LIN FENG’S POV The truck's headlights blinded me half a second before its horn tore through the night and I felt two palms on my back before I saw them, shoving me off the curb like I weighed nothing."Catch him if you can, Lin Feng!" Ryan's voice rang out laughing, like he was tossing me a joke instead of my life.My arms flailed, my shoes lost the ground and for one endless second I hung between the sidewalk and the road, before I saw all of them. Vivian Song was with her phone already up, filming, old classmates I hadn't spoken to in ten years were running their mouths but not one hand reached for me and Ryan, my best friend since we were seven years old was standing there with his jaw set and his eyes cold in a way I'd never seen on him before.Then the truck hit me but I didn't feel so much pain as I felt everything stop. The sound cut out first, then the lights, then the cold September air on my skin and the last thing I heard was Ryan's distant and warped voice before I blacke

LIN FENG'S POVThe photo was of my mother's grave.My fingers went numb around the phone, and for a second, I couldn't breathe or think. I could only stare at the cracked headstone I knew better than my own face—the one I used to kneel in front of every Qingming Festival with a single bundle of incense because that was all I could afford.Ryan had captioned it in bold red text over the image.“Some people never change, no matter how many years pass. Still visiting the same broken grave, still broke and still have nothing. See you all tomorrow, and don't bring him any pity. He doesn't deserve it.”My hand shook so hard the phone nearly slipped from my grip.In my old life, I never saw this message.I found out about it weeks after I died, when Su Wan quietly told me at my own memorial that Ryan had posted it the morning before the reunion, mocking me to the entire class before I'd even walked through the door.Back then, I'd felt nothing but a distant ache, I was already dead and alrea

LIN FENG'S POVThe phone slipped clean out of my hand and cracked against the kitchen tile, the screen splitting into a spiderweb of fractures right as her message finally loaded.I dropped to my knees, ignoring the sharp bite of broken tile against my skin, and snatched the phone back up with fingers that would not cooperate. The screen still worked, thank God. The crack ran diagonally across the glass, but the text underneath was still readable.“Vivian isn't just planning to embarrass you tomorrow. She's planning something bigger. I heard her on the phone with Ryan two days ago. They're bringing someone Ryan owes money to, and I think they mean to use you to pay part of it off.”I stayed frozen on the floor, my knees pressed against the shattered tile, staring at those words until they blurred together.Ryan was in debt?That was the first thought that hit me. The second was worse, they wanted to use me to pay for it.I read the message again, slower this time, searching for some d

LIN FENG'S POVI slammed my palm against the elevator button three times before realizing it was already lit. My reflection stared back at me in the polished steel doors, jaw tight, eyes darker than I remembered them being that morning.I had told myself the whole ride across the city that I would think this through carefully. I would weigh every risk before deciding whether to walk into a trap set by someone I could not name.Instead, I had grabbed my jacket, shoved my cracked phone into my pocket, and left before caution could talk me out of it.The elevator doors opened.I stepped into a hallway lined with gold trim and soft lighting, the kind of hallway that made it obvious I did not belong in a place like this.Not with these clothes, not with this face that still carried ten years of poverty in every hollow line. Nobody stopped me or looked twice.The Golden Crane was busy enough with wedding guests and business travelers that one more tired-looking man moving through the lobby

LIN FENG'S POVMy phone buzzed hard against my thigh once, then twice, then a third time in rapid succession, and I nearly knocked over my water glass reaching for it under the table.The room was still applauding Ryan, glasses raised and someone shouting a toast to his success, but I was no longer looking at him. I was staring down at my cracked screen, my thumb trembling as three notifications stacked on top of each other.“{Verification complete. Falsehood confirmed.}”“{Asset located: Heshan Central Development Group, three commercial tower properties, downtown district. Estimated value fifty million yuan.}”“{Warning: current host authority is insufficient for full asset transfer. Partial claim available.}”My chest tightened as I read the message again.Partial claim? So the system couldn't simply hand me everything it detected? For the first time since waking up in this second life, I felt something other than shock at one of its notifications.I felt curious.Yesterday, I had