Ten years ago

“Xinglong Electronics Factory is hiring employees! High school education or above is required. No tattoos or dyed hair allowed….”

“Huayu Security Company is hiring security guards! Education level doesn't matter, just need to be literate. No one shorter than 170 cm. Males only. Females and those who had surgery in Thailand, please don't apply….”

The talent market in late June was scorching hot, just like the sweltering weather.

A group of university students roamed around with their resumes, searching for their opportunities.

They were like radishes and cabbages in a vegetable market; whether they could find a satisfactory buyer in the end depended entirely on fate.

Long queues formed at the recruitment sites of famous large factories, while some smaller manufacturers had few visitors, even no one at all.

As for some assembly line factories, that was even more interesting:

The recruiters simply put aside their pride, grabbed a loudspeaker, and started shouting, leading to the scene at the beginning.

......

Chen Dong sat on a flowerbed under a large tree with his resume, staring blankly at everything in front of him.

He had been sitting there for two and a half hours. He carefully looked at the resume in his hand again, then pulled out his flip-phone Nokia from his pocket—

With a gentle press, the screen clearly displayed: June 25, 2012, 10:40 AM!

Putting away his phone, he pinched his thigh hard.

“Hiss—” It still hurt! The feeling was exactly the same as when he pinched it two and a half hours ago.

“Did I really go back ten years?” Chen Dong looked at everything in front of him, a little bewildered.

He clearly remembered: Yesterday, he attended a classmate’s wedding. Afterward, he and his university roommate and good bro, Hu Wei, returned to his rented apartment and ordered two cases of beer and a pile of grilled skewers.

“Dongzi, my youth, it’s just gone!” Hu Wei wailed.

“I pursued her for ten whole years, from freshman year until after work. I didn’t expect her to just get married like that, hahahaha—my youth was fed to the dogs.”

When he spoke emotionally, Hu Wei, this 180-jin big fatty, even shed tears. Chen Dong remembered that when he graduated from university, he was less than 150 jin. Four years of university, and then he pursued her for another six years after work, only giving up reluctantly when he truly saw no hope.

“I told you long ago, Li Xiaoyu, that woman, is a green tea bitch. She was just stringing you along, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“How dare you say that to me? It’s been ten years since university graduation, and you still haven’t let go of Gu Feifei. All these years, I haven’t seen you date anyone else.”

“Bah, how can I be the same as you? I dated her for three years and lived together for two years.

I took her to a hotel during the summer vacation of my sophomore year. Her first kiss, her first time, were all taken by me.”

“Dongzi, can you please say something human?”

“To be honest, I’ve experienced two out of three mouths, so I’m not at a loss.”

“Damn it, I have to beat you up….”

After a few bottles of wine, Hu Wei completely let loose,

“Hahahaha, I really didn’t expect Li Xiaoyu to marry such a man.

46 years old, divorced with two kids. Standing there, even with elevator shoes, he was still half a head shorter than Li Xiaoyu.

And that slicked-back hair, it was obviously a wig, his head was probably almost bald….”

“A-Wei, don’t think about these things. He’s rich, we can’t compare. Come, let’s drink.”

“Dongzi, honestly, are you still in love with Gu Feifei?”

This was the second time Chen Dong heard this name, once incredibly familiar and now unusually strange, from Hu Wei’s mouth.

“Let’s not mention her. She’s already married, why bother adding to the trouble?”

“But I heard from some classmates that she isn’t married.”

“Not married, is she still dating that man?” Chen Dong remembered that at Li Xiaoyu’s wedding yesterday, she brought a man with her. He looked about forty years old, like a successful person.

“She’s a mistress….”

......

“Changyu Electronics Factory is hiring employees! Tattoos are okay, and older ages are fine too….”

“Daqiang Security is hiring security guards! No gender limit, we even take those who are neither male nor female….”

The sudden sound of a loudspeaker pulled Chen Dong’s thoughts back to the present. He let out a long sigh.

It seemed he really had returned ten years ago—on this very day ten years ago, he submitted ten resumes, but only received two interview calls.

And it was precisely from this day that he began his ten-year life as a corporate drone.

If he got to start over, he definitely had to make a change.

But after some thought, Chen Dong suddenly realized—besides possessing some informational advantages, he seemed to have no way to monetize them!

He didn’t remember which lottery numbers would win big that year, didn’t know which stock would surge during which specific period, and certainly didn’t know where to find undervalued antiques.

He had no special skills, just an ordinary university student, as ordinary as could be! Even the songs by Jay Chou that were played everywhere in later generations, he couldn’t remember a single one completely!

bitcoin would become very valuable later, A-shares should have a crazy surge in these two years, housing prices would skyrocket, and stocks of BYD, Moutai, and ByteDance could be held long-term. In the World Cup two years later, Germany would crush Brazil 7-1 and win the championship dominantly!

These were probably all the money-making projects Chen Dong could remember.

But he felt the bank card in his pocket; the amount inside should be less than 1,000 yuan!

Borrow money to invest in A-shares, or buy a house?

But he was a child from deep in the mountains. When his relatives learned that he got into a 211 university, they all looked at him with eager eyes—Dongzi, when you make it big in the future, don’t forget us!

Who could he borrow from? The accumulation of this initial capital instantly became a huge problem.

I’ve embarrassed my fellow transmigrators!

Chen Dong rubbed his eyes: Did he still have to find a job, save some money, and wait until 2014 to buy a wave of football lottery tickets?

The previous Chen Dong had been a corporate drone for ten years, diligently working every day, living the blessed life of 996.

After ten years of effort, his salary successfully rose from 4,000 yuan a month to 15,000, but the housing prices in Jinghai soared like a rocket from 5,000 to over 60,000 per square meter!

He didn’t expect that even with a fresh start, he still couldn’t escape the fate of working for others!

No, wait, how did I inexplicably return ten years ago?

Chen Dong suddenly remembered: After the wedding, he and Hu Wei, both singing drunkenly, fell asleep on the sofa.

In a daze, a mechanical voice seemed to echo in his mind:

“Detecting that the host has diligently worked for ten years, is a very qualified worker, and also has many regrets and injustices. This system will give you a chance to start over, allowing you to bid farewell to being a worker….”

As a qualified worker, Chen Dong’s biggest pastime was usually reading free online novels on a certain platform. He was quite familiar with systems.

“System, little system, big system, daddy system, grandpa system—”

Chen Dong shouted several times in his mind, but as time slowly passed, there was no response whatsoever….