Primary School

A sharp, piercing pain shot up from the nerves in his waist straight to the top of his head.

Chen Zhi gasped sharply, his groggy sleepiness instantly vanishing into thin air.

The chorus of dozens of childish voices reading aloud mixed together, making his head throb with pain.

"Goose, goose, goose, bending its neck to sing to the sky..."

September, 2009.

Jiangcheng Experimental Primary School, Grade One, Class Two.

Chen Zhi rubbed the soft flesh at his waist expressionlessly and turned his head.

In his line of sight was a small, delicately carved face.

Lin Wanwan had her hair tied in two little buns and was wearing a brand new blue and white school uniform, with the red scarf at her collar tied crookedly. At this moment, her eyes were wide open, staring at him like a little tiger guarding its food.

That lethal pinch just now came exactly from the hands of this seemingly harmless little girl.

"Chen Zhi, no sleeping during morning reading class!"

Lin Wanwan lowered her voice. Her small hand still maintained the posture of the assault, not yet withdrawn, clearly ready to launch a second strike at any moment.

Chen Zhi sighed, feeling hopeless about life.

Ever since the boiling water incident when they were four, the relationship between their two families had advanced by leaps and bounds.

That old fox Lin Shuxian now couldn't wait to raise Chen Zhi as his own son. For their enrollment in primary school this time, he had even used his connections to force the two of them into the same class.

Not only that, but the homeroom teacher was also Lin Shuxian's high school classmate.

Thus, under the special care of this insider homeroom teacher, Chen Zhi and Lin Wanwan became desk-mates without any suspense.

This was simply the beginning of a nightmare.

"Big sister, it's only eight-thirty."

Chen Zhi pointed at the wall clock above the blackboard, his tone filled with the exhaustion of an adult. "At this point in time, normal living creatures should be in their beds, rather than here reciting some poem about a big white goose."

For a corporate slave with a mental age of over thirty, being reborn and having to learn from pinyin and basic addition and subtraction all over again was a form of mental torture in itself.

What was even more torturous was sitting next to a disciplinary committee member.

Lin Wanwan was unmoved. She took out a Chinese textbook covered with an exquisite book jacket from her schoolbag and slammed it heavily in front of Chen Zhi.

"Your mom said that if you dare to slack off at school, I should pinch you."

She self-righteously brought out Comrade Zhang Guifang. "This is for your own good. Zhizhi, we have to study hard so we can get into Tsinghua or Peking University in the future."

Chen Zhi rolled his eyes.

Tsinghua or Peking University?

In the past, he might have had some thoughts about it, but now he only wanted to make money and then lie flat.

"I wasn't slacking off. I was meditating."

Chen Zhi tried to push the book back and lay on the desk to continue catching up on his sleep. "Last night, in order to ponder the future of humanity, I overworked my brain. Now I urgently need to recharge."

"Liar!"

Lin Wanwan didn't buy this at all, and her small hand reached toward Chen Zhi's waist again.

The movement was practiced, fast, accurate, and ruthless.

Chen Zhi's body stiffened. He quickly sat up straight and raised his hands above his head in a gesture of surrender.

"Stop! A gentleman uses his words, not his fists!"

Lin Wanwan snorted, withdrew her hand, and let out a soft scoff from her nose.

"You definitely secretly played your game console again last night."

She leaned in a little closer, her large, clear eyes filled with scrutiny. "I heard everything. After ten o'clock last night, there was still light in your room, and there was the sound of buttons being pressed."

Chen Zhi's heart skipped a beat.

Did this girl have the hearing of a bat?

"I wasn't playing games."

Chen Zhi flatly denied it, his expression as serious as if he were discussing matters of state. "That was the sound of a keyboard. I was looking up information."

"Looking up information?"

Lin Wanwan looked him up and down suspiciously, clearly not believing him. "What information do you need to look up in the middle of the night? Plus, when I woke you up this morning, your dark circles were heavier than a giant panda's."

