Chapter 1

**Update Time: June 27, 2012**

Who would sit quietly in a car, waiting to attend their own funeral?

Shen Huai sat in the car, looking out the window at the sunlight filtering through the old elm trees on Siqian Street, casting dappled shadows like colored glass. It was as if the shadows of death were putting him to sleep, making his heart feel hollow.

Behind the pagoda garden were three Buddhist pagodas built during the Republic of China era, adjacent to the thousand-year-old Tianning Temple.

These three pagodas were originally private pagodas built by the Sun family, the largest ethnic capital family in Donghua City during the Republic of China era. They once housed three statues of the Guanyin Bodhisattva and were famous throughout the province.

On the eve of the liberation, the Sun family moved overseas with their family members, and their land, property, and the pagoda garden were subsequently confiscated by the state.

In the 1950s, after the pagoda garden was converted into a public cemetery, most of the nearby residents began to store their relatives' ashes in the pagoda garden. The garden was filled with trees larger than a person's arms, lush and verdant, and there were pavilions and rockeries throughout. If one didn't mind the ominous aura of the dead, the pagoda garden was the most scenic spot in the southeastern suburbs of Donghua.

Outside the main gate of the pagoda garden was a small square. Shen Huai parked his car at the edge of the square, under the shade of a lush tree, and watched as a Jiefang brand truck slowly drove up and stopped at the main gate of the pagoda garden...

Seeing his longtime friend and colleague from the city steel plant, Zhao Dong, park the car and quickly get out of the driver's seat, he hurriedly walked around to the right side of the car and opened the door—

Xiao Li, holding a lead-gray urn, got out of the car. Her beautiful face was still wet with tears, her eyes swollen from crying, which made the tears stream down Shen Huai's face as he sat in the car, dripping onto the steering wheel...

The relatives and colleagues who accompanied the funeral procession got out of the back of the truck, holding wreaths. The couplets were written in Xiao Li's elegant clerical script: "Grief cannot hold the clouds, and sobs follow the wild cranes: In memory of my brother Sun Haiwen."

Three days had passed, and the initial shock and confusion had not yet completely faded. But seeing Xiao Li in such deep sorrow, Shen Huai felt a sharp pain in his heart. He wanted to open the car door and rush out, shouting to the grief-stricken Xiao Li:

Xiao Li, I am Haiwen! I am not dead, I am still your brother...

Unfortunately, he now lived in someone else's body, and Xiao Li, the relatives, and his former colleagues no longer recognized him.

Shen Huai gripped the steering wheel tightly, his nails digging deep into his flesh, but he felt no pain:

He should have died. The urn Xiao Li held contained the ashes of his deceased body, but his consciousness and soul lived in someone else's body...

Two of the funeral procession attendees were his former colleagues. They did not enter the pagoda garden but walked over and stood under the shade of a tree, smoking and resting, not noticing the car parked by the roadside...

"Haiwen is dead, it's such a pity. If we had known this would happen, we should have insisted on transferring to the city with Old Xiong back then..."

"Old Xiong wanted to transfer Haiwen to the city too. But at the time, the factory was working with the Japanese on technical improvements and building a continuous casting furnace, so the factory couldn't do without Haiwen..."

"In the end, it was Haiwen's kindness that did him in. If he had insisted on going to the city with Old Xiong, could Gu Houzi, who got his position by sucking up to the city leaders, have stopped him? Think about it, how much has Haiwen suffered over the years? It's all because his family had no power or influence. The more talented Haiwen was, the more he was suppressed by people like Gu Houzi—after all, they were afraid he would surpass them. Haiwen has had a hard life. Now that he's been accepted into the doctoral program at Yan University, he could have avoided dealing with Gu Houzi, but this happened. It's so unfair..."

"Haiwen is dead; his sister Xiao Li, who relied on him, is now alone and destitute. She must be the most heartbroken. I wonder what she will do now..."

Listening to his former colleagues standing by the car speaking up for him, Shen Huai felt a mix of emotions. Sun Haiwen's life was his life. Who could know his life story better than he did?

He graduated from the provincial university in 1986 and was assigned to the city steel plant. With his solid academic foundation, he mastered all the production technologies in the plant in just over a year, becoming a key technical figure.

Even without a background, he was highly regarded by the former city steel plant manager, Xiong Wenbin (the Old Xiong his colleagues were talking about). In just two years, he became the workshop director, setting a record among the city's 300 state-owned enterprises. Later, when the city steel plant built a branch plant in Xinjin, Xiong Wenbin proposed that he be appointed as the branch plant manager, even though he had been at the city steel plant for less than three years.

However, after Xiong Wenbin was transferred from the city steel plant, especially after he was quickly reassigned to a less important position in the city, his lack of background became a significant disadvantage.

