Reborn With A System: Your Bragging Lies; My Fortune

CHAPTER 3 - THE PHOTO

LIN FENG'S POV

The 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 already beyond caring, but now I felt everything.

My jaw locked so tightly that it ached. My vision blurred at the edges, not from tears but from something hotter and sharper clawing its way up my throat.

I wanted to put my fist through the wall.

I wanted to march across the city, drag Ryan out of whatever expensive apartment his family had bought him, and ask him how he could stand there smiling at a dead woman's grave when he used to eat dinner at our table every single week growing up.

My mother had fed him. She'd patched the hole in his school uniform with her own hands the year his family couldn't afford a new one.

Then his family clawed its way into money, and suddenly poverty became something they were ashamed to remember.

I forced myself to sit down, my back against the door, I took a slow breath, then another.

“Not yet,” I whispered.

I scrolled through the group chat with a trembling thumb, the replies were already pouring in beneath Ryan's post.

Laughing emojis, cruel jokes, along with comments agreeing with him. A few classmates were even tagging each other to make sure everyone saw. Vivian Song had replied with three crying-laughing faces and the words:

“Some things never change lol.”

My stomach twisted. But beneath the fury, something colder began to take shape. I read Ryan's caption again, then I waited, but nothing happened.

I frowned. The system had reacted immediately to Boss Han's boast. Why wasn't it reacting now? I stared at the screen as if I could force the mechanical voice to appear, still nothing.

Minutes passed. My phone stayed silent except for the constant stream of notifications.

Then the answer came to me, the system didn't care about insults. It cared about boasts.

Boss Han's lie had worked because he'd been bragging about his wealth and success, trying to make himself look powerful while making me feel small.

Ryan's post was cruel, but it wasn't a boast. And the worst part was that most of what he'd said was true. I had been standing at my mother's grave with almost nothing in my pockets.

The system wasn't hunting every lie people told. It was hunting the lies people used to make themselves look bigger. I leaned my head against the door and let that realization settle, that changed everything.

I couldn't simply wait for people to hurt me and expect the system to respond. If I wanted to understand it, I needed to pay attention. I needed to learn its rules, and tomorrow's reunion would give me plenty of opportunities.

Ryan loved to brag, he always had..He needed everyone to know how successful he was, how expensive his clothes were, how powerful his family had become.

Tomorrow, he'd have an entire room full of people to impress. I couldn't help the small smile that touched my lips. If he wanted to boast, I would let him.

I stood slowly and looked at myself in the cracked mirror above the sink. The same tired eyes stared back at me, the same face, the same poor apartment.

But I wasn't the same man anymore.

Yesterday, I had been terrified of dying. Today, I was beginning to wonder what the people who had destroyed me would look like when they realized I wasn't playing the same role anymore.

I opened the group chat one more time. My thumb hovered over the screen. There were dozens of messages beneath Ryan's photograph, but I ignored every one of them.

Then I typed three words. “See you all tomorrow.” I pressed send.

For several seconds, nothing happened. Then the typing indicators began appearing. I didn't bother reading the replies, I wanted them to wonder. Let them whisper about why Lin Feng wasn't begging, defending himself, or explaining anything.

I set the phone down. It buzzed almost immediately, I picked it up again. But this time, it wasn't the group chat, it was a private message from an unknown number.

I opened it, my eyes stopped on the first line. “Don't go tomorrow, Lin Feng.” My breathing slowed, I could feel my lungs catching up. 

A second message appeared beneath it. “Whatever you're planning, it's not worth it.” Then another. “I know what happened to you last time.”

My entire body went rigid as I stared at the words more than I should have. Nobody knew what happened to me last time, nobody at all.

I had lived that death alone, it remembered the headlights, the impact. Ryan's face, vivian filming, the cold concrete road beneath me and the helplessness I felt after the trunk kicked me hard against the road. Those memories belonged to a life that, as far as everyone else was concerned, had never happened.

I slowly typed a response. “Who is this?” The message showed as delivered but no reply came so I waited. Ten seconds turned into twenty but still nothing.

I looked at the number again, it wasn't saved in my contacts so I didn't recognize it. My grip tightened around the phone, for the first time since waking up in this second life, the system wasn't the thing that frightened me.

It was the possibility that someone else knew about the first life. Someone who shouldn't exist inside my secret, I looked toward the dark window. The city outside was quiet, completely unaware that my world had changed twice in less than twenty-four hours.

First, I'd been given another life, then I'd been given a system. Now, someone had just told me they knew how I died. I looked back at the message, my heart began beating harder.

Who were they and what else did they know?