Forced Me to Regress, Huh?

Wucheng, inside an e-commerce park.

Cheng Zhu left the live streaming room where a female streamer was promoting products and returned to his office.

He sat on his chair, picked up a cigarette, and grabbed the Dupont lighter on his desk.

With a flick of his thumb, he opened the lighter’s lid, producing a crisp ding!

This Dupont lighter was priced at 13,200 yuan.

According to him, he bought it purely for the satisfying sound it made.

In his office, Cheng Zhu puffed out smoke without a care and even propped his feet up on his desk.

He picked up his phone, opened Douyin (Chinese TikTok), and saw one of his female streamers working hard at selling goods.

After watching for about thirty seconds, he swiped past it. I’m very assured of Yiyi’s skills.

Yiyi was the top streamer at his company, someone he had personally nurtured.

Just her alone could earn him nearly eight figures a year.

Of course, she was still a far cry from the top streamers.

But it was more than enough for Cheng Zhu to make a fortune.

He treated her quite well too. As a form of reward, he would occasionally discuss big projects worth hundreds of millions with her in luxury hotel suites.

There was no helping it for Chairman Cheng Zhu. Yiyi had been mature and savvy from a young age.

The next video he scrolled to was one of those interactive ones.

It displayed a simple question: If you were given the chance to go back in time and start over, would you want to?”

The video had over two thousand comments.

Bored, Cheng Zhu clicked on it. Sure enough, most people said they wanted the chance.

Some people wanted to go back and make up for their love lives, some wanted to go back to the past to make money, and others wanted to focus on their studies… The variety was endless.

With a cigarette in his mouth, Cheng Zhu casually typed his response. “No.”

Then he posted a picture.

It was a screenshot of one of his bank accounts, showing a balance of more than six million yuan.

I’m young and successful, and I have over six million in one account. Who wants to go back in time?!

Regress back to a time when I was destitute and a loser?

Among his circle of friends, Cheng Zhu was widely recognized as the king of showing off. His confidence was unmatched.

Although showing off was a trait most people had, this guy was really fucking good at it!

He lived more freely than the vast majority of people and was even somewhat uninhibited.

Unlike some of his friends, who had to pretend in a roundabout way to show off, he made it look effortless.

And his comment stood out like a sore thumb among the thousands of others.

Before long, he received several replies.

“Where did you find that picture? It looks so real.”

“Any image that is pixelated is automatically fake.”

“If you really had six million in one account, I would call you a big shot in real life. But this is Douyin. I can only say you’re still lacking.”

“Fuck, he’s so pretentious!”

“Delete it, and I’ll post it!”

“I’ve got ten thousand of these images in my photo album!”

Cheng Zhu stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray and smiled indifferently, not bothering to respond to the comments.

As the embers of the cigarette finally extinguished, he suddenly felt the world was spinning.

The next moment, he completely lost consciousness.

* * *

“Cheng Zhu! Cheng Zhu!”

A female voice began ringing in his ears.

As his vision gradually recovered, he saw a girl with long chestnut hair standing in front of him, looking annoyed.

Scattered cigarettes lay about on the ground.

The scene felt somewhat familiar to Cheng Zhu, but he couldn’t quite place it.

Beside him and the girl stood two boys and another girl.

One of the boys said, “Cheng Zhu, are you pretending to be depressed here? Smoking is harmful to your health. And you shouldn’t talk to Li Xinyue like that.”

The next moment, Cheng Zhu felt his brain throbbing, and many memories that had once been fuzzy became clearer and clearer. Damn it, the memories of my past are coming back to haunt me!

He remembered that it was the summer of 2014, the summer after graduating from high school. He and the girl in front of him, Li Xinyue, had just confirmed their relationship, embarking on his first love.

This was their first big argument, and Li Xinyue had mentioned breaking up.

Teenagers at this age were somewhat angsty and non-mainstream. Heartbroken, Cheng Zhu started smoking and even did it deliberately in front of Li Xinyue.

It was a bit like a girl getting drunk after a breakup and calling a boy to showcase her pain.

