Death Progress Bar

ne and Long Shi.”

Shi Jin hadn’t expected this.
“Long Shi is going too?”

“Yes.
He’s been hiding in the southeast for many years and knows the situation there well.
It’s not a bad idea to bring him.
Besides, he might be useful as bait if needed,” Lian Jun replied.
Seeing Shi Jin was still frowning, he continued, “I only ever considered Long Shi one of my subordinates—I never thought about him any other way.”

Shi Jin stared at him blankly for a moment before realizing he was explaining himself to him, and suddenly, a peculiar mix of emotions swirled in his heart: wonder, joy, satisfaction, and just a bit of a strange, itchy feeling.

“I never doubted it—how could you possibly look at such kind of a scum?” He pretended to be unconcerned but was secretly delighted.

Lian Jun glanced at him but said nothing.
He took out a tablet and offered it to him.

Shi Jin waved his hand.
“I don’t want to play now.
It’s almost time for dinner, let’s just chat.”

Lian Jun turned the tablet on and said, “This isn’t for playing.
While we were on the sea, there was a problem with data transmission, so information on Shi Xingrui couldn’t be delivered.
Now we’re back on land, and it finally came in.
You can take a look.”

Shi Jin remembered that, indeed, Lian Jun had promised him to investigate Shi Xingrui.
He took the tablet, hesitated, then set it aside, saying, “Let’s have dinner first.
I will read it later.”

Lian Jun knew he did it because he wanted them to talk longer and couldn’t resist leaning over to kiss his lips.

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After dinner, Lian Jun left to discuss the arrangements for the first group with Gua One and the others, leaving Gua Five in the ward.
The man sat against one wall, quietly working on his laptop without disturbing Shi Jin.

Shi Jin picked up the tablet.

The shift in his and Lian Jun’s relationship lessened Shi Jin’s concern with Shi Xingrui and his sons.
If not for the progress bar and the original ‘Shi Jin’s’ identify forcing him to care, he wouldn’t bother getting involved with that sick family again.

But reality wasn’t so accommodating.
He glanced at his progress bar, which had returned to 490, thought of Lian Jun, patted his cheeks to perk himself up, and unlocked the tablet.

There were two files in the folder.
Shi Jin opened the smaller one first.

An old hospital abortion record appeared on the screen.
The patient’s name was Xiang Qing, and the reason for the abortion was written to be, “Pregnancy terminated because the gravida suffers from systemic disease unfavorable to the proper development of the fetus.”

Systemic disease?

Surprised, Shi Jin slid down the document.

According to the enclosed hospital records, Xiang Qing caught a severe case of flu while she was pregnant with her first child.
It was bad enough her life was endangered, but the medicine she had to take had side effects and might have lead to malformation of fetus.
In the end, she chose abortion.

It seemed this abortion wasn’t deliberate.

Shi Jin’s brows wrinkled.
He closed the file and opened the second.

An old, black-and-white, family photo jumped out at him.
The person who compiled the information considerately drew a red circle around a child to the right of the front row, indicating it was the young Shi Xingrui.

Shi Jin never expected the investigator would even dig up Shi Xingrui’s childhood and was very appreciative of his or her meticulousness.
He examined the appearance of the people in the photo but found nothing special, so he continued to read.

The document was quite long—the information on Shi Xingrui’s childhood until high school, alone, accounted for over a dozen pages, most of which was a long list of school honors and awards, awards for winning writing contests, and so on.
It was clear Shi Xingrui had always been “someone else’s child.”

Shi Xingrui’s family wasn’t well off—on the contrary, it could even be called impoverished.
His father came from a large family and had seven siblings but only managed to sire a single child.
His mother’s body was weak, and she couldn’t do much work.
As such, his family’s livelihood was dependent on his father.

Probably because of the lack of more children and his mother’s poor health, Shi Xingrui’s family wasn’t very welcomed in their home village.
They lived in the most remote house, and Shi Xingrui seemed to be often bullied by his cousins.

Shi Xingrui spent his first years in his hometown.
When he graduated from elementary school, he became the only child in the village admitted to the county town middle school.
This was when his and his parents’ luck shifted.

In those days, attending middle school required an expensive tuition fee; Shi Xingrui’s family couldn’t afford it.
His father wanted to borrow the money from his siblings, but they weren’t willing.
In an unexpected surge of determination, he sold the house which he’d bought less than two years earlier, transferred the fields under his name to somebody else, took his wife and son, and moved to the county town.

In the beginning, they fell on hard times because Shi Xingrui’s father wasn’t highly educated nor knew any profession other than farming.
Fortunately, Shi Xingrui managed to win a scholarship and helped his father through those difficult days.

At the time, China was full of business opportunities.
By chance, Shi Xingrui’s father met a small businessman and started doing business with him, gradually becoming more and more affluent.
Shi Xingrui smoothly integrated into the county town middle school, continuing his “someone else’s child” glory.

