The city always carried a chill late at night. Pallid streetlights shone on the asphalt, with hardly a pedestrian in sight.
After a whole day of overtime, young Li Hongyun emerged wearily from his company's entrance.
He pulled his jacket tighter around himself. His eyes ached, and his mind was a tangled mess. Half a month of pushing a project forward at high intensity had left his body severely drained.
Standing at the intersection, he twisted his stiff neck and raised a middle finger at the air.
"Fucking idiot boss. Overtime every damn day, and not a penny of overtime pay!"
The wind swirled through the empty street. He fished a crushed pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, pulled one out, and clamped it between his lips. His lighter's flame flickered several times in the cold wind before the cigarette caught.
He took a deep drag of cheap tobacco and watched the white smoke he slowly exhaled, filled with pent-up frustration.
"My parents named me Hongyun-good fortune-but when have I ever had any? I joined this shitty company right after graduation, got stuck with this fucking idiot boss, and spend every night working late."
He looked at the time displayed on his phone screen-10:00 p.m. sharp.
His flat wallet and seemingly endless mortgage pressed against his chest like a mountain. He asked himself when these days would finally end.
"Tell me, where's my good fortune?"
Li Hongyun tossed his cigarette butt on the ground and ground it out hard with his heel, cursing as he prepared to walk home from work. It was already ten at night. Fortunately, his place was close to the company, only a ten-minute walk away.
His surroundings were unusually quiet. Even the delivery riders who occasionally sped past on other days were nowhere to be seen tonight. There was only the rustling of the roadside trees in the cold wind.
"Beep, beep!"
Walking along the road, Li Hongyun thought he heard something. At first, he assumed it was a car, but he turned and looked around without spotting anything.
He scanned his surroundings. The entire two-lane road was completely clear. Never mind a car-there wasn't even a stray cat in sight.
"What the hell was that sound? I don't see any cars!"
He rubbed his temples, silently cursing himself for staying up so much that he was hearing things. But just as he drew his gaze back, he caught something overhead out of the corner of his eye.
A bright star was shining above Li Hongyun. Its light carried a strange reddish tinge that stood out starkly against the pitch-black night.
Before he could investigate this astronomical phenomenon, a huge shadow suddenly covered the road ahead.
A red Dayun truck appeared out of thin air on the previously empty street. Its lights were off, and it didn't even make a sound as it drove eerily toward Li Hongyun.
In the Dayun's driver's seat, a blurry black figure gripped the steering wheel and slapped his thigh excitedly.
"Hahaha, what luck! Didn't think I'd get another job this soon. Deliver this one, and I'll hit my quota!"
The distance closed in an instant.
Although the Dayun had no headlights on and made no sound as it drove, Li Hongyun's sixth sense had always been accurate. He immediately sensed something was wrong.
Every hair on his body stood on end, and his pupils instantly contracted at the shock. He saw the bright red front of the truck less than five meters away.
There was no dodging it. Under normal circumstances, an ordinary person would already have been crushed to pulp.
But under the threat of death, he wrung out his hidden potential.
At the very last instant, he rolled sideways. The heavy truck brushed past the tip of his nose, even scraping a small patch of skin off his cheek.
As the Dayun swept past him, he faintly heard a voice filled with shock and bewilderment.
"No way. He dodged that?"
Li Hongyun rolled twice on the ground, then scrambled to his feet on his hands and knees. Having successfully dodged the Dayun, he let out a sigh of relief.
He gasped for breath, his heart hammering in his chest. His back was already soaked in cold sweat, and a gust of night wind set his whole body shivering.
"Whew, scared the hell out of me! Why's there a Dayun here with no lights on and no sound?"
While he was still shaken, his instincts as a webnovel enthusiast suddenly took over.
Some clichéd novel openings flashed through his mind at this inappropriate moment: a road in the dead of night, a dump truck appearing out of thin air...
"Wait, did I just miss out on some heaven-defying opportunity?"
He had barely finished muttering those words when the temperature around him rose in an instant.
The air currents grew violent, and the bright star overhead shone brighter and brighter. Li Hongyun stopped walking and looked up into the night sky.
"What's that thing up there? It's getting brighter!"
A massive fireball tore through the atmosphere, locking precisely onto Li Hongyun's location. Friction against the air produced an ear-piercing screech, and the surrounding windows shattered from the vibrations.
Just then, the shrill sound of braking and skidding rang out.
The Dayun that had passed Li Hongyun hurriedly turned around and charged back, its driver growing frantic.
"Motherfucker! Don't steal my quota!"
One above, one below; one horizontal, one vertical-and then, a piece here and a piece there.
"Holy shit, is that a fucking meteorite???"
Li Hongyun watched the meteorite in the sky and the Dayun about to ram him from the side, despair filling his heart.
He felt certain he must have destroyed the Milky Way in his previous life.
Never in his wildest dreams had Li Hongyun imagined that one day he would face a two-pronged assault from a meteorite and a Dayun. He was out of options!
Run? Where could he run? Even Captain America would have to stay up all night writing his will in the face of this.
This was the legendary reincarnation-delivery dump truck paired with a direct meteorite strike of physical annihilation. Who could dodge that combo?
In the instant before white light swallowed his vision completely, the expected agony never came. After his terror, Li Hongyun's mind instead grew strangely calm.
To get attacked by a Dayun and a meteorite at the same time-his good fortune really was sky-high!
It was a working man's dark humor. He slowly closed his eyes.
Mom, Dad, you picked the right name!
At that same moment, somewhere in the island nation, a fat shut-in was also struck by a Dayun.
Rain poured down, mingling with blood as it spread across the road. The obese body was flung into the air and slammed heavily into the mud like a torn sack, and his consciousness faded away.
Li Hongyun felt as though he had dreamed a very, very long dream.
There was no sensation in his limbs, no sound from his surroundings. It was as though his entire body had been submerged in nutrient solution kept at a constant temperature.
Until a faint light came in from outside.
After a stretch of darkness, Li Hongyun heard crying around him and opened his eyes.
Everything looked blurry. He could barely make out the outlines of colors. His lungs felt as though something was blocking them, and he instinctively wanted to cough.
I... I'm not dead?
His first thought was disbelief.
Can a person survive an attack from a Dayun and a meteorite?
Filled with profound questions, he tried hard to focus his newly opened eyes.
What greeted his eyes was not the pallid ceiling of a hospital room, but rough yet warm wooden beams and posts.
As soon as Li Hongyun opened his eyes, he saw a man and a woman looking at him and saying something, but he couldn't understand them.
The man had slightly tousled flaxen hair and a handsome face, his eyes brimming with barely concealed ecstasy.
The woman had beautiful blonde hair. She lay weakly on the bed, drenched in sweat, her gaze full of tenderness and doting affection as she looked at him.
The man leaned closer and shouted excitedly in that incomprehensible language.
"Wonderful, Zenith! They're twins!"
Only then did Li Hongyun realize that his body was completely beyond his control. Even turning his neck took tremendous effort, and his hands and feet were pitifully small.
I've been reincarnated?
Just as he reached that conclusion.
"Waaah, waaah, waaah..."
Clear, piercing cries burst beside his ear.
The crying continued. Hearing it coming from beside him, Li Hongyun turned to look.
Right next to him, a baby was bawling.
As an adult soul with workplace experience, all he felt right now was utter bewilderment. He looked at the unfamiliar man and woman above him, then at the crying baby beside him.
Where the hell have I ended up?