Su Mingyao, the Su family’s long-lost biological son, was also the guest of honor at today’s banquet.
His original name was Luo Mingyao, and he had grown up in another family with the surname Luo.
Compared to the Su family, the Luo family wasn’t particularly wealthy, but they weren’t poor either. Both Father Luo and Mother Luo were teachers—one taught at a high school, the other was a university professor. They lived comfortably and doted on Luo Mingyao endlessly. Wrapped in love, he enjoyed a smooth and untroubled life—until that car accident.
It happened one weekend when Luo Mingyao suggested they go out to clear their heads. The family of three set off on a road trip, only to be sideswiped by a truck driven by an exhausted trucker. Father Luo, up front, died instantly. Mother Luo, in the back seat, threw herself over Luo Mingyao to shield him from the worst of the crash. She succumbed to her internal injuries.
Luo Mingyao, miraculously, survived with nothing more than a few scrapes. The hospital staff called it a genuine miracle.
But the real miracle came later. While Luo Mingyao sat dazed in the hospital corridor, he crossed paths with Li Qingshu, who had come to visit the Su Family’s Old Lady. Something about him struck her as profoundly familiar; he even resembled her husband as a boy. On an inexplicable impulse, she arranged for a paternity test. The results confirmed they were mother and son—and that was the start of everything that followed.
Li Qingshu’s later investigation revealed the mix-up hadn’t been the Luo couple’s fault. The overwhelmed night-shift nurse had slapped the wrong labels on the babies. The Su family had taken home the Luo family’s child, while her own flesh and blood had been raised by the Luos.
Piecing together the two boys’ stories left Li Qingshu increasingly horrified.
Su Mingyao had lost his adoptive parents in the crash, only to be blessed by fate with his biological ones. He had ascended into high society, his life on a steep upward climb.
His counterpart, Luo Shang, had first learned he wasn’t his family’s blood, that his real parents were dead—and that the very boy responsible for their deaths had reclaimed his “true” home, casting Luo Shang out into the cold…
If she were in Luo Shang’s shoes, she’d hate Su Mingyao with every fiber of her being.
So what now… what to do…
Without Su Bingyao holding her up, she would have collapsed right there.
Luo Shang, however, seemed oblivious to the anomaly. “My body can handle it,” he replied. “I’m fine.”
“As long as you’re all right, don’t push yourself,” she urged. “Call the doctor if you start feeling off.”
With his mother on the verge of breaking down, Su Bingyao had no choice but to step in. He forced a “normal” expression and carried on the conversation.
“All right, then. I’ll get going?”
Luo Shang nodded.
In the past, Su Bingyao would have asked where he was headed.
But right now, Li Qingshu could barely hold herself together. He wanted Luo Shang gone before he noticed anything amiss. So he nodded. “Don’t forget to show up on time.”
Luo Shang pursed his lips. “Got it.”
With that, he sped off again.
Once the wheelchair vanished from sight, Li Qingshu finally gave out. Her knees buckled, and she dropped to the floor with a thud.
“Yaoyao…” Her voice cracked with despair, startling Su Bingyao.
“What are we going to do about your brother? Your brother!”
“He’s ended up like this all because of Mingyao. What if he goes after him?!”
Su Bingyao paused for a few seconds to register that she meant his blood brother, Su Mingyao.
Hiss…
This was tricky, all right…
But in truth, it wasn’t that big a deal.
“Mingyao will be fine,” Su Bingyao assured her.
“No.” Li Qingshu clung to him like a lifeline, her grip bruising his arm.
“Explain. Tell me exactly…”
“With his current power, killing Mingyao would be child’s play,” Su Bingyao continued.
His mother was just too distraught to think straight. Otherwise, with her sharp mind, she would have seen it already.
“He could make it look like an accident—no traces, no witnesses.”
Su Shang could destroy the entire world. What was one person’s death to him?
“It’s been hours since his discharge. In that time, he’s already wiped out the world once—and yet Mingyao’s still breathing. That proves he’s got no interest in hurting him.”
“…He’s already destroyed the world once?” Li Qingshu zeroed in on that bombshell.
And she hadn’t sensed a thing!
No, of course she hadn’t. Sensing it would have been the weird part!
“Yes.” Su Bingyao managed a wry smile.
“Mother, by the time I first laid eyes on him, he’d already ended this world once.”
“…”
“He’s humoring us with this little game of make-believe family life. We should be on our knees thanking him for it.”
“……You…… Sigh, you’re right.”
Li Qingshu finally conceded her son’s point of view.
~~~
Sunlight filtered through the trees lining both sides of the road, casting dappled shadows across the pavement. Tiny blades of grass sprouted from cracks in the stone and asphalt, blooming with delicate blue flowers that swayed gently in the breeze.
The woods, once filled with the occasional chirp of birds and hum of insects, now lay in deathly silence, as if every small creature had vanished. Neither the whispering wind nor the rustling grass could coax forth a single sound.