Perhaps his brilliance and technical expertise had made him too prominent, leading to even more intense exclusion and suppression. In the past two years, he had been completely sidelined and sent to the boiler room...

Even if he had gone to the city with Xiong Wenbin, things might not have been much better.

Xiong Wenbin was one of the most capable people in Donghua in managing enterprises. In the mid-1980s, he managed the city steel plant and achieved the remarkable feat of paying over 300 million yuan in taxes and profits annually.

When Xiong Wenbin was first transferred to the city, he was appointed as the deputy secretary of the municipal government and director of the enterprise office. Everyone thought he would soon be promoted to a more important position.

But who knew that Xiong Wenbin's transfer was just a ploy by some people in the city to remove him and allow others to take control of the city steel plant?

Within a year of his transfer to the city, Xiong Wenbin was reassigned to the policy research office of the municipal party committee and the municipal government, effectively becoming a marginal figure in Donghua's political scene, with no sign of a comeback.

Would his situation have been much better if he had gone to the city with Xiong Wenbin?

Reflecting on his past, Shen Huai felt a bitter taste in his mouth.

He had seen through it all. In a place like Donghua, where the economy was underdeveloped and opportunities for success were few, they were all controlled by those with power and influence. No matter how capable and talented he was, he had little chance of significant development.

Especially when others were cunning and sycophantic, his integrity and self-respect became his greatest mistake.

The world was never fair.

He had thought about leaving the city steel plant, but in Donghua, there were few places where he could use his skills outside the city steel plant.

There were a few private enterprises in Donghua that seemed to be of a decent size, but they were not necessarily cleaner than state-owned enterprises. These family businesses were also controlled by nepotism.

Moreover, his father had already passed away, and his mother was seriously ill. His sister was still young, and the situation did not allow him to leave Donghua and develop elsewhere. Although life at the city steel plant was stifling, his income was relatively stable, and he could support his family.

His mother had passed away a year ago, and he had successfully been accepted into the doctoral program in economics at Yan University. He thought this was the opportunity to take his sister out of Donghua, but an accident happened three days ago.

That day, Deputy Mayor Chen Mingde led a team to inspect the city steel plant, focusing on the main technical improvements in recent years. He was temporarily called from the boiler room to serve as a technical explainer.

While climbing the thermal power furnace to explain the technical improvements to Deputy Mayor Chen Mingde and his team, the rusted railing suddenly broke, causing him to fall from a height of twenty meters...

The fall was brief, and his mind went blank. He only remembered hitting the left shoulder of Deputy Mayor Chen Mingde's secretary before losing consciousness.

When he woke up, he was in the hospital, surrounded by doctors and others who seemed familiar but also strange, all looking at him with concern: "Secretary Shen, Secretary Shen, you're finally awake..."

He didn't understand what had happened, and he only learned the details from others: "It was a close call. The worker almost hit Mayor Chen's nose. Secretary Shen, you're lucky: you only grazed his left shoulder, causing a dislocation and some severe abrasions, but you need to stay in the hospital for observation..."

"...The city steel plant really needs to be overhauled. It's one thing for a worker to die, but if Mayor Chen is hit during an inspection, it would be a disgrace for Donghua's officials."

At that moment, he, who should have been Sun Haiwen, inexplicably became Deputy Mayor Chen Mingde's secretary, Shen Huai...

After a long time, he finally understood what had happened:

When he hit the ground, his consciousness had already left his body and should have dissipated, bidding farewell to the world. However, the incident occurred just before he hit the ground and struck Deputy Mayor Chen Mingde's secretary's left shoulder.

The impact on the left shoulder was not significant, but the sudden shock of the accident caused the secretary to lose his mind in that instant.

If consciousness were a tangible entity, in that moment, the secretary's consciousness was shattered by the intense shock, and his consciousness entered the secretary's brain, allowing him to survive.

In simpler terms, the secretary was essentially scared to death at that moment, and he had taken over the body of Secretary Shen Huai...

Shen Huai's injuries were not serious, and he spent three days in a daze in the hospital. When an elderly patient in the hospital passed away, and the family's cries woke him up, he suddenly realized that while he was adapting to his new identity in shock and confusion, his sister must have been devastated by his "accidental death" and would now be alone and destitute...

Shen Huai woke up and, ignoring the doctors' advice, immediately rushed back to the city government to get a car and headed to Meixi Town, which was adjacent to the southeastern suburbs of the city.

From noon, Shen Huai watched as his sister, with the help of relatives and friends, held his funeral, sent his body to the crematorium, and then watched as the urn was brought to the Tianning Temple pagoda garden for storage...

Seeing his sister in such deep sorrow, Shen Huai felt utterly helpless. His sister and the familiar faces of his relatives and friends all saw him as a stranger—

If one person is a world, from the moment of the collision, he had to live in the world of Secretary Shen Huai and could no longer return to the world of Sun Haiwen...