After calming Yui Ling down, Shen Hao headed to the private gym inside his estate before getting refreshed.
Instead of his usual light jogging, he went straight into stretching and a few quick exercises.
After that, he put on his gloves and started practicing on the heavy boxing bag.
With every strike, he felt a fresh surge of energy flowing through his body.
Ever since he had absorbed Shen Tian’s spirit, he hadn’t tested his true physical strength.
He stepped up to the gym’s punch-force measuring machine and threw a heavy, full-power punch.
“Bang”
Previously, his average punch registered between 60 to 70 kg.
But this time, the digital display flashed between 120 to 130 kg.
His raw physical power had officially doubled.
‘Woah…
my power really has increased quite a bit,’ Shen Hao thought to himself, making sure not to speak out loud so as not to give the System Spirit any unnecessary hints.
For a while now, he had already been scolding her harshly in his mind, establishing strict boundaries.
‘If you ever need energy from my essence again, you ask for my permission first!
I decide what happens and what doesn’t.’
‘Understood, Master…’ the System Spirit replied in his mind, her tone surprisingly compliant for once.
‘Since I am currently lacking direct combat abilities, I want to make myself useful to you.
Based on my analysis of your body and your current status, I can construct a customized Status Panel for you.’
‘A Status Panel?’ Shen Hao’s attention flickered.
‘Yes,’ she explained smoothly.
‘It will display your key attributes in a game-like format—including your current Fate Value, your stats, and how much power you can steal whenever you plunder the destiny of the World’s favored protagonists and heroines.’
“Fate Value?” Shen Hao asked in his mind.
“What exactly is Fate Value?”
The System Spirit explained in a clear tone, “As I mentioned before, I am a Heroine and Opportunity Plundering System.
When you steal the heroines or the golden opportunities meant for the Heavenly Chosen Ones, you are effectively stealing their fate.
That stolen fate converts directly into Fate Value.”
She paused slightly before continuing, “Normally, this luck would return to the Heavenly Will.
But with our bond, every single drop of Fate Value you steal belongs entirely to you.
The higher your Fate Value, the faster your power increases.”
A subtle, cold smile touched Shen Hao’s lips.
This meant every protagonist he crushed would directly fuel his own rise to the top.
“Would you like me to display your status panel now, Master?”
the System Spirit offered.
“Though I still cannot calculate your absolute Fate Value limit due to the White Space’s interference, I can show your current attributes.”
A translucent, faint golden panel materialized right in front of Shen Hao’s eyes, floating silently in the air:
━━━━━━━━━━ [ STATUS PANEL ] ━━━━━━━━━
Name: Shen Hao
Fate Value: ???
Cultivation: Mortal
━━━━━━━━ [ BOUND ENTITIES ] ━━━━━━━━━
➤ Heroine & Opportunity Plundering System
➤ Fox Spirit
Shen Hao scanned down the brief list of attributes.
His eyes drifted over his name, paused briefly at the “Unknown” Fate Value, and then stopped dead at the very last line under Bound Entities.
His eyebrows furrowed instantly as shock rippled through him.
‘Fox Spirit?’ Shen Hao demanded mentally, staring hard at the floating golden text.
‘What the hell is a Fox Spirit doing on my panel?!’
Curious, Shen Hao focused his mind and clicked directly on the [Fox Spirit] entry floating on his status screen.
Instantly, an expanded text box materialized to explain her origin:
[ BOUND ENTITY DETAILS ]
Entity: Vengeful Spirit (Fox Demon Manifestation)
Origin: A mortal woman who died in deep despair and resentment.
Her remaining dark wishes and desire for revenge transformed her soul into a Fox Spirit.
Current Status: Soul-bound contract established.
Sealed within the Host’s right arm in the form of a spirit mark.
Shen Hao shifted his gaze straight down to his right forearm.
Where his skin had been completely bare a second ago, a detailed tattoo of a fox slowly faded into view.
As he stared at it, the tattoo’s dark red eyes suddenly blinked and shifted, looking directly back at him.
The mark flared with a blinding white light.
A beam of spirit energy shot off his arm and hit the floor, condensing into a stunning, translucent female figure right before his eyes.
Shen Hao’s eyes narrowed as he recognized her instantly.
This was the exact spirit that had backed Shen Tian in the past—the same entity that had tried to intimidate Yui Ling with illusionary system pressure on their very first day.
She possessed smooth, porcelain skin with a ethereal, bone-white aesthetic, matching the pure white fur of her fox ears and the sweeping tail trailing behind her.
Her deep red eyes held a mix of sharp elegance and ancient sadness.
Instead of speaking aloud, her voice resonated directly inside Shen Hao’s mind.
‘I know you already hold a contract with some female entity,’ her mental voice sounded crisp, yet surprisingly subdued.
‘So I will communicate directly through your consciousness.’
Shen Hao’s eye flicked with a momentary shock, but his expression remained an absolute mask of stone.
The Fox Spirit raised one slender hand, casually licking her fingernail like a feline tending to its claws, her demeanor attempting to mask her underlying anxiety.
‘When you fell unconscious after Shen tian attack, a terrifying entity briefly took over your physical body,’ she revealed, her tone darkening.
‘It obliterated Shen Tian without effort and threatened to erase my existence on the spot unless I willingly submitted to a bound contract with you.’
She looked straight into Shen Hao’s eyes, her crimson gaze unwavering.
‘You don’t have to believe me, but that is the absolute truth.
I am not bound to you by choice, but out of sheer survival.
That ancient entity inside you would have ended me.
Now, the contract is permanent and I cannot break it.’
She let out a soft sigh, her white tail swaying gently.
‘However, I have observed you.
You aren’t a mindless brute.
If you leave me be and grant me shelter within your spirit seal, I will lend you my illusionary techniques and support whenever you need them.’
‘So now I have two spirits bound to me,’ Shen Hao mused silently, a calculating glint in his eyes.
Comparing the two, this Fox Spirit was far sharper than the airheaded System Spirit.
The System Spirit was naive enough to genuinely mistake Shen Hao himself for that terrifying ancient entity.
The Fox Spirit, however, saw through the illusion—she knew Shen Hao was just a mortal, but she stayed bound out of fear of the dormant power slumbering within his bloodline.
As he looked at her white fur and the obsidian crown around her neck, memory fragments from his past life clicked into place.
She was a key character from the original webnovel, The Immortal Empress Returns.
Her backstory was tragic: accused of witchcraft, she and her mother were burned at the stake by their own villagers.
Fuelled by intense despair and rage, her soul transformed into a vengeful Fox Spirit, massacring the entire village before a powerful monk sealed her away in a hidden shrine.
Shen Tian had been the one to break her seal.
Using her powers, Shen Tian had poisoned Shen Hao’s father to play the hero later by “curing” him.
Shen Tian had also ordered her to cast that illusionary system pressure to keep Shen Hao from being intimate with Yui Ling.
Because Shen Tian knew Shen Hao was a fellow transmigrator, he had used the Fox Spirit’s illusions as a strategic countermeasure.
Despite her dark past, she wasn’t inherently evil.
She was hostile at first, but deeply loyal once bound.
Her heart remained untainted, serving only the master she was tied to.
‘A tragic past, but immensely useful,’ Shen Hao thought.
‘And now, her loyalty belongs entirely to me.’
‘what should I do with her now’