Chapter 1: 0001 【This question is so hard, I don't know how to do it!】
Have you ever had such a nightmare?
Dreaming that you are in an exam, and you don't know how to do a single question.
Chen Guiliang encountered a real-life version—
After being startled awake, he was actually in an exam room!
Did I get up too fast?
Chen Guiliang looked down at the test paper, carefully checking the information within the seal line, and saw a line of small text at the top of the paper—
“Longdu City Ordinary High School 2003-2004 Academic Year (First Semester) Senior Three Midterm Examination Mathematics (Humanities and History) Test Paper.”
Midterm exam for the first semester of senior high?
Phew!
Good, good, it’s not the college entrance exam.
Chen Guiliang immediately felt much more relaxed.
Being dragged directly to the execution ground and shot is different from a suspended sentence.
In the upper left and upper right corners of the desk, there were an answer sheet and a pencil case.
Next to the pencil case, there were sharpened 2B pencils. A plastic ruler was placed there to prevent the pencils from rolling around on the desk.
Chen Guiliang was also holding a gel pen.
The scene was too real; it couldn't be a dream.
Chen Guiliang glanced at the test paper; he had finished the multiple-choice questions but hadn't started the fill-in-the-blank questions.
His gaze fell on the first fill-in-the-blank question, and sweat began to bead on Chen Guiliang’s forehead—he didn't know how to do this question!
“Let P be a moving point on the circle x+y=1. The minimum distance from point P to the line 3x-4y-10=0 is ____”
He definitely would have known how to do it back then, as he got into a first-tier university.
But 22 years had passed, and his math knowledge had long since been returned to his physical education teacher.
Chen Guiliang picked up the plastic ruler and drew a right-angle coordinate system on the scratch paper.
Then he racked his brains for a long time, completely clueless about what to do next.
Regarding the Cartesian coordinate system, his relevant knowledge was a blank slate. He only remembered two phrases: “odd changes, even doesn't; sign depends on quadrant.”
What quadrant am I looking at?!
He continued to read the questions, going through several of them.
As expected, he couldn't understand a single one.
The gentle breeze of late autumn, carrying a hint of chill, blew through the doors and windows, but Chen Guiliang felt hot all over.
He was anxious.
He hadn't been this anxious in many years.
Alas.
Give up, who cares.
This rebirth scenario was so damn awkward.
Chen Guiliang looked at the invigilator on the podium, a short, stout middle-aged man. He recognized him at a glance as his high school political science teacher, but… what was his name again?
It seemed his surname was Gao.
This Teacher Gao was sitting with his legs crossed, leisurely smoking and looking at his phone. Several students near the podium were covering their noses with their left hands to block the secondhand smoke, while diligently doing their questions with their right hands.
He remembered now, this guy was Gao Zhan.
His wife was Liu Shuying, who was Chen Guiliang’s English teacher and homeroom teacher.
Gao Zhan put down his Nokia brick phone and quickly noticed Chen Guiliang looking around. He stomped out his cigarette butt, tapped the podium, and reminded him, “Focus on your questions, don't look at other people's papers!”
Chen Guiliang bowed his head, put down his pen, and rubbed his face with both hands.
What to do?
Should he hand in a blank paper?
It seemed, it wasn't impossible.
It was just a midterm exam, not the damn college entrance exam.
With a 'don't care' attitude, Chen Guiliang suddenly felt completely relaxed, and his anxiety about not knowing how to do the questions vanished.
He even had the leisure to study the exam desk.
Next to the pencil case on the desk, someone had drawn a heart pierced by an arrow, with the message “love Weiwei” below it. Someone else had written “idiot” and pointed an arrow at the previous message.
Right above the desk, there was a four-character doggerel poem: “Body in the exam room, heart in the internet cafe. Can't do a single question, to hell with it.”
The more Chen Guiliang looked, the more interesting he found it, as if he had truly returned to his student days.
He looked up, brazenly observing other students, trying to retrieve more memories of his youth through those familiar yet unfamiliar faces.
The student on his left, he didn't recognize at all.
The student on his right had the surname Gong, and seemed to be the class monitor of the next class.
The female student diagonally in front was Wu Meng, who had surprised everyone with her excellent performance in the college entrance exam, becoming the top humanities student in the city, and later seemed to have immigrated to Singapore.
“Chen Guiliang!”
Gao Zhan suddenly roared, “If you don't want to take the test, hand in your paper. What are you looking around for?”
“Oh.”
Chen Guiliang quickly shaded the multiple-choice answers onto the answer sheet, put his pen and ruler into his pencil case, and stood up.
This action instantly attracted the attention of all the students.
It had only been about twenty minutes since the exam started; it was impossible to finish the questions, so Chen Guiliang must be messing around.
“Bring the paper over,” Gao Zhan called out.
Chen Guiliang picked up the test paper and answer sheet, walked over, and placed them neatly on the podium.
Gao Zhan glanced at the paper: “Why didn’t you do the questions at the back?”
“Headache, I’m sick,” Chen Guiliang casually made up.
Gao Zhan didn't believe such nonsense and frowned, “Take it back and finish the paper.”
In this situation, normal communication was impossible.
No matter how smooth-talking a person was, they couldn't explain rebirth, let alone complete the test paper.
Mathematics, if you don't know it, you just don't know it.
Chen Guiliang suddenly bent over, clutching his stomach, and said with a pained expression, “Oh, my stomach hurts, I need to go to the hospital!”
As he spoke, he ran out.
Gao Zhan hadn't even reacted before Chen Guiliang disappeared through the doorway.
After a moment of stunned, Gao Zhan angrily muttered to himself, “He’s getting more and more out of line!”
