295: It's the same old place.

This bastard brother of hers had been provoking her from the very beginning!

Tempting her with delicious food, numbing her with pampering, and finally, using this seemingly optional but actually checkmating question to ignite her competitive spirit!

"Brother!"

Lin Yao stood up abruptly, her movement so forceful that the table shook.

She snatched the bowl of soy milk that had only a bit left at the bottom and downed it in one go, her movements as heroic as someone drinking strong liquor before heading off to war.

"You just wait!"

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and glared huffily at Lin Yu, looking as if she might pounce and bite him at any second.

"I'm definitely winning these Potions!"

With that, she turned and left in a whirlwind, never looking back.

*Bang!*

The bedroom door was slammed shut so hard that even the walls seemed to tremble.

In an instant, only Lin Yu and the mess on the table remained in the room.

Lin Yu picked up his cup of tea, which had long since gone cold, and took a slow sip.

Done.

This girl—if she didn't have some external stimulation and just practiced blindly on her own, she would easily get stuck in a rut.

Now... Lin Yu smiled. He could almost imagine Lin Yao in her room right now, summoning all dozen or so of her class clones to begin a hellish training session.

Good.

Pressure creates motivation.

As her brother, he couldn't just watch her be left too far behind by him.

Lin Yu stood up, ignoring the takeout boxes scattered across the table.

The people from the Insect Dwelling would handle it.

He walked out of the room, through the dim, cyberpunk-style corridors of the Insect Dwelling, and left this underground world.

Returning to the surface, the piercing sunlight made him squint slightly.

He hailed a taxi.

"Where to, boss?" The driver was a talkative middle-aged man who sized Lin Yu up through the rearview mirror.

Lin Yu recited the address Li Mo had sent him.

It was a set of coordinates for a quite remote industrial zone on the edge of the city.

"Oh, going there?" The driver was a bit surprised. "That place is in the middle of nowhere. I just heard two days ago that it was all leveled. You're..."

"I have some business," Lin Yu replied flatly, then leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes.

Seeing he wasn't getting anywhere, the driver curled his lip and started the car.

The vehicle glided silently into the city's ceaseless traffic network.

Lin Yu leaned against the window, watching the bustling scenery flash past.

That address... he felt it was inexplicably familiar.

It was only now that he remembered.

It was a familiarity buried deep in his memories, something he had deliberately avoided touching.

He had spent five years trying desperately to escape that place.

He hadn't expected that he would now be returning there of his own accord.

The taxi gradually drove away from the bustling downtown area, and the surrounding buildings became increasingly low-slung and dilapidated.

Finally, the car stopped in front of a massive construction site enclosed by high white walls.

"Boss, we're here."

Lin Yu paid the fare and pushed the door open to get out.

He stood there, somewhat stunned.

Two days.

Only two days.

Two days ago, when he passed by here, this area had only just finished demolition and been leveled into a flat field.

And now... a massive architectural complex full of futuristic technology had already risen from the ground.

Dozens of buildings of various shapes were connected by sky bridges and anti-gravity passages. Their surfaces were covered in special solar-absorbing materials that shimmered with a faint blue glow under the sunlight.

Countless engineering robots and workers with construction-type classes were performing the final finishing touches.

The efficiency was terrifyingly high.

This was the terrifying execution power of the Four Major Pharmaceutical Companies plus the Heavenly Aegis Group—five giants joining forces to push a project forward regardless of cost.

Only... Lin Yu looked at the construction site, at the massive sign on the high wall that read "Qingyun Technology Research Institute," and he was completely dazed.

Here... He slowly turned his body, surveying his surroundings.

The rusted barbed wire in his memory, the weed-choked wasteland, and the several abandoned chimneys in the distance emitting black smoke.

Everything matched up.

This was exactly the abandoned factory area where he had lived in seclusion for five years.

It was the site of the shipping container where he had lived for five years—the small, broken one that leaked rain in the summer and wind in the winter.

Lin Yu's footsteps moved somewhat uncontrollably toward the construction site gate.

His mind was a complete blank.

He walked past the small path that used to be muddy and filled with foul-smelling sewage whenever it rained.

Now, it was paved with white floor tiles as smooth as mirrors, flanked by meticulously trimmed landscape plants.

He walked to a corner.

In his memory, a mountain of industrial waste had once been piled here, emitting a pungent odor.

Now, there was a small, exquisite fountain, its clear water dancing cheerfully in the sunlight.

His footsteps finally stopped in front of a main building.

This was where his shipping container had once been located.

He remembered it clearly.

That summer, when the debt collectors couldn't find him, they had poured bucket after bucket of excrement over his container.

The foul stench hadn't dissipated for an entire month.

He remembered that winter, curled up in the unheated container with a high fever, shivering so hard he felt like he would die the next second.

He remembered every time he was cornered by debt collectors on this very empty lot, being kicked and punched, his dignity trampled underfoot and ground into the mud.

He remembered rushing out of here, leaving bloody footprints with every step, to find an underground clinic in the black market.

Five years.

Over one thousand eight hundred days and nights.

All the despair, pain, resentment, and struggle had happened on this piece of land forgotten by the world.

He had once thought he would never be able to escape the shadow of this place in his entire life.

But now... Lin Yu reached out and gently touched the cold metal exterior wall of the building in front of him.

This place now belonged to him.

They hadn't destroyed this place.

They had simply used a more thorough method to level and erase everything from the past, along with those unpleasant memories.

Then, upon this land that buried all his humiliation, they had built his very own future kingdom.

An indescribable surge of emotion, a mix of bitterness and satisfaction, churned and billowed in his chest.

Just then, a commotion broke out nearby.

"Everyone, hurry up! The energy pipes over there haven't been connected yet! President Feng will be here for inspection soon!" a supervisor in a Qingyun Pharmaceutical uniform shouted through a megaphone.

Lin Yu looked toward the source of the sound.

On the nearby construction site, several familiar figures were busy.

Li Mo, the veteran CEO of Qingyun Pharmaceutical, was stern-faced, lecturing several subordinates who looked like researchers, spittle flying everywhere.

Feng Rui, the Vice President of Fengxing Technology, was directing a group of technicians to calibrate a massive anti-gravity generator.

And not far from them, a girl in a white dress with a cold aura was wearing a hard hat, holding a blueprint, and discussing something in a low voice with an engineer.

It was Wang Qingxuan.

She was also on-site.