Death Progress Bar Chapter 36 - God's Will

Chapter 36: G.o.d’s Will

As expected, someone shot at him—most likely a member of Black Rose.

s.h.i.+ Jin broke out in a cold sweat. He stabilized his body and just breathed a sigh of relief when he noticed his progress bar jumped up into the death zone. His pupils shrunk down to pinp.r.i.c.ks. Without thinking, he rolled behind a street trash can.

The next second, the bullet grazed the trash can. s.h.i.+ Jin let out a m.u.f.fled grunt and clutched his shoulder.

Too bad—the can was too narrow to provide sufficient cover for such a big target.

s.h.i.+ Jin shrunk his body as much as possible, trying to hide, and the burning pain in his shoulder made him hiss. As his progress bar refused to budge, he looked around and found a narrow alley not too far behind him. It had a large metal dustbin standing against one wall. Gritting his teeth, he took off the bulky bear’s head. After Xiao Si gave him the speed and enhanced hearing buffs, he threw it as far as he could. Then, he jumped toward a nearby pile of trash bags, rolled again, and lurched forward in a hunched run, hoping the heap of rubbish and the head would buy him a bit of time.

Pew pew pew.

It was the sound of a few missed shots. s.h.i.+ Jin was certain he felt the turbulence of the air as the bullets pa.s.sed by. His nerves stretched to breaking point, he finally saw the entrance to the alley near. He dropped to the ground and rolled into it safely, taking cover behind the dustbin.

Pew, pew pew.

The bullets. .h.i.t the wall and ricocheted off the metal surface, and gradually stopped coming. s.h.i.+ Jin’s enhanced hearing could no longer detect any suspicious sounds.

He leaned against the wall. The rusty metal dustbin partially blocked the alley’s entrance, and he had no idea where the unseen exit led. The wound on his shoulder was getting more and more painful and the feeling of blood loss became more and more obvious. Once he was sure he was temporarily safe, he took a deep breath to brace himself, sat a little straighter, and took off the bear costume. While vigilantly observing the alley’s entrance, he peeled off a partof its lining, unzipped his jacket and wrapped his wound to at least slow down the bleeding. Then he tidied up his clothes, hid the costume in the corner, and walked toward the alley’s other end, supporting himself on the wall.

Xiao Si’s voice was trembling. This was the first time it saw s.h.i.+ Jin be injured.

“It’s fine,” s.h.i.+ Jin soothed, trying to adjust his breathing. Keeping an eye on his surroundings, he said, “The sniper ambushed me on the old street while I was dressed as a bear. Now that I left the street and took the costume off, he shouldn’t be able to find me anymore.”

The system was about to cry from panic. It kept giving s.h.i.+ Jin buffs, one after another.

Immediately, the pain significantly eased and s.h.i.+ Jin’s body temperature, which had fallen due to the injury, returned to normal. He realized it was due to Xiao Si’s help and managed to smile. “I won’t die. Don’t I have you? You’re my golden finger—”

Cras.h.!.+

The alley was unlit and full of trash. As s.h.i.+ Jin shuffled through it, he didn’t notice there was a tangle of fis.h.i.+ng line in a pile of junk in front of him. He avoided the pile, but the fis.h.i.+ng line caught his feet, causing him to stumble and fall. Unfortunately, he landed on his injured arm, and an excruciating pain shot through his body. He felt as if all the strength he had left drained away into the ground beneath him.

Xiao Si shrieked.

“I’m…” s.h.i.+ Jin turned over to lie on his back and dark spots appeared before his eyes—it seemed the fall harmed him more than he thought. Resignedly, he changed what he had planned to say. “I’m not fine. Xiao Si, help me watch the alley, okay?”

His phone, which he’d tucked away in the jacket’s inner pocket, survived all the excitement. He took it out, sighing inwardly—in the end, Lian Jun would have to clean up his mess. He selected the number on the top of his call list and pressed the call icon, but it took a long time for the call to connect. Clinging to the last vestiges of consciousness, he shouted, “Jun-shao, help,” and reported his position in as much detail as possible. Then, he pa.s.sed out.

Ten minutes later, a black car stopped next to the alley’s entrance. The rear door opened and a slender man in a long black coat got off, holding a phone that was showing it was in the middle of a call. He softly trod on the dirty snow in the alley and stopped in front of s.h.i.+ Jin crumpled on the ground.

Crack.

The man stepped on s.h.i.+ Jin’s mobile phone, which had slipped from his hand, and stooped down. He reached out to touch the pale, bloodless face, his slender fingers stopping over the small beauty mark on the teenager’s nose. After a long moment, he leaned over and lifted him from the ground.

