Zhang Shuang felt that he must have stolen God's dog in his past life, which was why he was being toyed with by fate in this lifetime.
His only impression of his mother was a photograph and a few repetitive words from his father: "Your mother was a very good person…" "Your mother was a very virtuous person."
When he was seven years old, Zhang Shuang's father was helping a relative build a house when he accidentally lost his footing and fell from the roof. He was carried to the township health center, where the doctor said it couldn't be treated and he needed to be sent to a large hospital in the city. However, Zhang Shuang's paternal uncle Zhang Chenggui dragged him back home from the health center instead.
Although Zhang Shuang was young at the time, he clearly remembered several of his paternal uncles whispering in the main hall of his house. Later, Zhang Shuang's maternal uncle came over. He saw paternal uncle Zhang Chenggui patting his chest and assuring the maternal uncle that he would raise Zhang Shuang to adulthood. Meanwhile, his usually shrewish paternal aunt sat on the ground wailing bitterly, while his paternal uncle stepped forward to pull the maternal uncle aside and quietly handed him a package. After that, Zhang Shuang never saw his maternal uncle again.
Zhang Chengfu lay on his own bed for three days before passing away, without eating a single bite of food or drinking a drop of water the entire time. Young Zhang Xiaoqiang wanted to feed his father water, but was slapped to the ground by the paternal aunt beside him. That vicious woman also viciously said that his father's illness meant he could neither eat nor drink.
Before his father died, he held Zhang Shuang's hand, his lips moving as if he wanted to say something, but until he drew his last breath, Zhang Shuang could not hear clearly what his father had actually said.
Zhang Shuang became an orphan and henceforth lived in paternal uncle Zhang Changgui's home, while his own house became his paternal uncle's storage room. From then on, being beaten and scolded was a common occurrence for Zhang Shuang. His paternal aunt even went around the village calling him a jinx who brought misfortune to his mother and father, claiming that whoever came into contact with him would suffer bad luck. The superstitious people in the village began to distance themselves from him and forbade their children from playing with him.
Until Zhang Shuang graduated from junior high school, a construction contractor from the township came to the village to recruit workers. Zhang Shuang and a few bachelors from the village followed him.
Zhang Shuang had worked as a migrant laborer, learned to be a kitchen helper, swept the streets, and delivered packages. The hardships of his youth endowed him with resilient and industrious qualities, and over the years, he managed to save some savings.
Just as he was looking forward to making a great achievement in the future and fiercely retaliating against Zhang Chenggui's family, disaster struck from the heavens. An object falling from a height struck his cervical spine, and doctors diagnosed him with high paraplegia. Zhang Shuang was hospitalized, and the exorbitant medical expenses quickly drained his limited savings. As for compensation, nearly four months had passed, yet the police had still failed to find the responsible party.
When Zhang Shuang felt despair, the hospital president told him that a medical institution abroad was recruiting clinical trial participants for neural regeneration surgery. If he agreed, he could receive free treatment from the institution, have a high probability of recovering his health, and also obtain a substantial amount of compensation.
Zhang Shuang did not hesitate and immediately signed the papers. Soon, he was sent abroad by this medical institution to begin receiving experimental treatment.
And today was the day of the surgery.
"Mr. Zhang, your condition looks pretty good," Dr. Morris said indifferently, flipping through the tablet in his hands.
"Doctor, I'm a bit nervous. Will the surgery fail?" Zhang Shuang's expression was somewhat solemn.
"There's no need to be nervous, Mr. Zhang. You are already in the worst possible condition; the surgical result couldn't possibly be any worse than this, right?" Morris shrugged nonchalantly and said, "Oh, right, I have some bad news to tell you. Perhaps it will make you less afraid." Morris looked at Zhang Shuang meaningfully.
"Your paternal uncle Zhang Chenggui illegally manufactured explosives, causing an explosion accident. A total of six members of his family died, and there were no survivors."
"You… you're sure?"
Dr. Morris displayed the tablet in his hand before Zhang Shuang's eyes. The image on the screen was none other than that place he loathed, hated, yet was incomparably familiar with, except that it was now a tragic scene in the aftermath of an explosion.
Ever since he could remember, Zhang Shuang had fantasized countless times about how to retaliate against Zhang Chenggui's family. However, this sudden news still left him feeling completely at a loss.
Morris patted Zhang Shuang's shoulder and turned to walk out, leaving Zhang Shuang, whose mind was completely blank, lying alone on the operating table.
Morris returned to the monitoring room of the operating suite, looked at an assistant who was observing a computer monitor, and asked, "Has the subject's thinking speed slowed down?"
"This is simply incredible! Without using drugs or artificial hypnotic methods, the subject's thinking speed has dropped to the minimum! His brain seems to be in a stagnant state!" the assistant shouted loudly.
"Quickly adjust the wavelength of the human-computer interface to synchronize with the subject's brainwaves, and prepare to connect to the interaction system."
A trace of excitement flashed in Morris's eyes. This was indeed a good beginning. As long as they successfully connected to the human-computer interaction system, the interface would take over most of the subject's brain functions, generating a new functional area in the subject's idle brain region according to a pre-written program and activating it. This functional area would possess preset functions: assisting memory, enhancing perception, importing skills, forming a digital interface in the visual area, and so on.
The new functional area of the human brain was the true x-3 chip.
