Rebirth

Groggy, Lu Yang opened his eyes, feeling the damp stickiness on his back. His clothes clung uncomfortably to his skin, his memories frozen on the moment he fell off the cliff.

Is this death? It's not as scary as people say. I've always heard that people who jump from high places end up looking like sachima. I wonder if I look like one now, Lu Yang thought with a self-deprecating smile.

So what if he was dead? Lu Yang accepted it with equanimity. He had avenged the wrongs of his past life, leaving no regrets. But why did so much dissatisfaction still linger in his heart?

Was it trusting the wrong friend, or was he simply destined for this fate?

In 2040, Earth's industrial civilization experienced explosive growth. Machines replaced most manual labor, while the global population soared to an unprecedented 12 billion due to advances in healthcare.

Unemployment, widening wealth gaps, public grievances, and protests became synonymous with every nation.

To address these issues, countries united in various efforts. One such effort was the joint development of a 3D holographic simulation online game called "Second World" by nine of the most developed nations, fulfilling the dreams of global players for decades.

This game had only one server, where all players from around the world competed. Over 3 billion people entered the game, making it a favorite among investors. When the official platform enabled real-time exchange between in-game currency and real-world currency, it genuinely alleviated the pressure on some of the unemployed population.

Lu Yang was just an ordinary working-class kid. During his free time from university, he entered the game to supplement his family's income, becoming a gold farmer for a studio. However, Lu Yang never expected that such a small figure like himself would accidentally make a name for himself. He not only created a small guild of 5,000 people but also built a defensive fortress in a top-tier monster zone.

The top-tier monster zone was half a day's run away from the nearest system main city. Lu Yang's fortress was immediately welcomed by all players, who could buy medicine, repair equipment, trade at the auction house, and rest offline within its walls.

This fortress was more than just a gold mine; it was a massive source of wealth. At this point, Lu Yang had reached the pinnacle of his life. He believed that this fortress could bring a better life to his family and brothers, but Lu Yang did not expect that this was just an illusion.

On the third day after the fortress was built, Liu Jie, the president of the number one guild in the China Region and the young master of a Chinese super-rich family in reality, personally visited with three hundred elite members, wanting to buy the fortress from Lu Yang.

Lu Yang naturally refused. Liu Jie's price was only 10% higher than the construction cost, essentially treating Lu Yang and his people like laborers. Moreover, this fortress was the result of the joint efforts of 5,000 brothers, who had elected Lu Yang as their leader to manage the fortress, representing their trust in him. If he sold it just like that, how could Lu Yang face his brothers in the future?

After rejecting Liu Jie, Lu Yang worried about retaliation. Although his subordinates had 60 Tier 3 mages, and he himself possessed the Demon God's Heart and was not afraid of being outnumbered, Lu Yang discussed with the guild's three vice presidents to have them each lead three elite teams in shifts to guard the city 24 hours a day to prevent sneak attacks.

After a month of continuous tension, Liu Jie's side showed no movement, which gradually relaxed Lu Yang's vigilance.

As the saying goes, trust can lead to both success and failure. It was precisely because Lu Yang completely trusted his close friends that on the third night after he lifted the alert, Huang Xiang, his bunkmate of four years in college and the main MT of the first team, told Lu Yang that a new boss had been discovered in the top-tier monster zone, requiring the full force of the guild's three main teams to defeat it.

Lu Yang didn't suspect anything and immediately led the three main teams to a valley map under Huang Xiang's guidance. However, upon arriving, Lu Yang saw not a boss, but the sneering face of Liu Jie, the president of the number one guild in the China Region, and his twelve main teams, 12,000 top-tier level 200 members.

Only then did Lu Yang realize that Liu Jie had not given up on the idea of acquiring his fortress. He had simply changed his approach, using a large sum of money to bribe his subordinates to betray him, luring him into this inescapable valley map and releasing a barrier that prevented the use of return scrolls.

That night, Lu Yang and his three main teams were continuously killed at least forty times by the other side using forced combat resurrection.

The equipment of the three thousand main team members was completely dropped, suffering heavy losses. The fortress was also breached by Liu Jie's other six main teams, and all of Lu Yang's hard work was reduced to nothing.

To build this fortress, Lu Yang had borrowed a lot of money from the bank. With the fortress and the help of his guild brothers, Lu Yang could easily repay these loans. But now that the fortress was destroyed and the equipment of the main team members was gone, Lu Yang completely lost his ability to repay the loans. Faced with the huge debt and the desperate eyes of his brothers, Lu Yang panicked and chose to escape, locking himself in his room and drowning his sorrows in alcohol.

Lu Yang thought that the rest of his life would be spent in this endless pain and struggle, but one thing completely awakened him.

