I Was Reborn in 2001, and the First Thing I Did Was Save My Girlfriend’s Mother

Novel Info

Author:
正经小台
Status:Ongoing

Summary

Lin Feng, a middle-aged man who died saving his wife from a car explosion, awakens in the body of an eighteen-year-old boy in the summer of 2001. He quickly realizes he has been reincarnated to the period just after his college entrance exam, a time filled with regrets from his previous life. His first act in this new reality is to save An Yanrong, a beautiful and elegant young widow working at a supermarket, from a falling crate of apples. During their interaction, Lin Feng discovers that An Yanrong is the mother of Liu Wei, the woman who would become his wife in his past life. This revelation forces him to navigate a complex emotional landscape as he seeks to correct the mistakes of his previous existence while building a better future for himself and his family. The narrative takes a dramatic turn when Lin Feng recalls a traumatic event from his past life: a rainy night murder in an alley that left a profound psychological scar. Determined to change this outcome, he rushes to the location where the tragedy is about to occur. There, he encounters Zuo Jingwen, the daughter of a powerful underground syndicate boss who has recently died. Zuo Jingwen is being ambushed by three thugs hired by her half-brother, who seeks to seize the family empire. Wearing a Sun Wukong mask to conceal his identity, Lin Feng intervenes, using lime powder and tactical strikes to defeat the attackers and rescue Zuo Jingwen. He introduces himself as the Great Sage before disappearing into the night, leaving Zuo Jingwen intrigued and grateful. The following day, Zuo Jingwen arrives at the supermarket with her subordinates, including the one-armed Wu Yuhu, to find the mysterious boy who saved her. Lin Feng feigns ignorance and acts as a timid, stuttering employee to avoid drawing attention to himself, a performance that briefly worries An Yanrong but ultimately satisfies Zuo Jingwen, who leaves without exposing him. However, Zuo Jingwen remains suspicious of his true nature and later tracks him down at his home. She confronts him in a private booth at a bar, pressing him for answers about his identity and motives. Under pressure, Lin Feng explains that he wore the mask to protect his family from potential retaliation and that his actions were driven by a spontaneous urge to help. He claims that her beauty disarmed him, a confession that softens Zuo Jingwen’s hardened exterior. Moved by his words and his apparent vulnerability, she accepts him as a younger brother and offers him her protection and resources. Lin Feng, recognizing the strategic value of this alliance, agrees to work with her. He begins to analyze the political situation within the syndicate, identifying the half-brother as the primary threat and planning to help Zuo Jingwen consolidate her power while steering the organization away from the criminal activities that led to its downfall in his previous life. The story establishes a complex web of relationships centered on Lin Feng’s reincarnated perspective, his desire to protect his family, and his growing entanglement with the powerful underworld figures who will shape his new destiny.

Novel Items

Motorola flip-open phone

Item

An Yanrong's mobile phone, a flip-open Motorola model. In 2001, most ordinary families could hardly afford mobile phones and used public phone booths. Lin Feng marvels at it, noting she is well off.

Kangtek antipyretic

Medicine

An ibuprofen antipyretic medicine sold at the supermarket. Lin Feng gives it to An Yanrong for her daughter Liu Wei who has a fever over 38 degrees. Lin Feng puts the medicine cost on the tab.

Iodine

Medicine

Disinfectant stored at the supermarket. An Yanrong uses it to clean the scrape on Lin Feng's head after he is injured saving her from a falling crate.

Apple-filled crate

Item

A huge crate of apples from the supermarket that fell from a truck onto An Yanrong. It usually takes four strong men just to barely lift it. Lin Feng pushes An Yanrong out of the way and gets struck on the head by it.

Red wall calendar

Item

A calendar showing July 11, 2001, with the date circled in bright red pen. Lin Feng notices it and feels a chill upon realizing the significance of the date in relation to past events.

Sun Wukong Mask

Item

A mask shaped after the legendary Monkey King Sun Wukong, worn by Lin Feng during the alley rescue. It concealed his identity and became a memorable symbol for Zuo Jingwen, who would later always remember him as the boy wearing the Sun Wukong mask.

