The last thing Li Wei remembered from his old life was the wet slap of tires losing grip and the blinding flash of a semi-truck's headlights. Then pain—brief, honest, final.
After that came nothing. A perfect, weightless black.
When sensation returned, it arrived in layers. First the ache in his ribs, then the sour taste of cheap noodles still lingering on his tongue, then the faint mildew stink of a room that had never seen sunlight. His eyelids cracked open. The ceiling above him was stained yellow, water damage blooming like old bruises.
This wasn't a hospital. This wasn't even his apartment back on Earth.
Memories that did not belong to him poured in without permission. They came fast, clinical, like someone dumping files into an empty hard drive.
Lin Feng. Nineteen. Third-year student in the lowest martial arts track at Jianghai University. Father dead three years ago in a "training accident" nobody believed. Mother running a failing herbal tea stall in the old district. Zero cultivation talent. Monthly protection fee to the Red Snake Gang: eight thousand yuan he didn't have. Yesterday a senior named Zhao Jun had "accidentally" smashed his only training sandbag and added another three thousand to the tab.
Lin Feng sat up slowly. The motion felt too smooth, too controlled. The body was younger, lighter, but the mind inside it was not.
He swung his legs off the narrow bed and stood. A cracked mirror above the sink showed a sharp-jawed face with ink-black eyes. No panic in them. No grief. Just the same flat, appraising stare he used to wear while calculating quarterly projections at his old desk job.
Interesting.
A blue interface bloomed directly into his vision, clean and silent, the way only a system could be.
[Life Simulator System successfully bound.]
[Host identity confirmed: Lin Feng (reincarnated consciousness).]
[Current realm: Mortal Body – Zero cultivation base.]
[Core function: From this moment forward, the host may initiate a full life simulation of any chosen decision branch. Time inside simulation accelerates 1:1000. All sensory input, pain, and consequences will be experienced as real.]
[Rewards will be issued upon simulation completion according to performance metrics, strategic value, and alignment with real-world actions.]
[Hidden costs exist. Repeated low-performance runs may trigger unknown penalties.]
[First simulation is free. Choose wisely.]
The text hovered for three full seconds, then faded like breath on glass.
Lin Feng exhaled once through his nose. No smile. No whispered "cheat code." Just a single, precise thought:
*This changes everything.*
He didn't waste the free simulation on anything flashy. He had watched enough web novels in his previous life to know that systems lied by omission. First, test the tool on something small and immediate.
He closed his eyes and formed the command mentally, the way the interface seemed to expect.
"Simulate the next twenty-four hours if I borrow money from my mother to pay the Red Snake collector today."
The world folded.
He was suddenly standing in the tiny tea stall behind the university east gate. His mother—thin, hair already streaked with premature gray—counted out crumpled bills from the metal cash box. Tears tracked down her cheeks as she handed them over.
The collector, a squat man with a scar across his left eyebrow, pocketed the cash, grinned, and still slapped Lin Feng across the face hard enough to split his lip. "Interest compounds daily, kid. See you tomorrow."
Later that night the bullies found him again. Zhao Jun and two others. They took his phone, his last thirty yuan, and left him curled on the pavement with two cracked ribs. His mother stayed up until dawn boiling medicine she couldn't afford. By sunrise the debt had grown. The stall looked one step closer to closing forever.
Simulation ended.
Lin Feng opened his eyes back in the dim room. His pulse was steady. The phantom pain in his ribs had already vanished, but the memory of it remained—cold data, nothing more.
[Simulation complete.]
[Duration experienced: 24 hours.]
[Achievements: None.]
[Performance rating: Suboptimal.]
[Reward: Withheld.]
Exactly as predicted. Borrowing solved nothing; it only accelerated the downward spiral.
He tried again, no hesitation.
"Simulate the next twenty-four hours if I refuse payment and attempt to fight."
The world folded once more.