Next, under the control of the interface, this newly generated functional area would activate the brain's memory region, reading all of the subject's memories, emotions, cognitions, and feelings from the fetal stage until now, and writing them in chronological order into another blank brain—the clone's brain.
Finally, the subject would gain a new lease on life within the body of the clone.
At this moment, Zhang Shuang seemed to be having a dream. In the dream, past memories re-emerged one by one like a movie. He saw a woman, despite being on the verge of death, affectionately smiling at him, while several people wearing masks and green surgical gowns beside her were trying to save her—this was his mother. As it turned out, he had indeed seen his own mother when he was just born.
He saw his father crying bitterly while holding him as an infant; this man had just become a father, yet had lost his own wife.
He saw himself growing up day by day, from an infant to a babbling toddler, stumbling as he learned to walk, with his father always accompanying him by his side.
He saw that after being brought to the hospital by his teacher, he saw his severely injured father. Filled with panic, sadness, grief, and fear, he cried while shaking his father's arm.
He saw that when he tried to feed water to his bedridden, paralyzed father, he was slapped down to the ground by that vicious woman.
He saw that before his father died, he had been trying hard to say something to him. Although he couldn't clearly hear his father's low voice, at this moment, he could clearly see his father's lip movements repeating a single phrase over and over: "Live on well!"
He saw that when he was abused by his paternal uncle's family, he had secretly vowed that in the future, he would ruthlessly retaliate against his paternal uncle's family and make them kneel in front of his parents' graves to kowtow and apologize.
He saw himself receiving his first paycheck, jumping and skipping with joy.
He saw that after he was injured and fell into a coma, when he woke up in the hospital and the doctor told him he had high paraplegia, emotions of fear and despair tightly gripped him, and he couldn't help but wail bitterly.
"The subject's memories are being extracted. Past memories are causing large emotional fluctuations in the subject. Sir, should we inject the subject with a sedative?" a monitor operator looked at the up-and-down jumping curves on the screen and asked with an uneasy expression.
"No! These emotions are also important content that needs to be transferred. Unless absolutely necessary, we cannot resort to intervention methods!" Morris said solemnly yet indifferently.
"Warning! Warning! Large-scale death of clone brain cells! Large-scale death of clone brain cells!" A harsh alarm sound came out from the speakers.
"How could there be a problem with the clone?! How is this possible? Check quickly! What on earth is going on?" Morris roared loudly and exceptionally anxiously at a group of panicked and chaotic research assistants.
"Dr. Morris, there is a discovery here! Just now, besides receiving the subject's memories and emotional fluctuations, the clone also received countless sensory data, including taste, hearing, touch, vision, and so on. Among them, the taste perception information alone numbered over four million…" The research assistant monitoring the clone trembled as he opened the monitoring interface.
"Clone brain dead! Experiment failed!" The cold electronic voice echoed within the monitoring room.
"How could this happen? Shouldn't this redundant information have been cleared in advance by the human-computer interface?" Morris felt like he was going crazy, waving his hands and roaring, "How could such a low-level mistake be made?"
"Mr. Morris, one second before the experiment started, two pieces of code were written into the interface. One piece of code hindered the operation of the redundant information clearing program, and while writing all the information into the clone's brain, it also simultaneously uploaded it to the headquarters mainframe!"
The assistant in charge of program testing looked in terror at the person in charge and continued, "And the other code was written directly into the X-3 Chip. This code is the core operating code of the headquarters mainframe, King!"
"King? The artificial intelligence at headquarters! Could it want to become human?!" Morris gasped sharply.
"Clone brain dead, all memories of the subject have been extracted and cannot be recovered, subject brain dead. Experiment failed! Self-destruct sequence initiated!" The cold and crazy electronic voice resounded throughout the entire monitoring room.
"3 seconds remaining, 3, 2, 1, initiate!"
The massive explosion arrived as expected, instantly destroying everything and leaving no opportunity for the people at the base to transmit any information.
Where am I? Why can't I see anything? Did the treatment fail? Could it be that my nerves weren't repaired, and instead my brain was also damaged? I can't see light, can't hear sounds, can't smell odors, can't feel temperature? No! My entire body is gone. What should I do?
In the boundless darkness, Zhang Shuang wanted to have a good cry, but he didn't even have a body right now, let alone tears.
"I want to live! I want to live!" Zhang Shuang roared silently. A massive obsession urged him to begin moving. After not knowing how long had passed, he suddenly felt a point of light ahead, and thus excitedly moved forward, trying to get closer and see it more clearly.
Why is it so slow?
Zhang Shuang wanted to be faster, even faster. The endless darkness and loneliness were almost driving him crazy; even if that point of light was a man-eating fiend, he still had to go over.
How could he become faster? What Zhang Shuang thought of was throwing things away. Things really were dropped down, as cluster after cluster of information data were abandoned. He became lighter, and the pulling force of the white light upon him grew stronger and stronger, bringing them closer and closer together.
Suddenly, Zhang Shuang's vision brightened, and he saw colors. There was air between his mouth and nose, and there were sounds by his ears.
"Baron Wimbledon, you're awake!"
Zhang Shuang wanted to see things more clearly, but countless fragmented images surged forth, instantly drowning out his consciousness.
"Holy shit, I transmigrated!" This was his final thought before losing consciousness.