📖 Chapter 1: Rebirth

At 8 PM, the Guanyi Group headquarters was swallowed by the night, save for a single pool of light in the top-floor office.

The illumination fell upon a man working quietly in black. His tall, slender silhouette exuded a quiet air of detachment.

A phone ring broke the silence. The man looked up from his documents. A strip of white gauze wrapped around his forehead only deepened the exhaustion in his features.

“President Ji, you guessed right. Ji Xun went to Fuxing Bar. He’d barely stepped inside when Fang Kangming arrived. But Fang has just been sitting in his car for an hour now. No movement.” The caller was Wu Yu, Ji Mu’s assistant.

Walking toward the window, Ji Mu replied, “Understood. Thanks for keeping an eye on him. I’m heading over now. Should be there in about thirty-five minutes.”

Wu Yu quickly asked, “President Ji, you’re driving yourself?”

“Yes. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.” As he spoke, Ji Mu’s left hand instinctively dropped to his thigh. His fingers curled, crushing the fabric of his suit trousers. A sharp pang of pain surged through him. He slowly relaxed his grip.

Wu Yu wanted to say more but held back.

Ji Mu was gentle by nature and steady in action, but once he made a decision, it was nearly impossible to sway him.

He closed the window. The boundless night sky suddenly turned into a mirror, reflecting a pale face with calm, refined features.

It was a young face. Twenty-seven years old.

Ji Mu had been reborn — sent back seven years.

He gazed at his reflection, his eyes as still as a deep mountain pool. Beautiful, but utterly devoid of warmth.

Ji Mu had been criticized since birth, always practicing restraint and yielding to others. Yet somehow, in his past life, despite all the storms and detours, he had never known a moment of peace.

Before the age of nine, Ji Mu’s father was unknown.

His mother, Cheng Miao, had returned to the county town eight months pregnant. No matter how hard the family pressed, she refused to name the child’s father.

With the child’s origins unexplained, the Cheng household kept a quiet, guest-free first-month celebration. That very quietness gave Cheng Miao the cover she needed to slip away unnoticed.

Perhaps it was a habit of Chinese parents to shoulder their children’s messes, but Ji Mu’s maternal grandmother, ignoring everyone’s objections, took on the responsibility of raising him herself.

When Ji Mu was six months old, Cheng Miao called home. Amid her mother’s tears, she promised to send living expenses every month, but never once asked about Ji Mu.

In a small town, secrets couldn’t stay buried. Rumors chased Ji Mu like the wind. It seemed everyone felt entitled to joke about his uncertain birth and tragic background. He had no defense from the start. Over the years, those rumors hardened into a relentless rain of arrows, piercing his thin, bleak childhood.

Three years later, Cheng Miao returned to the county town, pregnant once again. This time, her lips curved into a smile, her brows relaxed, and a man followed closely behind her.

She was getting married. She had no intention of taking Ji Mu with her, nor did she ask him to call her “Mom.” She simply wanted her family to see her husband and receive their blessing for her marriage.

At nine, the only person who had ever been good to him—his grandmother—passed away. Cheng Miao returned through the rain.

After the heavy downpour, the dead were laid to rest.

Without an elder to act as a buffer, Cheng Miao could no longer shirk her guardianship duties. She took Ji Mu away from the remote county town. As the first sunlight of winter broke through, she pushed him through the gates of the old Ji family mansion.

In Ji Mu’s memory, Cheng Miao’s retreating figure was always so resolute, never pausing for him. That time was no different.

After nine years of being labeled a “bastard,” Ji Mu had overnight become a young master of a wealthy family. Many envied and resented him, unaware that the intricate etiquette of the Ji household pressed down on him like layers of shackles. It was hardly a life of ease.

Ji Mu’s biological father was Ji Heng, who had died when Ji Mu was five. Within the Ji family, Ji Mu remained an orphan with no living parents, living under another’s roof.

When the family patriarch, Ji Jianshan, first laid eyes on Ji Mu, his weathered, authoritative face froze for a moment. His eyes held a mix of joy and sorrow. He could only repeat, “So alike. So very alike.”

Perhaps it was that face, so closely mirroring his late son, that led Ji Jianshan to show extra care for this grandson who had appeared halfway through his life. No matter how busy he was, he always made time to ask about Ji Mu’s daily life. This, in turn, kept the rest of the Ji family from openly making things difficult for him.

Ji Mu carried that rare thread of familial warmth through his youth. It would later become the very vulnerability exploited in a life filled with calculation and betrayal.

