Rebooting Life

Chapter 1 - This question is so hard, I can't do it!

Have you ever had such a nightmare?

Dreaming that you're in an examination hall, and what's more, you can't answer a single question.

Chen Guiliang encountered the real-life version——

After being startled awake, he was actually in an examination hall!

Did I get up too rough?

Chen Guiliang lowered his head to look at the exam paper, carefully checking the

information inside the sealed line, only to see a line of small text written at the top of the paper——

[Longdu City Regular High School 2003-2004 Academic Year (First Semester) Third-Year Grade Midterm Examination Mathematics (Liberal Arts Stream) Paper.]

The midterm exam for the first semester of senior year?

Phew!

Thank goodness, thank goodness, it wasn't the Gaokao.

[N: The Gaokao, also known as the National College Entrance Examination, is China's extremely competitive standardized college entrance exam.]

Chen Guiliang instantly felt much more relaxed.

There's still a difference between being directly dragged to the execution ground to be shot and getting a stay of execution.

On the top-left and top-right corners of the desk were an answer sheet and a pencil case, respectively.

Next to the pencil case was a sharpened 2B pencil. A plastic ruler was placed there, preventing the pencil from rolling around on the desk.

In his hand, Chen Guiliang was also holding a rollerball pen.

The scene was too real; it couldn't possibly be a dream.

Chen Guiliang glanced at the exam paper; he had already finished the multiple-choice questions but had yet to start the fill-in-the-blanks.

As he turned his gaze to the first fill-in-the-blank question, Chen Guiliang's forehead began to sweat—I can't do this damn question!

“Let P be a moving point on the circle $x^2+y^2=1$. The minimum distance from point P to the line $3x-4y-10=0$ is ____”

Back in the day, he definitely would have been able to solve it; after all, he had gotten into a Tier 1 university.

But 22 years had passed, and he had long since returned his math knowledge to the PE teacher.

Chen Guiliang picked up the plastic ruler and, using it as a guide, drew a Cartesian coordinate system on the scratch paper.

Then he racked his brains for a long time, but had absolutely no idea what to do next.

His knowledge of the plane Cartesian coordinate system was a complete blank. He could only remember two phrases in his head: "Odd changes, even remains; the sign depends on the quadrant."

Quadrant my ass!

He continued on to the next questions, reading several in a row.

As expected, he couldn't understand a single one.

The late autumn breeze blew in through the door and windows, carrying a hint of a chill, yet Chen Guiliang felt hot all over.

From anxiety.

He hadn't been this anxious in many years.

Sigh.

Forget it, who gives a damn.

This rebirth scenario was too fucking awkward.

Chen Guiliang looked towards the proctor at the teacher's desk. It was a short, fat, middle-aged man. He recognized him at a glance as his high school politics teacher, but... what was his name again?

His surname seemed to be Gao.

This Teacher Gao was crossing his legs, leisurely smoking and looking at his phone. The few students near the teacher's desk covered their noses with their left hands to block the secondhand smoke, while their right hands held their pens, diligently working on the questions.

He remembered now. This guy was called Gao Zhan.

His wife, Liu Shuying, was Chen Guiliang's English teacher and homeroom teacher.

Gao Zhan put down the Nokia brick phone in his hand and quickly noticed that Chen Guiliang was looking all around. He threw the cigarette butt down, stamped it out, and knocked on the teacher's desk as a warning, "Focus on your paper, don't look at anyone else's!"

Chen Guiliang ducked his head, put down his rollerball pen, and rubbed his face with both hands.

What to do?

Turn in a blank paper?

It seemed... that wasn't out of the question.

It was just a midterm, not the fucking Gaokao.

With this devil-may-care attitude, Chen Guiliang suddenly felt his whole body relax, the anxiety of not being able to do the questions completely swept away.

He even had the leisure to study the desk.

On the surface of the desk next to the pencil case, someone had drawn a heart pierced by an arrow. Below the heart, the message was "love Weiwei". Someone else had written the words "Fucking Idiot" and drawn an arrow pointing to the previous message.

