To understand what I'm about to tell you, you need to do something first.
You need to believe in the Impossible.
Can you do that?
Good!
Then let me take you back, to the day of reckoning, to the day it all began!
****
He woke up from a dream in which he seemed to have experienced the short Life of a young boy named Liens.
The dream was monotonous; Liens spent most of his time in the small orphanage, frequently interacting only with other adopted orphans and the orphanage's caregivers.
Sometimes he would also see the director and adults who came to adopt children.
It wasn't until he was expelled from the orphanage at 13 that Liens truly came into contact with the world.
The world was not beautiful; everyone lived a hard, miserable Life, with only a few enjoying what little beauty there was, just like in the orphanage.
From the earliest memories he could recall, Liens was already a part of the orphanage; he didn't know how he came to be there, and even his name was given to him by a caregiver.
And the orphanage that took them in was not a welfare institution; on the contrary, it was very profitable.
Liens only understood this after leaving the orphanage.
The orphanage sounded like a welfare institution, but what truly kept it alive was the so-called 'donations' collected from those who adopted children.
These donations ensured that the orphanage's caregivers had a much better quality of Life than the average Outer City resident, and allowed the director to constantly flaunt his large gold jewelry.
Before leaving the orphanage, Liens didn't understand why the director wore such heavy and restrictive things.
Later, he realized they were symbols of wealth and status, a price the director paid to gain others' envy, jealousy, and a feeling of superiority.
After leaving the orphanage, Liens supported himself by doing odd jobs.
Although many times he could only afford black bread to fill his stomach, for him, that was actually quite good; at least it allowed him to eat his fill.
In contrast, in the orphanage, many times the orphans couldn't even get black bread, and going hungry was common.
Compared this way, Life outside seemed pretty good.
Of course, Liens had no intention of blaming the orphanage.
For whatever reason, it was the orphanage that adopted him, allowing him, who had no parents, to survive safely until now.
For this, Liens was very grateful to it.
He had fantasized about repaying the orphanage's kindness once he had the ability, but unfortunately, he never lived to see that day.
This wasn't because something went wrong with the orphanage, but because he himself had an accident... perhaps it wasn't an accident, but a delayed fate.
He lost his job and became a homeless man in the Outer City.
The reason was the continuous soaring prices in the Outer City, which made it increasingly difficult for him to maintain basic sustenance, coupled with the accompanying pressure of job competition, ultimately leading him to lose his last labor-intensive job.
And having lost the meager income that sustained him, Liens gradually became a homeless man who could only survive by begging and scavenging.
Even as a homeless man, he couldn't compete with the adults.
Whether it was the free relief meals distributed daily by the monastery or rummaging for food in the trash, these all required queuing or scrambling to obtain.
And the thin Liens, in terms of both experience and strength, could not compete with other adult homeless people.
He returned to the state of prolonged hunger, just like when he was still in the orphanage.
The last scene in the dream was Liens slowly closing his eyes as he lay in a pile of trash, still longing to be full.
"Sigh~"
Liens didn't know how to describe his current mood; there was pity and sympathy for the person in the dream, a slight joy of rebirth, and a deep unease about the future...
These emotions intertwined, ultimately forming this sigh filled with complex feelings.
After an unknown amount of time spent integrating memories, Liens vaguely understood his current situation.
He had transmigrated.
For some unknown reason, he, who had died suddenly from a heart attack at his company, had transmigrated to this world and become the main consciousness of this current body.
Putting aside the philosophical question of whether he was still himself, what made Liens even more uneasy now was that he had become a Slave.
From the shackles on his body and the surrounding environment, he had roughly deduced his current predicament the moment he opened his eyes.
In his memory, he had once visited a Slave market while doing odd jobs.
There, he had seen cages filled with people, men and women, some beautiful, some strong, some covered in scars.
They wailed and wept softly in their cages, their mournful cries making him feel as if he were experiencing a funeral.
They used their lamentations to tell of despair, thereby holding a funeral named 'Hope'.
After that, he never stepped into the Slave black market again, and at the same time, he secretly vowed in his heart that he would never become a Slave.
But fate always likes to play jokes.
"He" indeed did not become a Slave; even in death, "he" never stepped into the Slave market again, but he, however, took on this fate.
Thinking of the torment he would suffer in the future, Liens even had the thought of ending his own Life directly, but in the end, he couldn't bring himself to do it.
Of course, another reason was that there was nothing around him that could directly kill him.
"Gurgle~"
"Forget it, live one day at a time. When I can't bear it anymore, I won't have to suffer this old torment."
Liens mumbled softly, then lay down in the wooden cage and slowly fell asleep; as long as he slept, he probably wouldn't feel hungry.
Although the surrounding environment was very poor, the body's fatigue and weakness, as well as the adaptation left by the previous generation, still allowed Liens to naturally fall into a dream.
Then, he arrived in a white space.
"Where is this?"
Liens looked around in confusion; this place was very much like the opening scene of some transmigration anime, with nothing but white.
When he first saw such a scene, he thought he had starved to death again in his sleep, so he had come to this place that looked very much like heaven.
After all, it is often said that heaven is a sacred realm filled with endless light.
This place was a vast expanse of white, and it felt quite similar.
However, he did not wait for the so-called gods or angels, but for a piece of information.
In the message, he learned what this white space was.
This was his ability, the initial scene displayed by the so-called Golden Finger, similar to a resting place, and also a bit like the waiting interface for some games before they start.
It had no extra function, just like its all-white scene.
As for the function of the ability, it allowed him to simulate returning to his past, with the past's range being one day backward from the current real-time point.
Within this range, he could go back to any point in time.
Of course, this ability was only a simulation and did not truly allow him to return to the past, so naturally, it could not change the reality that he had already become a Slave.
"Hmm?"
"Didn't the information say I could go back to any point in time within one day in the past?"
"Why can't I go back even half a day... Could it be that even the Golden Finger has to boast about itself to survive now?"
Liens felt the stuck ability and complained somewhat speechlessly.
However, although somewhat speechless about the inaccurate description of the ability, Liens still activated the ability, choosing to return to the earliest accessible time point.