Xiao Si was so frightened it was about to crash. It goggled at the man’s face with shock, not daring to believe its eyes. It looked at s.h.i.+ Jin’s progress bar, which rose from 700 to 800 at the moment the man appeared, glanced at the cracked phone, and felt like weeping. Wis.h.i.+ng it had a save file it could reboot itself from, it wailed, choking out,

On his side, Lian Jun, who wasn’t able to settle down, finally dialed s.h.i.+ Jin’s number, but the call couldn’t get through because the other party was on the phone. His eyebrows wrinkled and the uneasy feeling in his heart got stronger. He called the club and asked for someone to find out what s.h.i.+ Jin was doing.

A few minutes later, his subordinate reported back and said that they had checked the whole six floors, but did not see s.h.i.+ Jin—the teenager disappeared.

Lian Jun’s face darkened. He recalled the appearance of the plush bear throwing out fireworks; the more he thought about it, the more familiar it felt. He ended the call and ordered, “Gua One, go back. s.h.i.+ Jin is not in the club—that bear was probably him.”

In the midst of shocked silence, Gua Two blurted out, “What?! That was s.h.i.+ Jin?!”

Gua One frowned and changed the direction at once, rus.h.i.+ng back to Solidarity.

When they arrived, the government people had already got the situation under control and caught most of the members of Black Rose present. The street was littered with trampled remains of fireworks, candies and balloon debris, bringing to mind the sad scene one would see the next day after a festival.

The official in charge noticed Lian Jun’s car coming back and hurried toward it, inquiring, “Mr. Lian, why are you back? You can rest a.s.sured that all the enemies have been caught, and there were no casualties among your people.”

Lian Jun did not beat around the bush. “What about the man in the bear costume that helped us out?”

“The bear? He’s gone. Wasn’t that someone you sent to hinder Black Rose’s shooters’ line of fire? I followed your earlier instructions and ordered my people to let him leave,” the official responded, not understanding why Lian Jun’s face looked so ugly.

Gua Three said with a dignified expression, “We sent three waves of people to obstruct the enemy. One wave was the ‘cleaner’ who at that time was approaching the community along the street, the second was the scouts inside who were about to reach the gate, and the ‘delivery boy’ and ‘plumber’ who were supposed to waylay the enemies waiting in ambush. Finally, the last wave was the people infiltrating all the possible sniping positions. There was no one in the bear costume.”

The other man was bewildered. “But didn’t you say you wanted someone to escort him? I thought he was from your side, so I ordered my man to cover his retreat to the edge of the buffer zone. All the members of Black Rose were here, he should’ve been safe away from the battlefront.”

Gua One’s face turned ugly—covering someone’s retreat to the buffer zone was escorting him to safety? He was safe since he was away from the battlefront? Taking into consideration the snipers’ possible attack range, casually determining the scope of ‘battlefront’ and ‘battlefield’ was sheer idiocy!

“Drive down the street,” Lian Jun ordered, his voice sinking. He didn’t want to waste any more time with the official.

Gua One immediately started the car and began to search for traces along the street. Gua Three called his people, instructing them to look for the man in the bear costume.

Five minutes later, the car stopped beside the tricycle at the end of the old street. Gua Two opened the door and got off to examine it. He found a backpack with some items inside and turned towards the car with an unsightly expression: “This is s.h.i.+ Jin’s backpack, I was with him when he bought it.”

So the bear really was s.h.i.+ Jin.

“All the snipers were caught. The attack range of one of them included this place.” Gua Three ended the call and relayed what his subordinate just told him.

Looking tense, Lian Jun said, “Get off the car and look for him.”

The bullet marks, garbage strewn on the ground, bear’s head that rolled to the corner… The more traces they found, the deeper their hearts sank. However, it wasn’t until the moment Gua Nine found the b.l.o.o.d.y bear costume tucked behind a dustbin in a small alley that their expressions changed drastically.

“There’s blood on it, s.h.i.+ Jin is hurt. Judging from the place, he was shot in the shoulder.” Gua One handed the costume to Lian Jun.

Lian Jun took it. Perhaps because of the freezing weather, his face took on an almost deathly pallor. He touched the b.l.o.o.d.y marks, then rolled his wheelchair forward for a while, until he reached Gua Two, who was walking in the front looking for clues.

Gua Two stepped over the fis.h.i.+ng line lying in the middle of the alley and took a few steps forward. He picked up a mobile phone with a broken screen from the ground and looked at Lian Jun, saying, “It’s s.h.i.+ Jin’s phone. There are man’s footprints coming from the street over there to this place and back; s.h.i.+ Jin should have been taken away.”