At the top of the desk, a four-character doggerel was inscribed: Body in exam hall, heart at the net cafe. Can't do a single question, so fuck it all.

The more Chen Guiliang looked, the more interesting he found it, as if he had truly returned to his school days.

He raised his head and brazenly observed the other students, trying to retrieve more memories of his youth through those familiar yet strange faces.

The student to his left, he didn't recognize at all.

The student to his right was surnamed Gong, and seemed to be the monitor of the class next door.

The female student diagonally in front of him was Wu Meng. She had caused a sensation during the Gaokao, becoming the city's top scholar in the liberal arts stream. Later, it seemed she immigrated to Singapore.

"Chen Guiliang!"

Gao Zhan suddenly roared, "If you don't want to take the exam, hand in your paper! What are you looking all over the place for?"

"Oh."

Chen Guiliang quickly filled in the answers for the multiple-choice questions on the answer sheet, put his pen and ruler back into the pencil case, and then stood up.

This action instantly drew the gazes of all the other students.

The exam had only started a little over twenty minutes ago; it was impossible to have finished all the questions. Chen Guiliang was definitely just messing around.

"Bring the paper over here," Gao Zhan yelled.

Chen Guiliang picked up his exam paper and answer sheet, walked over, and placed them neatly on the teacher's desk.

Gao Zhan glanced at the paper.

"Why didn't you do the rest of the questions?"

"I have a headache, I'm sick," Chen Guiliang casually made up an excuse.

Gao Zhan didn't believe that bullshit for a second. He frowned and said, "Take it back and finish it."

In a situation like this, it was impossible to communicate normally.

Even the most silver-tongued person couldn't explain rebirth, let alone finish the exam paper.

Math... if you don't know it, you just don't know it.

Chen Guiliang suddenly bent over and clutched his stomach, saying with a pained expression:

"Aiyo, my stomach hurts, I need to go to the hospital!"

As he spoke, he took off running.

Before Gao Zhan could even react, Chen Guiliang had already disappeared through the doorway.

Stunned for a moment, Gao Zhan then muttered angrily to himself.

"He's getting more and more outrageous!"

This student, Chen Guiliang, was the biggest headache for him and his wife.

He had a pile of demerits against his name and was currently even on "school probation"!

But for all his unreliability, his academic performance was actually decent. He could easily meet the score requirement for a Tier 2 university, and with just a little more effort, he could get into a Tier 1.

……

Outside the classroom, standing in the corridor, Chen Guiliang felt increasingly lost.

If this were a dream, it would never be this real.

He seemed to have... truly, tangibly returned to the year 2003.

SARS and all that hadn't had much of an impact on this small city, only causing the school to cancel the military training for new students.

Muddle-headed, Chen Guiliang went downstairs and arrived at the campus square.

The sculpture in the center of the square, as well as the nearby library building, had both been built for the school's centennial celebration and completed just last year at great expense.

Chen Guiliang felt his pockets.

Inside were a key, a student ID card, a library card, and on top of that, 13 yuan and 6 mao.

After wandering around the square for a bit, Chen Guiliang still didn't know where to go.

Out of sheer boredom, he started walking towards the library building, which was several dozen meters away.

Just as he entered the ground floor lobby, he saw a row of glass display cases exhibiting the works of famous alumni from over the years.

Two books among them were displayed separately as the school's pride and joy: one was called ‹Thick Black Theory›, and the other was ‹Ice Fantasy›.

For these two authors to be put together, and even presented as equals, could be considered a form of black humor.

He went around the display cases to the library's borrowing room, only to find the door locked tight.

Chen Guiliang silently left the library building and ambled towards the boys' dormitory.

It was an old, tube-style dormitory building, supposedly built in the 1970s. Fortunately, it was surrounded by camphor trees, so in the summer it was not only cool, but one also didn't have to worry about mosquito bites.

Chen Guiliang had forgotten his room number, but the memory returned as soon as he stepped into the corridor, and he headed straight for his dorm room: 302.

He took out his key, undid the brass lock, and pushed the door open.

