1 Getting Stronger by Playing Games

After a day's work, Ning Shi returned to the rented house.

The computer in the room cost more than 10,000 yuan. The mainframe was covered in dust and the monitor had not been turned on for a long time.

For the first two years of his work, Ning Shi looked forward to getting off work and resting on weekends, playing all kinds of 3A games and MOBA games.

In the third year of his work, he no longer play computer games and began to play King's Glory with his colleagues.

By now, he didn't even want to play King's Glory anymore.

Ning Shi was lying on his bed, playing short videos.

Suddenly, a pop-up window appeared on the screen of his phone.

"Five-star mobile game 'Centuries', fully automatic play, one-click hack upgrade!"

"Centuries"?

It looked a little interesting.

Ning Shi clicked on the pop-up window link and downloaded the game.

The game was very big, with a total of 13 gigabytes.

1%... 5%... 20%... 100%.

Installing... installation complete.

This game was very strange. The icon was a black figure meditating and practicing.

Ning Shi clicked on the icon and entered the game.

This game was too substandard. There wasn't even any background music. A dialog box directly popped up on the screen.

"Do you want to create a game avatar?"

A 13-gigabyte game took a lot of effort to download. Ning Shi maintained a certain level of patience and directly clicked "Yes."

Ning Shi suddenly felt a chill in his head. It was as if he had been cut by a sharp knife. His head was empty as if something was missing.

"Avatar created, the game officially begins!"

Then, Ning Shi's game character appeared in a bare room.

Ning Shi clicked on the screen and controlled the character to move. He wanted to open the door and walk out.

"Avatar ability is too low. Unable to enter novice village."

The game notification stunned Ning Shi. What kind of game was this?

Creating a character with no profession or skills, just staying in an empty room.

Ning Shi resisted the urge to delete the game. He clicked on the character's profile to check the interface.

"F*ck!"

The image on the screen shocked Ning Shi so much that he almost threw his phone out.

On the character's profile image, it was a person who looked exactly like Ning Shi.

He was wearing shorts and his upper body was bare. He was sitting cross-legged. Not only did he look exactly like Ning Shi, but he had the same bloated figure. 

Even the shape of the scars on his arms was the same.

"Could it be that the game developer recorded all the characteristics of my body through massive data collection?"

"That's impossible. I just downloaded this game. The developer wouldn't even have time to create a temporary model."

Ning Shi picked up his phone and was ready to log out of the game and return to the phone's home page.

"You are about to log out of the game. Do you want to hang up and let your avatar train on its own?"

Ning Shi felt that something was off. He chose "No".

After choosing "No", he was still in the game and could not log out. Feeling helpless, he could only choose "Yes".

"Your avatar is in the training room to train, please wait patiently."

Ning Shi ignored the game notification. He logged out of the game and opened his mobile browser to search for "Centuries".

He found that there was no such game on the Internet. The search results all led to a book. 

"Centuries" was a collection of prophetic poems written by the Prophet Chadain of the Kingdom of Mies. This book was written in the 16th century and accurately predicted many major events in the future of the Saturn World.

The birth of nuclear weapons, the impact on the Mieln Federal World Trade Center and the eruption of an undersea volcano in the Eastern Ocean. Whether it was in the field of science and technology, social hotspots or natural phenomena, "Centuries" had made accurate predictions.

Ning Shi read through the collection of poems earnestly. The last paragraph of the collection was a prediction of the human world in the 21st century.

"The world is a piece of paper in the hands of God. God was so playful that he folded it into a paper airplane. In the future, the paper airplane will eventually flatten into a piece of paper again."

If it was in the past, Ning Shi would have scoffed at this kind of vague prediction.

It was nothing more than a fortune teller's bluff.

But today's experience was a little strange. Ning Shi had to be careful and remember this sentence in his heart.

He opened the desktop computer that he hadn't used for a long time and logged into the major game forums, but he still didn't find any clues about this game "Centuries".

This game seemed to have been born out of thin air.

Ning Shi made up his mind and entered the game again. He found the avatar that looked exactly like him in the training room doing squats.

Ning Shi opened the character's profile and looked carefully.

Game Avatar: Ning Shi

Physique: 4 (sub-healthy)

Spiritual Power: 3 (weak)

Appearance: 6 (quite handsome)

Family Background: 5 (ordinary)

Bloodline: Ordinary human

Occupation: Programmer

Skills: Software programming Level 4, PPT production Level 1

Talent: Learning (white)

Achievements: None

Ning Shi clicked on "Physique" and an explanation about it appeared.

