Rebirth 2003

Reborn in 2003 is an urban rebirth web novel written by Mu Zixin since 2014, serialized on 17k.com and published on Qidian Reading. The book is about 2.56 million Chinese characters long, and its main text was completed on January 18, 2023, with the final chapter being Chapter 813, "The End." The protagonist, Lu Yang, was once a web writer. After a night's sleep, he returns from 2013 to September 1, 2003, becoming his eighteen-year-old self sitting on a train to H City Normal University for registration. Carrying ten years of future writing experience and memories of the industry, he decides not to repeat the regrets of his previous life: on the one hand, he deliberately distances himself from his high school classmate and first love from his past life, Feng Tingting, to avoid repeating emotional trauma; on the other hand, he throws himself back into web fiction writing and, in Building No. 3 on the edge of campus, begins writing his first novel after rebirth, Doomsday Wasteland. The work unfolds along the ecology of the web fiction world—new book releases, signing contracts, going on sale, and competing for monthly votes—and also covers print publication, film and television adaptation, music copyright sales, as well as internet cafe management, home purchases, stock investment, and other attempts at physical entrepreneurship and investment, presenting the process of a minor figure rewriting his fate by riding the tide of the times and exploiting information gaps. The book blends entrepreneurship, rebirth, entertainment, and nostalgia, features a multi-heroine romance line, and its protagonist has no system-based cheat; he relies mainly on memory and writing ability.