An impressive aroma, a mixture of stinky feet, sweat, and mildew, rushed to greet him.

Four bunk beds.

The bed frames were made entirely of iron, coated in green paint. The paint had already faded to a dark, inky green, and was peeling off in many places, revealing the rusted iron pipes underneath.

On the bottom bunk of the bed near the door, an acoustic guitar rested on the pillow.

On the desk by the window sat a copy of ‹The Legend of the Small Soldier›.

Next to ‹The Legend of the Small Soldier› was a plastic-framed glass mirror, with a picture from ‹Meteor Garden› used as the backing.

Chen Guiliang casually picked up the mirror.

Looking at his reflection, words could not begin to describe it.

His "distinguished appearance" in high school, how to put it... was a bit shabby.

Due to long-term malnutrition, he was as skinny as a bamboo pole, his sunken cheeks rather unsightly. Despite being 1.8 meters tall, he only weighed 56 Kg.

Fortunately, his features were well-proportioned; he had the foundation to be a handsome guy.

He could bounce back by eating more meat; after two or three months, he'd be a handsome dude again!

But there was no money to eat meat at every meal.

His monthly living allowance was 150 yuan.

Based on a calculation of 1 yuan for breakfast, 1.5 for lunch, and 1.5 for dinner, his daily food expenses came to 4 yuan. Eating for a month required 120 yuan.

But Chen Guiliang also had to save money to buy books and magazines, daily necessities like toothpaste and soap, and essentials like clothes and shoes. He went home at least once a month, and the round-trip fare was 8 yuan.

All these daily expenses were meant to be covered by the living allowance; his parents wouldn't send any extra money.

Therefore, Chen Guiliang often skipped breakfast, and for lunch and dinner, he would usually buy the 1-yuan meal (which was all vegetarian).

When he was most short on money, he would buy instant noodles by the case.

Those expired instant noodles, when bought in bulk, cost only 3 mao a pack. Once, after eating them continuously for a month, Chen Guiliang felt like puking at the mere smell of them!

"I must have been reborn, right?"

"The first priority after being reborn back in high school is to solve the problem of eating meat."

"But where's the money going to come from?"

Chen Guiliang's gaze fell upon his own bunk.

Against the wall on his bunk, neat stacks of books and magazines were piled high.

Chen Guiliang took off his shoes, climbed up, and casually pulled out a magazine.

‹Yilin›.

He pulled out another magazine.

‹Reader›.

He knocked over another stack of books, reading the titles on the spines: ‹Big Breasts and Wide Hips›, ‹Hometown, Foreign Land›, ‹The Ugly Chinaman›, ‹A Bitter Journey Through Culture›, ‹Chronicle of Wuni Lake›...

Aiyowei, this selection has quite the strong flavor!

What the hell kind of books was I reading when I was young?

To think I actually saved up my meal money, tightening my belt and going hungry, just to buy these books.

Chen Guiliang pulled out all the magazines, and then picked out the works of the aforementioned "sages."

After a moment's thought, he decided there was no need to keep novels like ‹To Live› and ‹White Deer Plain› either.

From the several stacks of books and magazines, Chen Guiliang only kept ‹The Poems of Hai Zi›, a ‹Dictionary of Classical Chinese›, ‹Guwen Guanzhi›, ‹A General Discourse on the Zhouyi›, ‹The Plum in the Golden Vase›, ‹Critique of Pure Reason›, ‹Being and Nothingness›, and a few others.

The rest, he planned to sell them all!

Sell them to buy meat.

To nourish his own frail, skinny frame.

Chen Guiliang tore a few pages out of an exercise book and, using his roommate's calligraphy brush, wrote: "Old magazines, 2 mao each, 5 mao for three, 1 yuan for eight."

Then he wrote another: "Famous works from China and abroad, 3 to 5 yuan each."

He blew the ink dry, then bent down to search under the bed.

Soon, he found a battered old suitcase under the bed.

He didn't know whose it was, but he requisitioned it for the time being, filled it with the books and magazines, and dragged it out.

Sell this stuff, and start living a different way in this life!