CH 1

In late autumn, in the cemetery.

Jian Ning wore a thin and loose white t-shirt with long pants and sat quietly in front of a new gravestone. He seemed exhausted and after lightly resting his face on the stone; he closed his eyes.

The red stone necklace around his neck slipped off and hit the black-and-white photo on the gravestone, making a light and crisp sound.

The man in the black-and-white photo had a handsome face with thin lips and a straight nose. His eyes showed no emotion as he looked ahead, with a gloomy and cold temperament.

This was his husband, who died in a car accident a week ago.

“Huo Lin, you lied to me,” Jian Ning whispered with his eyes closed, his forehead still wrapped in several layers of gauze.

In the car accident a week ago, although he was held by Huo Lin, his head still received a heavy blow and the wound on his forehead had not healed.

He remembered Huo Lin’s promise when the other proposed marriage to him, “Jian Ning, come with me and I will make sure you have a good life.”

At the time of the promise, their relationship was not actually close. He worked odd jobs at a car dealership and met Huo Lin there. Their eyes met, and then Huo Lin chased him.

Huo Lin’s black and heavy eyes were actually very attractive upon closer inspection, but his aura was too strong and his temperament was too cold. When he stared at people, it made their backs feel cold.

Jian Ning felt like a scary animal trapped him, and the animal was looking at him like it was getting ready to hunt for food.

In the end, the facts proved that he was not wrong.

A month later, Huo Lin found him again and before coming to see him, he had figured out all his details: an orphan from an old and failing welfare institution, newly graduated from college, financially strapped, working as an intern at a small company with a monthly salary of 2,200 yuan, working part-time at the car dealership with a monthly salary of 1,400 yuan, for a total monthly income of 3,600 yuan, of which he had to send back over 2,000 yuan to the welfare institution.

In less than ten minutes of meeting, Jian Ning received a check and a marriage application from Huo Lin.

Huo Lin told him that he would help the old and failing welfare institution where he was sending money to, and would make a proper arrangement for all the children in the institution.

Huo Lin also said, “Come with me and I will make sure you have a good life.”

Jian Ning clenched the check and looked up at the handsome face of the man in front of him. After a long time, he nodded.

He didn’t know why Huo Lin chose him. In his life of poverty and suffering, he had never experienced the feeling of being loved and treated well.

Huo Lin had never said the word “love” to him, but ever since they got married, he had always been loved.

On the day of the car accident, Huo Lin had just given him a red stone necklace worth billions of yuan.

The red stone was not an ordinary gemstone, but a unique one that combined recording, storage, and projection functions with other features, and was the only one of its kind in the world.

When Huo Lin gave him the necklace, he showed Jian Ning the images stored inside, which were the countless moments they had spent together.

Looking at those images, Jian Ning hugged Huo Lin for the first time. He buried his face in Huo Lin’s arms and softly called him “husband.” At that moment, he thought they still had a lot of time to slowly fall in love and grow old together.

But on that very night, he lost Huo Lin. They never had a chance to truly love each other.

As the red gemstone necklace swayed in the wind, the sound of urgent footsteps in the distance drowned out the light tapping of the necklace on the tombstone.

Several men and women rushed over, their faces angry and anxious. They passed by other tombstones and walked directly towards him.

“Jian Ning!” the middle-aged man at the front yelled in anger as soon as he saw him. “Stop right there!”

Jian Ning, who was sitting in front of the tombstone and had no intention of running away, opened his eyes, sat up straight, and showed no surprise when he saw the people approaching.

These are all Huo Lin’s uncles and aunts. When Huo Lin was ten years old and lost his parents, they didn’t care at all. But when Huo Lin suffered and climbed to the top, they all popped up like eels.

They always wanted to take advantage and get something for nothing, but Huo Lin was not a kind person. Even if he donated a lot of money, he wouldn’t give these eels a penny.

Jian Ning agreed with Huo Lin’s approach, but he didn’t expect that these were not eels, but venomous snakes!

These venomous snakes relied on their blood relationship with Huo Lin. As long as Huo Lin died, and then Jian Ning died, their family property would be divided among other relatives. Therefore, under the influence of greed, they staged a car accident.

“Jian Ning, did you make up something? Let me tell you, you and Huo Lin got into a car accident, and it was your own bad luck! No, wait, it was you, the jinx, who killed Huo Lin, and it has nothing to do with us! Don’t think you can just make up something and use it as evidence!” The Huo family’s uncle, who was speaking, had an overly expressive expression on his face. He glared at Jian Ning with hatred and said, “Hand over the videos, recordings, and other things you made up honestly. As an orphan, even if you die in this Pingchuan City, no one will back you up.”