She reached out a finger and poked at Chen Zhi's eye bags.

"I'm going to tell Auntie Zhang."

Lin Wanwan brought out her trump card. "Auntie Zhang said that if you dare to waste your life on playthings, she'll confiscate your pocket money and give all your game consoles to the old man who collects scrap."

This move hit right at his weak spot.

Although Comrade Zhang Guifang usually doted on him, she was absolutely impartial and strict when it came to wasting life on playthings. If she found out he was staying up late neglecting his proper duties, the secret stash and little treasury he hid under his bed would surely suffer a disaster.

Chen Zhi took a deep breath, his brain working at top speed.

He had to cover up this lie.

And he had to do it beautifully, so beautifully that it would make this girl feel guilty and not dare to casually disturb his sleep in the future.

"Wanwan."

Chen Zhi suddenly softened his tone, an indescribable look of worldly weariness appearing on his face.

He turned around to face Lin Wanwan directly, his gaze profound.

"Actually... I never wanted you to know."

Lin Wanwan was taken aback by his sudden seriousness and instinctively shrank back a little. "K-know what?"

Chen Zhi lowered his eyes, looking at the Chinese textbook on the desk, his fingers gently rubbing the corner of the book.

"Do you think I'm a genius?"

Lin Wanwan blinked, nodded, and then shook her head.

In their neighborhood, Chen Zhi was indeed the universally acknowledged child prodigy.

He could read at three, speak English at four, and help Zhang Guifang with the accounting at five.

The adults all said that the ancestors of the Chen family must be blessing them.

But in Lin Wanwan's eyes, Chen Zhi was just a lazybone.

Other than eating and sleeping, he was either staring blankly out the window or lounging around; she had never seen him seriously read a book.

"Everyone says I'm smart."

Chen Zhi's voice deepened a bit, carrying a trace of imperceptible trembling. "But Wanwan, where in this world are there natural-born geniuses? Behind all the glamour is sweat that no one knows about."

Lin Wanwan was stunned.

She had never seen Chen Zhi like this.

Fragile, exhausted, yet carrying a kind of tragic heroism.

"Are you saying..."

"That's right."

Chen Zhi raised his head and looked straight into her eyes, his words resounding. "You thought I was playing games? Actually, I was studying."

"The classes during the day are too simple; they can't satisfy my thirst for knowledge. I can only use my time at night to study more advanced knowledge."

"To keep my parents from worrying and from thinking I'm under too much pressure, I have to study secretly and pretend I'm playing."

These words were logically rigorous and emotionally sincere. Paired with Chen Zhi's face, which, although childish, exuded a mature aura, the destructive power was immense.

Lin Wanwan's small mouth parted slightly, her face written all over with shock.

But she had, after all, grown up with Chen Zhi and had a deep understanding of this guy's level of cunning.

After the shock, suspicion once again gained the upper hand.

"You're lying."

Lin Wanwan frowned, her small face full of distrust. "You aren't even willing to read Ode to the Goose, and you claim you're learning advanced knowledge?"

"That's to hide my true abilities."

Chen Zhi's expression didn't change. "The tree that stands out in the forest will be destroyed by the wind. I don't want to keep too high a profile."

"Then prove it to me!"

Lin Wanwan pulled a thick copy of Three Hundred Tang Poems from her backpack. This was an extracurricular reading book Lin Shuxian had bought for her, and she couldn't even recognize many of the characters inside.

She casually flipped to a page and pointed at the densely packed characters on it.

"If you can memorize and recite this poem, I'll believe you."

Chen Zhi glanced at it.

Song of Everlasting Regret.

A long narrative poem by Bai Juyi, totaling eight hundred and forty characters in length.

To a first-grade student, this was absolute gibberish.

But to someone who had been reborn—having already endured nine years of compulsory education and the trials of university—it only took a few read-throughs for it all to come back to him.