Birthday Presents

One day, Tian Feng fell asleep in meditation. In his sleep, he had a dream of his previous life. It could be considered his first dream since his arrival in this world.

It was a strange dream. Tian Feng felt like he was floating in the middle of boundless space filled with nothing but absolute darkness. He tried to move around, but he realized that he lost control of his body, it was like he didn't have a body at all.

This absolute darkness only lasted for a short while before it was changed with a swift motion. Tian Feng felt like he was teleporting.

When the moving motion stopped, he found himself inside a familiar office.

Tian Feng was shocked to see himself in front of him. If not for him unable to move, he would have run to check it more closely. Everything unfolded in front of him like a 360-degree movie.

Inside the well-lit office, three people were confronting each other. A fat man, who seemed to be the boss, pointed his finger toward the door and angrily said, "You're fired! Get out of my office! Leave now!"

Tian Feng saw himself standing in one place trembling and stuttering, unable to utter a single word. After struggling for a while, there was still no word coming out of his mouth.

In the end, he walked out of the office reluctantly.

The scene changed once more, Tian Feng saw himself walking dejectedly with a package box. 📦

Staring at this scene, Tian Feng felt self-empathy. He laughed lightly in self-mockery. Unable to watch any longer, Tian Feng wanted to close his eyes, but he found that he cannot close his eyes at all.

After walking for a while, he saw himself began cursing. All kinds of blasphemy words came out of his mouth one by one without any delay, he cursed the boss, insulting the god and swore the Heaven and Earth.

Seeing the resentment in his own eyes, Tian Feng recalled his past life events. His life took a different turn after high school. He spent the entire 4 years of college learning trash lessons, all knowledge was valuable, but those lessons were either superficial or out-of-date. It was not at all practical.

Due to his low mastery of skills, he didn't get any good job offer after graduation. After being unemployed for a long time, he finally got a stable job.

He thought that lady luck was finally smiling on him, but contrary to his expectation, his life was still as challenging as ever. It has only been a few months, and he already got fired.

"I have a powerful name, but in the end, I still couldn't live up to it."

The scene changed again, then he was inside his rental room. He saw himself sleeping face down, not bothering to take off his shoes at all.

Glancing around his room, Tian Feng was given quite a fright. That was because: in this small room, garbages filled the floor, spiderweb filled the ceiling.

Having lived his new life for almost a year, he had changed many habits. Seeing his messy old room now, he felt a bit nostalgic. "I was really a mess."

Before he could take a look at anything else, the scene before him became smaller and smaller, and he felt himself floating higher and higher at a fast speed.

Soon, he lost sight of his sleeping body and found himself in space. At this moment, a small blob of light in far away entered his line of sight. What puzzled him was that he found himself strangely attracted to that light, so much that all his attention was immediately spent at the first moment he saw it.

The light was approaching the Earth's atmosphere at an incredible speed.

In a moment, its size increased to the size of a fingernail from a dot.

Then in a blink of an eye, its size increased to the size of a fist, then a palm, then a human head, then a basketball, but its speed suddenly decreased.

When the light arrived in front of Tian Feng, he felt himself flying along with the light blob. While flying side by side into the Earth's atmosphere, Tian Feng got the chance to observe the light more closely.

However, all he could see was blinding light, nothing else, just a blob of light. The first thought that came to his mind was that this was some kind of alien.

At this moment, Tian Feng heard an anxious voice coming out of the light blob. "Oh no! I'm running out of power."

It was a female's voice. He was shocked to hear a light talking, but what was even more unfathomable was that he could understand what it was talking about.

It seemed like the human's technology was not advanced enough to detect the presence of this light blob. As a result, it has successfully entered the Earth's atmosphere.

Upon entering, it stopped and hovered above the area where Tian Feng was living.

As if realizing that she didn't have enough time, she hastily made a decision. "No good. I must find a worthy master fast."

Before Tian Feng could process what was going on, he saw the light started moving in a series of complicated patterns. Thousands of thin lines formed in the middle of the sky.

Boom!

A burst of light spread out and covered the entire Earth, but apparently, nobody noticed it.

A short while later, the light blob sighed in relief. "I finally found you, my beautiful maiden master! Though you are not the chosen one, I can't afford to be picky now. Eh... I can't move..."

Halfway through her word, she found herself unable to move as she began to lose control over her body gradually. Gathering her final bit of energy, she managed to utter a few words in difficulty. "Activate... Zeroth protocol."

Then she lost consciousness.

The light blob began to descend straight toward a particular place. Tian Feng was a bit surprised as he reckoned that to be the direction of his neighborhood.

The scene in front of him changed again as he was now viewing his neighborhood from the sky. Tian Feng was a bit perplexed as he looked at the people walking to and fro on the night streets.

