Summer of 1978. At his wife Lily’s shabby funeral, Ming endured the villagers’ gossip and the cruel remarks from her family with numb resignation. Suddenly, Lily’s mother, consumed by bitterness, shrieked out a secret buried for twenty years—it was Lily who had stolen the opportunity he had dreamed of and secretly given it to Gordon, the man she had loved! Gordon had ridden that chance to a life of prestige and success, while Ming remained trapped in the countryside, caring for Lily’s aging relatives, enduring scorn, even forced to tolerate his wife’s lingering ties to Gordon. The overwhelming humiliation and injustice shattered him. Amid the gasps of the crowd, Ming collapsed, dead. Yet, his consciousness did not fade. Ming jolted awake—his vision filled with the cracked earthen walls, the dim glow of a kerosene lamp, and the 1978 documents spread across the table. He had been reborn, returned to the turning point of his fate! Ecstasy and searing hatred intertwined. He swore: This time, he would never again be a pawn. With precise foresight, he intercepted the documents that should have been his—the ones Lily had hidden. When Lily confronted him in panic, his icy stare sent a chill down her spine. Ignoring her tears and protests, he resolutely set out on his new path, leaving the quagmire of his past life far behind. In university, he devoured knowledge hungrily. At a class reunion, Gordon—now the "golden boy"—and Lily, clinging to his side, mocked him relentlessly. Ming calmly revealed his true brilliance and prophetic insight into the era, exposing Gordon’s academic shallowness and Lily’s hypocrisy in front of everyone. The two were left humiliated, and Ming tasted the first sweet thrill of revenge.