The Ji family was vast, its branches sprawling.

Though Ji Heng’s only son, Ji Mu was also the product of an unmarried, reckless affair. His origins were far from spotless.

In the Ji household, Ji Mu was like a weed suddenly pushing through the soil after rain in a garden of brilliant, cultivated flowers. Out of place. Weeds are the easiest to uproot. To avoid unnecessary trouble, Ji Mu learned to keep his head low and never stand out. Yet Ji Mu was never truly a weed. Though his branches were cramped, his roots grew wild and untamed in the damp, dark soil beneath.

Most of the Ji family’s children chose to study abroad. The gifted leveraged their own talent and the family’s resources to push into world-renowned universities. The mediocre were simply funded by the family into respectable degrees.

The former was like Ji Mu’s cousin, Ji Zhou, a year his senior. The latter was like Ji Xun, Ji Mu’s same-age cousin.

Ji Mu did neither. He neither went abroad, nor did he rely on family connections. Relying solely on diligence and innate talent, he skipped several grades and graduated at twenty as an outstanding student from one of China’s top universities.

Others might not have known the full extent of Ji Mu’s achievements, but they never escaped Ji Jianshan’s notice.

The old patriarch once sighed to his longtime steward, Steward Zeng: “In every way but his looks, Ji Mu is nothing like his father, Ji Heng.”

Ji Heng had been a frivolous playboy, relying on his handsome face and wealthy pedigree to drift through the social scene. Ji Mu, however, knew his boundaries and understood when to advance or retreat. It was almost as if he were repaying a debt: the more troublesome the father, the more trouble-free the son.

As the years passed, Ji Jianshan’s health declined in his sixties. High blood pressure forced him into a behind-the-scenes role. Major decisions aside, the group’s daily operations were handed over to his two sons.

Given his special status, Ji Mu had initially planned to start his own business after graduation. But Ji Jianshan arranged for him to begin at the grassroots level of the company. Ji Mu had voiced his own plans, but he couldn’t bring himself to refuse when the old man appealed to him with the weight of his upbringing and family duty.

A year later, prolonged internal power struggles and scheming threw Guanyi Group into operational chaos. Ji Jianshan, recovering at home due to severe hypertension, heard the news and his condition worsened. Knowing he wouldn’t last much longer, he overrode all objections and summoned twenty-one-year-old Ji Mu to the headquarters. (Note: Original text reads 观易集团 here, which is a clear typo for 观益集团/Guanyi Group. Standardized for consistency.)

It was only later that Ji Mu realized his presence was nothing more than a pawn his grandfather had placed to checkmate his first and second uncles, preventing either from consolidating absolute power.

No one expected Ji Mu to secure a seat on the board of directors within two years and stabilize the company’s turmoil, then double its market capitalization in just two more. By that year, he was only twenty-five.

Rising to prominence at a young age, Ji Mu carried the quiet grace and restraint forged through years of keeping his head down. He showed not a trace of arrogance over his achievements, and his reputation within the company soared. The shareholders, having tasted the benefits of his leadership, were more than willing to follow such a young and exceptional figure.

But where there is admiration, there is also resentment. What Ji Mu never anticipated was that before facing any true rivals, he would first be betrayed by those closest to him—ending up disgraced and thrown behind bars.

Ji Mu had been reborn five days ago. The exact trigger remained unknown.

By the time his mind caught up, his cousin Ji Xun had him by the collar, fist raised high. In the split second before his rebirth, Ji Mu had been grappling with another cousin, Fang Kangming, in an attempt to save someone.

As fate would have it, both were sons of his second uncle, Ji Quan. Ji Xun was the legitimate heir; Fang Kangming was the illegitimate son kept outside the family. Half-brothers, sharing a third of the same features that rarely showed in daily life, but when pushed to their limits, their feral, mad-dog aggression was indistinguishable.

The cold, wet sensation of a knife slicing through fabric and blood draining from his body was still vivid. As Ji Xun’s fist closed in, Ji Mu could no longer tell whether he was fighting Ji Xun or Fang Kangming. Survival instinct and resentment surged together, and before he knew it, he had beaten Ji Xun half to death.

In his past life, around this same time, he had also fought Ji Xun. But out of deference to his grandfather and second uncle, he had held back more than he fought, ending up far more injured than Ji Xun.

This time, seeing that face which bore a third of Fang Kangming’s resemblance, Ji Mu held nothing back.

As his memories fully settled, Ji Mu finally pieced together the situation.

