The Sunscreen Incident and a Photographic Memory

The rubber track at Jiang University's sports field had softened under the sun.

The early September sun hung overhead, and even the air shimmered with heat. Every breath filled their lungs with a scorching dryness.

"What are you moving for? Who told you to move?"

The instructor's face was dark and red, his hands clasped behind his back. His voice was so loud it was as if someone had hung a loudspeaker over the field.

"Standing at attention means not moving a muscle! Even if a mosquito lands on your nose, you'll grit your teeth and bear it!"

The formation of freshmen fell silent as a flock of crows.

It was only the first day, and many were still lost in dreams of a carefree university life. Instead, this barrage of rules had left them stunned right from the start.

Chen Ziang stood in the third row, his brow tightly furrowed.

Hot.

Too hot.

Worse still was the sun. He always cared about his appearance and would never dream of going out without sunscreen. But they had been standing there for less than twenty minutes, and he already felt as though the sweat had washed the sunscreen completely off his face, leaving ultraviolet rays to roast his skin without a barrier.

If he got tanned, or worse, sunburned badly enough to peel, how could he keep up his polished young-master image in Jiang University's circles?

Chen Ziang gritted his teeth and stole a quick glance at the instructor out of the corner of his eye.

The instructor had just turned his back and was scolding a boy in the next row for fidgeting.

Seizing the chance, Chen Ziang quickly pulled a small bottle of sunscreen from his camouflage pants pocket.

He squeezed a little lotion onto his fingertip and discreetly rubbed it onto the tip of his nose and his cheeks.

He thought he had done it flawlessly.

But he had underestimated the instructor's trained eagle eyes.

The instructor whipped his head around.

"Third row, second from the left! You, putting oil on your face!"

The instructor strode over and jabbed a finger right in front of Chen Ziang's nose.

"Step out of formation!"

Chen Ziang's hand froze, the sunscreen bottle still clutched in his palm.

The dignified young-master manner he was so proud of at home and at dinner parties was, at this moment, worth less than a scrap of wastepaper before the absolute discipline of the military.

Chen Ziang steeled himself and stepped forward, his face flushed bright red. He was so embarrassed he wished he could find a crack in the ground and crawl into it.

"Do you think you're taking a stroll in your own backyard?"

The instructor raised his booming voice and gave him a tongue-lashing in front of the entire class of fifty or sixty.

"Putting on sunscreen, are you? Shall I bring you a parasol and cut you a watermelon while I'm at it?"

A few muffled coughs came from the formation.

Chen Ziang cared about his dignity more than anything, but now he was being scolded like a quail and didn't dare say a word in protest. With just a few sentences, the instructor had thrown the young-master airs he usually maintained to the ground and stomped them to pieces.

Just as Chen Ziang's embarrassment reached its peak-

"Pfft-"

Someone in the back row let out a snicker they had failed to hold in.

It wasn't loud, but it rang especially clear in the tense formation.

The instructor whirled around, his piercing gaze instantly locking onto the burly fellow in the back row who stood half a head taller than everyone else.

"What are you laughing at?"

The instructor pointed at Han Dong.

"You, the one who just laughed! Get out here too!"

Han Dong was an outgoing fellow with a fiery temper to begin with, and seeing Chen Ziang get put in his place had made him laugh before he could stop himself.

Now that the instructor had singled him out, he didn't back down. He strode out of formation.

"You think it's funny, do you?"

The instructor walked up to Han Dong and stared at the powerfully built freshman, demanding an answer in a stern voice.

Han Dong stood ramrod straight, thrust out his chest, and bellowed back in his full-throated Northeast China voice.

"Reporting to the instructor!"

"It's not funny!"

His shout rang out like a great bell.

A few girls in the front row near him had their shoulders shaken by the blast, and their ears rang.

Even the instructor was stunned for two seconds by the sudden roar.

The instructor looked Han Dong up and down, taking in his broad back, sturdy build, and guileless, fearless manner. His stern expression actually cracked.

The instructor raised a hand and gave Han Dong's broad shoulder two heavy pats.

"You've got a strong voice, all right."

"You've got the makings of a soldier!"

That unexpected praise finally broke the formation's restraint.

A wave of muffled laughter spread through the ranks. The striking contrast in their exchange dispelled much of the atmosphere that had been so tense it was hard to breathe.

Chen Ziang stood at the very front, watching Han Dong get praised. His teeth itched with anger, but he could only continue enduring the blazing sun.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the formation-

Zhao Yifan's physical fitness wasn't particularly good, and the sun had already made his face a little pale.

Soybean-sized beads of sweat rolled down his forehead and temples, dropping one by one onto the rubber track. His legs had begun to tremble slightly, but he gritted his teeth and made no sound, maintaining a textbook posture without so much as a sway.

Lu Chuan stood in the last row of the formation.

His hands pressed against the seams of his pants, he felt his undershirt gradually soak through with sweat.

At this point in his previous life, he would never have put himself through this.

