Everything before him was both familiar and strange; all around him, youth buzzed with life.
Chen Mo was a man in his thirties, a standard middle-aged office worker who had spent over a decade grinding away at his career and had only just clawed his way into middle management. Now he was being besieged by a mortgage, car payments, baby formula, and a hairline that kept retreating. At that moment, he sat stiffly in a hard wooden classroom chair, as if his soul had left his body.
His gaze was locked on the upper-right corner of the blackboard.
There, written in red chalk, were a few alarming words, followed by an unmistakable number—
[Gaokao Countdown: 252 Days]
Beside the number, someone had drawn a tiny exclamation mark in white chalk, giving it a faintly tragic air.
"Two hundred and fifty-two... days?"
Chen Mo silently repeated the number to himself. A chill shot from his tailbone up his spine to the crown of his head, more invigorating than downing three iced Americanos in one go.
He pinched his thigh without thinking.
"Ow—!"
It hurt! It really hurt! This wasn't a dream!
Everything around him seemed so real: a somewhat shabby classroom, with an inspiring slogan on the wall—"The diligent find a path through the mountain of books; the steadfast sail across the boundless sea of learning." Books were piled on the desks like little mountains, nearly blocking the view ahead. The air carried that unmistakable school smell: chalk dust, teenage hormones, and some kind of cheap snack all mixed together.
Boys and girls in blue-and-white school uniforms, so unfashionable they seemed decades out of date, gathered in small groups, chattering away. Some were discussing last night's TV drama, others were trading the latest news about their idols, while a few students who looked like top scholars argued heatedly over a math problem.
A vibrant, energetic air of youth washed over him like a wave, tinged with anxiety but brimming with hope. It nearly knocked the soul of this "old geezer" Chen Mo right off its feet.
He'd crossed into another world.
Just like that, without warning or reason, he'd crossed into another world.
He hadn't been hit by a dump truck, the hardworking "laborer of the transmigration world," or gone through any of the standard routines, like suffering a major setback in life, getting drunk, or falling from a building. He'd just been slacking off at his desk, dozed off for a moment, and opened his eyes to a different world.
His career had just started to take off, and the chance for a promotion next quarter was within reach. His wife, though sometimes nagging, was generally easy to get along with. And their little money-sink had just started kindergarten, cute enough to melt your heart one minute and make you furious the next... Had all of that become part of his "previous life"?
And the worst part was, what a rotten time to cross over!
The first semester of senior year! Just 252 days remained until the Gaokao, the exam that determined the course of countless lives!
As a typical office drone who'd been out of school for over a decade, the high school knowledge in his head had long since been squeezed out by KPIs, PowerPoint presentations, weekly reports, monthly reports, and all kinds of workplace gossip and social obligations.
Math? He could maybe work out whether a function was even or odd on his fingers. What was calculus? Could you eat it?
Chinese? He might still be able to stumble through the first two lines of the Tengwang Pavilion Preface. What came after "The evening glow and a lone wild duck fly side by side"?
English? He still remembered "abandon" quite well. After all, every time he resolved to study English, he started with that word—and then... actually abandoned it.
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Science or humanities subjects? Sorry, the memory has been formatted. All that's left are a few vague terms and pictures of scientists...
Back when he took the Gaokao, he'd relied on his young, sharp mind and fought his way across the single-plank bridge, scoring over 500 points and getting into a decent second-tier university—not a top school, but good enough. But that had been over a decade ago! If he took the exam now, he'd probably get half that score, and still owe them money.
Worse, once he'd tried to merge with the memories of the original owner of this body, he found the situation even more hopeless.
The original Chen Mo was exactly what his name suggested: a silent background character in class. His grades were consistently near the bottom, and his teachers thought he had "plenty of room to improve"—meaning he had little hope. He guessed his way through exams, relying on a rubber eraser for multiple-choice questions—though it had to be a six-sided one—and left the written problems blank. He was the very picture of a laid-back test-taker.
Birds of a feather flock together. Nowhere was that clearer than in the classroom seating chart.
"Hey, Brother Mo! You've been spacing out forever. What's up? Did some female ghost steal your soul? If something's got you down, tell me so I can enjoy it!"
A cheeky voice came from beside him, along with the rustle of a snack bag being opened.
Chen Mo turned stiffly. A familiar yet unfamiliar face came into view: his deskmate and best friend, Zhang Shun.
The guy had a mess of hair that looked like it had just been bombed. Red pimples, the marks of adolescence, dotted his face. He was as skinny as a stick, with a healthy—perhaps more accurately, neglected—wheat-colored complexion. Now he was shaking his leg and peering at Chen Mo with little eyes that gleamed with "wisdom"—or, more likely, gossip. His face practically screamed, "Come on, tell me! I've got my seat and my seeds ready."
Sure enough, anyone who hung around the underachiever Chen Mo was bound to be another "legend" who ruled the back rows of the classroom. Zhang Shun was every bit his equal in the fine art of consistently failing.
The strange thing was that these guys seemed completely unaware that they were underachievers. Take Zhang Shun: despite looking like he was destined to die alone, he thought he was devastatingly handsome, always lost in inexplicable confidence and brooding self-absorption. Unfortunately, the moment he saw a girl who was even a little pretty, that confidence crumbled. He'd become flustered, blush bright red, and speak in a voice quieter than a mosquito's buzz, perfectly carrying on the original Chen Mo's "fine tradition."
Chen Mo took a deep breath, trying to rein in the ten thousand imaginary horses stampeding through his mind. Mimicking the original owner's slightly disillusioned tone, he put on an air of profundity and brushed Zhang Shun off. "Nothing. I'm just pondering some philosophical questions about the origin of the universe and the meaning of life. You wouldn't understand."
"Yeah, right!" Zhang Shun curled his lip and held out half a bag of chips. "Quit acting like some big shot. Here, you look like you've lost your soul. Have some energy."
Chen Mo didn't hesitate. He took the bag and crunched down a few chips, trying to calm himself. Then, pretending it was just a casual question, he asked, "Shunzi, has anything major happened at school lately? The atmosphere feels a little different."
First, he needed to figure out the situation and get the timeline straight.
"Anything major?" Zhang Shun scratched his bird's nest of hair and thought hard for a moment. "What could there be? The homeroom teacher just keeps preaching at the front of the class every day. 'The Gaokao decides your fate,' 'one point can beat an entire sports field,' 'if you don't work hard now, nobody will even hire you to lay bricks later'... I'm sick of hearing it. Anyway, you and me, bro? We're half-dead!"
He made an exaggerated gesture, as though the ultimate dream of a salted fish was to be fried until golden on both sides.
"Half-dead?" Chen Mo mouthed the word, looking at the bright red "152" in the upper-right corner of the blackboard. His heart sank.
Half-dead? They were completely cooked already. They were just waiting for the Gaokao to be the final test of doneness!
He could almost see himself 252 days from now, failing to get into college, then being cruelly cast aside by this inexplicable world and ending up homeless...
No! Absolutely not!
How could a middle-aged soul that had been beaten down by society just sit back and wait to die? Even if the road ahead was a mountain of swords and a sea of flames, even if it was a wasteland of knowledge he'd long since forgotten, he had to... find a way to hold on first!
At the very least, he had to figure out whether there was still time to cram and salvage the situation.
Chen Mo's gaze drifted toward the pile of textbooks and exercise books, heaped up like a little mountain. His eyes were filled with the resolve of a man cutting off his own arm, along with a touch of the shrewd calculation of a middle-aged man.
"If you can't find the book by title, try searching by the author's name! Maybe it's just been renamed!"
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