Latest Release

Date	Group	Release
2026-08-11	shanghai fantasy	c7
2026-08-11	shanghai fantasy	c6
2026-08-11	shanghai fantasy	c5
2026-08-11	shanghai fantasy	c4
2026-08-11	shanghai fantasy	c3
2026-08-11	shanghai fantasy	c2
2026-08-11	shanghai fantasy	c1

First Prev 6 7 8 910

Community Reviews

Rating(3.2 / 5.0, 9votes)

5 stars

0(0%)

4 stars

2(22%)

3 stars

7(78%)

2 stars

0(0%)

1 stars

0(0%)

Popular reviews

FantasyLord Review ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ March 15,2025

Okay I need to talk about this moment because it completely wrecked me. Zuo Jingwen taking the money from Lin Feng and her fingers sliding across his palm two or three times — that is NOT a normal transaction motion. The text literally says it did not look like a normal motion for taking something. And Lin Feng, this guy who just got reincarnated and is trying to play it cool, felt it. He was startled inwardly but kept his face honest. Meanwhile Zuo Jingwen is already in her car replaying it: "If he really was shy, then he's quite an interesting little boy." SHE IS ALREADY INVESTED and she doesn't even know it yet. But the part that really got me is An Yanrong. After the whole Zuo Jingwen incident, she's the one comforting Lin Feng. And then she asks him — out of nowhere — whether he thought Sister Wen was pretty. She regrets it immediately but can't take it back. The text says "a strange new feeling suddenly appeared in the air." She's a married woman working at a supermarket, dealing with debt and loneliness, and this boy she's been protecting makes her feel something she hasn't felt in years. Then he hits her with "compared with you, she is but a flicker of light... how could she ever compare to the sun and moon?" And she's flustered enough to walk away without waiting for a response. That line though — "lust emboldens the timid" — the narrator is basically calling her out and I love it. The triangle is forming and it's delicious.

Reply Like(54) Helpful (10)

PancakesWitch Review ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ January 18,2025

Okay so this whole arc is built around this one brilliant narrative device—the Sun Wukong mask. Think about it. Lin Feng saves Zuo Jingwen while wearing it, she sees his eyes and somehow reads everything through them, and then when they finally meet face-to-face in the bar, the entire history between them hinges on that single masked encounter. The author is playing with dramatic irony like a damn chess master here. We know Lin Feng is reborn. We know he's pretending. But Zuo Jingwen? She's sharp enough to notice the look in his eyes but chooses to believe his flimsy excuse about being 'flustered.' That moment when she removes the mask from his face and declares him her brother—'what's mine is yours'—that's not just a plot turn, that's the entire foundation of their alliance being laid down in one gesture. And then there's the half-brother subplot simmering underneath. Zuo Le, the guy who sent those three knife-wielding thugs, whose backgrounds were 'terrifyingly clean'—meaning they were professionals, paid hands. Lin Feng immediately pivots to analyzing this, and you can see his reborn experience kicking in. He's not just some hot teenage boy anymore; he's reading the board like a veteran. The scene where he stares down Wu Yuhu and makes the guy sweat? Chef's kiss. That's not just character moment, that's Lin Feng establishing dominance in a room full of grown gangsters. But here's what's keeping me up at night—the interrogation results. Those three attackers appeared out of nowhere with clean records. That screams 'patsy' or 'professional,' and either way, Zuo Le is behind it. The author hasn't revealed the full picture yet, but the pieces are all there. And Lin Feng knows more than he's letting on. That gap between what he knows and what he says? That's where the tension lives. I'm genuinely curious how long he can maintain this double life before something cracks.

Reply Like(52) Helpful (17)

VimbaiMurindagomo921 Review ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ January 21,2025

There are two scenes in this batch that just live in my head rent-free and I need to unpack them. First: the supermarket at dusk. "After a busy day, An Yanrong also put down her work, looked at the young man in the white short-sleeved shirt in the distance, and listened to the supermarket's clearance announcements." The text says the intrusions of outside debts, the pressure from creditors, household expenses, even the loneliness buried in her heart — all temporarily eased. That single paragraph does SO much worldbuilding. We don't need a chapter of exposition about her financial situation because the author just lets us feel it through atmosphere. The clearance announcements playing in the background while she watches this boy? That's cinematic. I could see the fluorescent lights, the hum of the freezers, the tired but peaceful end-of-shift energy. Second: the residential compound at dusk. Lin Feng returning to the old housing complex where he grew up, reminiscing about his previous life — his wife Liu Wei, their daughter, the memories. Then the horn. The black Mercedes pulling up in this modest teachers' compound. "The cool evening breeze lifted the young man's bangs from his forehead, revealing his calm, guarded expression." The contrast between Zuo Jingwen's world of black Mercedes and power, and Lin Feng's world of old housing compounds and supermarket shifts — it's not just setting, it's class warfare dressed up as a romance setup. And that final line: "Little brother, we meet again, yo." She's playing casual but the whole scene is charged with danger and attraction.

