Late at night, in the quiet of the upscale Green Bamboo residential district in Jinhai City.
Shi Feng sat motionless on a plush leather sofa, a stack of documents in hand, gazing through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the swimming pool outside. His heart was heavy with frustration and unwillingness.
He had been the team leader of Shadow, one of the four major gaming studios in Jinhai City. He commanded a guild of tens of thousands and was a well-known expert in the city — the Sword Magician, they called him. Yet now all he could do was sit at home drinking to drown his sorrows.
Ten years of a gaming career.
Ten years of blood and battle.
After countless hardships and suffering, he had finally led the Shadow Guild to establish ten city-states inside Divine Realm, putting them on equal footing with first-tier guilds. He was on the verge of enjoying boundless glory when a single notice reduced everything to smoke and dust, gone forever.
Shi Feng had never imagined that ten years of effort would go to waste. For the sake of gaming, he had given up so much — and in the end, it all became someone else's gain, simply because he opposed Shadow merging into the super-guild Domination Under Heaven. Before the next day was even over, the Lanhua Consortium had given him his answer: delete the level-200 Sword King account he had spent ten years building, then go to finance to settle his final paycheck.
All he received was five million Credit Points and a luxury mansion — a pittance compared to the ten city-states and the virtual kingdom that generated gold every single day.
Shi Feng thought about everything he had poured into Shadow, how his efforts had helped turn Lanhua Group into a major consortium. Much of that was his doing. And yet they had tossed him aside like garbage. For what the Lanhua Consortium had done, he would have his revenge.
"I won't let this go. If I have to, I'll just start over from the beginning."
Determination and confidence blazed in his eyes. He tore the termination documents to shreds, then grabbed a bottle of red wine from the table and took several deep swigs.
Even without his Sword King account, even without the support of his team, his in-game skills and knowledge would never betray him. As long as those remained, he could rise again in Divine Realm and build a virtual kingdom of his own once more.
Morning came. The sun had just begun to rise.
Beep beep beep!
His phone rang over and over.
Shi Feng groggily woke to the noise, then reluctantly got up and grabbed the phone from beside the bed. The hangover from last night still left him dizzy.
"Hello, what is it?"
"Bro, it's Hei Zi. What do you mean 'what is it'? We agreed we were going to become pro players! Today is the day Shadow Studio is recruiting at school. Haven't you always wanted to become a core member of Shadow?"
Shi Feng was confused.
He had just been fired by the Lanhua Consortium — why would he go to Shadow's tryouts?
"Bro? Bro, are you there? They start testing at ten o'clock. If you don't hurry over, you're going to miss it!"
"Hei Zi, stop joking. I just got fired from Shadow."
"Fired? Bro, how much did you drink yesterday? You're still not awake. Shadow hasn't even started recruiting yet — how could you have been fired? Come on, hurry up and get here."
Before Shi Feng could process what was happening, Hei Zi had already hung up.
His head still fuzzy, Shi Feng glanced at the phone and realized this battered old iPhone 6 was definitely not his — his phone was the latest iPhone 12.
He looked around the room.
The tiny bedroom, barely fifteen square meters, was a mess. Strategy guides for various games were scattered everywhere. An old, outdated laptop sat on the desk in the corner by the wall. A large wardrobe against the opposite wall had clothes spilling out of it. And in the wardrobe's full-length mirror, he saw a familiar face.
When Shi Feng caught sight of that unmistakably familiar reflection, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
"How did I get younger?" He immediately stood and walked to the mirror, checking again and again before finally accepting that he truly had become younger.
Just yesterday he had been sleeping in a spacious, luxurious bedroom. Now he had woken up in this rundown place — and he was younger, too.
He still had some memories of this place. Ten years ago, when he was a senior in college and determined to conquer Divine Realm, he had gritted his teeth and rented this tiny apartment. He had lived here for over half a year before making some money in Divine Realm and moving into a bigger apartment-style place in the city.
Back then, life had been incredibly tough. His family's finances were poor, and they had taken on considerable debt just to put him through college. Even so, his parents worked hard every month to send him enough living expenses, letting him bear the hardship himself.
Shi Feng had been single-mindedly focused on earning money to improve the family's situation, but college graduates were a dime a dozen, and finding a decent-paying job was harder than climbing to heaven. So he turned to the most lucrative option: virtual gaming. To sharpen his skills, he had spent what little he had on a virtual headset, aspiring to become a professional player and grinding away in virtual games day after day.
Back then he ate plain steamed buns and instant noodles every day. To save money, he never joined the class gatherings or social mixers, and so he became invisible to his classmates — looked down on by the guys, avoided by the girls. Every time he went to the supermarket to buy noodles, his wallet held fewer than ten Credit Points, not even enough for a one-Credit-Point sausage. The female cashier, seeing how pitiful he looked, had recommended a discounted ham. Shi Feng stared at the tempting ham, patted his wallet, and grit his teeth in refusal.
"Is someone playing a joke on me?"
Shi Feng looked at the familiar room and his young reflection in the mirror, then shook his head and dismissed the thought.
Even the most advanced nations didn't have anti-aging technology like this. Who would waste their time pranking a washed-up middle-aged man?
Shi Feng checked the time on the phone.
April 19, 2129.
"Could it be that I've been reborn?" A bitter smile crossed his face as he said it half-jokingly.
He remembered today was supposed to be August 5, 2139 — it couldn't possibly be April of 2129, when he was still a college senior.
Shi Feng shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, but a sliver of hope still lingered in his heart — the hope that he really had been reborn, truly sent back ten years. He walked over to the desk and opened the laptop.
If the phone's date could be faked, surely the news online couldn't be.
After a few minutes of browsing the internet...