In a busy city like this, there's no real difference between night and day. It was almost 3 a.m., but the streets were not silent. At this moment, he noticed a man who was taking out the trash. After staring for a while, he recognized that man to be himself. Thereupon, a series of memories popped into his mind.

He recalled waking up in hunger, cleaning the room spotlessly before taking a bath, and changed into a new set of clothes to take out the trash.

It was his habit to do serious cleaning when he was sad. There was one time when he cleaned the entire house until he fainted because his mom wouldn't buy him a robot car.

Shaking these thoughts away, Tian Feng saw himself walking to a convenience store. At this point, he already knew what would happen as he had recalled almost everything he did that night.

As he didn't have to work tomorrow, he had decided to pull an all-nighter. Thus, he went to the convenience store to buy some staying-up supplies.

He looked on with a knowing gaze, and muttered, "Three Coca-Cola. Two cup noodles. Two bags of sweet. A bunch of snacks. This should be enough for tonight and tomorrow's lunch."

After seeing that he had guessed correctly, Tian Feng chuckled lightly. "My memory is not that bad. hehe. 😉"

Then the scene suddenly zoomed in, and Tian Feng found himself standing by the counter's queue. After experiencing this motion effect several times, he didn't feel that good anymore.

Staring at the dazed expression of himself, he knew that he must be thinking about finding a part-time job tomorrow, but it'll all be useless. He already knew that he'll be staying up all night reading novels in his room, then fell asleep at dawn before waking up in the new world.

Thinking about this, he really missed his novels, it has accompanied him through every single lonely night. Those absurdly strong protagonists who dominated the world with a system, just recalling that made his blood boiled in excitement. He had always yearned to live in those worlds.

"Excuse me! Hey!"

The voice of the cashier calling him jolted both Tian Feng awake from their thoughts. Tian Feng was not interested in the checkout process, but at this moment, a girl suddenly cut the line and went in front of him. She didn't turn back, but Tian Feng can recognize her instantly with a glance.

This was his crush—Li'er. Tian Feng was stunned by this development. As this was the night before his transmigration, he especially remembered everything clearly, and this wasn't supposed to happen. She shouldn't be here. There should be nobody to cut the line.

He turned to look at himself, but he also had a surprised look on his face. Furthermore, there's even a tinge of agitation. Li'er seemed to be in a hurry, and she didn't notice Tian Feng at all. She didn't wait for the staff to check out properly as she just showed her item for a brief moment before leaving some money for the cashier, and dashed out of the store.

Tian Feng couldn't move, thus cannot go after her. However, the 'Tian Feng' in the dream can, so he urged the cashier to check out his items then quickly went after Li'er.

As soon as the door was pushed open, the entire world collapsed, then Tian Feng found himself waking up in his small body once again.

"What's that strange light blob? Did I fall asleep during practice again?"

"It doesn't seem like a dream, it was so real."

Tian Feng was in a state of disbelief, his expression turned serious. "Li'er! Why were you there?"

After thinking for a while, his emotional states became normal again. As a result, he started to consider this whole thing as one of the weird dreams. After all, he tried but couldn't figure out the meaning behind this dream, so he concluded that Li'er and the light blob were probably parts of his imagination.

At the same time, he started to wonder what would have happened to his previous body.

Forcefully shaking these random thoughts out of his mind, he got up intending to go out and find some food. He felt quite hungry after experiencing this thrilling dream.

However, just as he was about to get out of his bed, he sensed something strange.

"Could this be the so-called Qi?"

When this idea popped into his mind, he froze in one place to examine it more closely. He tried to maintain this state lest he lost this connection. Contrary to his expectation, more and more Qi began to materialize. Soon afterward, countless Qi surrounded Tian Feng inside his room.

When he was looking for it, it was nowhere to be found, yet it showed itself right before him when he stopped looking.

At this moment, a soft voice echoed from outside of his room.

"Xiao Feng! Come out to have dinner."

Tian Feng was jolted up from that state. Recognizing his mother's voice, he wasn't angry and quickly shouted. "Okay, Mom! I'm coming."

In the dining room, there was a lot of food on the table—definitely different from the usual dinner. Hong Xing lifted Tian Feng up and put him on her lap.

Tian Lang took a small jade box from his sleeve and passed it to Tian Feng. "Happy Birthday, Xiao Feng! This is your gift."

Hong Xing leaned down to kiss his cheek and whispered, "Let Mom kiss you as an extra gift."

Only now did Tian Feng realized that today was his birthday. He had been in this world for one whole year now. Tears welled up in his eyes, but he didn't shed it. He was thoroughly touched by family love and wished for nothing but for this moment to last forever.