[Reborn + county-town guns and gangsters + satisfying business-war story + no saintly protagonist]
In the winter of 2026, Lin Chen stood on the roof of an office tower with nothing left and jumped.
He had spent half his life navigating both sides of the law in a county town, then gone legitimate and become a construction contractor. He had escaped countless underworld feuds, only to be ruined by reckless expansion and financing projects upfront. His family's fortune of tens of millions vanished overnight. Betrayed by friends and relatives and surrounded by creditors, he died without a proper burial.
When he opened his eyes again, time had stopped in the late autumn of 2012. He had just turned eighteen and was still in his final year of high school.
The Lin family's earthworks business was at its peak, and they had connections across the county, both legal and criminal. He was the local young master no one dared to cross, armed with guns and fists.
He'd been following his father to drinking sessions and nightclubs since he was a boy. Covered in tattoos from his shoulders to his back, he had ruled the streets from a young age. Everyone who saw him had to bow their head and call him Young Master Chen.
In his previous life, he had been reckless and immature, with no sense of strategy. He could only watch as his family stumbled into a doomed unfinished development project.
Reborn, he carried the shrewdness and hard-earned worldliness of a thirty-year-old who had gone bankrupt, hidden inside the body of an eighteen-year-old boy.
There was no need to pretend to be tame and honest. His family was at its peak and his backers were solid, so he could be as cocky as he pleased and settle every score on the spot.
A new student dared to provoke him? He'd get them expelled. A drunk at one of his venues acted out of line? He'd teach him the rules.
He would stop his father from investing in the unfinished Lingzhou development before it was too late, quietly earn his first fortune through online shopping, and seize every internet boom over the next decade and a half.
With connections and power in hand, and the rewards of the times at his feet, he wouldn't grovel, hold back, or go soft.
The opportunities of 2012 had just begun, and the underworld had yet to reach its end. Watch Lin Chen, the county-town tough guy, restart his life, dominate his generation across the whole county, and amass every kind of wealth!
