Death Progress Bar

Chapter 1: Inheritance

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When Shi Jin opened his eyes, he found himself lying on a soft, wide, wooden bed, wearing cotton pajamas and holding a cucumber pillow in his arms.

Where is this? It doesn’t look like a hospital and certainly not like hell either.
He blinked in confusion, raising a hand to rub his forehead.

Wasn’t he hit by a truck that ran a red light while he was pursuing a thief? With speed of the truck, there was almost no possibility of survival, so what was going on?

A crisp mechanical voice suddenly sounded inside his head, making Shi Jin sit up in alarm.
He looked around vigilantly: “Who said that?”

“Meaning ‘death by laughter’?”

Shi Jin stopped looking around and finally decided that the voice was really speaking directly in his brain.
He tried to knock on his head.

Shi Jin: “…”

At this point, Shi Jin determined that he really was reborn and definitely not in his own body.
He used to be a handsome, long-legged man with eight-pack abs, but this body was “round as pearls and smooth as jade”—white, fat and round, with the mass of flesh instead of arms and legs.
When he breathed, his pajamas almost burst, when he sat down, pants tightly clung to his legs.

…In his whole life, he was never so “magnificent”!

He might as well have died.

Xiao Si clearly perceived what he was thinking and asked without any pity:

Shi Jin lay back on the bed and closed his eyes with a serene expression.
“…Weight can be lost, but if you lose your life, it’s the end.
You wouldn’t be able to eat delicious food or enjoy playing mahjong.”

Shi Jin exhaled, thinking about the feeling of smooth mahjong tiles under his fingers.
Then he opened his eyes, got out of bed and finished dressing.
“Tell me then, what is happening?”

His words were followed by silence.
Just as Shi Jin started to suspect that all this was a hallucination that appeared before death, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his brain, and a lot of confused memories and pictures poured in.

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After half an hour, Shi Jin lay back on the bed once again and calmly closed his eyes.

Xiao Si:

Shi Jin began to snore.

Shi Jin endured.

Shi Jin couldn’t tolerate it any longer.
He once again got out of bed and dressed, asking with an unfriendly expression: “So the novel I read before my death is the origin of your existence? You transported me into a world inside a book?”

Xiao Si stopped crying and replied obediently.

“Am I really inside a book right now?”

Xiao Si was silent.

“Then can I get out of here?”

This time Shi Jin fell silent.
After some time, he continued asking: “Why me?”

This time, Xiao Shi hesitated for two seconds, then enunciated clearly:

“…” Actually, what you said makes perfect sense.

Shi Jin, having nothing to say in reply, walked into the bathroom connected to his bedroom and stood in front of the mirror.

His appearance was both familiar and strange.
Familiar, because the face closely resembled his own, strange because of the body shape—he looked exactly as he did when he was younger, there was even an identical little mole on his nose; it just felt weird because his body was several times larger.

Fortunately, my appearance hasn’t changed.
It feels less disturbing this way.
Shi Jin sighed deeply, then washed his face and brushed his teeth.

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According to the memory provided by Xiao Si, he was also called Shi Jin now and was about to turn eighteen.
‘He’ was the protagonist of a novel that should make the readers feel good by taking rightful revenge, called “Death Progress Bar”.
Unfortunately, its plot was mostly depressing and just when the protagonist was about to begin his revenge, it was dropped.

‘Shi Jin’ had a harem-novel-protagonist-like father and five older half-brothers.
When his father was still alive, ‘Shi Jin’ was cherished and spoiled, but after his death, he became like a bug that anybody can stomp on.
His brothers tore down their affectionate masks and tortured him to death.

And the time of Shi Jin’s rebirth coincided with the death of ‘his’ father, that is, with the beginning of the book.

After finishing his morning routine, Shi Jin did not go out, but sat back on the bed and continued his internal talk with Xiao Si.

“What do you need me to do?”

There is no such thing as a free lunch in this world.
Xiao Si took a lot of trouble to let him be reborn, it definitely had something it needed his help with.

Xiao Si displayed two things resembling progress bars inside his mind, one active and one grayed out.

Shi Jin, who had a slight OCD, hadn’t shown immediate interest in the connection between this progress bar and his own life, but instead asked with an extremely disgusted expression: “999? Can’t you round it up to 1000, like the one below?”

Xiao Si voice, which had been somewhat serious, suddenly become heated:

Shi Jin’s mind was shaken by the force of this passionate cry.
“Stop fooling around and focus on what matters!”

Xiao Xi’s tone became serious again.
It begged earnestly in a pitiful voice:

With all this said, what was Shi Jin supposed to do? Of course, he could only endure his obsessive-compulsive disorder and nod seriously.

He got a brand-new life.
Even though he may still lose it at any time, there was also a crybaby self-proclaimed ‘golden finger’ in his mind and a matter of finding the other person with a progress bar, but it was a life anyway.
He could still touch the mahjong tiles many more times.

It was his gain anyway.

Xiao Si cheered:

Shi Jin, who was mistaken