New Year’s Day, 1995.
At the entrance of St.
John’s Welfare Institute in Los Angeles.
At that moment, two people stood at the entrance, one Black and one white.
The Black person was a middle aged man in his thirties, while the white person was a cold, black haired youth with distinctly Asian features, a youthful face, and blue eyes.
He was clearly a Eurasian mixed race teenager.
“John, let’s go,” the Black middle aged man sighed, saying to the young man beside him.
John Leighton nodded, turned to take one last look at the welfare institute where he had spent his entire childhood, then followed the middle aged Black man into an old pickup truck that slowly drove away.
Sitting in the back seat and leaning against the headrest, John Leighton closed his eyes, expressionless, and fell into deep thought and recollection.
The optimistic Zach looked at the young man with his eyes closed in the back seat through the rearview mirror and couldn’t help but smile.
He didn’t know that at that moment, the young man in his eyes was overwhelmed with thoughts he couldn’t control.
…
My name is John Leighton.
English name: Saint John Leighton.
An orphan from St.
John’s Welfare Institute in Los Angeles.
From the name alone you can tell the orphanage is church affiliated, and I named myself Saint John Leighton in remembrance of that.
Fifteen years ago, when John Leighton opened his eyes and felt this world for the first time, he was stunned.
Feeling his whole body soft, powerless, and wrapped in a small body, he, who was used to reading transmigration novels on a certain website, confirmed that he had also transmigrated.
He truly didn’t know whether to cry or laugh.
Fortunately, in his previous life he was also alone, so John Leighton didn’t have much aversion to transmigration.
He just sighed in his heart and thought, “What a pity.
I wonder who got my house, my car, and my money from my previous life.”
In his previous life, he was born in a small village in 1980.
His father passed away when he was young, his mother ran away, and he lived with his grandfather.
When he was sixteen, his grandfather also quietly closed his eyes.
With 1,000 US dollars in cash, raised by selling his house and land, he moved to the city and settled down.
From then on, construction sites and small restaurants became his main venues.
At eighteen, he became fascinated with the internet and subsequently became a glorious “network administrator,” commonly known as a netizen.
With his drive, by 2000 he had become the internet café owner’s confidant, managing the operations of five internet cafés, commonly known as an internet café manager or director.
Actually, being an internet café manager wasn’t a big deal.
He spent his days surfing the internet, collecting money, settling accounts with the boss, and occasionally dealing with government regulatory departments.
Two years later, as the regulations on the internet café industry became more standardized, he left the internet café owner and opened an illegal internet café on the urban fringe.
In just two or three years, he made a substantial profit.
Later, through his former internet café boss, he acquired a legitimate internet café, catching the last few years of the internet café boom.
After selling the internet café in 2012 and paying off his mortgage, he had accumulated several million in savings by his thirties, making him a man with a house, a car, and money in the bank.
Perhaps due to his family background from a young age, even in his thirties his personal life remained unresolved.
From the time he transferred the internet café, relying on his savings and living off bank interest for several years, he lived a very free and easy single life.
In June 2017, during a rainy season, he forgot the online warnings about not making phone calls during rain.
As a result, he was struck by lightning, immediately lost consciousness, and woke up as a mixed race infant still in swaddling clothes.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the face of an obvious Western European old woman, and he knew he had probably transmigrated to a world of Westerners.
Later, he learned that he had arrived in Los Angeles in 1980, a city famous to everyone on Earth.
…
Perhaps transmigration and rebirth come with a golden finger effect.
Even John Leighton couldn’t have imagined that accompanying his transmigration was an incredible great figure, the memory of a Magic God named Einstein from the Alister Magic Continent.
Well, whether it’s the Magic God Einstein or the Einstein who proposed the theory of relativity, perhaps anyone named Einstein is a genius.
The Alister Continent is a magical world, and as a peak figure on the continent, Einstein lived a life of eating and waiting to die, occasionally doing a few small magic experiments.
Perhaps the legendary gods of the Magic Continent couldn’t stand it anymore.
During one small experiment, he unexpectedly activated spatial elements, causing a spatial storm.
One must know that even a Magic God couldn’t control spatial elements, and as a result he was sucked into the spatial storm.
For some unknown reason, only a mass of consciousness transmigrated to Earth, and accompanied by that lightning, it took John Leighton’s consciousness and transmigrated back to Los Angeles in 1980.
Anyway, for some unknown reason, the legendary Magic God had passed away, leaving only a mass of memories that benefited John Leighton, providing him with the greatest capital to establish himself in the new world.
…
A few days ago, Sister Mary, the director of St.
John’s Welfare Institute, returned to heaven, to the embrace of the Lord.
The only director who was good to him in the welfare institute had passed away, and John Leighton therefore had the idea of leaving the welfare institute and immediately made the request to go.
The successors of the welfare institute immediately agreed to John Leighton’s proposal, which led to the scene at the entrance earlier.
Of course, looking at the deserted send off, it was clear that in his more than ten years at the welfare institute, John Leighton had not won people’s hearts, which was due to his reclusive personality throughout those ten years.
You see, after John Leighton gained the memories of the great Magic God, he gradually familiarized himself with and practiced magic from the time he could walk.
Three years ago, he became an apprentice magician, barely able to cast a small fireball to light a fire.
Now he had reached the peak of an apprentice and was about to become a full fledged magician.
Of course, in John Leighton’s current view, the greatest benefit of becoming a magician was a strong body and abundant strength, so minor ailments didn’t affect him.
