It seemed like I had slept a long, much-needed sleep.
My body feels warm, this is the sensation of sunlight shining on me.
"Sunlight? What time is it now?"
Bian Xuedao's mind suddenly became clear, but strangely, his body didn't seem to follow his commands.
His brain transmitted instructions over and over, and after many attempts, his hands and legs finally felt connected to his brain. This feeling was strange, but very real.
Hmm?
What's my sleeping position?
Did I fall asleep sitting on the sofa?
Did Shang Xiu help me to the bed? No, wait, why do I feel like I'm lying on the desk?
Open your eyes! Open your eyes! Why can't I open them?
There's noise now...
It's so noisy!
The sound of people coming up the stairs, opening doors, chairs scraping, and a jumble of conversations that can't be organized into order.
After the sound of a door opening, everything suddenly fell silent, like they had rehearsed it.
Bian Xuedao continued to struggle to control his body, as he was really curious about what kind of dream he was experiencing now.
I have to say, dreaming like this is just unbelievable.
At this point, a middle-aged woman's voice entered Bian Xuedao's ears.
"Classmates, let's start! Open the 23rd set of mock questions, Huanggang Mock Exam (3)..."
The sound of pages flipping echoed around.
Someone behind him whispered, "Hey, did you do it? I haven't done it, tell me the answer later."
"Slap" someone on Bian Xuedao's right shoulder tapped him: "Wake up, class is starting."
The middle-aged woman's voice came again: "The first question of the multiple-choice section, let's start with Xu Bing."
After a pause, she added with more emphasis: "Students still lying down, please get up quickly."
Someone on the right tapped Bian Xuedao again, and then, as if a point had been hit, Bian Xuedao suddenly sat up.
Bright sunlight flooded his eyes!
Before him was a strange yet familiar classroom, and the woman standing at the podium... she must be surnamed Chen, yes, Chen, the geography teacher.
The person who had just tapped him was Guo Dong!
Hmm...
Now the theme of this dream has changed, going for the nostalgic vibe?
Recalling his conversation with Song Ming, Bian Xuedao pinched himself hard, it hurt!
Pinch again, it hurts!
Guo Dong looked at Bian Xuedao as if he were a fool and asked, "What's wrong with you? Did you stay overnight at Big Eyes?"
Big Eyes?
Bian Xuedao remembered this was the name of an internet cafe he used to frequent during his senior year.
At this point, Bian Xuedao suddenly noticed something on the upper left corner of the blackboard—small letters saying "48 days until the college entrance exam!!!"
This was his senior year classroom?
Inside the classroom, classmates were standing one by one, holding their papers, reading the questions and answers, like monsoons, ocean currents, the northern hemisphere...
Bian Xuedao sat rigidly at his desk, his geography book open to a random page, and remained there until lunchtime when school ended.
The classroom gradually emptied, and soon, only Bian Xuedao remained.
His physical sensations and thought processes were incredibly clear as he picked up a small mirror left on the desk by a female classmate. The mirror reflected his face, though much younger, the image of him from his high school days.
Rolling up his left sleeve, he didn't see the scar from when he had burned himself while learning to cook after marriage.
Bian Xuedao was completely stunned!
This dream was so detailed, even down to the smallest scars.
Walking to the classroom window, he looked out at the high school boys arm-in-arm and the girls walking in pairs on the school playground. Bian Xuedao suddenly felt a voice in his mind, something was about to break free.
That voice came from Song Ming: "I'm stuck in this d*mn newspaper office, it's so suffocating, I just want to let loose, even if only in a dream."
What was breaking free was a thought—"I've missed several good opportunities in my first half of life, leaving a lot of regrets. If I could start over, even in a dream, I'd make up for those regrets and live brilliantly, see how I could turn out."
With this decision in his heart, Bian Xuedao suddenly felt ambitious and excited.
The reason he was excited was that at that moment, his heart was full of secret joy.
At this point, Bian Xuedao felt like a player who had gained a huge advantage because of a game operator's mistake, receiving powerful equipment and game experience after a rollback. Now that he had re-entered the game, he was gleefully enjoying his newfound fortune.