This time the collector laughed when Lin Feng swung. The man's palm met his wrist, twisted, and the crack of bone was sickeningly loud. Hospital fees. Police who looked the other way because the Red Snake Gang paid them more than the university did. Mother selling her wedding ring. Debt tripled. By nightfall Lin Feng was unconscious in an alley with a knife wound in his side that would scar forever.
[Simulation complete.]
[Performance rating: Catastrophic.]
[Reward: Withheld.]
[Note: Host body possesses zero combat foundation. Direct confrontation equals suicide.]
Lin Feng's lips pressed into a thin line. Not disappointment—data.
Third run.
"Simulate if I appear cooperative, extract information, and stall for time."
The blur returned.
This version played longer. He kept his head down, voice soft, eyes lowered exactly the way the original Lin Feng would have. The collector's tongue loosened after the third respectful bow. Red Snake was a bottom-tier gang, barely tolerated by the Zhao family. Their leader was currently distracted by a turf war with the Iron Tiger Hall two districts over. Internal pressure was high; collectors had quotas but limited backup. A clever delay might buy three days without immediate violence.
The simulation ended with Lin Feng walking away unharmed, pockets still empty, but carrying three new facts and a possible opening.
[Simulation complete.]
[Performance rating: Average.]
[Achievement unlocked: First Information Harvest.]
[Reward issued: Temporary Mental Clarity +1 (lasting 72 real-world hours). Hidden insight fragment stored.]
A faint coolness brushed the inside of his skull, like someone had wiped fog from a window. Thoughts moved a fraction faster.
Lin Feng opened his eyes again. He glanced at the cheap wall clock—7:14 p.m. The collector would knock in exactly one minute.
He crossed to the sink, splashed water on his face, and studied his reflection once more. The eyes looking back were the same as before—calm, flat, patient.
The mother in the memories had loved this body. She had worked sixteen-hour days for it. The original Lin Feng had felt guilt, gratitude, fear.
The new tenant felt nothing at all. She was a variable. Useful for now. A liability if she became a chain. He filed the observation away without sentiment.
A heavy fist hammered the door.
"Lin Feng! Open the fucking door or I'll kick it in!"
The voice was exactly as remembered from the second simulation—gravelly, impatient, already tasting blood.
Lin Feng dried his hands, walked to the door, and opened it with the precise half-second delay of someone who was afraid but trying to hide it.
The collector filled the frame: five-foot-eight, thick arms, scar through the left eyebrow. Behind him stood a thinner man holding a metal baton, eyes bored.
"Eight thousand plus the three you owe from yesterday," the collector said, cracking his knuckles. "Cash. Now."
Lin Feng kept his gaze on the floor, shoulders rounded exactly right. "I… I don't have it all. But I can get half by tomorrow if you give me one extra day. My mother's stall—"
A backhand cut him off. Not hard enough to break anything, just enough to sting and humiliate. The collector leaned in, breath sour with cigarettes.
"One extra day costs interest. And I don't like waiting."
In the back of Lin Feng's mind the system interface pulsed once, almost eagerly.
[New simulation branch available: Immediate tactical response options.]
[Warning: Unaccounted variable detected two blocks away.]
Lin Feng tasted blood on his lip. He did not flinch. Instead he lowered his voice to the perfect trembling register and said the first line of the script the third simulation had proven worked.
"I understand, sir. Please… just one day. I swear on my mother's life I'll have it."
The collector laughed.
But somewhere outside, footsteps approached—too many, too purposeful. The system's warning flashed brighter.
Lin Feng's expression stayed perfectly submissive. Inside, his mind was already spinning new simulations faster than the collector could blink.
Because the real game had just begun, and the first rule he had learned in two previous lives was simple:
Never let anyone see you calculating.
The collector raised his hand for a second slap.
Lin Feng waited, perfectly still, already living out a dozen futures in the space between heartbeats.
And somewhere in the distance, sirens began to wail—wrongly timed, wrongly directed.
The system's next line appeared in blood-red text only he could see:
[Major life branch diverging. Hidden cost incoming.]