1 Rebirth

He opened his eyes in a daze and felt the pain all over his body. Lu Yang's memory was fixed on the moment he fell off the cliff.

"Is this death? It's not as scary as I thought. I've always heard that people who jump down from high places break into pieces like broken cookies. I wonder if I look like one now," Lu Yang thought to himself self-deprecatingly.

Although he died at a prime age, Lu Yang did not care much. He had taken revenge in his previous life, so he did not leave any regrets. However, why did he still have so much reluctance in his heart?

Did he trust the wrong friend, or should he accept his fate?

In 2040, Earth's industrial civilization reached an explosive advancement, with machines replacing the vast majority of labor. As a result of improved medical care, the human population on Earth reached an unprecedented 12 billion.

Unemployment, growing disparity between the rich and the poor, public grievances, and demonstrations became synonymous in all countries.

In order to solve this problem, countries made various efforts together. One of them was the joint development of a 3D holographic simulation online game called Second World by the nine most developed countries. The decades-long dream of players worldwide was finally fulfilled.

This game only had one server. All the players in the world competed here. More than 3 billion people joined the game, making the game a massive hit. When the official platform launched the currency exchange function in the game allowing real-time currency exchange, it really helped relieve the pressure of some unemployed people.

Lu Yang was originally from a typical bourgeois family. He took advantage of his free time at university and joined the game to supplement his family's income and became a gold miner in a studio. However, Lu Yang did not expect that a small figure like him would unexpectedly make a name for himself. Not only did he create a small guild with 5,000 people, but he also built a defensive fortress in the top-level monster area.

It would take half a day to reach the nearest system main city from the top-level monster area. After Lu Yang built this fortress, it immediately became very popular among all players. Players could buy medicine, repair equipment, and trade at the auction house. They could also go offline and rest in the fortress.

By relying on this fortress, even though it could not make him wealthy overnight, the money was decent enough. Lu Yang had already reached the most glorious moment of his life. He thought using this fortress, he could give his family and friends a better life. However, Lu Yang didn't expect that this was just a dream.

On the third day after the fortress was established, someone visited him. It was the guild leader of the number one guild in the local region. He was also the young master of a super-wealthy family in the real world, Liu Jie. The man personally came to visit with 300 core members, wanting to buy the fortress from Lu Yang.

Naturally, Lu Yang could not agree. The price Liu Jie offered was only 10% higher than the cost of the construction. It was simply calculated with Lu Yang and the others as laborers. Moreover, this fortress was the result of the joint efforts of 5,000 people. They had selected Lu Yang as the leader to manage the fortress, so this meant they trusted him a lot. If he sold it just like that, how would Lu Yang face his friends in the future?

After rejecting Liu Jie, Lu Yang was worried that the other party would take revenge. He had 60 third-promotion great mages under him and he had the Demon God's Heart, so he was not afraid of the other party despite their numbers. However, in order to prevent a sneak attack, Lu Yang discussed with the three guild deputies and asked them to each lead three teams consisting of core members to guard the fortress 24 hours a day.

After being nervous for a month, there was no movement from Liu Jie's side, which made Lu Yang gradually lower his guard.

As the saying went, trust could often make or break one. Lu Yang completely trusted his good friend, Huang Xiang, who had been a bunkmate for four years in university and was also the main tank in the guild. On the third night after the alarm was lifted, Huang Xiang told Lu Yang that a new boss had been discovered in the top-level monster area and he needed all three main teams in the guild to be mobilized to eliminate it.

Lu Yang did not suspect anything and immediately led the three main teams to a valley area under Huang Xiang's lead. When they arrived, what Lu Yang saw was not the boss, but the sneering face of the leader of the number one local guild, Liu Jie, along with 12 main teams under him. There were a total of 12,000 level 200 crack members.

Only then did Lu Yang understand that Liu Jie had not given up on obtaining his fortress. Liu Jie had just used a different method. He had used a large sum of money to make Lu Yang's subordinates betray him and lured him to this inescapable valley map. Moreover, Liu Jie had also released a barrier that prevented him from returning to the city.

That night, Lu Yang and his three main teams were killed at least 40 times by the other party through forced resurrection in battle.

The equipment of the 3,000 main force members had all been destroyed, and they had suffered heavy losses. The fortress had also been breached by Liu Jie's other six main forces, and all of Lu Yang's efforts were obliterated.

In order to build this fortress, Lu Yang borrowed a lot of money from the bank. Back then, with the help of the fortress and his guild members, Lu Yang could easily repay these loans. However, now that the fortress was destroyed and the equipment of the members of the main team was gone, Lu Yang had completely lost the ability to repay them.

