Mu Xingyu opened his eyes to a clean, tidy room. Dazed, he raised his left hand and saw that his wrist was smooth and pale, without a single scar.
What was going on?
He couldn’t help feeling shocked. He had clearly slit his wrists to kill himself, his blood staining the floor. So why… why were there no wounds when he opened his eyes again?
Wait, this room looked familiar. It seemed he’d seen it somewhere before.
A flash of insight cut through Mu Xingyu’s muddled thoughts. He remembered. This was the hotel where he’d stayed while filming his first TV drama. Startled, he sat up, only to jolt his injured leg. “Tss!” He groaned and nearly fell out of bed.
He quickly grabbed the headboard, but knocked over the bedside lamp with a loud thud.
“Brother Xingyu, what happened?” Someone pushed open the door, hurriedly set down the food in his hands, then came to the bedside and asked with concern, “Brother Xingyu, did you fall? Do you need anything? I’ll get it for you.”
“Xiaowen?” Mu Xingyu stared at him in astonishment.
Xiaowen was the assistant the company had assigned him. His name was Fang Xiaowen, and he was the same age as Xingyu, a cheerful young man.
After his family went bankrupt, the agency had suppressed him. At his lowest point, he hadn’t even had a place to live, and Xiaowen had taken him in. Later, the agency transferred Xiaowen to work as Feng Zian’s assistant. But Feng Zian had always hated Xingyu, so he treated Xiaowen terribly.
Seeing Xiaowen again made Mu Xingyu very happy, but he was also filled with indescribable shock.
The familiar room, the familiar person. Had he… been reborn?
“Brother Xingyu, what’s wrong?” Seeing Mu Xingyu sitting motionless in a daze, Xiaowen hurriedly asked.
Mu Xingyu shook his head and smiled. “I’m fine.”
Only then did Xiaowen relax. He set the lamp upright, then brought the meal over to Mu Xingyu. “Brother Xingyu, eat while it’s hot.”
Mu Xingyu took the food and glanced at Xiaowen, then at the familiar twin room. At last, he was sure. He really had been reborn, back two years.
His family hadn’t gone bankrupt yet. Gu Yunzhou was still in a coma, and the man who had deceived and framed him, and killed Gu Yunzhou, still hadn’t gained control of Gu Group.
Thank goodness. There was still time.
Mu Xingyu couldn’t help feeling relieved. After the bitter lessons of his previous life, he would never trust Andre again.
In his previous life, he hadn’t wanted to marry Gu Yunzhou, who was disabled and in a deep coma. After a talent scout discovered him while he was traveling, he had quietly entered the entertainment industry. He’d been naive back then. As soon as he joined the agency, he’d stood up for someone and offended its biggest star, Feng Zian.
Feng Zian had made his debut through a talent show and was a popular idol, as well as one of Fenghe Media’s top talents. Feng Zian had taken a dislike to him and deliberately humiliated him at a brand event. Andre had spoken up for him, helping him out of an awkward situation.
Later, Andre had arranged for him to play the second male lead in Warm Moments. Mu Xingyu had been so grateful that he’d come to think of Andre as a close friend.
He hadn’t known that Andre had approached him with bad intentions from the very beginning.
Andre was Gu Yunzhou’s cousin. After Gu Yunzhou’s car accident, he had come to China and begun working at Gu Group.
He knew Mu Xingyu was Gu Yunzhou’s fiancé. He wanted to toy with Xingyu as a way to get back at Gu Yunzhou. But Xingyu didn’t like him, so he never achieved that goal.
His other goal, however, had gone very well.
On Father Mu’s birthday, Andre had given Mu Xingyu a jade Buddha and asked him to present it to his father as a birthday gift.
Taking Andre at his word, Mu Xingyu had placed the jade Buddha in his father’s office. Little did he know, there was a listening device hidden inside it, which allowed Andre to obtain all the business secrets of the Mu family’s Jian’an Real Estate.
Andre had used that information to bring down Jian’an Real Estate, earning the approval of Gu Group’s shareholders.
The Mu family went bankrupt soon afterward. Unable to bear the blow, Father Mu jumped to his death. Mother Mu was devastated and died soon after from an overdose of sleeping pills.
After blow after blow, Mu Xingyu had wanted to join his parents in death. But his burning desire for revenge kept him going. Even so, he was alone and powerless, no match for Andre.
He waited desperately for a chance. Later, when he heard that Gu Yunzhou had woken up, he hurried to ask him for help.
Gu Yunzhou was a cold-faced tyrant, and Mu Xingyu was terrified of him. But for the sake of revenge, he went to the Gu residence of his own accord. To win Gu Yunzhou over, he even made him a pot of chicken soup. Back then, he’d been so poor he could only afford one old hen.
