Beachcombing: From the Start, All I Had Was a Broken Bowl, and From Then On I Drifted at Sea

(No System, slow burn, not solely about tidepooling, lots of romance. If that’s not your thing, read something else.)

Just after failing the college entrance exam, the young man learns that his father has been framed and sent to prison, leaving the family with three million yuan in debt.

Three years later, his mother dies of illness brought on by overwork and the strain of being unable to repay the debt.

That same year, his brilliant younger sister is deceived by a rich delinquent and falls into depression, never recovering.

After one misfortune after another, the young man eventually starves to death beneath an abandoned bridge.

Luckily, an ancestral treasure sends him from 2030 back to a pivotal moment in 2017, giving him a chance to change his fate.

The young man throws his head back and cries out: “In this life, I decide my own fate!”