“If you know what’s good for you, I will treat you well,” the Huo family’s uncle said.

As soon as he finished speaking, the people behind him immediately chimed in. Although they already knew that Jian Ning had evidence, they were still rude to him.

Jian Ning had no relatives or friends and never showed off after marrying Huo Lin. To put it nicely, he was not very dangerous. To put it bluntly, he was easy to bully.

Seeing that some of these people were getting impatient and were about to slap him, Jian Ning’s long and thick eyelashes finally flickered.

He lifted his eyes and said softly before the other’s hand landed on him, “I have given it to the police. Your criminal evidence. I have handed it all over to the police. Not just this car accident, but also everything else you’ve done. I have evidence for it.”

He spent a lot of money and hired many professionals to collect evidence of what these people had done.

Afterwards, he handed all the evidence over to the police.

When Jian Ning spoke, everyone present was stunned. They looked at the young man sitting in front of the tombstone in disbelief. His face was delicate and pale, with bandages wrapped around his forehead, giving off a fragile and broken feeling.

“Are you trying to scare us?”

Huo family uncle looked at the young man steadily, trying to maintain his composure as he spoke harshly, “You’re too inexperienced to try to scare us! Hurry up and tell me, where did you hide the things you did?!”

Huo family uncle questioned him, and his eyes suddenly caught sight of the ruby on his neck. This ruby was too expensive, and its value and function had been extensively reported in the news at the time.

“The videos and recordings are all in this ruby, right? Show it to me.”

Perhaps out of genuine suspicion or out of greed, Huo family uncle took the lead in approaching Jian Ning, reaching out to grab the ruby on his neck.

Jian Ning avoided his hand and stood up, leaning against the tombstone.

“Get lost.”

The ruby was retrieved inside his clothes, and Jian Ning’s face was calm, his dark eyes just as cold as they used to be: “Your time of death is about to come. In this last bit of time, you might as well hurry up and pick a cemetery.”

In their ears, Jian Ning’s words were undoubtedly a curse.

The already ill-tempered group of people became even more aggressive, crowding around him again, extending their hands to try and push him away and snatch the object.

Jian Ning’s body was frail and thin, and during that week, he had lost all the flesh that Huo Lin had carefully nurtured for more than half a year.

Although he looked thin and weak, his fighting skills were visibly fierce.

An orphan, especially a good-looking one, couldn’t have grown up to be this big without relying on the sympathy of others. It was only after marrying Huo Lin that he put away his defensive spines and became a soft little lamb. With Huo Lin’s love, he no longer needed to use his spines.

Several middle-aged men who were bigger than Jian Ning were not treated kindly. They were slapped by Jian Ning several times on their faces, and their bodies hurt so much that they howled.

Jian Ning’s advantage of being fierce didn’t last long. He was injured in a car accident, and his bandaged head was throbbing faintly due to the recent movements, causing him to feel unsteady on his feet.

Coincidentally, Huo’s uncle, who was anxious to retaliate, pushed him hard at this moment.

Bang-

He hit his head on the tombstone and the pain suddenly intensified. Besides the pain, there was also a suffocating dizziness.

Jian Ning vaguely touched his forehead, and the next second, he saw the blood on his hand.

There were panicked shouts and arguments about blaming each other in his ears, and finally—

It was the sound of police sirens coming from far to near. Before these people arrived, Jian Ning had already called the police.

The evidence he collected was enough to make these people eat bullets and go to jail.

The sound of police sirens accompanied the panicked escape of several people, becoming increasingly muffled in Jian Ning’s ears.

Jian Ning didn’t pay attention to these sounds, he just tried to crawl forward a bit.

When he reached Huo Lin’s tombstone and sat up gasping for breath, his bleeding forehead touched the tombstone, staining the pure white tombstone red bit by bit.

The crisp sound of the red stone hitting the tombstone rang out again.

Jian Ning lifted his hand, touched the photo on the tombstone, and whispered softly, “Huo Lin, wait for me, okay?”

He was a firm atheist, didn’t believe in reincarnation or cultivating for the afterlife, but at this moment, he only hoped that heaven could have mercy on him and let him meet Huo Lin again. He had never told Huo Lin that he was not the only one who had fallen in love with at first sight.

A gust of wind blew by. The sound of his forehead hitting the stone tablet was louder than the sound of the stone tablet hitting the red stone.

Time and space instantly became ethereal, and his blurred consciousness plunged into complete darkness. The stone tablet and the red stone were soaked in blood, as if in a silent record.

After an unknown amount of time, a ray of light pierced through the chaotic darkness. Shivering, Jian Ning woke up in the cold that had permeated his whole body.