But he’d never imagined that Gu Yunzhou would suddenly show signs of poisoning after drinking the soup.
Andre had shown up with the police and accused him of trying to harm Gu Yunzhou, then had them arrest him. Gu Yunzhou had still been conscious enough to say Xingyu had nothing to do with it and tell Andre to let him go.
Mu Xingyu knew he’d fallen into Andre’s trap. He had killed Gu Yunzhou, and even on his deathbed, Gu Yunzhou had defended him.
Later, while he was in prison, the death of Gu Yunzhou and the grudge over his parents nearly drove him to the brink of collapse. After he self-harmed once, a doctor came to treat him. He hid the scissors used to cut the bandages, then eventually slit his wrists to kill himself.
Even now, his wrists seemed to ache, and the hand holding the food trembled slightly.
“Brother Xingyu, are you still feeling unwell? Should I get a doctor?” Xiaowen asked worriedly.
“I’m fine.” He forced a smile. “Xiaowen, I want to go home. Please ask the director for leave for me.”
“All right, but I don’t know how many days off I can get.”
“Go ask. However many days I can get, I want them. I just want to go home now,” Mu Xingyu said.
Now that he had a second life, nothing mattered more to him than going home. He wanted to see his parents. He wanted to see Gu Yunzhou. In his previous life, he hadn’t cherished the people who mattered to him. This time, he wouldn’t let them down.
Xiaowen hurried off to find the director.
The drama Mu Xingyu was filming now was Warm Moments, the one Andre had recommended. Feng Zian was the male lead. Xingyu had been injured this time because Feng Zian had deliberately used too much force while filming, causing him to fall down the stairs.
He’d impulsively entered the entertainment industry back then, and no one at Fenghe Media knew who he was. So they’d treated him rather ordinarily.
On the set of Warm Moments, even though Mu Xingyu was the second male lead, Feng Zian had made sure he was treated poorly.
In his previous life, he’d suffered many indignities on set. But when the drama aired, most of his scenes had been cut. His role as the second male lead had been reduced to little more than a bit part.
So Mu Xingyu didn’t want to waste any more time here.
After eating a little, he got out of bed and began packing, planning to leave for home as soon as Xiaowen returned.
He didn’t have much: just three changes of clothes and a few basic personal items. He finished packing quickly, then limped back to the bed and sat down, intending to massage the bruising with medicated oil.
That was when he noticed something strange about the jade bracelet on his left hand.
His mother had bought it at an auction in France for over a million. It was one of the artifacts France had looted from the Mogao Caves. His mother had bought eight artifacts at the auction. She donated all the others to the national museum and kept this bracelet to give him for his eighteenth birthday.
The bracelet was made of fine Hetian jade, with nine round beads on either side surrounding three lotus buds in the middle. The buds were white all over, with a hint of pink at the tips of their petals. They were beautiful.
Mu Xingyu loved it and had worn it ever since. He remembered the shape of the buds very clearly, but now they had opened into tiny lotus flowers.
What was going on?
Mu Xingyu took a closer look and saw that the buds had really bloomed!
But it was jade. How could it change like that?
Mu Xingyu was astonished. Suddenly, he remembered that just before he died in his previous life, he seemed to have seen a flash of light. He’d thought it was a hallucination, but now he realized the light seemed to have come from his wrist.
The thought thrilled him. He’d read plenty of novels. Didn’t their protagonists always gain magical treasures by dripping blood on them? Maybe when he’d tried to kill himself, his blood had dripped onto the bracelet and made it recognize him as its owner.
Mu Xingyu hurried to examine the blooming lotus flowers, wondering if they had some special power.
He saw what looked like water glimmering inside one of them, so he turned the flower upside down to see if he could pour the water out.
To his surprise, a drop of water really did fall out. He quickly caught it in his right hand.
The drop looked ordinary. When Mu Xingyu looked at the flower again, he saw that it had turned back into a bud. Astonished, he did the same with the other two flowers, catching a drop from each and watching them slowly fold back into buds.
Only then did Mu Xingyu dare believe that he really had obtained a magical treasure.
But what did the drops of water do?
He hesitated, then put a drop in his mouth.
Almost immediately, he felt a warm current enter his body, spreading warmth through all four limbs.
Most astonishing of all, there had been a large bruise on his knee. The warm current reached it and quickly cleared it away. He quickly got to his feet and tried taking a few steps. His knee hurt much less.
After a while, the warmth faded, and the bruise on his knee had disappeared completely. He pressed the injured spot with his hand. It didn’t hurt at all. Unable to help himself, he jumped for joy.
In his previous life, he’d been driven to the end of his rope. He’d never expected to survive death and gain such a miraculous treasure.
He touched the lotus buds on his wrist and smiled happily.