Guanyi Group primarily dealt in home appliances, with a significant portfolio of other electronic devices. It was a company that placed immense value on traditional reputation and innovation.

Ji Xun was impulsive and flamboyant, excelling only in dining, drinking, and entertainment.

After taking over management, Ji Mu had invested in several top-tier domestic research institutes and universities to drive product innovation. Partly to give back to society, partly to build the company’s reputation and seek partnerships. Among them was Professor Zhang Ji, a well-known scholar at Ningcheng University.

Half a month ago, Zhang Ji discovered that a design he had completed only days earlier was featured at a major exhibition. Before he could figure out what had happened, Ji Xun gave a media interview, loudly claiming ownership of the product and announcing plans to file for a patent.

Zhang Ji had spent three years on that project, pouring his heart and soul into it. Enraged by the theft, he stayed up all night drafting whistleblower emails to all senior executives, threatening to go public with the media if the matter wasn’t handled properly.

Zhang Ji was brilliant and proud. Within all of Guanyi, he only maintained a decent rapport with Ji Mu. His restraint from immediate public exposure was solely out of respect for him.

Normally, Guanyi operated multiple dedicated R&D teams. Funding industry experts and designers to develop products or purchasing design copyrights was standard procedure, all secured by legally vetted contracts handled by the company’s legal department. Errors were rare. But this time, Ji Xun had acted unilaterally without board approval, purely to show off.

Ji Xun held a high-ranking position and frequently flaunted his wealth online, making him something of a minor public figure. If this leaked, it would severely damage the group’s reputation. Ji Mu had no choice but to investigate himself.

His investigation revealed that Ji Xun had originally intended to purchase a design from an industry rookie, Wang Yu. But as it turned out, Wang Yu was all fame and no skill. Facing an impossible deadline, he stole Zhang Ji’s work to cover his own tracks. With Wang Yu now missing, Ji Xun had become the unwitting patsy and fall guy.

As a fellow Ji family member of similar age, Ji Xun had been with the company for four years. Aside from having a well-connected father, he had little to show for himself. His flashy demeanor had already offended many. The board simply voted to strip him of his position. Second Uncle Ji Quan wanted to plead for him but found no grounds, ending the meeting with a stormy face.

After the meeting, upon hearing the verdict, Ji Xun stormed into Ji Mu’s office like a madman, slammed the door shut with a loud bang, and threw the first punch.

The Ji Mu of his past life hadn’t understood. The reborn Ji Mu now guessed: the easily led Ji Xun had almost certainly been used as a pawn by Fang Kangming.

The entire plagiarism scandal, too, was likely a trap Fang Kangming had set for him.

After all, as long as Ji Xun remained the legitimate heir, Ji Quan would struggle to bring Fang Kangming through the Ji family’s gates.

Hearing the commotion, colleagues outside rushed to pound on the door.

The door was too well-made. They couldn’t break it down.

A few minutes later, Ji Mu opened it from the inside, dragged a barely-conscious Ji Xun out by the collar, and tossed him through the doorway. The onlookers finally exhaled in relief.

Fang Kangming stood in the crowd. He rushed forward to catch Ji Xun, his movements appearing frantic, but his eyes couldn’t hide a trace of satisfaction.

The moment Ji Mu saw him, a frenzy of blood-red memories flooded his mind. He forced them down, fighting to keep his composure intact.

If Ji Xun was a paper tiger that only knew how to bark, Fang Kangming was a cold-blooded viper skilled at disguise.

In his past life, Fang Kangming had climbed the corporate ladder by any means necessary. After being fired, he harbored deep resentment. Days later, during the evening rush hour, he brought a knife to the company entrance and carried out a retaliatory attack. In an instant, chaos and screams erupted at the gates. People fell. People fled.

Fang Kangming’s eyes were bloodshot, feral. Seeing this, Ji Mu dragged his injured leg and fought him bare-handed. To shield several female colleagues, he used his own body as a human shield. After taking several stabs, he flung the stolen fruit knife away. As security arrived and the distant wail of an ambulance drew near, Ji Mu finally let out a breath of relief—then lost consciousness.

Seeing Fang Kangming again after his rebirth, a sharp, ruthless gleam flashed in Ji Mu’s eyes. Had the circumstances allowed, he would have much preferred it was Fang Kangming lying on the ground.

After Ji Mu left the office, Guanyi Group was swallowed by darkness.

A dark sedan slid quietly through the city streets, as memories from seven years ago slowly surfaced.