Shen Jin’an spent more than half of his life living in the most absurd circumstances.
Born into Huishi’s top wealthy family, he possessed stunning good looks, and his birth characters foretold a destiny of great fortune. He was born carrying the blessings of over a dozen family members.
Before the age of ten, Shen Jin’an was the deeply cherished, carefree young master of the household.
However, they say that things reach an extreme and then reverse, and so does fate.
On Shen Jin’an’s eleventh birthday, sixteen members of the Shen family were poisoned by someone they trusted. Fourteen of them died after emergency rescue efforts failed, leaving behind only his severely disabled eldest aunt and an eleven-year-old Shen Jin’an. The perpetrator remained at large.
After that, Shen Jin’an locked himself away from the world. For ten years, only a few tutors were allowed into the Shen residence to teach him.
With no news of the Shen family’s sole surviving heir leaking to the outside world, everyone whispered that the Shen Group was completely finished. They said Shen Jin’an was either insane or an idiot. What a terrible waste of such a gorgeous boy.
Little did they expect that after turning twenty, Shen Jin’an would suddenly begin making high-profile appearances at the corporation. Aside from his icy cold demeanor, he was no different from ordinary people, and he even managed to lead the Shen Group back to the pinnacle of success.
By then, over half of Huishi’s commercial territory was once again under the control of the Shen Group.
People began crawling out of the woodwork to play the wind-swayers, declaring that a tiger has no dog for a son. With the courage and daring of the Shen couple back in the day, they claimed that if Shen Jin’an were to start a family, the Shen family would undoubtedly return to its peak.
Just as the public was paying intense attention to Shen Jin’an’s matrimonial affairs, another sensational major case shook Huishi.
On his twenty-sixth birthday, Shen Jin’an committed suicide by poison in his hillside villa.
When the police arrived, they found two bodies on the third floor of the main villa. One was the disabled woman who had been dead for nearly a week, and the other was Shen Jin’an, who had passed away less than two hours prior.
As soon as the front door was opened, the air conditioning inside was set to a very low temperature. The stench of decomposition drifted out through the corridor, draining the color from the faces of all the maids standing in a row awaiting questioning. They covered their mouths in a panic and fled outward, each rushing to absolve themselves, claiming they truly had no idea the eldest aunt had been dead for a week, and that it had nothing to do with them. The young master had clearly been bringing meals inside every single day.
After forensic examination, it was confirmed that the woman had indeed died of natural causes due to illness.
She should have passed away several years ago. Being kept alive this long by the finest medical equipment was already the absolute limit.
Following the conclusion of this case, within a single short week, several other cases were successively unraveled. The victims were either dead or maimed, all meeting miserable ends.
Through police investigations, it was discovered that these victims were people who had deep ties with the Shen family back in the day. The mastermind suspect pointed solely and unmistakably to Shen Jin’an.
However, since the sole suspect was no longer alive, these insider secrets involving wealthy family grudges were sealed away for good.
Before a person dies completely, their brain remains exceptionally clear. Past experiences flashed through Shen Jin’an’s mind like a revolving lantern.
Every single step he took was calculated and plotted while locking himself away in a dark room.
Those greedy, rampant, and evil souls all deserved to die.
The only thing Shen Jin’an could not understand was why the man who saved him a year ago was entirely different from the profit-seeking leeches of this world. He asked for no reward, sought no favors, and did not even ask to meet again.
He was the single exception in Shen Jin’an’s life.
Life does not extinguish, death does not scatter.
What the system can detect are the greed, malice, resentment, and obsession of a person before death…
The night was deep.
In late June, summer is always filled with the noisy chirping of insects. The surroundings were pitch black, save for the instruction sign on top of the highway exit a few hundred meters ahead, which glowed with a few large characters: Welcome to Lianshi.
Bang.
“Damn it!”
The car was rear-ended. Qin Zhen was shoved violently forward by the momentum and recoil, his head striking the steering wheel directly. A few red impressions stamped onto his handsome face before quickly fading away.
