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Rewriting Life (Complete + 6 Extras) by Baye Dang (Jinjiang VIP/Entertainment Industry/Golden Finger)

Tang Shi had lived to the age of twenty-five in his previous life, always pampered and content with modest wealth.

He had neither a cold-hearted father nor a vicious stepmother. He had never been used or betrayed by a lover. Nor had he endured any bitter, blood-deep hatred that made him want to drag someone down with him in revenge.

So he had no idea why Heaven had given him a chance to live again.

But since it had, he would just make do with it!

In short, this was the story of an arrogant, willful, poorly self-controlled brat with far too many flaws and no great ambitions, who, after being reborn, followed his childhood friend into the entertainment industry, went into business and made money, and ultimately achieved success in both love and career, climbing step by step to the pinnacle of life.

Modern setting, alternate history, main character is the bottom.

*Special notice: The background settings, novels, film and television works, songs, and so on in this story are all original nonsense and disconnected from reality. Please do not fact-check. The Jinjiang and Qidian websites mentioned in the story will be renamed Terminus Station Website and Green Website.

Rebirth, getting rich, writing fiction, with entertainment industry elements. The story is slow to warm up, plot-driven, focused on career, with little romance, no explicit content, and ambiguity.

A melodramatic, cliché Xiao Bai story with an overpowered golden finger. This was written while Lazy Ba was sleepwalking, so readers, bring your own lightning rods~~

Tags: Rebirth, Modern Alternate History

Search keywords: Protagonist: Tang Shi ┃ Supporting characters: Lu Hengzhi, Mama Tang, etc. ┃ Others: Modern alternate history, entertainment industry, Gary Stu, feel-good story, golden finger, entertainment industry

[52 Book Repository shares completed romance novels, boys' love novels, and more. For good novels, visit 52 Book Repository https://www.52shuku.vip/]

☆, Chapter One

The sun overhead was no different from what he remembered.

On a midsummer evening, gorgeous sunset clouds stained the entire sky red. Under the slanting rays of the setting sun, a gentle evening breeze swept through, rendering the shabby old town like an oil painting steeped in countless years. Yet at this moment, it was vividly displayed before his eyes.

Tang Shi wore a white hooded T-shirt on top and loose, baggy blue school tracksuit pants below, with a pair of black travel shoes scrubbed so clean that not a speck of dust clung to them. He pushed a bicycle, with his loose school uniform jacket and heavy schoolbag hanging from the crossbar in front. Standing on the curb by the street, he stared blankly at the flashing traffic lights across the road.

The red light turned green, then red again. It flashed several times in succession. Traffic streamed past and pedestrians flowed endlessly around him, but Tang Shi did not move, as if he had been possessed.

A large Liberation truck loaded with sand and dirt rumbled past from the end of the road, scattering dust everywhere. The surrounding pedestrians complained one after another. Slightly germophobic by nature, Tang Shi subconsciously raised a hand to wipe his face, then touched his intact right leg, which felt completely normal. His mouth fell open in shock.

One second ago, Tang Shi had been typing away in the bright, spotless study of his home, where the temperature was just right. Outside the window, snowflakes fluttered down, while neighbors in down jackets were having a snowball fight in the residential garden. In the kitchen, his mother and his best friend Lu Hengzhi were busy making dinner. The rich fragrance of seafood hotpot broth drifted lazily from the kitchen, making Tang Shi, with his sensitive nose, immediately feel ravenous. He stopped typing, got up, and headed to the kitchen, intending to ladle himself a bowl of hotpot broth to satisfy his cravings and take a short break. Then his vision went black, and the next second, he had become a school-uniformed boy standing guard by the street, pushing a bicycle home after school.

Across the pedestrian crossing, the green light came on again. Tang Shi still stood there in a daze. He could not accept everything before him. Whether it was this ancient old city, where time and architectural styles had both regressed by more than a decade, the endless stream of unfashionably dressed pedestrians around him, or even the outdated vehicles on the road that should have long since been phased out, all of it left Tang Shi at a loss. He felt as though he had accidentally wandered onto a street set built for a film crew.

