Warning: This chapter contains adult themes and mature content. It is strictly intended for readers 18 years and older. If you are under 18, please do not continue reading.
My name is Lin Mu Chan.
In that first, ruined life, it was a name etched in tragedy from the moment I drew breath. My parents perished the night I was born, leaving only echoes of the once-mighty Lin family—old wealth, hidden alliances, and a fragile pride that refused to bend.
We bent anyway.
One stormy midnight, a frightened girl barely past childhood staggered through our gates, bloodied and desperate. My grandfather, ever the stubborn idealist, sheltered her when the men sent by Zhao Tianheng—the spoiled heir of the Zhao conglomerate—came to drag her back. They wanted silence. We chose honor.
Honor cost everything.
Three weeks later the estate became an inferno. Masked enforcers moved through the smoke with practiced efficiency. I was nineteen, barely a man, clutching my cousin's hand as bullets shattered heirloom screens and ancestral tablets. The ceiling came down in burning pieces. Her scream was the last sound I heard before darkness claimed me.
Then light—cold, artificial, impossibly blue—ignited inside my mind.
[THE GREATEST REVENGE SYSTEM]
[Successful neural link established]
[Host: Lin Mu Chan – vitals terminated]
[Regression & Preparation Protocol active]
[Option 1: Initiate vengeance in current state]
[Option 2: Return to origin point – build strength]
Dying men see strange things. I assumed delirium.
My fading hand ghosted over the second choice.
Reality folded inside out.
Warmth returned first. Then scent—milk, faint jasmine, clean cotton. My body felt impossibly small, limbs heavy and uncoordinated, vision a soft watercolor blur. A steady heartbeat thrummed beneath my cheek, and a gentle voice wrapped around me like silk.
"…there, there, little one. Don't fuss. Sister's got you."
A tender hold shifted me closer. Warmth pressed softly against my lips—instinct answered before thought could form. Sweetness bloomed across my tongue, rich and comforting, carrying the quiet rhythm of the woman cradling me.
Lin Xue Ning.
My cousin. In that first life she had been the last pillar standing—twenty-three, brilliant, burdened, sacrificing her own future to keep our shattered family from dissolving completely. She had held me through nightmares, bandaged my childish scrapes, shielded me from the worst of the creditors after Grandfather passed. When the fire came she had thrown herself between me and the bullets.
She died for me.
Now I rested in her arms again—this time as an infant, dependent on her care in the most intimate, vulnerable way possible.
A soft exhale stirred the fine hair on my head. Gentle fingers supported me, steady and sure. The closeness was absolute; there was no barrier between us, only trust and necessity.
I drank slowly, deliberately, letting the moment anchor me.
This was not weakness. This was time borrowed. Every heartbeat I borrowed from her now was one more day I could use to grow claws sharp enough to tear the Zhao name from the earth.
Inside my tiny frame something else stirred—a faint, almost imperceptible thread of qi already coiling in what would one day be my dantian. Too early. Too perfect. The system hadn't merely thrown me backward; it had rewritten something fundamental.
I released with a small, contented sound. Xue Ning adjusted her hold, drawing me higher against her chest. Her heartbeat was a steady drum beneath my ear.
"You're different today," she whispered, half to herself. "Quieter. Like you're… listening."
I couldn't answer. Not yet.
Instead I pressed one small palm flat over her heart—a silent oath sealed in skin.
*I remember every second of what they did to us. I remember your scream. I remember the fire. This time no one will touch you. This time I become the storm they should have feared.*
She stilled for a long breath.
Then her lips brushed my forehead, feather-light.
"Grow strong, Mu Chan," she murmured, voice thick with something unspoken. "Sister doesn't want to carry everything alone forever."
I closed my eyes against the sudden sting behind them.
The taste of her care lingered like a covenant.
The Zhao family would come again. Sixteen years from now the same hunted girl would appear. The same refusal. The same massacre.
But this time I would not meet them as a grieving boy with empty hands.
This time I would meet them as something they could never control.
Revenge could afford to wait.
Strength could not.
(end of Chapter 1)