"'Physique' represents the overall quality of the body, including strength, agility, reaction ability and a series of indicators. As strength, agility and other indicators are interrelated, they are not listed separately. The standard physique of an ordinary human is 5, and the limit physique is 10."

"The main body is engaged in mental work all year round and lacks exercise. The body is in a sub-healthy state and its physique is 4."

He continued to click on "Spiritual Power".

"'Spiritual Power' represents an invisible power that governs the body, including soul, mind, wisdom, will and other indicators. The standard spiritual power of an ordinary human is 5, and the limit spiritual power is 10."

"The main body is a graduate of a famous university, so its brain power is better. Spiritual power was originally 6, but it took 3 points to create the avatar, so its spiritual power is 3."

As for the rest of the information such as "Bloodline", "Skills", "Talent" and "Achievements", when he clicked on them, the game only gave a cold response.

"Please explore on your own."

Ning Shi's expression changed and he clicked on "Game Avatar".

The system gave an explanation as expected.

"The 'Game Avatar' is made up of a part of the main body's soul. If the avatar dies in the game, its spiritual power attribute will drop a little. When the spiritual power drops to 0, it will die permanently. Note: The avatar and the main body's various attributes can be synchronized."

The avatar was made from the main body's soul and it could be synchronized with the main body's various attributes!

Ning Shi understood that he had hit the jackpot!

If the avatar in the game became stronger, his main body would also become stronger!

Of course, opportunities also represented danger. If his spiritual power was 0, he would die!

Ning Shi fumbled around with the game interface again and found the synchronization button at the top of the game interface.

He clicked it and the game notification said, "There is no data difference between the avatar and the main body at the moment, unable to synchronize."

If Ning Shi did not manually synchronize, the game would automatically synchronize the body data of the avatar and the main body every month.

Ning Shi set the timer to synchronize at 10 a.m. every day.

Synchronize once a day.

Whether this game was a scam or if it had superpowers, would depend on whether Ning Shi's body was effective after the synchronization.

In his heart, Ning Shi already believed that he had picked up a golden finger.

Whether it was the realistic feeling of his soul being cut apart when he created the avatar or the avatar being the same as him in reality, it all showed that this game was not something that ordinary humans could develop.

After thinking for a while, Ning Shi felt unusually tired. He lay on the bed and fell asleep in a daze. He had lost 3 points of spiritual power. It was impossible for him to not have any sequelae.

He slept very soundly until 9:30 a.m. when his immediate superior, Yu Shilong, called.

"Ning Shi, where are you? Didn't you know about this morning's meeting? Do you still want to work?"

Yu Shilong roared on the phone. Ning Shi's face was filled with disgust as he said coldly, "I'm not feeling well. I'm asking for leave today."

"What?! I won't allow it! There's a hole in the technical post and requests for leave must be reported one week in advance..."

Yu Shilong was still rambling over the phone and Ning Shi directly hung up the phone.

This Yu Shilong's technical ability was extremely poor. He relied on his flattery and superb PPT production skills to become the team leader. To find a sense of presence, the team members had to have a morning meeting at 9:20 a.m. every day.

One had to know that Ning Shi works for an Internet company. The company's working hours were from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

Encountering this kind of leadership, Ning Shi had long wanted to resign.

Ning Shi had worked for five years and had always been single. He did not have any huge expenses. Given his programmer's salary, his bank account had more than 600,000 yuan.

He was single and his parents did not need him to take care of them for the time being, so there was no pressure on him.

Ning Shi shook his head. After his spiritual power dropped, his thinking seemed to slow down.

He went downstairs to eat a bowl of beef noodles. When he returned home, it was just 10 o'clock.

The game notification appeared directly in his mind.

"The avatar is training in the training room for six hours, physique +1, meditation for six hours, spiritual power +1."

"Synchronizing the main body and the avatar..."

Ning Shi felt unknown energy flowing into his body and it was very comfortable.

His body had changed.

His small belly, caused by years of inactivity, slowly disappeared and muscle contours appeared on his arms. The cervical spondylosis caused by years of sitting at a desk and playing with his phone also healed without the use of medicine.

He shook his neck and there was no pain at all!

Not only that, the degree of myopia in his eyes also decreased. Ning Shi's previous myopia was more than 600 degrees, which was considered high myopia. When he took off his glasses, his vision was blurry.

Now that he did not wear glasses, he could see some things clearly!

"This has only added one point of physique, and my physique has reached five points. It is the standard physique of an ordinary human, but it already has such an effect."

Ning Shi muttered, "Looks like I'm going to be rich. With this game avatar, anything is possible!"