Looking back, he thought about how he had fallen into the trap of smoking, making outstanding contributions to the country’s taxes, and felt utterly foolish.

The boy who had just criticized Cheng Zhu was the class monitor of their class, Li Rui.

He was academically gifted and came from a wealthy family. His father drove a Mercedes-Benz S350. But the car was actually a Mercedes-Benz S300, with the emblem swapped out for an S350.

Li Rui had always liked Li Xinyue, and it seemed their fathers were from the same village, so the two of them had known each other since childhood.

But what was the saying?

Green plums cannot withstand sudden arrivals.

Li Rui was short and not handsome. Unlike Cheng Zhu, who stood at 182 cm, was handsome, and had a certain bad-boy vibe.

During this first love, Cheng Zhu found Li Rui incredibly annoying.

Under the banner of being childhood friends, he would chat with Li Xinyue every day. Whenever the couple quarreled, he would immediately comfort Li Xinyue in all kinds of ways, such as inviting her out for meals and movies, all while claiming it was because they had grown up together.

Whenever he had the chance, he would do his best to show how gentle and considerate he was, presenting himself as a great, warm-hearted guy.

Unfortunately, at this stage, Li Xinyue was still looks-oriented and hadn’t yet become materialistic.

The memory of his past continued to bombard Cheng Zhu. He remembered that after their argument, he once again went to apologize and make up with Li Xinyue, feeling dejected.

Although the argument had started because she was being overly dramatic, Cheng Zhu, at this stage, would foolishly surrender the moment she mentioned breaking up.

Of course, the outcome was that they really reconciled. Meanwhile, Li Rui was like a tool, comforting Li Xinyue for three days before she kicked him aside again and gave him a good brother card.

These days, it was still popular among students to recognize each other as brothers and sisters.

Seeing Cheng Zhu still silent, Li Rui couldn’t help adding, “Cheng Zhu, it’s wrong for you to start smoking. Don’t you see how angry Xinyue is?”

One of the other two bystanders, a boy with dark skin and acne, chimed in, “Brother Zhu, we shouldn’t smoke. It’s bad for our health.”

Cheng Zhu glanced at the boy named Wang Anquan, and his eyes softened a bit.

Wang Anquan’s father was a firefighter, so he named his precious son after the phrase ‘safety (Anquan) first’.

He was Cheng Zhu’s high school deskmate. The two of them lived in the same neighborhood, making them childhood buddies.

As for the girl standing beside Wang Anquan, her name was Chen Rongrong, and she was Li Xinyue’s best friend.

Although they both advised Cheng Zhu not to smoke, Li Rui used the opportunity to put him down, while Wang Anquan was genuinely concerned about him.

He turned to look at Li Rui, this class monitor who was tirelessly swinging his hoe, hoping to undermine him to advance his own position. He narrowed his eyes and smiled. “Do you know the saying, warm-hearted guys line up behind dogs?”

Who do you think you are to think about stealing my woman?

In terms of hierarchy, warm-hearted guys ranked even lower than licking dogs (simp).

Even if I don’t reconcile with Li Xinyue this time, it won’t be your turn, you little opportunist.

However, it seemed there wasn’t such awareness these days, and being a warm-hearted guy still appeared to be a compliment.

Although Li Rui didn’t fully understand the meaning behind Cheng Zhu’s words, anyone with a shred of common sense could tell he was insulting him.

“Cheng Zhu, you… you…”

In front of Li Xinyue, he couldn’t even manage to say ‘you bastard’, desperately maintaining his so-called gentlemanly and warm-hearted image.

In the end, he only raised his voice slightly. “What do you mean?!”

“What do I mean? Do you really need to ask?” Cheng Zhu raised an eyebrow slightly.

He grinned. “I usually don’t say things that make people uncomfortable, but if I do…”

After a brief pause, his smile grew even brighter. “It’s because I really want to make you uncomfortable.”

===

Hi, thanks for reading the first chapter. There’s a lot of Chinese meme/slang in this novel, and I’ve tried my best to adapt/translate/localize/explain most of it, but if I’ve missed something or if something is unclear, please drop a comment and I’ll check it.