Back then, all he could think about was maintaining his "noble young master" image. Sweating under the scorching sun, his clothes sticking to his body and stinking, was beneath him. More importantly, he simply couldn't handle the intensity and hardship of military training, so on the third day, he had paid someone to get him a hospital excuse note convincing enough to pass for the real thing.

While everyone else was sweating buckets on the field, he sat in the shade of a distant tree, sipping an iced drink and comfortably watching them suffer. He had even felt smug, thinking himself far cleverer than those ordinary students.

But now that he was living a second life,

his state of mind was completely different.

The sun beat mercilessly down on him, and his calves sent up waves of aching protest after being held taut for so long.

There was no air-conditioning, no cold drink.

Yet Lu Chuan felt utterly at ease.

There were none of the roundabout probes of the drinking table, no need to calculate what others thought when they looked at him, and even less need to put on airs to curry favor with those so-called core circles.

There was only gravity, only sweat, only this purest expenditure of physical effort.

The feeling of having his feet planted on solid ground made him feel especially grounded.

It was a relaxation that came from his very bones after sailing through a thousand storms and seeing vanity and material things for what they truly were.

"Tweet-"

A shrill whistle cut through the waves of heat over the field.

"Everyone! Take a fifteen-minute break where you are!"

As soon as the instructor gave the order, the formation that had been standing ramrod straight instantly collapsed.

The freshmen wailed as they slumped to the ground, or rushed in twos and threes toward the distant shade.

Han Dong darted back to the formation, plopped down, and tugged at his collar to fan himself frantically. Chen Ziang, meanwhile, wore a dark expression as he immediately ducked under the largest camphor tree and pulled out tissues to wipe his face furiously.

Lu Chuan also walked into the shade and found a clean step to sit on.

He unscrewed the bottle of mineral water he had brought with him and tipped his head back, gulping down half of it.

The slightly cool water flowed down his throat and into his stomach, carrying away some of the heat.

Lu Chuan put down the bottle and gazed calmly at the rippling heat in the distance, beginning to reassess this body of his, now brimming with renewed vitality.

Recently, he had been busy buying a house and a car and trading on overseas markets, moving at a pace that left him no time to catch his breath.

It wasn't until he stood here today that he truly noticed something was off.

By rights, although he hadn't been sickly in his previous life, he certainly hadn't been full of stamina either. Standing under such an intense sun for that long would have left him seeing stars back then.

But now, he had merely broken a sweat and felt a little soreness in his muscles. His heart rate had quickly returned to normal, and he even felt as though his body held an inexhaustible supply of strength.

But that wasn't what shocked him most.

What he found most incredible was his brain.

Lu Chuan leaned against the tree trunk and closed his eyes.

He tried to recall a complicated, lengthy financial research report he had read in his previous life.

It was an analysis, published roughly five years from now, of data from the upstream and downstream sectors of the new energy industry chain. In his previous life, he had only skimmed it to make conversation at a drinking party, swallowing it like a whole date. Many of the details should have long since grown hazy.

But now,

as he recalled it, the contents of the report unfolded slowly in his mind like a high-definition photograph.

The movements on a commodities candlestick chart from a particular month and year.

A subtle turning point in an obscure overseas market.

Even an inconspicuous mineral reserve figure in the report could be retrieved with perfect accuracy, down to the two digits after the decimal point, as clearly as if he were looking at the document right in front of him.

Lu Chuan's eyes flew open.

The hand holding his water bottle paused slightly.

To test his suspicion, he went on to recall the details of several obscure commercial mergers and acquisitions he had only paid attention to once in his previous life, as well as the historical highs and lows of various foreign exchange rates.

Everything was there.

Nothing was missing, nothing blurred.

All his memories were as if someone had sorted them into a superdatabase, ready to be retrieved in milliseconds whenever he wanted.

A flash of wild joy and clarity passed through Lu Chuan's eyes.

He had finally confirmed it.

This was the greatest trump card Heaven had given him belatedly for his second life.

It wasn't just the head start of knowing the broad course of the future, but also a body brimming with energy and a monstrous brain with what amounted to a photographic memory and terrifying powers of logical processing.

When he had traded crude oil futures before, he had simply assumed that major event had left too deep an impression on him.

Now he understood: his brain domain had undergone a qualitative leap after his rebirth.

With this heaven-defying brain to support him,

he would have no flaws or blind spots left as he directed Xu Chengyuan from afar, fought in the financial markets, and even laid the groundwork for a far greater empire of capital and industry. He didn't need to memorize that jumble of data by rote; every piece of information he possessed that others lacked would become the sharpest blade in his hand.

Under a tree not far away,

Han Dong was pressing a bottle of ice water against his forehead, humming with pleasure.

Chen Ziang was still upset about the makeup that had come off his face. He used his phone's dark screen as a mirror while muttering something through gritted teeth.

Zhao Yifan sat quietly in a corner, resting with his eyes half closed.

Lu Chuan looked at the young faces and listened to the noisy voices on the field.

He slowly screwed the cap back onto his water bottle.

A few rays of dazzling sunlight filtered through the gaps in the leaves.

Lu Chuan raised his head slightly toward that light and slowly breathed out a stale breath trapped in his chest.