Chapter Fifteen: The Brahmin of the County Town

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Zhou Ziyang had no idea how to describe what he was feeling.

If one were to speak of the incomprehensible, nothing could be more incomprehensible than being reborn.

And yet, when Zhou Ziyang lowered his head to look at the examination paper, memories from ten years ago came flooding back as vividly as if they had happened only yesterday.

Take this paper, for instance. Zhou Ziyang had done it once before, back when he was in high school in his previous life.

Afterward, his English teacher had even gone over it in class.

Zhou Ziyang could recall every detail of that lesson.

His flirtatious English teacher had been wearing a pair of black stockings with a run in them. Zhou Ziyang remembered it particularly well: through the torn opening, a section of snow-white calf had been exposed.

He had happened to glimpse it and had privately exclaimed, What incredibly fair skin!

Ten years had passed, yet Zhou Ziyang remembered it all!

But enough reminiscing. Back to the matter at hand.

If he could remember details as trivial as that, then naturally he remembered the questions on the paper—and the places where students were most likely to make mistakes.

This one should be C.

That one should be A!

That was right. Zhou Ziyang remembered all the correct answers.

He could even translate every English word on the entire examination paper without missing a single one!

It was simply astonishing. What on earth was happening?

Zhou Ziyang had been ready to give up on studying, but now his interest in learning had been rekindled.

Over the next few classes, he went through all the examination papers one after another.

Chinese, mathematics, even the papers from minor subjects—so long as he had taken the exam in his previous life and retained any impression of it, Zhou Ziyang remembered everything.

And that was not all.

Whether it was a lengthy piece of classical Chinese, a poem, or obscure and unwieldy English vocabulary, Zhou Ziyang discovered that all he had to do was look at it once.

Just once.

After that, he could reproduce it from memory with ease, or even recite it outright.

Zhou Ziyang conducted a special experiment. That afternoon, he memorized more than a dozen long words, all of them extremely complicated to spell.

For example, “civilization.”

When evening self-study began, Zhou Ziyang tried writing the words from memory.

Well, he did not even need anyone to give him hints. He remembered every one of them in both Chinese and English.

Zhou Ziyang realized that after being reborn, he had somehow gained the ability to remember everything at a glance!

No—that was not quite it.

What Zhou Ziyang could genuinely sense was that after his rebirth, all five of his senses, along with his mental faculties, had grown noticeably stronger.

To put it another way, in addition to the five senses, people often possessed a sixth sense.

That sixth sense was sometimes accurate and sometimes not.

For instance, one might be sitting quietly and suddenly feel that someone was watching from behind.

Such a sensation seemed mysterious and elusive. Sometimes someone really was there.

At other times, it was merely an illusion.

But after being reborn, Zhou Ziyang could truly grasp that sixth sense with precision.

He felt as though his entire soul had been elevated to a new level of strength.

He could not explain it clearly. All he could do was attribute it to the ten-year leap involved in his rebirth. His soul and mind must have undergone some kind of tempering during the process, leaving his mental power far stronger than that of an ordinary person.

In other words, throughout these first few days after his rebirth, Zhou Ziyang had been brimming with energy.

He had always assumed it was because he was young again and had returned to the peak of his condition.

In truth, that was not the case. Zhou Ziyang had not merely returned to his peak—he had become stronger than he had ever been at his peak.

To test this theory, Zhou Ziyang skipped the third evening self-study period and went to the track to run laps.

The athletic field was pitch-black. Only two or three students from the sophomore and junior classes had skipped study period to come there for clandestine romance, though they did not dare behave too openly.

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So Zhou Ziyang ran around the field.

One lap, then another.

He did not feel tired in the slightest.

After completing five kilometers, there was indeed sweat on his forehead.

But his breathing remained even, and he felt not the slightest bit fatigued.

He checked the time. Less than seventeen minutes.

Seeing that, Zhou Ziyang found it almost unbelievable.

In his previous life, he absolutely could not have done it.

Even in the world as it was now, Zhou Ziyang had no idea whether anyone else could manage it.

It seemed that he had not merely been reborn.

At that thought, an inexplicable excitement began to rise within him.

For the entire class period, Zhou Ziyang kept running around the track. He had no idea how many laps he completed. All he knew was that one lap followed another, and his pace never slowed.

His shirt was soaked through, and sweat drenched his head.

It was not until the bell rang that Zhou Ziyang finally felt a faint trace of fatigue.

He crouched down, braced his hands against his knees, and began breathing lightly.

A gentle breeze swept through the April night.

It brushed softly across Zhou Ziyang’s sweat-dampened forehead.

The sensation was wonderfully refreshing.

After every bout of exercise, he felt as if his body had been cleansed and remade from within.

