A Clichéd Opening

Friday.

Ningcheng No. 1 High School, senior year, Class 2.

Lu Yuan sprang to his feet and stared around in stunned silence.

The classroom looked familiar, as did his classmates. In a little box on the right side of the blackboard, it read:

[35] days until the college entrance exam.

Distant memories gradually came into focus.

Was this... twenty years ago?

Had he... been reborn?

Wu Jishan, the homeroom teacher, frowned from the podium.

"Lu Yuan, what is it?"

Lu Yuan opened his mouth, but for a moment, he didn't know what to say.

He couldn't very well say, "Teacher, I've been reborn!"

Fortunately, his deskmate came to his rescue just in time.

"Mr. Wu, it's nothing. A hornet flew in just now and scared Lu Yuan silly."

His deskmate, Ma Jin, grinned and pulled Lu Yuan back into his seat.

Wu Jishan nodded, apparently accepting the explanation.

Then he resumed the topic Lu Yuan had interrupted.

He pointed to the college entrance exam countdown on the blackboard.

"Although there's still a month until the college entrance exam, cultivator universities all admit students in the early admissions round. Anyone who's interested needs to apply next week."

With that, he dropped a stack of forms on the podium.

"These are the application forms for cultivator universities. Class monitor, hand them out."

The class monitor, Jia Xuanxuan, rose from his seat and began distributing the forms.

The students took the opportunity to break into a buzz of discussion.

"Are you applying to Cultivation University?"

"How could I get in? Applying would just be a waste of money."

"Only one person from our school got into Cultivation University last year, right?"

"I hear it's even harder this year."

"I really want to become a cultivator, marry a tall, rich, handsome man, and reach the peak of life."

"Wake up and stop dreaming!"

Lu Yuan didn't hear any of it. He was still in a state of disbelief.

Had he really returned to twenty years ago, to just before the college entrance exam?

Seeing him like that, his deskmate Ma Jin impatiently put down the math book in his hands and asked, "Lu Yuan, you've been reborn, haven't you? I'm not mistaken, am I?"

This time, Lu Yuan heard him clearly.

He turned in disbelief to look at his perfectly calm deskmate.

How could anyone know when he had only just been reborn?

Could it be that this sort of thing was common?

"You... how could you possibly know?!"

"Tch, how did I know?" Ma Jin scoffed. "You think all those novels I read were for nothing?"

"You suddenly stood up in class with disbelief written all over your face, and it's right before the college entrance exam. You know what this is?"

"What?" Lu Yuan was utterly baffled.

"It's the most clichéd opening to a rebirth novel there is!" Ma Jin said with feeling. "This venerable one has read every novel under heaven and knows every trope like the back of his hand."

With that, Ma Jin gave Lu Yuan a thumbs-up.

"But honestly, Lu Yuan, your acting is way too over the top. You're only fit for short dramas!"

Lu Yuan recalled that his high school deskmate had loved reading novels.

He hadn't just loved reading them; he had also spent all day fantasizing about what he would do if he were reborn or transmigrated.

But after the college entrance exam, everyone had gone their separate ways, and they had never met again.

The book Ma Jin had just put down might have had "Math" on the cover, but inside it was all treasures, fortuitous encounters, and boobs. Those who knew, knew.

If only math really were that interesting!

Lu Yuan calmed down.

In his previous life, he had lived an exhausting life, struggling at the very bottom.

Now that he had a chance to start over, he believed that with the advantage of knowing the future, he could surely achieve something earth-shattering.

He needed to quickly recall which industries would be especially lucrative over the next few years. Cryptocurrency seemed pretty good. Invest a few thousand yuan, and in a few years he would be a billionaire.

Hehehehe...

Just as he was secretly savoring the thought, a voice suddenly rang out from outside like a great bell.

"Ningcheng No. 1 High School!"

Lu Yuan jumped, thinking it was a broadcast from the principal's office. But his classmates clearly knew what was happening.

"Wow, it's a cultivator!"

Someone cried out in surprise.

Immediately afterward, every student ran out of the classroom, heedless of the lesson in progress. They crowded into the corridor, gazing into the distance at the figure standing atop the clock tower, their eyes full of longing and envy.

Cultivator Ji Yin stood with his hands behind his back at the highest point of No. 1 High School. He was in his thirties, tall and imposing, with a gaze that commanded respect without anger.

"Silence!"

The noisy students immediately shut their mouths. A cultivator's authority was beyond question.

"Recently, cultists have been active near Ning City, and the Internal Affairs Bureau is doing everything it can to apprehend them. Students and teachers, please stay safe. If anything unusual happens, report it to the Internal Affairs Bureau immediately!"

Having made his announcement, Ji Yin was about to leave for the next location.

Just then, he caught sight of a familiar figure out of the corner of his eye.

Ji Yin's heart stirred. He rose to his full height and, in two or three leaps, flew across several hundred meters.

Under the adoring gazes of the school's teachers and students, Ji Yin floated down in front of the homeroom teacher, Wu Jishan.

"Mr. Wu, long time no see." Ji Yin bowed slightly to show his respect. "I've been busy with official duties and haven't come to visit often. Please forgive me."

