His name was Ling Fan. He was of no great importance.

It took him ten years to plan his escape, and finally he made it.

At this moment, he was sitting on the roof of an old garbage truck, thin and weak. He was a mere bag of bones. He looked tiny compared with the large truck’s roof. If it wasn't for the fact that his dark brown eyes gleamed calmly and frostily, he might be thought of as a pathetic creature.

He was under 30. A man of his age was ordinarily bouncy and full of energy, but Ling Fan looked very thin with sunken cheeks. He was not ugly, but seemed as pale and grey as a tombstone. To be honest, he was like a frightening ghost. He tapped limply on the tin roof with his skinny fingers.

In a word, Ling Fang was lifeless.

Different from Ling Fang who was silent and indifferent, Lei Wu was extremely excited.

"Haha, sixteen years passed, and I finally came out of that damn place. The air outside is fresh! Bro, you are really a genius! The prison is heavily guarded, but you successfully got us out of there," Lei Wu said excitedly. His rugged face was set in an expression of admiration.

At the beginning, Ling Fan was the person Lei Wu most despised. At that time he considered Ling Fan a reticent, sickly man who was so weak as to be unable to stand a gust of wind. But now Ling Fan was the person he admired most.

'Although he looks weak, no one else in the prison can hold a candle to him in terms of cruelty. What's more, he is so smart that he can easily deal with those who try to challenged him,' Lei Wu thought to himself.

Seeing that Ling Fan kept silent, Lei Wu scratched his head. He didn't feel offended, because he had been accustomed to Ling Fan's silence.

With a smile Lei Wu asked, "By the way, what are you gonna do next?"

He wanted to express a willingness to be a follower of Ling Fan, but he was afraid that Ling Fan would turn him down, for he was just an uncultured boor. So, he bit back the words he would like to have said.

Hearing this, Ling Fan finally opened his mouth.

"To wait for death."

Lei Wu snorted with laughter. "Bro, come on, no kidding. We've just escaped from that damn place. This calls for a celebration. Please don't say such things, even in fun."

"I'm serious," Ling Fan said. He looked down at his old watch and continued, "I will probably die before sunrise..."

He was really dying. In a premeditated incident ten years ago, he had had a broken rib, which had penetrated his heart. He had lingered on for ten years. Now he was at death's door. At this moment, he could feel himself dying...

After a long silence, Lei Wu said, "Don't talk about it anymore. Death is not horrible. You fear no death, right?"

The sun hadn't yet risen. Lei Wu stared up at the distant sky and asked, "By the way, if there were an afterlife, what kind of person would you like to be?" He sounded calm, but his red-rimmed eyes gave him away.

"If there were an afterlife..." Ling Fan murmured. "I would like to be a wise man..."

A wise man wouldn't fall for a person who didn't deserve his love. He didn't want to be a mediocre, weak person anymore...

Ling Fan thought he was dead.

But the pain in his back, arms and legs brought him back to reality. He realized that this kind of pain was different from that caused by organ failure, such as heart failure. He had been suffering multiple organ failure in the past ten years.

The pain showed that he was being punched and kicked. So, maybe he was still alive...

"This guy is physically weak. Be gentle with him. We'd better not cripple him. Otherwise, we'll be in trouble," came a man's sharp voice, in which there was a note of dark pleasure.

"Humph! It doesn't matter even if we cripple him. He's a stupid guy. No one cares about him."

"You two go search him. I can't believe that he doesn't have any money on him."

"Okay."

Seeing someone approaching him with a stick, Ling Fan unclenched his fist without hesitation.

"Shit! You've been holding your money in your hand." The man gave Ling Fan a kick and snatched the money from his hand.

"Bro, do you know what? He has only a coin."

"Only a coin? Damn it! You're wasting my time. Come on, guys, let's give him a sound beating."

Then they began to give Ling Fan bashes and kicks again.

Ling Fan lay prone on the ground with his head buried in his hands.

He was undergoing a beating. Strangely enough, the expression in his eyes changed from timidity to calmness. He even seemed a bit excited.

He had spent ten years in the prison. Those days were long, flat and empty. Most of the time Ling Fan kept thinking back to his past over and over again. He remembered every detail of what had happened, everyone he had met and every word they had said to him. He even had vivid memories of the faces of those guys who had sneered at him...

Although it was just a very ordinary day in his short life, Ling Fan remembered it very well.

It was 3:48 p.m. on Wednesday, May 17th, 2017. In other words, he had been transported back to a time when he was just a sophomore in high school 11 years ago.

At this point, he was being attacked by a gang of youths, for he refused to pay protection money.

