Chapter 1: Kill That Gold-Digging Scammer (1)
Prologue:
In the novel’s ending, Shen Wu wrote:
On the second night of staying in the same room as the corpse of “Shen Hangwu,” Xie Cishu died.
He hadn’t intended to commit suicide.
He had simply taken the wrong medicine. Having been drinking, he mistook the Cephalosporin for sleeping pills and took a few too many.
Perhaps it was more than just a few.
But he could no longer remember.
He just wanted to get a good night’s sleep.
…
Shen Wu was very satisfied with the ending he had given this book.
For Xie Cishu’s tragic life, prison shouldn’t be his final destination. Death should.
After clicking publish on the final chapter, Shen Wu turned off his computer and stood up. After rubbing his aching neck, he went to the fridge in the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of ice-cold mineral water.
One gulp was enough to refresh his mind.
He checked the time; it was already 12:30 AM.
But for Shen Wu, whose days and nights were inverted, the night was still young.
Shen Wu’s profession was a full-time author.
He was persistent and passionate about writing “dogblood” novels. He made them as melodramatic as possible, often serving up such a mess of drama that readers wanted to crawl through their internet cables just to slap him twice.
But he was fearless, bravely being himself.
After tossing his phone onto the bed, Shen Wu took his pajamas into the bathroom.
He rented a small one-bedroom apartment.
After paying the rent and necessary living expenses from his monthly royalties, he basically had nothing left.
It wasn’t that his spending was high, but that his income was too low. The novels he wrote were such massive failures that few people read them, so he naturally couldn’t make much money, barely managing to keep himself fed and warm.
By the time he finished his shower, it was nearly 1:00 AM. Shen Wu picked up his phone from the bed and happily opened Honor of Kings.
As a total shut-in, Shen Wu only had one hobby: gaming.
Aside from his daily required writing time, he spent almost all his spare time playing games.
…
“There’s a game that makes you younger, Honor of Kings on your phone~ No one here calls me ‘little bro’~ because they all call me an ‘elementary student’~”
Shen Wu hummed to himself as he entered the matchmaking phase.
As expected.
After one game, he had indeed become “younger.”
Because he had been scolded until he was someone’s grandson.
But he was defiant.
Looking at his 1-9-2 record, he fell into deep thought.
[The screen protector needs to be changed; the touch sensitivity is off.]
[The opponents I matched with were too strong; my luck was just bad.]
[My teammates were too trashy to carry me.]
[I shouldn’t have played Angela; I should have played Daji!!!]
…
In any case, this record was absolutely not a reflection of his true skill.
He decisively started another round.
Loss.
Another.
Still a loss!
After a six-game losing streak, Shen Wu began to doubt his life.
Trash game, ruining my youth! Uninstall!
Shen Wu stared at the uninstall button, but after a moment of silence, he pulled his hand back. He comforted himself: Come to think of it, today just wasn’t a good day. It wasn’t suitable for ranked matches. It’s not the game’s fault.
Suddenly, a rooster’s crow startled Shen Wu.
D*mn it, he’d only played a few games. It couldn’t be 6:00 AM already, could it?
He checked the time; it was only past 4:00 AM.
Is this rooster a bit early today? Curse it!
He lived in a complex full of illegal structures. The floor above the sixth floor was originally a terrace, but it had been fenced off by the sixth-floor tenant to raise several chickens.
When Shen Wu first moved in, he couldn’t sleep at all because of the noise. He had even thought about secretly getting rid of those chickens.
But he never did.
He was afraid of being called a chicken thief.
After a long time, he eventually got used to it.
He had to admit, his adaptability was quite strong.
After getting up to use the restroom, he prepared to sleep.
But as he lay in bed, his brain became more and more awake.
[I shouldn’t have bought the Blood-Drinking Claw just now; I should have bought the Star-Breaker Hammer.]
[So frustrating! I shouldn’t have face-checked that bush in the final wave!]
[No, if I don’t win a round tonight, I won’t be able to sleep!]
…
With a flip, Shen Wu scrambled out of bed and turned the lights back on.
He thought to himself: I’ll play one last game. If I win, I’ll sleep.
The result was that not only did he not win, but he also got into an argument with someone.
When it came to arguing, Shen Wu actually had some skill. As netizens put it: if you throw a brick into a kennel, the one that barks the loudest is Shen Wu.
A bit crude, but accurate.
