Power Is Poison

Lin Zhou, an office worker who died suddenly at his desk, unexpectedly wakes up reborn in 2008, back in his seventeen-year-old senior year of high school. Armed with fifteen years of future memories, he holds the keys to a fortune: skyrocketing stocks, unfinished buildings in prime locations, and early Bitcoin. Yet he feels no youthful nostalgia, only hatred for the miserable life he lived before and an ambition to turn everything upside down.

He gets his start with lottery numbers he remembers, then aggressively expands his business empire, founding Zhouyu Investments and swallowing up industries ranging from building materials to logistics and printing. He even moves into overseas renewable energy and technology. He uses ruthless methods to eliminate Zhang Qiang and Zhou Qiang, who bullied him in his previous life. He engineers the social destruction of Su Qing, the ex-girlfriend who once trampled his dignity. Even his elite circle of roommates while studying at Oxford becomes a stepping stone for infiltrating power and seizing “spoils.”

He uses money to manipulate people and violence to remove obstacles, climbing to the top of the business world over countless lives ruined and tears shed, and even dreaming of controlling the globe. But the black hole of desire eventually consumes him. An alliance of rebels rises, and his mechanically enhanced body and autocratic rule crumble during Operation Daybreak. He ends up a prisoner, meeting his final end in the darkness of Guantanamo Bay. This is a brutal parable about power and desire corroding human nature, disguised as a wish-fulfillment rebirth story.