He didn't know why he luckily returned to life after death. Anyway, he was very thankful to be alive again, although he was now just a 17-year-old student who gave the impression of being weak and cowardly. What was more, misfortune had not yet befallen him when he was 17.

Ling Fan believed that there is nothing better than to be alive. If it hadn't been for this belief, he wouldn't have had the courage to struggle to survive in the prison.

The thought of his years in prison filled Ling Fan's heart with mixed emotions. He trembled and burst out laughing.

His hysterical laughter chilled the gang and sent shivers down their spines. Shocked and puzzled, they stopped hitting and kicking him.

"Gosh! Is he crazy?"

"That's enough. Bro, we've taught him a lesson. Let's go."

The leader of the gang raised his voice and said, "Humph!

Maybe he's trying to deceive us by pretending to be insane." He became a bit nervous.

He looked down at Ling Fan, who was lying on the ground laughing loudly, and said, "Hey, pal, don't try any tricks. Otherwise, I'll beat you to death."

They were about to run away when Ling Fan suddenly stopped laughing and hauled himself to his feet.

They turned to look at Ling Fan. They felt that Ling Fan was a changed man... He used to be very afraid of them, but now he seemed fearless. Although they couldn't tell why, they got a bad feeling.

"Humph! You seem to be all right. I think we are merciful to you. There's no need to thank me. Remember to take more money with you next time. Come on, guys, let's go."

They were preparing to leave.

"Wait a minute," Ling Fan suddenly said.

"Have I given you permission to leave?"

Ling Fan looked very calm under the watchful eye of those men. He bent down and picked up a brick.

The leader of the gang said with haughty disdain, "Hey, boy, don't tell me you're going to fight me. Haha, you'd better give up the idea.

'Humph! A brick won't make any difference in a fight. I don't think this sickly boy can beat us. After all, we have numerical superiority,' he thought.

Actually, Ling Fan didn't have the strength to fight back. He was almost too weak to lift the brick.

But...

"Haha..." A creepy smile formed on Ling Fan's face.

"Yes, I can't beat you. But what if I kill myself with the brick? By then you guys will be arrested. Do you know how long you will have to stay in prison?" Ling Fan asked leisurely. His voice was weak and flat, but his words chilled them to the bone.

"No kidding, boy... Ah!" a member of the gang squawked.

Before the man could finish his sentence, Ling Fan bashed himself over the head with the brick without hesitation.

Blood poured from a wound on his head and streamed down his face. His eyes took on a murderous glow.

"It doesn't seem enough. Guess how many times I have to hit myself before I die," Ling Fan said with a smile, as if the deep wound on his head didn't hurt.

His face was covered in blood, and his smile was gloomy and crazy, as if an evil spirit had awoken inside him. His homicidal aura blanketed the vicinity, and he looked like a demon from hell.

He didn't know what the hell was like, but he thought of himself as a ferocious ghost that had just come back to the human world from hell.

At Ling Fan's words, those youths swollen with arrogance were scared stiff. They subconsciously took a step backwards, their faces taut and terrified.

They enjoyed the fun of bullying their schoolmates, but anyway, they were just teenagers about seventeen or eighteen. They had never seen anyone as fearless as Ling Fan before. They were trembling all over with fear.

"Shit... He's gone mad... He's gonna kill himself... Let's get out of here..."

They ran away in a panic. They even threw away the coin that they had robbed from Ling Fan.

Ling Fan watched them disappear in the distance. He squatted down, picked up the coin and put it in his pocket. He was very poor now and had to watch every penny...

He seemed oblivious to pain. He took off his coat, wiped the blood off his face and applied pressure to his wound to stop the bleeding. Then he turned to leave.

The first lesson he had learned in prison was that "the weak fear the strong, and the strong fear those who have no fear of death".

Ling Fan cherished his own life, more than anyone else did. Although his wound looked terrible, it was not at all life-threatening.

...

Ling Fan went back to his classroom without receiving any medical treatment. His classmates looked at him with surprise or curiosity or fear. Some even had a look of dark pleasure on their faces. None of them sympathized with him or cared about him.

Their reactions didn't surprise him at all. Without saying a word, Ling Fan went back to his seat, just as he had done in the previous life.

After a while, their monitor came up to Ling Fan and said unhappily, "Hey! our class teacher asked you to go to his office."

Without a word spoken, Ling Fan just nodded to the monitor.

The process had changed, but the result hadn't changed a bit. He was called to the class teacher's office, as he had been in the previous life.

Ling Fan curved his lips into a smile.

'That man... I haven't seen him for ten years...' he thought to himself.