He woke up to the sound of rain on a roof. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a water-stained ceiling. The air smelled of wet earth and detergent. His body felt wrong - lighter, smaller.
The second was a battered desk piled with schoolbooks.
The third was his own hands — younger, unscarred, no calluses.
He sat up too quickly, heart pounding, and nearly rolled off the narrow bed. The room was unfamiliar yet not — a cramped, second-floor apartment bedroom with peeling wallpaper, faded curtains, and the faint hum of an electric fan. Outside the half-open window, the street below bustled with life: vendors shouting, cars honking, the smell of frying dough curling through the humid air.
It took him five minutes to realize what had happened.
He wasn't just reborn.
He was somewhere else entirely.
In his last life, before the final collapse, he had passed time reading old scavenged books — fantasy, romances, apocalypse thrillers. One of them had stayed with him: Ashes Reclaim the Sky, the story of Lu Qingshan, a quiet nobody who, when the end came, awakened an unmatched ability, a real Deus Ex Machina golden finger, and clawed his way to the top.
This… was that world. That was what the memories of this body and his own, combined, told him.
The date on the wall calendar made his mouth go dry.
Three months before the outbreak.
He sat back against the headboard, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes until he saw sparks. This was insane. He wasn't supposed to be here. Lin Zeyan had never existed in the book — no name, no role, no tragic backstory. Yet here he was, seventeen years old, occupying the body of some local delinquent who skipped classes and got into fights.
His lips twisted into a smile that didn't reach his eyes. Whatever the reasons, at the very least, he was still alive. And he would very much keep on being.
For that, the plan came quickly:
1- Find the protagonist.
2- Take the golden finger before he could awaken it.
3- Survive.
If he was reborn in this time and space with his full memories, then it was his fate to have it!
But fate, as Lin Zeyan was about to learn, had a sense of humor.