, feeling quite guilty that she had let this happen under her supervision when she was the one that invited the two to her house.
“I take it you guys are still plagued with those problems from before?” Lisa patted her shoulder comfortingly.
“It’s almost been dealt with, but I owe you one.” Rosé quickly calmed down and turned over to look at Jimin. “You too.”
“Don’t mention it, we’re friends after all!” Jimin smiled, and continued, “If you have anything you need help with you can just ask! Even though I haven’t inherited the Wu family, I can still use some people without any problems. If there’s anything you guys don’t want to do because of your family name, our family can do it for you!”
The Xiao family was purely business-oriented, while the Wu family had their fingers in all sorts of different pies, and they had connections to all sides of society, so they could do things that the Xiao family couldn’t do.
Lisa wanted to say something too, but her phone rang at just that moment, and she accepted the call and listened for a bit, before nodding and hanging up on the call.
“I won’t bother you anymore today, so you guys focus on your problems okay? I’ve got to go.” Lisa waved her hand in goodbye.
Rosé didn’t stop her from leaving because she had a lot to deal with in her own backyard, and so she saw the two visitors off before walking back into the manor and straight to the kitchen, practically leaving a trail of ice as she walked.
She had become livelier after being friends with Lisa, but she had become much scarier too as a result. Ever since the time that she and Lisa were kidnapped, both she and Jimin finally understood that they weren’t strong enough, and they needed to become stronger to at least not hinder Lisa.
Let this first step of hers to be by rectifying the Xiao family!
Taehyung was the one that called Lisa, and his car was stopped not far away from Xiao Manor, and the young man that had always been flawless and unbothered now had his eyebrows furrowed tightly, not knowing what to say.
Standing beside him was a young girl that was around four years old who was wearing a surgical mask and was holding a lollipop in her hand.
Taehyung initially went to the grand opening to hold the show because not a lot of influential people went there, and his appearance had truly been useful in stopping anyone with ulterior motives. As he was leaving the scene, he saw Naeun that was sitting by her lonesome on a bench and brought her with him out of pity.
After he did, however, he had no idea how to deal with her because he had never dealt with children before, but Naeun was a nice child that had a pair of innocent eyes, along with longing towards everything in the outside world.
Taehyung practically melted and brought her to interesting places to satisfy this longing of hers, but as she played, she started becoming paler and paler to the point where he was so worried that he got the help of Lisa.
“Sister Lisa, I missed you so much!” Naeun looked at Lisa with bright eyes, not even blinking.
“Good girl, you can take off your mask when there aren’t a lot of people, you know?” Lisa carried her over to sit on her lap, taking off her mask as she did. “Have you eaten yet?”
Naeun glanced over at Taehyung as if she were undecided on how to reply, but it was clear what the answer to that question was, so Lisa sent a withering glare at Taehyung.
Taehyung immediately called up his secretary to reserve a restaurant for them, explaining himself after he did, “I didn’t know what she could eat, or else I would have taken her to eat in the first place! I wouldn’t ask you for help otherwise!”
Lisa ignored him completely and held Naeun’s hand gently, before sending a gentle, small stream of chi into her body. Naeun only felt a warmth spread through her hand into her body, and she suddenly felt much better, a healthy blush making its way onto her face as she looked at Lisa in surprise.
“Naeun’s immune system is much weaker than everyone else, so she would need to be sent back to the quarantine room after being in public for too long.” Lisa knew how scary the quarantine room could be for a child, in a place where no one could enter except for the nurses that were in charge of medicine.
“Sister Lisa, I’m the one that wanted Uncle Yin to play with me.” Naeun scratched Lisa’s hand gently, her expression serious. “Naeun has had so much fun today!”
Taehyung saw those innocent eyes through the rear-view mirror, and he couldn’t help the warmth and sadness that went through his heart. “I’ll pay better attention next time, I’m sorry.”
Because the people that were with him were Lisa and Naeun, Taehyung didn’t take them to any strange places, but just an exceedingly normal private restaurant.
Lisa had already eaten, so she only watched as Naeun ate.
Taehyung sat opposite of the two girls, and while he always knew that Lisa was a beauty, he was still attracted by her eyes that were like clear springs, and her gentle and warm expression as she looked down at Naeun.
If it weren’t for Jungkook, he would have…
Ahem.
He stopped his thoughts even before they could take form, and thinking of this he reached over and pushed a glass of fruit juice in her direction.
In any case, it was still quite nice to have a new little sister.
“Try this fruit juice, it’s the best in N City!”
Lisa took the glass and sipped, before raising her eyebrows slightly. It really was good.
“I’ll go get a call outside.” Taehyung couldn’t help but smile as he saw that she liked it, but his phone suddenly rang.
Seeing who the caller was, his expression froze slightly before he accepted the call outside.