Reborn: From Building Materials Shop to Urban Renewal Tycoon

Before he was reborn, Zhou Mingyu had lived a miserable life. He died at fifty in a construction-site shack, with 8,600 yuan in his account and a stack of IOUs.

After being reborn, he found himself on an old street in the east of the city in 2012. Outside the building-supplies shop his mother had left him, a text from his ex-girlfriend came in: “Mom says you need to add another eighty thousand to the bride price.”

He replied with one word: “Get lost.”

Then he did three things.

First, he cornered a bank manager in his office and got a fifty-thousand-yuan loan using a shabby little shop as collateral. Second, he bypassed the local thug and snapped up the two neighboring shops for next to nothing. Third, he set his sights on two mu of wasteland east of the secondhand market: the only thing his father had left him, and the very thing Liu Jianye was desperate to seize.

Later, at a contract-signing, he helped an old man recover 180,000 yuan in compensation, and the video spread all over Jiangbei. Then a woman in a white blouse appeared outside his shop and handed him a business card. On the back, she had written:

“I want to know how the story of a man who owns land will play out.”

Zhou Mingyu took the card without a word. In his heart, he said:

“Dad, in this life, no one will ever grind me into the dirt again.”