Ling Yi's home is in an old residential building on the sixth floor of the old street in the Eastern District. There is no elevator.
Built in the 1990s, most of the exterior tiles have fallen off, revealing the gray cement underneath.
Half of the motion-activated lights in the hallway are broken, and the other half are intermittent, requiring you to stomp your foot to turn them on after a few steps.
Ling Yi lives on the fourth floor in a two-bedroom, one-living room apartment of over 60 square meters.
This is the house left to him by his parents.
It was a house that my third uncle's family had been coveting for ten years.
He took out his keys and opened the door. In the entryway sat a pair of slippers that didn't belong to him—pink slippers with a bear pattern.
That belongs to his cousin, Ling Xue'er.
The sound of a television program was coming from the living room; laughter and screams were pouring out of the speakers, giving me a headache.
You're back?
Third Aunt Wang Guifang sat on the sofa, holding a plate of melon seeds in her hands, her eyes fixed on the TV screen, without even lifting her head.
His tone was neither warm nor cold, as if he were greeting a roommate.
"Um."
Ling Yi changed his shoes and went straight to his room.
"Wait a moment."
Wang Guifang finally looked up from the television and sized him up.
"Shouldn't you pay your living expenses this month?"
Ling Yi stopped and glanced back at her.
My monthly living expenses are 300 yuan.
This is one of the terms in the "agreement" signed ten years ago.
His third uncle's family takes care of his food, clothing, and shelter, and he pays them 300 yuan a month for living expenses.
When I turn eighteen, I will transfer the house to my third uncle's family at one-tenth of the market price.
Three hundred yuan might have been barely enough for a high school student's daily expenses ten years ago.
But with prices soaring these days, 300 yuan isn't even enough to eat at the cafeteria.
Ling Yi had never eaten a decent meal at his third uncle's house.
Every morning, his breakfast consists of leftover cold steamed buns from the previous night and a glass of plain water.
I ate the cheapest set meal at the school cafeteria for lunch.
Dinner... If he comes back early, he can catch the leftovers after his third uncle's family has finished eating.
If I come back late, I'll just go hungry.
He paid his three hundred yuan living expenses in full.
It's not because he can't come up with more money.
Rather, it was because this was a condition he proposed voluntarily.
Ten years ago, an eight-year-old child faced alone relatives who coveted the family fortune.
There's no cheat code, no system, and no power to rely on.
All he could do was to use the most humble posture to buy himself a chance to survive.
Three hundred yuan was the price he paid to save his life.
"Knew."
Ling Yi took out three crumpled hundred-yuan bills from his pocket, placed them on the coffee table, and then turned and went into his room.
Close the door and lock it.
His room was small, containing only a single bed, a desk, and a wardrobe.
Several high school textbooks and supplementary teaching materials were laid out on the desk, making it look no different from the room of an ordinary senior high school student.
But if someone opened the bottom drawer of his desk, they would find a cell phone inside—not the cheap phone he usually used at school, but a brand new flagship model.
He sat on the edge of the bed, took out the phone, unlocked it, and accessed an encrypted banking app.
Account balance: 2,147,380,000, plus a fraction of 2,691.36 yuan.
Ling Yi stared at the number, his expression Changes.
For him, money was never the goal, but merely a tool.
Ten years ago, when he transmigrated into the body of this eight-year-old child, there was nothing there.
There was no cheat system, no system, and even the original owner of this body only had a few scattered memories.
All he knew was that the child's name was Ling Yi, and that his parents had both died in a car accident, leaving behind a house and a modest insurance payout.
Then, my third uncle's family arrived.
They moved in under the guise of "taking care of their nephew," but in reality, they were after the house.
Although the Eastern District of Dafeng City is not a prime location, this old building happens to be included in the urban renewal area and is said to be demolished in the future, with compensation at least tripling.
My third uncle, Ling Jianguo, is a small businessman who runs a small building materials store and isn't exactly well-off.
Third Aunt Wang Guifang was a shrewd woman to the core; on her very first day there, she began calculating how much the house was worth.
Eight-year-old Ling Yi, faced with the blatant coveting of two adults, did not cry, make a fuss, or ask for help.
He did something that surprised everyone: he recorded his third uncle and aunt's conversation on his phone about "what if something happened to the child."
An eight-year-old child hid under the covers late at night and used his mobile phone to record his guardian's "Gaga" plan.
This video became his talisman.
He backed up the recording to three different cloud storage services, and then, with a calmness completely out of character for his age, confronted his third uncle's family.
"I know you want this house."
The eight-year-old boy stood in the middle of the living room, looking up at the two adults whose faces were ashen. His voice was not loud, but every word was clear.
"I can give it to you, but I have conditions."
"First, when I turn eighteen, I will sell the house to you for one-tenth of its market value."
"Secondly, until then, you must guarantee my safety."
"Third, if anything happens to me before I turn eighteen, the recording will be automatically made public."
Ling Yi still remembers the expressions on his third uncle and third aunt's faces at that time.
Shock, fear, disbelief.
They just couldn't understand how an eight-year-old child could do such a thing.
But they had no choice; the key issue was that they dared not gamble.
Ling Yi's performance exceeded their expectations, leaving them feeling uncertain.
Ling Yi's calm and composed demeanor, in particular, stunned them.
In any case, Uncle San and his wife were just ordinary people.
I haven't seen much of the world.
At eighteen, even at a tenth of the market price, they could still make a huge profit, and they were willing to wait.
The agreement was signed.
Of course, that video was just the first line of defense.
Ling Yi knew very well that a single video could not possibly keep two adults in line for ten years.
Therefore, he needs more leverage.
He spent two years learning the rules of this world in various ways—law, finance, the internet, and business models.
His ability to learn from two lifetimes made him learn at an astonishing speed.
This world is highly similar to his previous world, and much of the knowledge he gained can be directly reused.
When he was ten years old, he used a small portion of the money left over from his insurance payout to register his first online account and started writing online novels.
Pen name: Reincarnation.
The first novel he copied was a classic fantasy novel he had read in his previous life.
It wasn't a word-for-word copy; rather, I memorized the core concepts and story framework and rewrote it in my own words.
Even so, the novel still caused quite a stir in the online literature world.
Over the next ten years, he wrote seven novels under the pen name " Reincarnation," each of which became a phenomenal success.
His royalties are conservatively estimated to exceed 300 million.
He started getting involved with stocks at the age of twelve.
Both methods utilize the information gap between two incarnations.
The economic development trajectory of this world bears a striking resemblance to that of his previous world.
He has a clear understanding of which industries will rise, which companies will take off, and which stocks will skyrocket.
Using the pseudonym "LY", he paid several people online to do the work for him.
By operating multiple offshore accounts, the initial principal of several hundred thousand yuan was grown into nearly one billion yuan over ten years.
At fifteen, he saw the potential of the food delivery industry and, as an anonymous investor, invested in a newly established food delivery platform.