The Past

Summer 2019, a residential complex in a county of a city in a certain province.

The complex had been built in the early twenty-first century. By modern standards, its design and layout had plenty of shortcomings.

As night fell, Lin Chenxing dragged his exhausted body home.

Standing outside his front door, he glanced at the entrance to the villa next door, the corner of his mouth twitching slightly. His eyes held a trace of helplessness and irritation.

"These wires are getting more and more ridiculous. At least they used to put a clip on them. Now they're just hanging there. Whatever, let them do what they want. If something happens to the wires, it's not my problem anyway."

Lin Chenxing muttered under his breath about the neighbor's behavior.

To be fair, the villa next door had lanterns, security cameras, and strip lights all around it, as well as a shelter for electric bikes. Naturally, that meant more and more wires, and now the whole place looked increasingly messy.

Once inside, Lin Chenxing instinctively turned on the air conditioner, opened the fridge, and took out a bottle of sugary soda. Then he slumped into a chair.

Glug, glug.

The bottle of sugary soda was empty in no time.

"Ah, that's the life."

"I'll go to bed early tonight. I barely slept last night. I'm exhausted."

Lin Chenxing squinted and burped.

Suddenly, a series of sharp crackling sounds came from outside.

"Is someone setting off firecrackers out there?" Lin Chenxing wondered, looking out the window. Then his eyes suddenly widened, and he blurted, "Holy crap!"

After the initial shock, he watched as the flames grew higher. The neighbors came out of their homes one after another to watch.

A few people realized what was happening and began shouting, "Fire! Put it out, quick!"

"Anyone with a fire extinguisher, go get it!"

Only then did Lin Chenxing snap out of it. He immediately rushed to where the fire extinguisher was kept, grabbed it, and ran toward the burning shelter next door.

By then, the fire had spread from the grass beside the shelter and was advancing toward the house.

Some of the nearby residents brought buckets of water, while others brought fire extinguishers. They all began fighting the blaze.

As the flames gradually died down, everyone slowly began to relax.

Lin Chenxing was still holding a fire extinguisher. He put out the last of the flames inside the shelter.

Looking at the traces of fire damage all around him, Lin Chenxing wiped the sweat from his forehead, ready to take a moment to catch his breath.

"Young man, run! It's dangerous!"

An older man, looking anxious, waved urgently at another young man.

Lin Chenxing looked puzzled and slowly raised his head to see where the young man was.

It turned out that the wires strung across the shelter were directly above him. They had burned through and come loose from their clips, and were about to fall. The young man was sitting on the ground beneath them, resting.

But the warning had come a moment too late. The young man no longer had time to get up and run.

As he hesitated, trying to figure out what was happening, one end of the wire finally came free and plunged toward the ground.

Lin Chenxing's mind hadn't caught up yet, but his body moved on instinct. He rushed toward the young man and shoved him hard. The young man was saved, but for Lin Chenxing, it was already too late.

In June 1992, in another world, a new life was born in Xinan County, Su Province.

From learning to speak through the end of kindergarten, this new life showed nothing particularly unusual.

But everything changed when he started elementary school.

Lin Chenxing's memories gradually began to surface in his mind, bit by bit.

As he learned more, he discovered that this world wasn't all that different from the one he'd come from. Only a few historical figures and events differed slightly from his previous life: people had different names, and the order of some less important events had changed.

Since he'd crossed into a similar world, it would be a waste not to make use of the memories of his previous life as they slowly returned.

In 2010, Lin Chenxing graduated from high school and enrolled at Jiangzhe University, one of the country's top universities.

At university, he successfully joined the student union and began meeting with senior executives from various companies. Drawing on the experience and knowledge he'd accumulated in his previous life, he established partnerships with the heads of several businesses.

In mid-2011, at the instigation of the owner of one of the chemical companies, some of the businesses that had partnered with Lin Chenxing merged. The new company was named Xingyan Chemical, combining Xing from Lin Chenxing's name with Yan from the name of its major shareholder, Chen Yanbing.

By mid-2012, the company's annual profits had surpassed five billion, and plans to form a group were underway.

At the end of 2012, the group was established, and the protagonist became one of its shareholders.

With the guidance of the group's other shareholders, Lin Chenxing began focusing on physical training and health. He even traveled around with one of them to visit martial arts masters, where he began learning various styles of boxing and spear techniques.

In 2013, the R Virus broke out.

Lin Chenxing began renovating and adjusting the company's many facilities, adding integrated screening and disinfection equipment at the entrances and strictly controlling the movement of personnel to prevent the R Virus from spreading on a large scale within the company.

Thanks to this measure, Xingyan Group emerged stronger from the disaster rather than weaker.

In mid-2013, the group formed a joint venture with a pharmaceutical company, establishing a subsidiary and entering the medical industry.

In 2014, Lin Chenxing's outstanding performance earned him admission without an entrance exam. He became a graduate student at Jiangzhe University and began building a bridge of cooperation between the group and the university's research institutes.

But 2015 was destined to usher in the most painful era for all of humanity on Blue Star.

In just three months, everyone witnessed the arrival of the Grim Reaper.

The emergence of the RR Virus made people realize that the disaster wasn't over.

One person after another around them fell, like the arrival of the apocalypse—a catastrophe that left them feeling utterly powerless to resist.

Every entrance to the group's facilities had integrated screening and disinfection equipment, and infirmaries had been established as well. Any employee who became infected was immediately sent for treatment, bringing the death rate down as low as possible.

But "as low as possible" was only relative. With the global death rate nearing thirty percent, the group's rate was still just under twenty percent.

Just when people were on the verge of despair, the tolling of death's bell seemed to come to an abrupt halt.

To everyone's amazement, they discovered that their physical abilities had improved dramatically.

Their bodies had grown stronger. Almost everyone had more than doubled their strength, speed, cellular activity, and skin resilience! Even an ordinary person could easily break the old world records in weightlifting and the hundred-meter dash.

This sent shockwaves through the entire world.

Fortunately, people still couldn't move faster than bullets. After various measures were put in place in different regions, things gradually stabilized around the globe.

A world recovering from disaster, full of hope and waiting to be rebuilt; a world where markets and social order were still waiting to be restructured—all of it seemed to appear before everyone's eyes.

After several months of rebuilding the world order, everything was peaceful and stable, and society had become remarkably harmonious and orderly.

Until that day, when everything began to change.

In some areas, pets began attacking people.