The first time Liang Shen saw the city burn, he was forty-two.
The second time, he was nineteen.
Rain hammered the glass towers of New Hangzhou — the mega-city he himself had designed in his past life. A thousand drones flickered above the skyline like captive fireflies, their red sensors casting silent beams onto the streets.
Liang stood under a leaking neon canopy, clutching a cracked phone whose screen kept flashing: [Connection Lost].
He had just woken up here — 2019, his old dorm room's student district — and for a long moment he thought it was a simulation, one of his own prototypes. The air smelled too alive. The rain was too cold.
A girl with a paper umbrella brushed past him, humming a tune that hadn't existed yet.
Liang's heart pounded. This is real.
Inside his mind, memories layered like glass panes:
– The contracts he'd signed with the five great families.
– The secret algorithm that turned cities into living organisms.
– The explosion that ended it all.
And under those, something new, glowing faintly like a circuit traced in gold: the Lotus Engine — a strange, meditative code that had come to him in his final moments.
He whispered to himself: "I know every tower. Every patent. Every betrayal. This time…"
His fingers tightened around the cracked phone.
"…I'll redraw the blueprint."
Across the street, three black sedans rolled up. The tinted windows bore a logo Liang recognized instantly: Yan Group Security. They weren't supposed to find him for another three years.
Liang turned and walked into the rain, a smile ghosting his lips.
Let them come.
This time, he wasn't just building cities.
He was building a kingdom of glass.