Animals in nature possessed instincts far sharper than those of humans. While people remained blissfully unaware, these creatures had sensed the immense peril long ago and gone into hiding.
The car’s four wheels rolled over the shifting patches of light, barreling toward Su Mingyao’s position.
Luo Shang spun the steering wheel with casual ease, rocketing ahead and leaving the other drivers far behind, their vehicles shrinking to specks in his rearview.
To him, it was a negligible detail, but others saw it quite differently.
Among the conference invitees were Su Shang’s old racing cronies—those fair-weather friends he used to burn rubber with.
They prowled the expansive Su family driveway in their gleaming new supercars, music thumping, wind whipping through open roofs, some with girls sprawled in the back seats, the vibe electric. Then, out of nowhere, a blur shot past, pelting them with grit and gusts. By the time they turned to look, the offender was already gone.
It lit a fire under them. A few slammed the gas, engines roaring—not necessarily to chase down and cuss out the speed demon, but at least to ID whoever had the balls to blow by them.
They floored it until the tires smoked, yet the leader remained a ghost. They began to wonder if they’d hallucinated the whole thing.
Luo Shang, the architect of their frustration, pressed on without fanfare, his deed destined to go unsung.
Moments earlier, Su Shang hadn’t overlooked Li Qingshu’s unusual reaction.
Her temperature rising, pulse racing, breaths coming short and ragged, rhythm thrown off—all classic signs of nerves.
But he dismissed it as par for the course. In the Reincarnation Space or any other world, low-rank players or fragile natives always froze up like this around him.
Their life essence remained unchanged, primitive; confronting a superior existence like his triggered pure animal fear, rabbit before tiger.
And that wasn’t even counting the raw malice and killing intent he’d leaked for 0.001 seconds while toying with the idea of world-ending. To them, it was an alien terror they’d never brushed against.
“So concealing my anomaly was the smart play,” Luo Shang concluded.
Otherwise, if his aura crushed everyone into submission, leaving them too winded to stand, how was he supposed to follow the plot?
Posing as a regular guy chafed, like having your limbs hacked off mid-stride, forcing you to slither on your belly. Luo Shang hated the constraint.
“Endure it a bit longer,” the System counseled.
“Finish walking the plot, ditch those jackal-like Fate Priests, and you’ll taste real freedom.”
~~~
At the sink, Su Mingyao gazed into the mirror at a face both intimately familiar and strangely alien. He brushed his cheek—no scars, just the full, youthful curve of a man in his twenties.
This was his younger self, from over a decade ago.
“Have I returned to more than ten years in the past?”
“Am I reborn??”
He had no clue why.
After marrying Shen Changqing, his days had been happy and serene. He held stakes in both the Shen and Su family enterprises, drifting off each night beside the man he loved. True, in the quiet aftermath of their midnight trysts, weariness sometimes crept in as he studied his partner’s sleeping face—but wasn’t that just life?
So why had this version of himself been reborn?
And to the exact moment he’d been welcomed back into the Su family, before ever laying eyes on Su Shang!
The thought of that so-called little brother darkened his gaze.
At first, guilt had gnawed at him. He blamed his own selfish demands for orphaning Su Shang, stripping him of his birth parents. He’d bent over backward to atone, even turning down the Shen family’s marriage proposal.
It was a straightforward business union between the Su and Shen houses, sealing corporate ties. Su Shang wasn’t blood, so the role should’ve defaulted to Su Mingyao.
Yet Su Mingyao’s refusal, combined with Su Shang’s long-standing engagement to Shen Changqing—and the fact that Su Shang was now “family,” no surname switch required—kept the arrangement intact at the outset.
Then Su Shang’s true venom showed. Jealous of Shen Changqing’s clear preference for Su Mingyao, terrified of losing it all, he struck. Endless schemes to torpedo his career, frame him at every turn. The unforgivable part? Su Shang hired a driver to slam into him—pure hired murder.
Once everything came to light, Su Shang was disowned by the Su Family. His engagement was annulled, he was driven out of the household, and he vanished from B City without a trace.
The last news Su Mingyao ever heard about Su Shang was the report of his death.
While countering Su Shang’s attempts to frame him, Shen Changqing came to his aid time and again, revealing his clear fondness. Through their repeated encounters, Su Mingyao fell in love with him.
After Su Shang was disowned and cast out of the Su Family, Su Mingyao and Shen Changqing entered the bonds of matrimony. From that day forward, they became the celebrated golden couple admired by all.
Su Mingyao let out a soft sigh as he briefly recalled those events from over a decade ago.
Now that he had been reborn—reborn right at the moment he had entered the Su Family—and with full knowledge of what was to come, he was far better positioned to deal with Su Shang’s schemes. He could lay his plans in advance, transforming a defensive struggle into an offensive one.