One should know that John Leighton’s punch could reach over 500 kilograms.
If those boxing coaches saw him, they would probably cry and beg him to be their coach.
This fifteen year old youth, standing about 1.75 meters tall and looking thin at a glance, was simply a human monster.
John Leighton himself sometimes thought, “Why not go into boxing and become a boxing champion?
That’s not bad either.” Thinking about how Ali and Tyson made money so fiercely, but then considering he was also a transmigrator with a cheat, merely becoming a boxing champion would be too embarrassing for someone who had transmigrated and been reborn.
In his previous life, the protagonists of those online transmigration novels, which one of them didn’t become the richest person, stepping on Gates and Warren Buffett, embracing Oscar winning actresses, and so on?
He finally gave up the idea of being a boxing champion.
Perhaps the world truly missed out on a top tier boxing champion.
…
Unconsciously, the car arrived in the eastern and southern areas of downtown Los Angeles and stopped in front of an old ten story apartment building.
This was a rental apartment in a slum area of Los Angeles where the middle aged Black man lived, and John Leighton also planned to temporarily settle down here.
To be honest, John Leighton was not really familiar with Los Angeles.
Previously, because he was young, he mostly stayed at the welfare institute, and school had a school bus for pick up and drop off, which resulted in him still being very unfamiliar with Los Angeles even after transmigrating there for fifteen years.
“John, what are your plans for the future?” Zach asked the young man beside him.
Zach dared not underestimate the young man in front of him.
In terms of thinking, ever since he met him, the young man’s emotions were very stable, his thoughts mature, and he planned things out, not at all like a teenager but rather like a mature, steady middle aged man.
In terms of wealth, Zach knew that the fifteen year old in front of him was worth hundreds of thousands, much richer than a poor man like himself.
In terms of skill, Zach believed that the young man’s strength and speed far surpassed ordinary people, which often made him sigh and persuade John Leighton to train in sports, saying he would definitely win championships in the future.
“Zach, I don’t have any immediate plans.
I’ll stay for a while to get used to it first.”
“Alright.”
The two walked into the apartment, chatting and laughing, and took the elevator to the twelfth floor, the top floor.
…
The entire twelfth floor had four apartments, and John Leighton and Zach each took one.
Walking to the doors of apartments 1201 and 1202, which faced each other, Zach opened room 1202 and said with a smile to John Leighton, “This is your place.
Mine is in room 1201.
Call me anytime if you need anything.
You can tidy up yourself.”
After speaking, he gave John Leighton the keys, put down his luggage, and walked back to his own apartment.
Looking at the 60 to 70 square meter one bedroom, one living room, one kitchen, and one bathroom layout, with a small balcony facing the street, John Leighton was very satisfied.
The appliances were complete, allowing him to move in directly.
His previous daily necessities had already been arranged, saving him the trouble of buying them again.
After a simple tidy up, he moved a chair to the balcony, sat down, and began to contemplate his future life.
…
In the previous ten years, although he had lived a normal life and practiced magic, he was still a child after all.
If he had shown too much, like the monstrous characters in novels, he probably would have been invited for a talk by the FBI long ago.
One must not underestimate the government’s capabilities, especially in a sole superpower like the United States.
However, being a transmigrator after all, his only real move was last year, during the 1994 World Cup held in the United States, when John Leighton used his accumulated 300 US dollars to start his plan to earn his first pot of gold.
Thanks to being a football fan in his previous life, he had met many people who were passionate about the sport, and naturally he paid attention to football.
Roberto Baggio was also one of his idols at the time, and he was quite infatuated for a while.
After all, to communicate with those around him, there had to be common topics, and football was a very good tool.
Although he didn’t play football himself, he occasionally watched games and bought a few football lottery tickets.
He had some understanding of Baggio’s famous matches and had specifically researched them, leaving a deep impression.
It could be said that among football fans of that era, very few were not infatuated with Baggio.
Therefore, John Leighton was very familiar with the results of Baggio’s 1994 World Cup journey, from the four knockout matches that made Baggio a global star.
…
According to his memory, starting from the World Cup Round of 16, with odds of over ten times, followed by the quarterfinals and semifinals, both with odds of nearly six times, and the final also with odds of about six times, he placed his bets accordingly.
This allowed his 300 US dollars, after four matches and deducting taxes, to become over five hundred thousand US dollars, making him a middle class American.
Of course, Baggio’s melancholic eyes and his lonely figure with hands on hips also became a permanent memory in his mind.
Similarly, at that time, through Sister Mary’s introduction, he met the middle aged Black man from before, who was also a somewhat unreliable lawyer.
Zach was also an orphan raised by Sister Mary, with a relatively honest, optimistic, and cheerful personality, a true free spirit.
After all, from the last two matches onwards, the prize money was quite substantial, and it was troublesome for a child to handle alone.
Fortunately, there was Sister Mary and Zach.
Neither of them was greedy for money, and they helped John Leighton open a bank account and deposit all the money safely.
His departure from the orphanage this time was also due to Zach’s help, making Zach his temporary guardian, as he was still a minor and many things required a guardian’s assistance.
“John, let’s go, we’re going for lunch.
It’s my treat today.” It was Zach calling John Leighton for a meal.
John Leighton stood up from his balcony chair, faced the open air, and shouted out loud.
“America, here I come!”
Then he turned and followed Zach out of the apartment.