A New Identity

Lu Zhiyu walked out of the police station. It was in a small county under Nanchong, Sichuan Province. Through some connections, he had paid someone in the system who sold fake certificates for a list of people who had died but whose deaths had never been registered. He picked out a few men around his age, then went back to their hometowns to apply for ID cards.

His method was simple. He just had to use his mental powers to lightly hypnotize the clerk and subtly guide their thoughts. Once the application passed review, they would take a new photo of him and issue him an ID card and household registration booklet.

Lu Zhiyu used his mental powers to affect their optic nerves, then had his Sub-Brain generate the images he wanted them to see and feed them into their visual systems. Everything their eyes sent to their brains was whatever Lu Zhiyu wanted them to see. To outsiders, his technique was just like the illusions in legends. The surveillance footage here would only be kept for six months, so even if anything came up later, anyone trying to investigate would face plenty of obstacles.

But on Earth, Lu Zhiyu couldn't travel through space at will like he could with the Universe Scroll. Unless he left the mark of a Dimensional Gate somewhere, he had to travel from place to place the old-fashioned way. He applied for four identities in all, and they were all genuine. Of course, they wouldn't hold up to a thorough investigation, but they were good enough!

Lu Zhiyu went straight to the bank, canceled all his old cards, and applied for new ones under each identity. Now he had four different identities, each with its own bank card.

Then Lu Zhiyu drove to a gold-buying company in the provincial capital and carried a wooden box inside. There were quite a few gold-buying companies like this in the real world, and some jewelry stores offered the same service. Some banks also had precious-metal trading and buyback centers, though they were strict about purity and required 99.9-percent gold. This company was fairly powerful, well known, and very reputable.

The gold Lu Zhiyu had brought out came from Maria World. It was part of the old stockpile from the Golden City. But two weeks had passed here, and hundreds of years had gone by in Maria World. The Golden City had fallen, and the Golden Dynasty had long since collapsed. The palace and the Temple of Light, remnants of the once-mighty Golden Dynasty, had long turned to dust. Lu Zhiyu had found the Golden City's old treasury and taken some of its gold, all in bars.

The gold had been refined using ancient methods, so its purity fell short of 99.9 percent. But as long as Lu Zhiyu had Maria World, producing gold like this was easy for him.

A middle-aged man examined the gold by sight and sound, then used instruments to test its density. After carefully inspecting and checking the bars one by one, he leaned over and whispered something to the manager beside him. The manager nodded, then turned to Lu Zhiyu. "The gold isn't 99.9 percent pure. It's only about 90 percent. May I ask where this batch came from? I'm sorry, but the amount is quite large. You've brought in more than fifty kilograms."

Lu Zhiyu replied at once, "It was left to me by my ancestors. It's been hidden in the cellar at my old family home for many years."

The manager nodded. "I see. That shouldn't be a problem. But since it isn't 99.9 percent pure, we can't offer the usual price..."

These days, many families had antiques, gold, silver coins, and other things passed down from their ancestors. People rarely asked where they came from or demanded certificates. Everyone had a little something handed down through the generations. It wasn't as if you couldn't sell something or were barred from buying it without a certificate!

Lu Zhiyu argued back and forth with the manager. Using Mind Reading, he figured out the manager's bottom line and talked the price down to an amount he was happy with. At last, they reached a deal. Lu Zhiyu said at once, "I've got more in my car. Since I'm already here, I might as well sell it to you too!"

The manager's mouth fell open. "How much more?"

"Not much. A little over a hundred kilograms!"

"Ah!"

After that, Lu Zhiyu traveled through several provinces and cities, selling nearly a ton of gold in multiple batches. Each time, he used a different identity and spread the money across different accounts. In total, about 230 million yuan flowed into his accounts.

Lu Zhiyu had never seen so much money before. It had come so easily. If he weren't worried about attracting too much attention, he could have sold a few more tons. With Maria World at his disposal, gold, silver, and diamonds were as easy for him to obtain as flowers and grass along the roadside. He had sold this ton of gold under different identities, so at most, it would become a bit of gossip among people in the gold-buying business. Each deposit amounted to tens of millions, but even if that was a huge sum to an ordinary person, no one across the country would pay attention to it.

Of the four identities, Lu Zhiyu chose one named Mu Tao as his everyday identity. According to his records, he was from Sichuan Province and had graduated from Modu University. He had studied abroad, then gone missing in a disaster. His body had never been found.

He had majored in fine arts and was rather solitary, with few friends. He had studied oil painting abroad, too. Artists tended to have unusual personalities, so it all seemed plausible. Lu Zhiyu decided to use Mu Tao as his regular identity and keep the others in reserve for emergencies.

Using Mu Tao's identity, he bought a plane ticket home. He planned to take care of the last few loose ends connected to his identity as Lu Zhiyu, so that if he ever got into trouble, it wouldn't affect that identity or drag in his family and friends.

With two hundred million yuan on him, well... his heart was pounding. Lu Zhiyu told himself that he could create an entire world at will, manipulate the fates of all its inhabitants, and create intelligent life. If a mere two hundred million could rattle him, that was pretty lame!

Still, he couldn't suppress his excitement. This was the first time Lu Zhiyu had ever had so much money in his hands. He had also made four identities for himself to cover up his past. It felt like something out of an American action movie.

Inside the Universe Scroll, Lu Zhiyu could treat everything as a game he played behind closed doors. But this was Earth, the real world. His sense of belonging and the emotions it stirred in him were entirely different!

Sitting on the plane, Lu Zhiyu felt nervous, but also brimming with confidence. It was as if this was the first real step on his path, the moment he finally set sail!

When he got home, Lu Zhiyu received another call from Xiao Le. He'd been away for a while, and Xiao Le sounded like she'd been run off her feet. As soon as he answered, she snapped, "Boss, where on earth have you been?"

Lu Zhiyu thought for a moment. "Xiao Le, I might have some things to take care of. I probably won't be back for a while."

Xiao Le exclaimed in surprise, "Huh? What about the pet shop?"

Lu Zhiyu laughed. "I might not have time to manage it anymore. If you're interested, Xiao Le, I'll give you the pet shop. You've done a good job running it on your own these past few days. To be honest, I only started it because I was bored and wanted something to do. You've handled most of the shop's affairs anyway. Thanks for all your hard work."

Xiao Le said in surprise, "No way, boss, I couldn't..."

"You don't need to pay me. I said I'm giving it to you. Besides, I didn't spend much on the transfer fee when I first took over, and I've made that back by now. I don't need the stuff in the shop, and I don't have time to come back and deal with it. So that's that, Peng Xiaole. From now on, you're the owner of the Cats and Dogs Pet Shop. I believe in you! I'll courier the transfer agreement to you later. All right, I've got something to take care of here. I'm hanging up!"

Peng Xiaole hung up, her face blank with confusion. She had no idea what had just happened. She looked around the pet shop at the customers chatting on the sofa, the cats and dogs making a racket, and the chatty parrot. The shop belonged to her now?