Inside a properly-ventilated adequate-sized room, on a wooden bed with a sleeping mat on top, an 18-year-old boy was sleeping, drooling from the corner of his mouth.
It was not hard to tell that he was having a rather good dream, judging from a subtle smile on his lips.
But his sweet dreams did not last long; an alarm clock on a small bedside table started to screech.
Ring… ringgg… ringgg…
The sudden sound of the alarm clock made the boy jolt awake like a scared cat. His eyes widened drowsily. The scene in front of him looked slightly blurry at first, but when he saw everything clearly, his body shook intensely.
“This… this is…!” Bai Chen was speechless. He scanned the room with its familiar atmosphere with great caution.
“A dream?”
He suspected that the scene in front of him right now was a dream. Because if not, what else could it be? The absurdity of this situation was truly inexplicable.
His heart drummed loudly in his chest without reason. Bai Chen pinched his cheek—only to find that the throbbing pain he felt was so real, his eyes became slightly watery. “D… don’t tell me that this is all real?!?”
Bai Chen found this extremely hard to believe. Could it be possible that he had traveled back in time? He rushed to the mirror and saw a boy of 18 staring back with a dumbfounded expression.
“Th… this…this…this…” He opened his mouth wide, but all that came out were three consecutive utterances of “this”. Like a ferocious storm, his heart was beating even faster. Bai Chen’s breathing quickened as he inhaled deeply.
He slowly turned to look at a calendar hung on a wooden wall. His eyes fell on the date, month, and year printed on the page.
“June 16, 2017!”
He nearly stopped breathing. He stood there, rooted motionless to the ground for a while before letting out a roar of laughter. “Hahaha, this is not a dream. It really isn’t. I traveled back in time to 12 years ago. I really did!”
Tears streamed down his cheeks. Endless streams of emotions flooded Bai Chen’s mind.
“Little Chen! Shut it and go get ready for school right now!” A rough voice can be heard through a closed door—the voice that made Bai Chen’s body tremble violently. His lips quivered before letting out a hoarse sound, “Dad…”
That was his father’s voice! It was really his!
Bai Chen tried to calm down. He took a deep breath, sucking in trails of snot. The boy wiped tears off his face with his hand before looking up at the ceiling and speaking with the most heartfelt gratitude.
“Thank you, heaven. Thank you for letting me come back here!”
He paused momentarily. The tone of his voice shifted from being grateful to somber and hostile. “This time I won’t let anyone tear my family apart again. I’m going to kill Wang Chengye. I’m going to destroy the whole Wang family. My parents are going to live lives of happiness. I swear it!”
As soon as his words died down, a sound rang in his head, and a translucent white window appeared.
Ding!
---
[The Life Changing System]
User: Bai Chen
Age: 18 years old
Level: 1 (0/100)
Description: You still need 100 points to level up.
Instructions: If you wish to change your life to what you have always wanted, proceed with the following missions!
[Mission Dashboard]
Mission 1: Feed a mysterious man sitting next to a garbage pile (15 points)
Mission 2: Feed stray cats at the park (10 points)
Further instruction: The order of mission completion is irrelevant. After you are done with the tasks assigned to you, you will be given a chance to receive special skills or items at random. The skills or items will give you a better life!
---
Bai Chen blinked rapidly. He stared at the translucent white window with gold lettering in front of him, dumbfounded. But then his heart skipped a beat when he thought of the time when he was standing on the prison grounds staring at the sky. It was just like that time!
Agitation rose within him. He did not have the faintest idea what this system was or how it appeared in front of him. But he was thankful from the bottom of his heart that it helped him to travel back in time—back to the time that he dreamt of changing the most!
,m Bai Chen calmed down a little. He was a man with a sharp mind. He knew that the Life Changing System was anything but ordinary. With it, he surely stood a chance of killing Wang Chengye and destroying the whole Wang family—one of the top five families from Beijing.
He took a good look at the window of the Life Changing System in front of him before coming to a realisation. This system was quite similar to some of the novels he had read.
Bai Chen was beside himself with anticipation. He felt lucky—lucky that he persevered until the age of thirty until he received this wondrous system.
“First, I need to complete the missions. The rest can wait. This system is the only trump card that will help me to get rid of Wang Chengye and his clan.”
Bai Chen mumbled to himself, eyes gleaming with strong determination as he raised his fist to the sky.
He closed the Life Changing System by tapping the red X button, then hurried off to shower and get ready for school, while trying to find a way to take revenge.
After leaving his bedroom, Bai Chen walked down the five-step stairs to the first floor. He lived in a two-storey house made of wood. His and his parent’s bedrooms, as well as the bathroom, were on the second floor. The first floor was a tiny Chinese steamed bun shop—small but just enough to feed a normal family such as his.
“Come eat your breakfast, little Chen. Mummy has prepared all these dishes for you.”
When he reached the first floor, Bai Chen saw his father, Bai Chang, who was sitting on a chair reading a newspaper. Bai Chang was a middle-aged man of 50 years with salt-and-pepper hair. In front of him was an adequate-sized dining table with rice bowls and several dishes on top.
End of Chapter 2