Lian Jun stared fixedly at the bloodstain on the ground, which was hard to make out because of all the dirt. His eyes resembled the pools of darkness, and his voice was so tight it seemed to be squeezed out from the cracks between his teeth: “Check it. Copy s.h.i.+ Jin’s call history and find out who he called last!”

s.h.i.+ Jin woke up in a room permeated with the smell of antiseptic. He was dizzy and couldn’t feel his body. He struggled to crack open his eyes, but catching sight of a man sitting beside the bed, he let his eyelids fall, bitter. Please, not again. He felt that each time he woke to this kind of scene, nothing good ever followed.

Unfortunately, it turned out his intuition was disgustingly accurate.

Xiao Si found out he regained consciousness and hurriedly said,

Li Jiuzheng? How come? Didn’t he call Lian Jun?

Bewildered, s.h.i.+ Jin snapped his eyes open, only to see Li Jiuzheng’s scalpel hanging right in front of his face, pointing at his eyeball.

He took a cold breath and almost fainted in fear. He instinctively tried to back away, but behind him was the headboard.

“As I thought, you woke up.” A voice, mellow and pleasant to hear, but lacking any emotion, came from the bedside. The scalpel suspended in front of s.h.i.+ Jin’s eyes disappeared.

s.h.i.+ Jin let out a relieved sigh, his heart thumping wildly. He stiffly turned his head to the side to look a the speaker.

Like all s.h.i.+ Xingrui’s sons, Li Jiuzheng’s looks were extraordinary.

Unlike the eldest brother’s mature charm, the third brother’s bewitching beauty, and the fourth brother’s rugged good looks, Li Jiuzheng’s face appeared cold but tender. The soft line of his cheek, the eyebrows curving in a gentle arc over the slightly drooping eyes, light-colored lips, straight nose… When he turned his eyes downwards and didn’t speak, it created the illusion he was a meek, melancholic beauty. However, this was just an illusion—once Li Jiuzheng raised his eyes, the person he looked at would quickly realize he wasn’t a man to be trifled with. There were indifference and a sense of alienation in his eyes that would never appear in the eyes of a truly gentle person.

Li Jiuzheng wasn’t melancholy at all, quite the opposite, he made other people melancholy—such as s.h.i.+ Jin right now.

It was a small ward separated from the rest of the room by curtains. s.h.i.+ Jin was lying in the bed and Li Jiuzheng sat at his bedside, wearing a white doctor’s coat. There was only one lit lamp. Its light, pale and dim, cast the long shadows that obscured the expression on Li Jiuzheng’s face.

s.h.i.+ Jin swallowed with difficulty, suppressing the panic that tried to overwhelm him at the sight of Li Jiuzheng’s emotionless eyes. Warily eyeing the scalpel in the man’s hand, he forced a stiff smile and said, “Fifth, Fifth Brother, did you save me? Thank you.”

“The voice stayed the same,” Li Jiuzheng spoke. The sound of his voice seemed to float in the air and cool it down. His eyes deepened, and the strange look that had been misunderstood by the original ‘s.h.i.+ Jin’ countless times appeared in them again. He whispered, “s.h.i.+ Jin, why did you lose weight…”

s.h.i.+ Jin kept silent—these words sounded familiar.

Xiao Si was scared to death:

f.u.c.king h.e.l.l! Li Jiuzheng really wants to kill the original ‘s.h.i.+ Jin!’ And his killing intent is quite strong!

s.h.i.+ Jin’s heart rose to his throat. His eyes swept over the room, catching sight of the red Fú characters pasted on the windows, and inspiration struck him: “I, I’m just not used to China yet! That’s why I got thinner, I’m missing home! But isn’t it Spring Festival already? After I eat all those festive dishes, I’ll get fat again. But Fifth Brother, it’s New Year’s Eve, why are in B City alone? When did you come here? Why aren’t you with your family, aren’t they worried?”

<900, JinJin! And he seems to be even scarier!> Xiao Si shuddered.

s.h.i.+ Jin was shocked. He couldn’t understand which of his words set his brother off so he shut up, not daring to speak any more nonsense. As he was wondering how to salvage the situation, Li Jiuzheng abruptly stood up and went to the bedside cabinet, exchanging the scalpel for a syringe. He drew a small amount of an unknown liquid, turned around, and took hold of s.h.i.+ Jin’s numb arm, then injected the liquid into it.

s.h.i.+ Jin’s eyes opened wide, bulging from terror. He wanted to struggle, but his body wasn’t listening to him.

“I, I’m not going to die, right?” s.h.i.+ Jin asked tremblingly in his mind.

Xiao Si was about to cry.