Perhaps he had shone too brightly before, and his exceptional talent and technical skills had only made him the target of even greater exclusion and suppression. In the past two years, he had been completely kicked down to the boiler room...

In fact, even if he had gone to the city with Andrew Grant, his situation might not have been any better.

Andrew Grant could be considered one of the most capable figures in Donghua when it came to running enterprises. In the mid to late 1980s, he managed the city steel plant and once achieved the remarkable feat of paying over 300 million in annual taxes and profits.

When Andrew Grant was transferred to the city, he initially served as deputy secretary-general of the municipal government and director of the enterprise office. Everyone thought Andrew Grant would soon be promoted to an even more important position.

But who could have known that Andrew Grant's transfer was merely a ploy by some people in the city to lure the tiger away from the mountain, making it easier for others to take control of the city steel plant?

Less than a year after Andrew Grant arrived in the city, he was kicked over to serve as deputy director of the municipal party committee and government policy research office, as if he had become a marginal figure in Donghua's officialdom, with no sign of a comeback to this day.

Would his situation really have been much better than at the city steel plant if he had gone to the city with Andrew Grant?

Reflecting on his own life, Brian Sullivan sat in the car, bitterness welling up in his heart.

He had seen through it all: in a place like Donghua, where the economy was underdeveloped, opportunities to stand out were already scarce, and those that did exist were monopolized by people with connections and power. No matter how capable or talented he was, there was little chance for real advancement.

Especially when others schemed and flattered their way to the top, his insistence on keeping himself clean became his most fatal mistake.

This world has never been fair.

It wasn't that he hadn't thought about leaving the city steel plant, but in the Donghua region, once he left, there were few places where he could put his skills to use.

There were a few private enterprises in Donghua City that seemed to be of decent scale, but behind the scenes, they were no cleaner than the state-owned enterprises, and these family businesses were all controlled by nepotism.

Moreover, his father had already passed away at the time, his mother was gravely ill, and his little sister was still young. The situation did not allow him to leave Donghua to seek opportunities elsewhere—even though life at the city steel plant was stifling, the income was stable enough for him to support the family on his own.

A year ago, his mother passed away from her illness, and he was successfully admitted as a doctoral student in economics at Yanda. He had thought this would be his chance to take his little sister and finally break out of Donghua's small circle, but he never expected the accident that happened three days ago.

That day, Vice Mayor Mark Brooks led a team to the city steel plant to inspect its most significant technological improvements in recent years, and he was temporarily transferred from the boiler room to serve as a technical presenter.

While he was climbing up the thermal power blast furnace to explain the plant's technological upgrades over the years to Vice Mayor Mark Brooks and his entourage, the rusted railing beneath his hand suddenly snapped, sending him plummeting from a height of twenty meters...

The fall lasted only a moment, his mind went blank, and all he remembered was that just before hitting the ground, he crashed into the left shoulder of Vice Mayor Mark Brooks's secretary. After that, he lost all consciousness.

When he woke up, he was already lying in the hospital, surrounded by doctors and other people who seemed familiar yet strangely unfamiliar, all looking at him with concern: “Secretary Sullivan, Secretary Sullivan, you’re finally awake.”

He couldn’t figure out what had happened at the time; he only learned the details from others: “That was really close! That worker almost fell right past Mayor Brooks's nose. Secretary Sullivan, you’re really lucky: you only got hit on the left shoulder, and aside from a dislocation, the abrasions are pretty serious, so you’ll need to stay in the hospital for observation.”

“...The city steel plant really needs a thorough overhaul. These days, if one or two workers die from a fall, it’s one thing, but if word got out that a worker fell on an official during Mayor Brooks's inspection, how could Donghua’s officials show their faces?”

It was as if, in that moment, he, who should have been Ethan Foster, had inexplicably become Vice Mayor Mark Brooks’s secretary, Brian Sullivan...

It took him quite a while to roughly figure out what had actually happened.

At the moment of impact, his consciousness had already left his body and should have completely dissipated, bidding farewell to this world. However, the twist occurred in the instant before he hit the ground, when he struck the left shoulder of Vice Mayor Mark Brooks’s secretary.

The impact to the left shoulder wasn’t the main issue; it was the sudden shock of the accident that caused Vice Mayor Mark Brooks’s secretary’s soul to scatter in that instant.

If consciousness were a tangible thing, then in that moment, the secretary’s consciousness shattered from the intense fright, while his own consciousness slipped into the secretary’s mind and survived.

To put it more plainly, Vice Mayor Mark Brooks’s secretary was actually scared to death at that moment, while he became a parasite in the body of Mark Brooks’s secretary, Brian Sullivan...

Brian Sullivan’s injuries weren’t too serious, and he spent three days in a daze in the hospital. Today, an elderly patient in the hospital passed away, and the cries of the family woke him up. Only then did he suddenly realize that, while he was inhabiting someone else’s body and struggling to adapt to his new identity in shock and confusion, his little sister must be devastated by his “accidental death” and would now be left all alone...

Brian Sullivan snapped awake, ignoring the doctors’ advice. He immediately rushed back to the city government, grabbed a car, and headed straight for Meixi Town, which bordered the southeastern suburbs of the city.

And so, starting at noon, Brian Sullivan personally witnessed his little sister, with the help of relatives and friends, hold a funeral for him, send his body to the crematorium, and then watched as the urn was placed in the Tianning Temple pagoda cemetery for safekeeping...