Chapter 2

Most of the seats in the classroom were already occupied. The teacher had just come in and was arranging her lesson plans at the lectern.

Lin Sheng quickly went to his seat and sat down. He looked up at the lectern.

The foreign language teacher rested a hand on her black-framed glasses as she slowly opened her lesson plan, her eyes occasionally flicking downward.

The students she looked at would instinctively straighten up and sit properly. Lin Sheng was no exception.

But today, his sister's words from earlier kept circling in his mind. He unconsciously gripped the only two hundred yuan in his pocket, feeling both dejected and weighed down.

Grandpa had suddenly suffered a stroke, and the family had borrowed money from everyone they could. Their savings were now completely drained, and even his older sister, who was in college, had to work while studying.

As he thought about it, he sighed softly.

"At least things are difficult, but we can still get by."

Coming back to himself, he suddenly remembered last night's nightmare. It had been so vivid.

Beep.

The bell rang soon after. Lin Sheng refocused, took his foreign language textbook from his schoolbag, and began studying attentively.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried, the nightmare kept resurfacing in his mind throughout the entire morning, along with thoughts of Grandpa's upcoming surgery and the increasingly difficult atmosphere at home.

One class after another passed. When the last class was almost over, a girl sitting in front tapped on Lin Sheng's desk.

"Lin Sheng, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." His expression calm, Lin Sheng looked up at her.

The girl had a slightly long, oval face and long, narrow eyes. She wasn't particularly pretty; she looked like a fox whose face had been stretched out. Her bulky school uniform also made it hard to tell what kind of figure she had. The only thing that stood out was her fair, delicate skin.

Her name was Shen Yan. She was one of the few friends he had in this temporary class. She often borrowed things from him, like erasers and pencils.

"Really? You're fine?" Shen Yan had a somewhat tomboyish personality. She liked anime and such, and didn't get along with the girls. Most of her friends were boys instead.

"I'm fine." Lin Sheng shook his head.

Shen Yan reached out and patted Lin Sheng on the shoulder.

"The Gymnastics Club's meeting is later. You look down in the dumps today, so I'll take you there and broaden your horizons!"

"." Lin Sheng looked a little helpless.

"What's with that look?! Don't all you boys like going to the Gymnastics Club to check out the girls? Hehe. Ah!!" Before Shen Yan could finish, Lin Sheng pinched the back of her hand, making her yelp.

Lin Sheng expressionlessly withdrew his hand.

His only friend had another bad habit: every so often, she'd blurt out lewd, outrageous things that were hard to stomach.

"Lin Sheng, have you lost your mind?! Take this, my invincible Sacred Heart Palm! Aah!" Shen Yan got up and lunged at him, reaching for his face with both hands.

Unfortunately, Lin Sheng picked up his textbook and precisely blocked her entire combo.

She was so easy to read, just a simple-minded crazy girl.

"I'm being nice and taking you to see the benefits! And this is how you treat me?!"

Shen Yan persisted, attacking again and again.

Unfortunately, Lin Sheng blocked every move without the slightest effort.

A few nearby classmates watched the two of them fool around and couldn't help laughing.

At the lectern, the history teacher had seen it all before. He glanced over, rubbed his bald head, and pretended not to notice.

It was their final year of high school, with only a few months left. Most of the teachers turned a blind eye to things like this, giving everyone in the class the only perk they had while working so hard.

Soon, class ended. The somewhat grating bell rang, making everyone's scalp prickle.

"Xiaoyan, want to go see the new tapes at lunchtime?" A girl beside them leaned over and whispered to Shen Yan.

"Sure, why wouldn't I? I'm just one last tape away from collecting all of Zhang En'ai's tapes. This time, I'm definitely going to—"

The two girls leaned together, chattering away.

Lin Sheng glanced at the girl beside Shen Yan.

Suddenly, Shen Yan shrieked and jumped up to chase after the long-legged girl. The girl immediately turned and ran.

Bright laughter filled the room, making Lin Sheng's head ache.

An Ling, nicknamed Coconut, was considered one of the pretty girls in class. With her black ponytail and the graceful figure she'd developed through years of gymnastics, she was popular among the students. Rumor had it that boys from both inside and outside the class had fought over her.

"Boring."

Lin Sheng shook his head, packed his books into his desk, and got up to eat.

The food in the cafeteria suited his taste.

Sitting among the sparsely scattered metal tables and chairs, Lin Sheng quietly ate the food on his tray.

A serving of scrambled eggs with tomatoes and two liang of rice made up his entire lunch.

It was simple, but delicious.

That was his everyday life.

He went to class, came home to do his homework, reviewed past exam papers covering all the major topics, studied until late at night, and then went to sleep.

The next day, he got up and repeated the same routine.

His parents were out early and home late, while his sister was still in college and about to head back there again. Grandpa's serious illness was why she had come home for a while.

"Honestly, it's so boring."

Lin Sheng calmly spooned up his rice and put it in his mouth.

Now and then, his gaze shifted with the students milling around the cafeteria.

But most of the time, it remained calm and undisturbed.

He had been born into an ordinary family, with no extraordinary talent and no unprecedented intelligence or social skills.

Even his grades at school were average, nothing remarkable.

But he had one major problem.

He lacked ambition.

That was the first key reason he could stay calm about most things that happened to him.

The second reason was that he was a strange person who had awakened memories of his past life.

Nearly thirty years' worth of memories from his previous life left him almost unmoved by the life he was living now.

The college entrance exams in his previous life hadn't been much different from the ones here. He'd also spent every day buried in practice papers.

Naturally, going through it all again felt dull and tedious.

"The technology here is only at the level of the early years of the newly founded People's Republic of China. They have cars and planes, as well as plenty of little gadgets that have only recently become widely available. But it's still a long way from the most prosperous era of my previous life."

Lin Sheng sighed inwardly.

After experiencing the convenience of an era with mobile payments, and the highly advanced computer networks, returning to this world—where computer games had barely reached the level of the first StarCraft—put him in a terrible mood.

Fortunately, adaptability was one of humanity's greatest strengths.

After more than ten years of adapting, he had long since gotten used to an ordinary student's life.

And because he understood the wisdom of not standing out, he had never openly displayed the maturity of his personality.

He believed it was no coincidence that he'd managed to live peacefully until now.