Now that he knew he possessed so many advantages, making money had suddenly become far less important in Zhou Ziyang’s eyes.

He was going to go to college!

By the time Zhou Ziyang returned to the classroom, drenched in sweat, evening self-study had already ended. More than half the students had left.

The others were gathering their things and preparing to go as well.

When they saw Zhou Ziyang appear in the classroom looking like that, one of them exclaimed, “What the heck, Ziyang! What happened to you?”

Zhou Ziyang ignored him and went straight back to his seat.

“Can’t you tell? Old Chen gave him a dressing-down! Didn’t you notice Zhou Ziyang was distracted all afternoon?”

“Of course. Old Chen is a master at stamping out puppy love. Remember how he dealt with those two students from the junior class? Do you remember how viciously he put it? He told the boy outright, ‘Your parents sell vegetables. What could you possibly give her to make her happy?’”

“Exactly. Someone like Zhou Ziyang, whose grades aren’t anything special, and whose family conditions…”

Remembering Old Chen’s habitual methods of humiliating people, everyone began silently mourning Zhou Ziyang.

What kind of blow had he suffered to exhaust himself like this?

He had even started packing his schoolbag in the middle of class. Was he actually planning to study?

Sigh. Old Chen really did enjoy putting people through the wringer.

The journey home was one of the few truly relaxed moments in a student’s day, so it was only natural for them to exchange a little gossip.

Still, when they thought about what had happened between Zhou Ziyang and Xia Wei, they felt genuinely sympathetic.

No one had expected Zhou Ziyang and Xia Wei to fall into a school romance.

But Xia Wei was so outstanding. It was only natural that Zhou Ziyang should feel a great deal of pressure.

The students whispered among themselves up ahead.

Xia Wei, who happened to overhear them from behind, felt deeply uncomfortable.

Especially when it came to Zhou Ziyang.

He had always been refined and well-groomed, with clean clothes and a tidy appearance.

Yet today, he had run for an entire class period.

Watching him silently pack his things with an expressionless face, Xia Wei felt a sharp ache in her heart.

She thought that it must have been because she had rejected Zhou Ziyang and dealt him a serious blow.

But the two of them could never possibly be together!

Even if they had never formally entered a relationship…

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A full moon hung high in the sky.

Following behind her gossiping classmates, Xia Wei kept thinking about everything that had happened that day.

For some reason, she could not stop thinking about Zhou Ziyang, whom she had been interacting with so much lately.

In truth, there was no reason for her to be tormented by such complicated emotions.

But the heart of a teenage girl was not something that could be explained so easily.

Zhou Ziyang had completely unsettled her.

It was already half past ten at night, yet the road outside County No. 1 High School was still crowded with vehicles of every kind.

Some people had come on electric scooters or motorized tricycles.

Others had driven small private cars and were waiting quietly along the roadside.

Xia Wei was distracted as she walked forward in a daze.

She did not snap back to her senses until a white Mercedes-Benz C-Class honked beside her.

The window of the white Mercedes rolled down.

Behind the wheel sat an exceptionally elegant woman.

She wore a light undershirt, and a glittering gold necklace hung around her bare neck.

She looked to be around thirty-five, but showed no signs of aging. There was about her the polished air of someone raised in a comfortable, cultivated middle-class household.

Even though she had merely come to pick up her daughter, she had still applied a light layer of makeup.

Xia Wei climbed into the car with her thoughts weighing heavily on her mind.

Xu Qing glanced at her daughter in the back seat and asked in confusion, “What’s wrong, Weiwei? You don’t look yourself.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Nothing at all.”

Xia Wei spoke haltingly. When she saw that her mother continued watching her through the rearview mirror, she could only come up with a casual excuse.

“We had a math test today, and there was one problem I couldn’t solve…”

Hearing that, Xu Qing could not help laughing softly.

She had thought something serious had happened.

“You’re already working hard enough,” she said. “With grades like yours, Tsinghua or Peking University may be out of reach, but getting into Nanjing University shouldn’t be a problem.”

“What you should do now is rest properly and keep yourself in the best possible condition.”

Xu Qing adored the Mercedes-Benz C-Class she had bought less than two years earlier. She drove it slowly away from the road outside the county’s No. 1 High School.

Xia Wei gazed out the window.

This small city in northern Jiangsu was not especially well developed, yet outside the county high school, with eleven o’clock approaching, the streets were still filled with the vivid bustle of ordinary life.

Seeing that her daughter remained unhappy, Xu Qing continued, “A little while ago, your Uncle Zhou went to the provincial capital and had dinner with a professor from Nanjing University. I think they were classmates or something.”

“So you really don’t need to worry.”

“Even if you fall short by two or three points…”

“Don’t you still have Uncle Zhou and your mother?”

“With us here, you can put your mind completely at ease.”

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