Even though he lost the game, Shen Wu won the argument.
He felt his heart beating a bit faster than usual and couldn’t help but frown. He cursed silently, thinking he must be worked up from that idiot’s comments.
In the next second, he collapsed onto the bed.
———
“Sigh!”
Shen Wu squatted under the old locust tree by the door, a stalk of foxtail grass dangling from his mouth.
After his 10,086th sigh, 0032 couldn’t help but ask, “Host, is there a problem?”
The problem is huge!
After dying from sudden cardiac arrest, he had been mysteriously bound to 0032.
0032 told him that as long as he bound himself to the System and completed missions in small worlds, he could not only be resurrected but also receive a reward of one hundred billion.
Was Shen Wu the type to pass up such a bargain? Of course not!
He had agreed to 0032 decisively.
But the moment he was transferred to this small world, Shen Wu was dumbfounded.
Isn’t this the book he just finished, Kill That Gold-Digging Scammer?
He had transmigrated as the protagonist shou, Shen Hangwu!!!
Moreover, he looked exactly like his real self, even down to the position of the mole at the corner of his eye. Shen Wu even suspected he was being set up.
0032 told him that his mission was to follow the original plot he had written.
Shen Wu: ?
Excuse me, the original plot was that Shen Hangwu scammed Xie Cishu out of a huge sum of money and was murdered by Xie Cishu while trying to elope with a lover!
That was a real murder! A one-hit kill, dead-as-a-doornail style death.
Thinking of this, Shen Wu couldn’t help but shudder. “0032, if I scam Xie Cishu, he’ll kill me.”
“It’s fine. I won’t let him kill you, and you can directly leave the world once the mission is complete.”
The System had bound Shen Wu precisely to ensure that Xie Cishu wouldn’t carry the stigma of being a murderer and could live out his life in peace. How could it let Xie Cishu kill Shen Wu?
“That’s still not okay. I’m straight. How can I… scam a man…”
Furthermore, Shen Wu had written quite a bit of R-18 content. To scam Xie Cishu, Shen Hangwu hadn’t hesitated to “enter the game with his own body,” engaging in all sorts of cosplay in the bedroom, bathtub, balcony, and sofa…
It was simply—
Looking back now, he had definitely written things without any restraint.
But even though he wrote BL novels, his personal sexual orientation was normal. Making him be pressed down by a man… wasn’t that just asking for his life?
0032 was silent for a few seconds. Every host seemed to have said this to it.
But in the end, they all ended up with men.
So, did “straight” in their mouths just mean “straight into a man’s arms”?
It felt like it finally understood.
“It’s okay, Host. Just be yourself. When the lights go out and your eyes are shut, just stick your rear out and it’ll be over.”
While 0032 didn’t know the… specific details of the operation, it felt like it should be quite enjoyable. After all, every time it came out of the “little black room,” it saw the host looking completely satiated.
Shen Wu: ?
Is this something a human says?
“It’s not your rear that’s suffering the hardship, so of course you think it’s fine.”
0032: …
“So, does the Host want to accept this mission? if not, I’ll unbind and find a new host.”
Shen Wu: … Was he being discarded just like that?
“Then what about me?”
“You’re already dead! You’ll go into reincarnation, of course. I hope the Host won’t suffer a sudden death in your next life.”
0032 finished and let out a very human-like sigh. “I need to find someone who’s willing to take a hundred billion.”
Shen Wu: …
Right, there was still the hundred billion!
While it’s true a man shouldn’t sell himself no matter how poor he is, if it was for one hundred billion, Shen Wu felt that he could occasionally relax his bottom line.
Bravely… be himself.
“Wait, who said I wasn’t willing to do this mission? I’ve already been transferred, of course I’m doing it.”
“Very well, Host. I wish you a speedy completion of the mission.”
0032 was about to vanish when Shen Wu suddenly stopped it. “Wait.”
“Is there another problem, Host?”
“Why does Shen Hangwu look exactly like me?”
0032:
“Because this is a small world generated from a book. Since you’ve come to take over Shen Hangwu’s role, you naturally use your own face.”
Shen Wu: …
So that was it.
———
Standard Content Warning:
Do not ask if it is “unclean” for the protagonist gong to be with the original protagonist shou “Shen Hangwu.”
This small world is a book; the plot line only begins when Shen Wu transmigrates. He is the protagonist shou.
!
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