A smile bloomed across Wu Jishan's aged face like a flower.

"It's all right. It's good for young people to keep busy."

More than ten years ago, Ji Yin had been in Wu Jishan's class when he had tested into a prestigious cultivator university.

It was the proudest accomplishment of Old Wu's entire teaching career.

After the two exchanged a few more pleasantries, the principal of Ningcheng No. 1 High School came hurrying over, hoping to have a few words with the cultivator.

But Ji Yin merely nodded to the principal before flying away. He still needed to hurry to the next location on his patrol.

Warning the residents to be careful was one aspect of it. The other was to serve as a deterrent, so the cultists hiding in the shadows wouldn't dare act recklessly.

Only when he had gone a long way off did the students reluctantly return to their classrooms.

Cultivators were truly enviable. They could fly into the heavens and burrow into the earth, capable of anything.

Not to mention their outrageously high incomes.

What student didn't want to become a cultivator?

But to become a cultivator, one first had to get into a cultivator university.

Every year, five or six million students took the college entrance exam, but there were fewer than twenty thousand places for cultivator students. That was an acceptance rate of roughly one in two hundred.

It was so hard!

Ningcheng No. 1 High School wasn't a particularly prestigious high school. Only one student had been admitted to a cultivator university last year.

It could be said that the vast majority of people at Ningcheng No. 1 High School had no hope at all.

But if they gave up, they could only spend their lives as ordinary people who amounted to nothing.

It was so frustrating!

Faced with the application forms, the students of senior year Class 2 were torn.

Lu Yuan wasn't torn. He was panicking like crazy.

Just now, he had been standing beside the homeroom teacher.

He had seen with his own eyes a human named Ji Yin fly over in a single leap of several hundred meters, then fly away in another leap of several hundred meters.

Not a single teacher or student in the school thought it was abnormal. Instead, they were envious.

This definitely wasn't the Earth he had come from!

Just moments ago, he had been brimming with confidence, thinking he could make something of himself with twenty years of future experience. Now Lu Yuan realized things were probably far from that simple.

Lu Yuan took a deep breath.

"Ma Jin, can I ask you something?"

Ma Jin put down his collector's edition math book and glanced sideways at him. "What is it?"

"What should someone do after being reborn? You've read a lot of novels, so you should have plenty of experience, right?" Lu Yuan asked humbly.

At the mention of novels, Ma Jin wasn't sleepy anymore.

"Rebirth is easy. First off, don't even think about it-you've got to make money.

"With experience from your previous life, you can't possibly miss a single chance to make money.

"Once you've got money, you level up and kill monsters while collecting all the campus beauties and empresses in your harem..."

"Stop!" Lu Yuan hurriedly cut him off,

"I mean, what should you do if, after being reborn, you discover the world has changed and there are lots of incredibly powerful people?"

"You mean an ordinary person being reborn into a Primordial World? The kind of rebirth where Gods and Devils are as common as dogs and emperors walk all over the place? That's not rebirth, that's transmigration!" Ma Jin corrected him solemnly.

"...Whatever."

"You need a system for transmigration." Ma Jin offered his professional analysis. "You rely on the system to keep a low profile for tens of thousands of years, then come out of seclusion and wipe out all those old Primordial monsters! Then you take all the campus beauties and empresses into your harem."

"How could a Primordial World possibly have campus beauties?!" Lu Yuan pointed out the fatal flaw in Ma Jin's plan.

Ma Jin sneered dismissively. "'I Opened a Girls' School in the Primordial World.' How about that?"

Criminal. Utterly criminal!

But Lu Yuan didn't need a girls' school. He needed a system!

"How do you get a system?" Lu Yuan pressed.

"A system needs a [ding]," Ma Jin said without hesitation.

Lu Yuan was baffled again. "What [ding]?"

"The [ding] of a microwave." Ma Jin asked, "Have you heard a [ding]?"

Lu Yuan shook his head solemnly.

"Without a system, you can just wait to die!" Ma Jin made a threatening face. "You'll be crushed like an ant!"

Lu Yuan was struck speechless.

The dismissal bell rang at just the right time. Lu Yuan tucked the application form into his schoolbag and left with his head down.

"Oh, right, Lu Yuan, what novel are you reading, anyway?" Ma Jin called after him. "The power scaling is cranked up so high, it sounds pretty interesting.

"Tell me the title. I'll check it out tonight too."

"I don't want to talk to you right now." Lu Yuan waved goodbye listlessly.

"'I Don't Want to Talk to You Right Now.' Got it." Ma Jin waved goodbye in return. "If the book's no good, I'll smash the shop!"

[Special note]: Because too many readers have been discussing "who is whose clone" and causing confusion, I am making a special note here at the beginning: according to this book's fundamental theory, the three souls cannot inhabit two bodies, so there is no such thing as a clone. I don't know how other books handle it; in any case, there are no clones in this book. The specific principle of mutual exclusion is as follows, where C is the Yaoguang set and B is the carrier of consciousness.

The tensor product is the zero vector, so they must be mutually exclusive.