His parents, who were 10 years away from retirement, decided to retire early from their state-owned enterprise to prevent Lu Yang from spending the rest of his life in debt, and went to work as laborers on construction sites every day to earn money for Lu Yang to repay his debts.

But in less than half a year, his father was inexplicably injured by heavy objects at the construction site and died in the hospital before he could be rescued. His father's death was a great blow to his mother, and she also passed away not long after.

The successive deaths of his parents in a short period of time made Lu Yang grief-stricken. He thought his father's death was an accident, but when he was knocked to the ground by Liu Jie's lackey, Wang Teng, who mockingly told him that everything was instructed by Liu Jie, Lu Yang realized that Liu Jie did not want to give him any chance to turn over.

Just as Wang Teng was about to kill Lu Yang, his comrade-in-arms Han Cheng, who had learned of the death of Lu Yang's parents, rushed over from another place and happened to rescue Lu Yang and take him abroad.

For 5 years, Han Cheng taught Lu Yang how to exercise and how to kill. 5 years later, Lu Yang, driven by his hatred, became the internationally renowned mercenary "Bloodfire," and returned to China with a team of mercenaries. He spent a lot of money to find out the time when Liu Jie would return home, and then Lu Yang ambushed him at the entrance of his house. The moment Liu Jie entered the house, he shot Liu Jie in the head.

At that moment, Lu Yang finally felt a sense of relief. He wanted to continue hunting down others who had harmed him, but Liu Jie's family used all their power to hunt him down. Lu Yang could only leave temporarily with the mercenary group. Unfortunately, near the border, Lu Yang was discovered by the police and the Liu family's assassins.

During the chase, Lu Yang led the police into the mountains alone to cover his injured brother, and was eventually intercepted on a cliff.

Faced with the police's persuasion to surrender, Lu Yang only sneered. He had avenged his great hatred in this life, and Lu Yang had no regrets or reason to live. He jumped off the cliff and chose to commit suicide.

However, at the moment of jumping, what flashed before Lu Yang's eyes was a smiling face and eyes without a trace of impurity. If there was any regret, it was her.

She was Lu Yang's university classmate, named Shen Mengyao. She was so beautiful, so untainted by the world. At that time, Lu Yang was just an inconspicuous ordinary person in the school. Her every smile could bring great encouragement to Lu Yang. At that time, the two were very close, but Shen Mengyao came from a prominent family.

Lu Yang originally wanted to confess his love when he had the strength, but Liu Jie did not give him that opportunity. 5 years later, when Lu Yang returned, he inquired about Shen Mengyao's news, but what he got was that Shen Mengyao had been married off under the arrangement of her family, but she was not happy.

Unwilling, ah. If he hadn't trusted the wrong friend…

If he could have had more time to develop…

If he could have become stronger…

If…

If…

The anger in his chest made Lu Yang reach out and punch the wall next to him. The intense pain instantly occupied his entire nervous system.

Lu Yang's eyes suddenly widened.

"Didn't I die? How can my arm still move? How do I still have nerve sensation?"

Lu Yang quickly sat up and checked his body, finding that his body, which should have been smashed into sachima, was still intact without a single wound. He touched his back, and the wet, sticky substance on his clothes was not blood but the sweat he had just sweated while lying on the bed because of the hot weather.

Lu Yang was stunned. What was going on? He wasn't dead, and he was still alive and well? How was this possible? Even in 2050, he had never heard of anyone being able to revive someone who had been smashed to pieces intact. Even if there was, it couldn't be used on him, and where was this?

Looking around, Lu Yang found that he was sitting on an old single bed, with a mosquito net covering the single bed tightly.

Pulling open the mosquito net, what came into view was an old wooden table that had been used for who knows how many years.

There was a line of words on the wall above the table: "Are you not ashamed!"

The moment he saw these four words, Lu Yang felt a cold war all over his body and his scalp went numb. He thought in disbelief, Isn't this the old house I lived in when I graduated from high school? These four words were written at the beginning of my last semester of high school to encourage myself to take the college entrance examination. However, Lu Yang clearly remembered that his mother had redecorated the house later and these words had been erased. How did they reappear?

There were also some damaged plastic stools, a wooden dining table folded in the corner, and an old forty-two-inch TV. He had personally thrown these away and bought new ones. How did they return to this room now? Could it be that he was reborn?

Looking up at the clock, it was one minute to twelve noon. Lu Yang opened the TV somewhat uncertainly and tuned it to CCTV-1.

Watching the female host on the midday news broadcast say in person: "Hello, viewers, today is June 16, 2040, the seventh day of the fifth lunar month..."

At this moment, Lu Yang's mind exploded. He quickly rushed out of the house and came outside. Looking at the university main building, which had been relocated 5 years ago, still sitting intact in its original place, Lu Yang couldn't help but feel excited. He punched the wall at the entrance of his house heavily, shouting angrily in his heart: I, I really reborn.