If his consciousness had not remained perfectly clear without the slightest hint of fainting, Tang Shi would have suspected that everything happening was another prank by his best friend, who had made a name for himself in the entertainment industry but was nearly thirty and still unreliable and fond of stirring things up.

Yet Tang Shi also knew clearly that this was impossible. Leaving aside the unbelievable experience that was practically Heavenly Shifting Skill, no production crew could possibly construct such a lifelike and immense setting.

This was a miracle belonging only to time, a scene that could exist only in days gone by and in people's memories.

The pedestrians coming and going around him either hurried past without looking up or cast him a calm, indifferent glance before brushing by, leaving Tang Shi far behind. Yet he still made no move. His body was stiff, his face full of astonishment as he stood in place, his mind wholly absorbed by the strange sight before him.

Had he traveled through time, or been reborn?

He had to thank his profession as a web novelist, which seemed utterly unreliable to outsiders, for allowing him to recognize the situation with relative calm the moment it happened.

The green light came on again. This time, Tang Shi did not miss it. He lifted his foot, pushed his bicycle across with the packed crowd, and stopped in front of a congee shop with floor-to-ceiling windows. Through the brightly polished glass, clear enough to reflect a person's image, he saw what he looked like now—

Tall and thin, with neat, short black hair that made his fair skin and delicate features stand out even more. The sun slowly dipped behind the western hills, its golden afterglow spilling over the boy from front and back. Against the backdrop of ceaseless crowds flowing past, a soul from more than ten years in the future was abruptly reflected in the clean, bright window.

Black hair, black eyes, a gentle temperament, and a sunny smile.

The familiar yet unfamiliar outline belonged to his teenage self from the family photo album.

Tang Shi parked his bike where it was, pulled the schoolbag off the crossbar, unzipped it, and casually took out a textbook. On its cover were the words: X City No. 1 High School, First Year, Class Three.

Tang Shi blinked and began trying to remember where his family had lived when he was in his first year of high school.

Almost everyone's life was like this. Over the long yet fleeting decades, one had to move house several times. It was a symbol of changing times and of the passing years. Tang Shi was no exception.

Especially after his second year of middle school, the old house they had lived in for more than ten years was demolished, which remained one of his clearest memories. The compensation they received had been less than thirty thousand yuan, nowhere near enough to buy a home. Tang Shi's father had insisted on using the money to start a business instead of waiting a few years, paying extra to expand the floor space, and moving back in. That decision had added a measure of instability to the previously steady life of the three-person Tang family.

Especially during the years after Tang Shi entered his third year of middle school, when his father died in an accident and the family's savings were wiped out. To survive, Mama Tang had no choice but to take Tang Shi, who was still in school, from place to place. They seemed to move every three or six months, and each rental was farther away and more rundown than the last. They had practically lived through every remote old single-story housing district in X City that had not yet been demolished, making it even harder for Tang Shi to recall the address.

Fortunately, Tang Shi had an excellent memory. His years as a professional writer, along with the ever-popular online themes of time travel and rebirth, often prompted him to dig up childhood memories, then turn them into words with the help of all kinds of reference material. He used them to entertain readers behind their computer screens and earn yuan to pay off his mortgage and car loan.

That experience allowed Tang Shi to easily recall the house his family was currently renting. Then he got on his bicycle and slowly followed the route in his mind through the old city.

In Tang Shi's memories, as the economy developed and advanced at breakneck speed, the city's layout in later years had actually differed greatly from that of more than a decade ago. At the very least, aside from downtown and the riverside, there had not been nearly so many buildings taller than seven stories, nor so many private cars on the roads. Looking down the street, most of the residential areas on either side consisted of squat five- or six-story heated-kang apartment blocks. In the compounds below the buildings, where trees and grass should have been planted, people had built one low shed after another to store old household belongings and firewood for winter. Only narrow passageways remained for residents to walk through.