As soon as he woke up, he felt like the whole world was spinning, not just spinning, but also shaking violently!

“Hey, this little brat is awake.” A rough voice sounded, followed by Jian Ning shaking even more violently. His head was swinging in mid-air, and after swinging for just a few seconds, the feeling of nausea overwhelmed him.

He threw up twice.

The milky white liquid he threw up splattered onto a large hand, which was covered in calluses. The hand was like it had touched an electric current, and it suddenly threw him aside.

Jian Ning flew in a parabolic arc in the air, and then was caught by another hand. This time, his head finally didn’t face downwards, and his vision cleared.

In his clear vision, Jian Ning saw the woman who caught him. She was wearing strange clothes and had a horrible brand on the right side of her face. At her feet lay a corpse.

Not just one, but everywhere in this strange, cabin-like environment, there was blood and fresh corpses.

Jian Ning: “!”

Jian Ning subconsciously wanted to speak, but he exerted all his strength, turned red in the face, and only managed to let out a string of “Ah, ah, ah!”

Milk-voiced and childish cries, coupled with his own short arms and legs that just caught his eye, made Jian Ning’s expression stunned as if struck by lightning.

While Jian Ning was still in shock, the woman holding him had already put him on the lid of a garbage can and began to inspect him. “Tsk, this poor little brat, what a shame. In this day and age, he still wears such a cheap red glazed necklace.”

As she spoke, the woman ripped off the red stone necklace from Jian Ning’s neck and threw it at her companion to see.

Her companion laughed heartily as he looked at the necklace: “This little brat is so poor and shabby, it’s really rare. Let’s send him to a good place. That would be a good deed.”

After passing the necklace around for a while, a short man finally threw it to the ground.

Jian Ning didn’t have time to study his short arms and legs, and his gaze followed the necklace’s movement, finally settling on the blood-stained floor.

The woman searched him all over and found nothing valuable, so she lost her patience. “Carl, let’s go. The Eagle’s message is probably wrong. This transport ship is just an ordinary ship. There is nothing valuable.”

They had already looted the valuable things on the ship, and they hadn’t gotten as much as they had from previous raids.

“Well, let’s load everything up and kill the brat while we’re at it.”

As they spoke, they quickly packed up the loot they had just gathered. The woman holding Jian Ning also took out a knife.

Before the knife’s cold light could reach Jian Ning, a sudden commotion came from outside.

“Fuck, it’s the Fitz Group’s spaceship!”

“Hurry, let’s go! These people are always preying on their own kind. If we run into them, we’ll all die here!”

“What a fucking unlucky break to run into them here!”

Despite cursing, it was evident from their panicked demeanor that they were afraid of the approaching group.

The spaceship coming towards them was covered in black skulls and had several crooked red letters written on its hull--

All die!

The star thief organization called the Fitz Group also had another name, which was the few words on their ship: “All Die”. This star thief organization wandered in space all year round, full of evil, notorious, and anyone who saw them must run.

The woman who wanted to kill Jian Ning obviously trembled. She put away the dagger and turned to run. Before running away, she casually threw Jian Ning into the trash can.

Jian Ning: “......”

Jian Ning, who was listening to their conversation with his ears upright, kicked his legs in the trash can unwillingly.

He naturally heard that the bad guys who were originally going to kill him were now running away. And the reason they were running away is that a group of even worse people were coming!

The group of people retreated quickly, and there was no movement outside the trash can after a few minutes.

Jian Ning, who was lying in the trash can, tried hard to shake the trash can and wanted to overturn it. At the same time, he thought about his current situation and how to survive.

He was now in a situation that, using a trendy term, should be called “rebirth”.

He was reborn as a little baby.

Being reborn as a little baby... maybe he could find Huo Lin, who was a few years older than him. In this life, he wanted to be with Huo Lin from an early age!

Thinking of Huo Lin, Jian Ning’s short hands burst into strength.

Boom!

The trash can was knocked over, revealing Jian Ning, who was stripped by the star thieves and only had a small pair of underpants left.

Jian Ning’s forehead turned red, and he didn’t have time to rub his head. He crawled out of the trash can in a hurry and then crawled to his necklace.

His chubby little hand successfully grasped the red stone necklace. Jian Ning smiled twice with his crescent-shaped eyes. After laughing, he turned around and prepared to climb to a safe place to hide.

But as soon as he turned around, a pair of long legs appeared in front of him.

Looking up along the long legs, Jian Ning saw a big man with a beard all over his face. The big man looked down at him expressionlessly, wearing a black hat with a white skull pattern all over it.

Jian Ning’s little face was stunned: “Ah.”

It’s over.

Even worse bad guys had come.

He’s afraid he would have to be reborn again.