Reborn With A System: Your Bragging Lies; My Fortune

CHAPTER 6 - THE MORNING OF THE REUNION

LIN FENG'S POV

I woke up to fists pounding on my door, my heart already slamming against my ribs before my eyes had fully opened.

I rolled off the mattress, my bare feet hitting the cold floor, and grabbed the closest thing within reach, an old broom handle leaning against the wall before I even registered the time on my phone, it was six in the morning.

The reunion wasn't until evening. Nobody had a reason to be at my door this early unless something had already gone wrong.

"Lin Feng, open this door right now!" I let the broom handle drop against my leg, relief loosening my shoulders for half a second. It was Cheng Ye's voice, but there was something wrong with it.

His usual gravelly calm was missing. His voice carried a sharp edge of worry that immediately put me on alert.

I crossed the room, yanked the door open, and found him standing in the hallway with his robe hanging half open and a folded newspaper clutched in one shaking hand.

"What's wrong?" I asked, my pulse still refusing to settle.

He shoved the newspaper into my chest without a word. I caught it, confused, then looked down at the front page of the local business section.

My stomach dropped.

HAN'S PAWN AND TRADE UNDER INVESTIGATION AFTER SUDDEN OWNERSHIP TRANSFER, FORMER OWNER CLAIMS FRAUD

I stared at the headline, my mouth going dry. I had known the ownership transfer would draw attention eventually. I just hadn't expected it within a single day.

And I certainly hadn't expected Boss Han to go running to a reporter instead of quietly accepting whatever confusion the paperwork had caused him.

"That's the shop two streets over," Cheng Ye said, watching my face too closely for comfort. "Isn't that the man who came pounding on your door yesterday?"

My mind raced through possible answers and I settled on the safest one. "He did. He wanted money, but I didn't have any."

Cheng Ye's eyes narrowed.He studied me for several seconds, his expression sharper than before. He had survived on this street longer than I had been alive, and there was very little that slipped past him.

"Funny thing for a man to shout fraud over," he finally muttered, "unless someone actually stole something from him." I said nothing. After a moment, Cheng Ye grunted and shuffled back toward his own door, muttering something about young people and their secrets.

But before disappearing inside, he looked back at me, that look stayed with me. I closed my door and leaned my back against it, the newspaper still crumpled in my fist.

My thoughts were already spinning.

If people started asking questions about how a poor tenant with an empty bank account had suddenly ended up owning part of a downtown pawnshop, I would need answers ready long before anyone thought to ask me directly.

I moved to the small table near the window and smoothed the newspaper flat.

Then I read the article again.

Boss Han was quoted calling the transfer impossible. He insisted he had never signed away any part of his business and demanded an investigation into fraud and forgery.

There was no mention of my name yet, thank God. The article only referred to an unnamed party who now appeared in the ownership records. But that wouldn't last forever, someone, somewhere, would eventually connect the dots.

I folded the newspaper and pushed it aside, then I forced myself to eat something. It was difficult, the food sat heavy and tasteless in my stomach while my mind raced ahead to the reunion that night.

Ryan's message from the previous evening still sat unanswered on my cracked phone.

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow, old friend. I've got a surprise for you. You're going to love it.

I didn't need to guess what kind of surprise Ryan meant.

Su Wan's warning about the debt collector sat heavy in my chest, twisting together with the mystery of the stranger who claimed to have watched me die.

Three separate problems seemed to be circling the same night and I had only hours left to prepare. For the first time in my old life, I did something I had always been terrible at.

I planned.

I sat with a cheap notebook and a pen that barely worked, writing down everything I knew, everything I suspected, and everything I needed to accomplish before walking into that reunion hall.

First, the system. I still didn't understand its limits.

It had already proven that it could turn someone else's boast into something real and transfer that asset to me, but I didn't know exactly how far its range extended or what determined the value of a reward.

I couldn't afford to walk into a room full of people and assume the system would solve every problem for me, especially when I still didn't fully understand what I was dealing with.

By the time the afternoon light began slanting gold through my cracked window, my list was longer than I had expected. Yet strangely, I felt calmer. I showered in water that never fully warmed, then dressed in the same worn jacket I had died in during my old life.

I stood in front of the cracked mirror above my sink. The man staring back at me looked exhausted, poor, and unremarkable in every visible way. Nobody looking at me would guess that I already quietly owned a piece of a downtown business.

Nobody would guess that a strange system existed inside my life now and nobody would guess how much I remembered. I stared at my reflection, then the familiar mechanical voice sounded inside my head.

"{System status: active. Proximity range currently limited. Expansion available through additional verified assets.}"

I straightened. The voice still startled me, even after two days of hearing it. "Additional verified assets?"

I waited but nothing came in. The system had always been generous with information only when it felt like being mysterious. I sighed and turned away from the mirror, my phone buzzed on the table behind me.

I turned to check it, expecting Su Wan again. Or perhaps another taunting message from Ryan before the night began. Instead, it was the same unknown number as before.

The stranger who claimed to have watched me die. I opened the message. "He's already there, setting up early. If you want to see what Ryan really has planned for you tonight, come now, before the others arrive. Third floor, east wing of the Golden Crane Hotel. Come alone."