How Does 'First Heir 3446' End?

(Alternate Title: The Glorious LifeMain Characters: Philip Clarke, Wynn Johnston) “Oh no! If I don’t work harder, I’d have to return to the family house and inherit that monstrous family fortune.” As the heir to an elite wealthy family, Philip Clarke was troubled by this…

At my 20th birthday banquet, I am to sign and receive the ten-billion-dollar inheritance left to me by my mother. My half-sister, Samantha Hatfield, and Howard Daley, her husband, who is also a secretary, eagerly urge me to sign the document. In my previous life, they trick me into signing the very same agreement, and the inheritance somehow becomes theirs. When I try to fight back, no one listens to me. Together, they have me confined to a sanatorium, where I spend the rest of my life drugged, imprisoned, and forgotten. But this time, their scheme is going to fail—I have returned with memories of what happens from the past life. Under their confident, expectant gazes, I pick up the pen. However, I do not pick it up to sign. I raise my hand and slash the pen's tip across Howard's face. As he lets out a terrified scream, I tear the agreement into pieces in front of all the guests and hurl the paper scraps at them. I say coldly, "My mother left all this to me. What makes you two heartless parasites think you're worthy of laying even one finger on it?"

The day my brother, Chester Rodney, came to the orphanage to take me home, my boyfriend Dominic Huxley looked at me coldly and said, "If you choose to acknowledge your birth family, we're over." I knew he had his pride—he could never accept the difference in our social standing. So, for him, I turned my back on the family I had yearned for my whole life. In the decades that followed, I toiled without complaint, saving every cent to help him rise to success. By the time I was not yet fifty, overwork had worn me down. Lying on my deathbed, my breathing shallow and weak, I watched Dominic on television. He was now an acclaimed scientist, just awarded the nation's highest research honor. Tears welled in his eyes as he thanked another woman. "All these years," he said, "I never felt worthy of Alicia. But now, maybe I can use this award as the prologue to a love I've owed her for decades." The "Alicia" he spoke of was the woman mistakenly switched with me at birth—the false heiress the Rodney family raised as their own. The camera zoomed out. Alicia Rodney stood radiant, graceful, and perfectly preserved by years of luxury, blushing as she accepted the trophy. "I waited for you for decades," she said sweetly, "but marriage is still something I'll need to ask my brother about." Chester, who had long taken over the family, looked at her with an indulgent tenderness tinged with something unspoken. "I was adopted by our uncle back then for one reason—to protect Alicia. Making the only princess of the Rodney family happy has always been my life's mission." Only then did I realize—everything I thought I had chosen freely, every sacrifice I made without regret, was nothing but a trap, carefully woven by two men, all for Alicia. The betrayal pierced my heart. I died without peace. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very day Chester came to take me home from the orphanage. I glanced past the two men eyeing me with subtle disdain. Without hesitation, I stepped into the car. "Take me home," I said. This time, I'd send whoever stole my life back to the gutter they slithered from.

After a car accident left me with amnesia, a woman claiming to be my girlfriend proposed to me in the most heartfelt way. Everyone around me said I'd been waiting for this moment for seven whole years and urged me to just say yes. In my past life, I nodded along without thinking twice. Her childhood best friend, who turned out to be the long-lost biological son of my parents, ended up going with them to Neller City—and completely leapfrogged into a whole new social class. As for me, I followed Estelle Camden back to her hometown and became just some ordinary guy from the countryside. Cooking, doing laundry, taking care of her bedridden father—I did it all, for thirty years straight. But Estelle left to find work in the city just a year after we got married, and she'd only come back once every few years. The money she sent was barely enough to keep a beggar going. It wasn't until I lay wasted away on my deathbed, barely clinging to life, that I finally saw the truth in her cold, calculating eyes. She let out a sigh of relief and confessed, "The couple who came looking for their child back then—they were your real parents. They're worth hundreds of millions. But you? You're so ordinary—what right did you have to that kind of life? So I gave the DNA test to Derek instead. "Derek is handsome and clever. He deserves the good life way more than you do." When she saw the rage burning in my eyes, she just gave a careless little smile. "You know, sometimes I actually felt guilty looking at you. But now, you're finally about to die—so I guess that's one less thing weighing on my conscience." Right after she said that, I coughed up a mouthful of blood and died, seething with regret. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in that hospital bed—and Estelle was asking me to marry her.

One year after I was confirmed to be a fake heir, all my friends said I was like a completely different person. I was no longer spoiled or entitled. I no longer desperately sought even a passing glance from my parents. And I no longer exhausted myself trying every possible way to win Jane Fraser's love. The harsh reality of financial hardship left me running ragged every day. It also made me understand, with painful clarity, that affection and romance were the most useless things in this world. As they wished, I stopped fighting. I stopped competing for anything at all. Later, when Jane brought the real heir back home, I simply went quietly to the guest room and waited in silence, ready to give up everything that once belonged to me. But those who had long wanted me to be obedient and well-behaved were suddenly driven mad. They asked me, over and over, why I had stopped fighting back.

Yvette and I fought over who was the real heiress for two lifetimes. In my first life, my parents were convinced I was their true daughter. They coaxed me into going to the hospital for a blood test. However, when I woke up in the ward, weak from blood loss, I saw their faces twisted with hatred as they strangled me. “You fake! Just die!” “You’re not our child at all!” I could not fight back. In agony, I took my last breath. In my second life, I was certain Yvette was the real heiress. I pretended to be sick to avoid my parents. Still, I saw the news a few days later—Yvette’s body had been found in the wilderness, drained to a husk. When I opened my eyes again, I was reborn for the second time. Yvette was shaken with fear, while I was dragging my suitcase. Both of us were staring at each other. I looked at her and smiled. “How about we run away together?”