The years of middle school passed without a hitch.
Shi Xingrui’s father saved enough money to buy a house in the provincial capital and decided to move his business there, after Shi Xingrui passed the high school entrance exam, to let their family stay together.

It was a pity the Heavens made nothing of mortals’ plans.
The day after Shi Xingrui got the results of his entrance exam, his mother, who’d returned to their home village to share the good news with his grandparents, died under unclear circumstances in the Shi family home.
It was said that her old illness relapsed suddenly enough that she couldn’t be rescued.

It was impossible to know what really happened that year.
However, according to the information, Shi Xingrui’s father never went back to his hometown, nor did he send money to his family again.
He closed up his business, set up a small shop in the provincial capital, and cared only for his son.

Shi Xingrui also never returned to his hometown again.
Even after he became successful, he refused every request for help from the Shi family.
As if to make them deliberately angry, he went so far as to enthusiastically support his mother’s family.

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His journey through high school was smooth.
Always one of the best students in school, he managed to get high marks in the competitive exam and was admitted into one of the best universities in B City, choosing to study finance.
That year his father passed away, leaving Shi Xingrui all alone in the world.

After his father’s death, Shi Xingrui sold his home and store in the provincial capital, moved to B City, and started his own business while still a student.
That was the beginning of his legacy.

He spent two years investing in a variety of businesses, completing his first wave of capital build-up.
In his second year, he founded Ruixing and developed it slowly, paying equal attention to his business career and his studies.
By the time he graduated from university, Ruixing was already a small but prestigious enterprise.
When he could fully concentrate on managing the company, Ruixing began to develop at a rapid pace.
In less than five years, it gained a firm foothold in B City and aimed for the world.

Nothing significant happened in the next few years.
Then, when he was 27, Shi Xingrui met Shi Weichong’s mother, Xu Jie, and accepted her as an assistant.

At this point, Shi Jin paused.
He returned to the beginning of the document and carefully analyzed the first half of Shi Xingrui’s life.
As he did so, a strange sense of violation grew stronger and stronger.

Although the world has never been short of geniuses or lucky people, someone like Shi Xingrui, who seemed to have never failed since he was a child, nor made a single misstep, was an anomaly.
Shi Jin had never seen a child whose academic performance was so perfectly stable even after just losing a parent.

Moreover, Shi Xingrui’s investment vision was way too accurate—not only had his business never lost money, it had made him a fortune.
All the competitors who tried to stop his development ended up bankrupt.
He avoided all the severe business crises, and he pulled out of all the businesses affected by a sudden change in official policy in advance as if he could foretell the future.

It was too amazing—he seemed enveloped in a protagonist’s halo.

But was it possible for someone to be this outstanding and this lucky?

Shi Jin frowned.
Recalling his own transmigration, he couldn’t help but wonder if Shi Xingrui also had some sort of cheat, or maybe had been reborn, or…

He shook his head, stopping with pointless guesses, and turned his attention back to the document.
He skimmed through the pages describing how Shi Xingrui became a business legend, moving onto the part about his interpersonal relationships, and began to browse through the photos, searching for anyone who looked similar to him, either a man or woman.

Due to the sheer number of photos, it took him a lot of time, but in the end, Shi Jin never found anyone with an appearance close to his own.
He was overcome with doubt.

There’s none?

The document even contained the photos of Shi Xingrui’s elementary school’s classmates.
He speculated the man wanted someone’s replacement, his first love or such, but had he been wrong?

Refusing to give up, he looked through the photos again, this time adding one more condition—someone fat.

He still got nothing.

Was he wrong after all? He frowned, distressed, noticed a straw next to his lips, and reflexively sucked on it.
He found it was his favorite mango juice and muttered approvingly, “Tasty.”

“What’s troubling you?” The person who fed him juice asked affectionately.

Shi Jin nearly choked.
He looked at Lian Jun, who had reappeared at his bedside at some point, and a smile lit up his face.
“When did you get back?”

“Just now,” Lian Jun replied, his expression easing at the teenager’s smile.
“Is there something wrong with the information? You were frowning.”

Shi Jin was happy to have someone to bounce ideas off.
He edged closer and showed him the document on the tablet, telling him his speculations and suspicions.
Finally, he sighed.
“I’m beginning to doubt whether I guessed wrong, but my intuition tells me I’m right.
I don’t know what to think.”

“Maybe Shi Xingrui’s love was unrequited? What’s more, they didn’t necessarily have to know each other—at least on the surface, there might have been no intersections between them,” Lian Jun spoke his thoughts then appeased, “You shouldn’t doubt yourself—when all the clues point to one thing, then no matter how impossible, it’s likely to be true.”

Shi Jin’s heart steadied.
He took a deep breath and picked up the tablet, studying the information and photos again.
He put a hand on his forehead and continued to ponder—Shi Xingrui had never been able to forget this person, so just when and how could have they met?

Translator’s Notes:

“Someone else’s child” [别人家的孩子] – have you ever heard the “How are your grades so bad, just look at your cousin/classmate/the neighbors’ son…” speech? Need I explain more?