Facing the huge debt and the despairing gazes of his members, Lu Yang chose to run away from his problems. He locked himself in his room all day and drank until he was drunk.

Lu Yang thought that he would spend the rest of his life in endless pain and struggle, but something completely woke him up.

His parents were ten years away from retirement. In order not to let Lu Yang spend the rest of his life in debt, they resolutely decided to retire early from the state-owned enterprise they were working at. Every day, they would go to the construction site to do manual labor to help Lu Yang earn money to repay his debts.

However, less than half a year later, his father was inexplicably hit by a heavy object and injured at the construction site. He was sent to the hospital and died before he could be resuscitated. His father's death was a huge blow to his mother. Not long after, his mother also passed away.

In a short period of time, his parents passed away one after another, causing Lu Yang to be in so much pain that he wished he was dead. He originally thought that his father's death was an accident. When he was beaten to the ground by Liu Jie's lackey, Wang Teng, Wang Teng mockingly told him that Liu Jie had instructed him to do everything. Lu Yang finally realized that Liu Jie did not want to give him any chance to make a comeback.

Just as Wang Teng was about to kill Lu Yang, his comrade, Han Cheng, rushed over after learning that Lu Yang's parents had passed away. He happened to save Lu Yang and brought him overseas.

Five years. For five years, Han Cheng taught Lu Yang how to train his body and learn how to kill. Five years later, Lu Yang became an internationally renowned mercenary known as Fiery Blood.

He brought a group of mercenaries back to the country and spent a lot of money to buy the intel about the time Liu Jie would return home. Then, Lu Yang disguised himself as a servant and entered Liu Jie's house. The moment Liu Jie entered the house, a knife was stabbed into his heart.

At that moment, Lu Yang finally felt a trace of relief. He had wanted to continue hunting down the others who had harmed him, but he did not expect Liu Jie's family to use all their strength to hunt him down. Lu Yang could only temporarily leave with the mercenary group.

Unfortunately, when he was approaching the border, Lu Yang was discovered by the police and the Liu family's assassins.

During the chase, Lu Yang brought the police into the mountain alone to cover his injured friends. In the end, he was stopped on a cliff.

Faced with the police's persuasion, Lu Yang could only smile coldly. Now that he had avenged himself in this life, Lu Yang no longer had any regrets and lost the reason to live. He jumped off the cliff and chose to commit suicide.

However, he felt sorry for his brothers who had grown up with him. In the end, he did not let his brothers live a good life in the game, nor did he let the girl who had accompanied him to eat steamed buns in the canteen have a happy life.

He felt very indignant. If only he hadn't trusted the wrong friend.

If only he had more time to grow.

If only he could become stronger.

If only…

If only…

...

The anger in his chest made Lu Yang reach out and punch the wall beside him. The intense pain instantly occupied his entire nervous system.

Lu Yang's eyes suddenly widened.

"Aren't I dead? Why can my arm still move? Why can I still feel anything at all?"

Lu Yang quickly sat up and checked his body. He realized that his body, which should have been shattered like a cookie, was still intact without a trace of injury. He touched his back. What was wet and sticky on his clothes was not blood, but his sweat from lying on the bed due to the heat of the weather.

Lu Yang was stunned. What was going on? He wasn't dead and was still alive. How was this possible? Even in 2050, he had never heard of anyone being able to revive a person who had been smashed into pieces. Even if such technology was available, it would not get used on him. Moreover, where was this place?

Lu Yang sat up and looked around. He realized that he was sitting on an old single bed. A mosquito net covered the single bed tightly.

He pulled open the mosquito net and saw a foldable table and a few plastic chairs beside the bed. On the white wall above the table, there was a line of words engraved on it: Never forget the shame!

The moment he saw these words, Lu Yang felt a chill run down his spine. He couldn't believe it. Wasn't this the old house that his family rented? These words had been added at the start of his last semester in high school to motivate him to take the college entrance examination. However, Lu Yang clearly remembered that the words had been removed when his mother renovated the house. Why did they appear again?

There were also some broken plastic stools, a wooden dining table that was folded in the corner, and an old 42-inch television. He had personally thrown these away and bought new ones. Why was he back in this room now? Could it be that he had been reborn?

He looked up at the clock. It was one minute to 12 noon. Unsure, Lu Yang turned on the television and turned it to Central 1.

Looking at the female host in the afternoon news broadcast, she personally said, "Hello, everyone. Today is June 16, 2040, the seventh day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar…"

At this moment, Lu Yang's head exploded. He hurriedly rushed out of the house and looked at the main building of the university that had been relocated five years ago. It was still intact in its original place. Lu Yang could not help but feel excited. He punched the wall outside his house heavily and shouted angrily in his heart, "I've really been reborn."