At that time, centrally heated apartment buildings were not yet widespread. And people who had grown used to single-story homes and had only recently moved into apartments did not understand the dangers of putting up illegal structures wherever they pleased. At least in Tang Shi's memories, these ubiquitous little sheds frequently caused fires of varying sizes. This situation continued until several years later, when centrally heated buildings replaced the heated-kang apartment blocks and people no longer needed to burn fuel, after which the sheds gradually disappeared.

As for the areas that had not yet been demolished, they remained full of low single-story houses and square courtyards. Such old, distant memories made up the youthful years that always seemed softly lit whenever Tang Shi looked back on them.

Those old memories were like photographs sealed away at the bottom of a box. As Tang Shi recalled them and took in the streets around him, they gradually became vivid and clear. Starting from the congee shop, he headed north, crossed an intersection, turned right and went forward five hundred meters, then turned left. After passing behind a residential complex of heated-kang apartment blocks, he crossed the street and entered an alley. The sky gradually darkened, as though he had suddenly stepped into another world. The alleyways crisscrossed like a maze. Against the pitch-black background, lamps lit up in every household. Through open windows came the sounds of family squabbles, televisions playing, and food sizzling in woks in the kitchen. Those scattered sounds, together with the smell of cooking oil in the air, merged into a river of memory that flowed through one's mind, warming hearts that had grown ever colder.

Relying on the tiny scraps of memory still in his mind, Tang Shi finally found his front door before night completely fell. It was an old single-story house of unknown age, its whitewashed walls faded and flaking. The worn courtyard gate was made of nailed-together wooden planks. A fist-sized padlock hung from a thick iron chain, swaying in the gap between the gate panels. Tang Shi reached out and pulled down the heavy lock. Diu Diu, the old yellow dog his family kept, heard the sound at the entrance and came over with its tail wagging. Its furry head rubbed insistently against Tang Shi's leg, its tail sweeping back and forth. Tang Shi reached down to stroke the head pressed close to him, then walked straight across the uneven front yard and into the low house.

The moment he entered the living room, Tang Shi smelled the aroma of food. He sniffed. It was his favorite sweet-and-sour ribs and garlic fish. He could also hear the sizzling of stir-frying from the kitchen. Tang Shi set down his schoolbag and tiptoed into the kitchen, studying the person standing by the stove.

Mama Tang, Song Chunyi, had been forty when Tang Shi was in his first year of high school. She wore a short, permed hairstyle that was fashionable at the time. Small in stature and pretty in appearance, her fair face was dotted with freckles. Every gesture revealed the straightforward competence of a working woman, while her brows held the shrewd optimism of an ordinary citizen.

In Tang Shi's heart, Mama Tang had always remained this young and capable. With the bright, fearless attitude of a warrior, she managed their small family without a husband or father. On her slender shoulders, she held up the sky for a widow and her son. Even after losing his father, Tang Shi had still grown up carefree. His experience in a single-parent household had not made him sensitive and suspicious, nor gloomy and extreme.

It could even be said that this strong single mother had already used every ounce of her strength to protect her only son. Like a lioness who never knew exhaustion, she kept little Tang Shi behind her, shielding him from wind and rain, giving him happiness and the safe warmth of a home. From childhood to adulthood, she had let him encounter as little as possible of society's dark side, cold as frost, allowing him to preserve more innocence, passion, and dreams. Only then could he go on to make a living weaving beautiful dreams.

When he recalled so many past events, they were all filled with trivial matters of daily life: oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, chicken feathers, and garlic skins. Yet every person's joys and sorrows, pain and strength, resistance and struggle under the pressure of life—though their outward appearance might grow ever more glamorous, the bitterness behind them was always something outsiders could never truly understand.