Reply Like(48) Helpful (12)

Lord_of_the_void Review ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ April 27,2025

Can we talk about the gossip scene with the unloading workers? This is peak worldbuilding through dialogue and I'm obsessed. The guy they call Four-Eyes starts dropping lore about Zuo Jingwen: "Actually, I used to drive for a rich young master; I was his driver." And he tells this story about a rich second-generation heir who tried to drug her, and she caught him, and the next day — "the villa that had been tall and resplendent the day before was deserted on Day 2. In a single night, not a blade of grass remained." He stops there. Just stops. The crowd loses it. "Yeah, you stopped at the exciting part; what happened in the end?" And Four-Eyes just goes back to unloading. This is such a brilliant narrative technique — the author doesn't tell us what happened to that rich heir, we have to imagine it, and our imaginations are infinitely worse than anything they could write. The workers' reactions tell us everything: they drew a collective breath and went silent. Nobody talks about it anymore. And then there's Lin Feng's dialogue with Zuo Jingwen at the end. He plays dumb about the "Great Sage" — "is he like Sun Wukong... brave and fearless?" — while internally knowing exactly what it means. His voice shifts from timid boy to calculating man in real time, and the text makes that clear: "Lin Feng reacted quickly; there was no way a middle-aged man's scheming could be that obvious, so he hastily blurted out something." The dialogue in this book has layers upon layers. Everyone is performing except when they think no one is watching.

Reply Like(46) Helpful (25)

AGodAmongMen Review ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ April 3,2026

I need to talk about this one scene because it destroyed me. Zuo Jingwen applying ointment to Lin Feng's hand, blowing on the wound gently, asking 'does it hurt?'—and the narration specifically notes she's trying to frame it as 'only the affection between siblings and nothing more.' NOTHING MORE. Girl, you are blowing on a boy's scraped hand like you're tending to a wounded bird and you think I don't see what's happening here? The text says: 'A woman's scent wafted over him, not a strange perfume but a warm, comforting aroma.' That's not just description, that's the author telling us this is intimacy. This is the kind of detail that makes your stomach do flips. And then Lin Feng, this guy who's lived decades more than his eighteen-year-old body should allow, who's supposedly immune to her charms because 'this was nothing' compared to his previous life's social engagements—he still feels something. His heart softens when he realizes how lonely she is. How hardened she is from years of being alone at the top. The most devastating line in all of this isn't even romantic. It's Zuo Jingwen's internal monologue: 'For so many years Zuo Jingwen had been alone; she dared not expose her inner self to others because anyone might do her harm.' She's a woman who holds an entire association together after her father's death, who crushed her half-brother with 'absolute strength,' and yet the moment a boy looks at her with those eyes—those pitiful, guarded, composed eyes from under a mask—and says something tender, she crumbles. The can falling from her hand. The trembling. The blush. This woman who terrifies everyone else can't handle three honest sentences from a teenager. And Lin Feng? He's playing her, sure, but the text also makes it clear he's genuinely affected too. 'Lin Feng paid no attention to the woman's blushing and, throwing caution to the wind, kept talking on his own.' He's performing, yes, but he's also caught up in the moment. That's what makes this CP feel real instead of manufactured. Both of them are vulnerable in different ways, and they're both too proud to admit it.

Reply Like(35) Helpful (15)

AhmedEmad9773 Review ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ August 19,2025

Let me start with the mask. Zuo Jingwen is searching for a "Sun Wukong" mask. Sun Wukong — the Monkey King. The great sage. The rebellious deity who caused havoc in heaven and couldn't be contained. And Lin Feng's codename in this underworld world is literally the Great Sage. The mask isn't just a prop, it's a symbol of identity, of the persona Lin Feng has to wear, of the chaos he's capable of if he chooses to unleash it. When Zuo Jingwen takes the mask and pays one yuan for it, she's literally buying a piece of that identity. And that palm slide? She's touching something she doesn't fully understand yet — the boy who might be more than he appears. She says "Hehe, it's a little brother's toy; he lost it and insisted I buy him another one." A lie so smooth the henchmen admire it. But underneath that lie is her own hunger — to understand him, to possess something mysterious in a world where she controls everything. Then there's the recurring imagery of light and darkness. An Yanrong is described in terms of sunlight — "compared with you, she is but a flicker of light... how could she ever compare to the sun and moon?" Lin Feng calls her the sun and moon while Zuo Jingwen operates in black Mercedes and schemes. The novel keeps setting up this opposition: warmth versus cold, innocence versus calculation, the ordinary versus the extraordinary. But here's the thing — An Yanrong's warmth is also a kind of power. She's the one holding the supermarket together, managing debts, protecting this boy. Zuo Jingwen has money and henchmen, but An Yanrong has something harder to quantify. "As the saying went, they had considered it ordinary at the time!" — that opening line about missing ordinary moments hits different when you realize Lin Feng is living through what might become his most ordinary, most precious memories. The supermarket shifts, the dusk walks home, the simple interactions — these are the things he'll miss when the chaos catches up.

Reply Like(29) Helpful (12)

See all reviews