Era background: 1998-2018, spanning twenty years. These are the two decades of dramatic transformation in Chinese society - the wave of layoffs from state-owned enterprises, the boom in real estate, the rise of the Internet, and the normalization of crackdowns on organized crime and evil. The underground world and the above-ground society resonate at the same frequency.
· Protagonist setting: Chen Zheng, in his previous life, was the "uncrowned king" of the underground world in a southern province. He rose from the streets to become the overlord of the province by relying on his iron fists and extraordinary brains. But at his peak in 2005, he was betrayed by his most trusted brother and hacked to death in a dock warehouse at the age of 32. Reborn in 1998, when I was 16 years old, my father had just lost his job due to the wave of layoffs from state-owned enterprises, my mother was bedridden, and the family was destitute.
· Core golden finger: "Emperor's Mental Technique" - twenty years of experience in the world, the art of understanding people, and the overall situation are all brought back. There is no system, no cheats, just a heart tempered by betrayal, a pair of eyes that can see through people's hearts, and a soul that knows how to dance on the edge of a knife.
· Core theme: This is not a gangster novel that promotes violence, but a story of "restoration of order". The protagonist once fell into darkness and still chooses this path after rebirth. But what he wants to do is not to repeat the bloody conquests of his previous life, but to use underground rules to restrain the underground world and turn the disorderly chaos into an orderly world. What he wants to become in the end is not a murderous demon king, but a person who can make the world follow the rules.