Before he could even react, a curse had already slipped out of his mouth instinctively.
When he raised his head again, the pitch-black scenery outside and the familiar interior of the car left him stunned for a few seconds. He couldn’t even care about being rear-ended right now. Qin Zhen wiped his face, clicked on his clunker’s high beams, and stared ahead.
What on earth was going on here?
Could it be that he really committed that much bad karma in his past eight hundred lives? Living and working himself to death through live-streaming video games just to make a living was one thing, but did he still have to work off his sins in hell after dying?
Could anyone possibly be this miserable?
The muscular, bald middle-aged driver behind him stepped out of the vehicle and slammed the door shut with another bang.
Driving the night shift was already exhausting enough, so he marched up angrily, slapped the window of Qin Zhen’s car, and unleashed a torrent of complaints right at Qin Zhen in the driver’s seat.
“Can you even fucking drive? There wasn’t even a car in front of you. Why the hell did you suddenly slam on the brakes in the middle of the night? Are you in a rush to get yourself killed? If your life is too short, go find a telephone pole to crash into yourself; don’t come and mess with others!”
After the bald driver finished swearing menacingly, he noticed that the young man who had opened the car door, though offering an apology, had a deep, underlying impatience hidden between his handsome brows. The guy looked easily like he stood 190 centimeters tall.
In the middle of the night, nobody wanted to stir up trouble on the road, especially given how high everyone’s hostility was in this day and age. If a fight really broke out in a minute, he wasn’t certain he could win, and his wife and kids were still waiting for him at home.
Besides, both parties were at fault here. Glancing over it, the bald driver decided to chalk it up to bad luck, called the traffic police and insurance company, and the two stood by their cars for a bit, both choosing to head to the traffic police detachment to process it later after returning.
After all, the accident wasn’t severe, and neither car was affected from normal driving.
Back in the car, Qin Zhen looked with uncertainty at the glowing golden little ball floating beside him, which even had an arrow on its tail.
He closed his eyes and looked at the little ball again.
“What did you just say you were? Your name is 999?”
999 flew a bit closer to his eyes with unconvinced annoyance: [I am not a thing. I am the highest-level system from the interstellar era. This time, I’m here to take you on a mission. In return, a successful mission will reward you with a chance at rebirth.]
Qin Zhen was half-skeptical. “What mission?”
999: [The mission to redeem the villain.]
Qin Zhen chuckled, raising an eyebrow. He didn’t take 999’s words completely seriously and playfully pressed further: “Who is the villain?”
Is this thing losing its mind? This isn’t a TV show, what kind of talk about villains is this? he thought to himself.
999 sensed Qin Zhen’s thoughts, but as an experienced system, it wasn’t in a hurry to debate the reality of it with its host. It just gave a light snort and then said with a proud air: [The target character hasn’t appeared yet. Once they appear, you’ll know.]
Qin Zhen tapped his slender fingertips casually against the steering wheel, drawing out his tone carelessly with an “Oh.”
He used to be a typical materialist, neither afraid of ghosts nor believing in Buddha.
Even though he always liked to joke around asking when money would fall from the sky, he was actually always hardworking. Even in his previous life, when he was driven to death by his company’s trash boss and agent, he still dutifully worked hard at live-streaming until he suffered a myocardial infarction and died suddenly.
There was no help for it. Life without money is tough, and even a hero must bow to worldly pressures.
Reborn into this new life, he had somehow ended up making a living part-time as a ride-share driver, still running around for survival in the middle of the night. Qin Zhen could only lament that his fortune was rather poor.
More than three years had passed since he died in his previous life, and Qin Zhen couldn’t remember if anything special had happened today. All he knew was that he needed to drive home first and get a good rest in bed to calm down.
Before starting the car, he saw 999 still suspended in mid-air in the passenger seat. His slender eyes narrowed as he studied it for a few seconds, and then he suddenly smiled meaningfully.