This student named Chen Guiliang was the biggest headache for him and his wife.
He had a pile of disciplinary actions against him, and was currently even on “school probation”!
But to say Chen Guiliang was unreliable, his academic performance was actually quite good. It was easy for him to pass the second-tier university line, and with a little effort, he could get into a first-tier university.
...
Out of the classroom, standing in the hallway, Chen Guiliang felt even more bewildered.
If it were a dream, it wouldn't be this real.
He seemed… to have truly returned to 2003.
SARS and such had no impact on this small city, only causing the school to cancel freshman military training.
Confused, Chen Guiliang went downstairs and arrived at the campus plaza.
The sculpture in the center of the plaza, and the nearby library building, were built last year at great expense for the centennial celebration of the school.
Chen Guiliang felt his pants pocket.
In his pocket were a key, a student ID card, a library card, and 13 yuan and 60 cents.
After wandering around the plaza, Chen Guiliang didn't know where to go.
Out of boredom, he walked towards the library building a few dozen meters away.
As soon as he entered the first-floor lobby, he saw a row of glass display cases, showcasing the works of famous alumni throughout history.
Two books were displayed separately, serving as the school's facade: one called “Thick Black Theory,” and the other called “city of fantasy.”
That these two authors could be grouped together, and even be side-by-side, was a kind of black humor.
He walked around the display cases to the library's borrowing room, only to find the door locked.
Chen Guiliang silently left the library building and strolled towards the boys' dormitory.
It was an old, communal-style building, said to have been built in the 1970s. Fortunately, it was surrounded by camphor trees, which kept it cool in the summer and free from mosquito bites.
Chen Guiliang had forgotten his dorm room number, but entering the hallway awakened his memory, and he headed straight for his Room 302.
He took out his key, unlocked the brass lock, and pushed the door open.
A moving scent, a mixture of foot odor, sweat, and mildew, wafted towards him.
Four bunk beds.
The bed frames were all made of iron, painted green. The green paint had turned dark green, and in many places, the paint was peeling, revealing the rusted iron pipes underneath.
On the lower bunk of the bed closest to the door, there was a wooden guitar on the pillow.
On the table by the window, there was also a copy of “legend of the Little Soldier.”
Next to “legend of the Little Soldier,” there was a plastic-framed glass mirror, with “Meteor Garden” used as backing paper on the back of the mirror.
Chen Guiliang casually picked up the mirror.
Looking at himself in the mirror, it was hard to describe.
His appearance in high school, how to put it… was a bit shabby.
Due to long-term malnutrition, he was as thin as a bamboo pole, with sunken cheeks that were quite unsightly. He was 1.8 meters tall, but only weighed 112 pounds.
Fortunately, his features were regular, with the potential to be handsome.
He could recover by eating more meat, and in two or three months, he'd be a handsome guy again!
But he didn't have money to eat meat every meal.
His monthly living allowance was 150 yuan.
Calculating breakfast at 1 yuan, lunch at 1.5 yuan, and dinner at 1.5 yuan, his daily food expenses would be 4 yuan. Eating for a month would cost 120 yuan.
But Chen Guiliang also had to save money to buy books and magazines, as well as daily necessities like toothpaste and soap, and essential items like clothes and shoes. He went home at least once a month, and the round-trip bus fare was 8 yuan.
These daily expenses were all included in his living allowance; his parents wouldn't give him extra money.
Therefore, Chen Guiliang often skipped breakfast, and for lunch and dinner, he often bought the 1 yuan meal (which was all vegetarian).
When he was most short on money, he would buy instant noodles by the box.
Those expired instant noodles, if bought in large quantities, only cost 30 cents a bag. Once, after eating them for a month straight, Chen Guiliang felt like throwing up just by smelling instant noodles!
“I must have been reborn, right?”
“The first priority after being reborn back to high school is to solve the problem of eating meat.”
“But where will the money come from?”
Chen Guiliang looked at his bed.
Against the wall by the bed, neat stacks of books and magazines were piled.
Chen Guiliang took off his shoes and climbed up, casually pulling out a magazine.
“Yi Lin.”
Then he pulled out another magazine.
“Reader.”
He then laid down a stack of books, and from the spines, he could see the titles: “Big Breasts and Wide Hips,” “Hometown and Foreign Land,” “the ugly chinaman,” “Cultural Journey,” “Chronicles of Wuni Lake”…
Oh my, this taste is too strong!
What kind of weird books was I reading when I was young?
These were the books that made me save money on food, tighten my belt, and go hungry to buy them.
Chen Guiliang found all the magazines, then picked out the works of the aforementioned sages.
After thinking about it, novels like “To Live” and “White Deer Plain” also seemed unnecessary to keep.
Of several stacks of books and magazines, Chen Guiliang only kept “Hai Zi’s Poems,” “Ancient Chinese Dictionary,” “guwen guanzhi,” “Zhouyi Tonglun,” “Jin Ping Mei,” “Critique of Pure Reason,” “Being and Nothingness,” and so on.
He planned to sell all the rest!
Sell them for meat.
To nourish his weak and skinny body.
Chen Guiliang tore off a few pages of homework paper and used his roommate's calligraphy brush to write: “Expired magazines, 20 cents each, 50 cents for three, 1 yuan for eight.”
Then he wrote: “Famous Chinese and foreign classics, 3 to 5 yuan each.”
He blew the ink dry, then bent down to search under the bed.
Soon, he found a worn-out suitcase under the bed.
He didn't know whose suitcase it was, but he temporarily commandeered it, loaded it with books and magazines, and dragged it away.
By selling these things, he would live a different life in this lifetime!