Would you call that cheating?
Maybe.
But if the system made a mistake, is it my fault?
Clearly, it's not the player's fault.
However...
Just as Bian Xuedao was preparing to show off, he suddenly saw the college entrance exam slogan on the blackboard.
D*mn!
The exam was only 48 days away! If it were two months earlier or later, that'd be fine, but with everything in my head full of memories of being a proofreader, I've forgotten nearly all my high school knowledge. How am I going to take the exam?
I can't not take it.
Even in a dream, I can't let my parents get mad or upset because of this.
But what can I do to prepare?
What if I can't do well?
Forget it, I'm hungry, I'll just go home for lunch first.
As he stood in front of the bicycle rack, Bian Xuedao suddenly felt troubled. He found the key to his bike in his pocket but couldn't remember what his bicycle looked like.
Luckily, many students had already ridden off, and after comparing with his vague memory, he found his bicycle after trying the fourth one.
Bian Xuedao's family lived in a separate courtyard house with an area of over 140 square meters, and in front of the house, there was a small garden.
Because both of his parents had lost their jobs, he remembered that a few months after he started university, his family sold the house and bought a 40-square-meter one to live in, using the money from selling the house to pay for his tuition.
Back then, Bian Xuedao didn't realize he would never return to that house after his first year at university. There were several times, after drinking too much, he had truly missed the days spent in that house.
He was home.
He opened the big gate, parked his bicycle, and suddenly felt a surge of homesickness.
"Mom, Dad, I'm home."
Looking at the much younger faces of his parents, Bian Xuedao felt a mix of emotions and kept putting food on their plates, making them feel awkward.
After lunch, Bian Xuedao followed the habit he had in his senior year and lay in his room for 30 minutes.
Lying on the hard single bed and looking at the celebrity posters he had put on the walls, Bian Xuedao began thinking about what he should do next.
His mind was full of memories from 2014, and he had no knowledge of the high school subjects he was going to take in the exam 48 days later.
This is really a problem!
Wait...
Wait...
Don't panic, I have an advantage!
I've played this life game before, and although I didn't complete it, I know the route to level 35, the key plot points, key NPCs, how to level up the fastest, which maps drop the most money, which dungeons drop the most useful equipment—everything is clear to me.
Thinking about it, Bian Xuedao suddenly sat up, grabbed a clean notebook, and began listing his advantages one by one.
First, he knew the college entrance exam score line for his province—511 for first-tier liberal arts, and 454 for second-tier.
Second, he knew his exam seat number, which was the fourth desk from the left against the wall in the classroom, with the top 3 students in his class seated in front of him.
What else?
The exam questions... right, the exam questions.
2001 was the first year of the "3+X" exam format. Bian Xuedao remembered that after the exam, many classmates failed in the "X" section of the comprehensive exam.
There were two reasons: one, it was the first year of this new format, and both teachers and students were inexperienced; second, the 2001 liberal arts comprehensive exam had many questions on topics that had been excluded in the exam guidelines, and many students had overlooked those topics before the exam, especially the last 30-point question, which caught a lot of people off guard.
Bian Xuedao was lucky.
In 2014, there were still many old high school textbooks used by Xu Shangxiu in his family's bookcase.
After the 2001 college entrance exam, Xu Shangxiu had marked many questions in the textbooks and folded them out.
A few months ago, during a weekend, the two of them had carefully gone through those textbooks together, reminiscing about their high school days.
Even in a dream, happiness existed.
As a high school senior, was there anything more fortunate than knowing the exam questions in advance?
In the era when students reported their college preferences before getting their results, was there anything more fortunate than knowing the score line in advance?
As a Chinese person, was there anything more fortunate than knowing in 2001 that housing prices would soar in the future?
Uh... let's not think too far.
Bian Xuedao refocused and tried to recall the memories of when he and Xu Shangxiu were going through those marked textbooks.
Political points... historical points... geographical points... he clearly remembered the last few questions of the liberal arts comprehensive exam involved cross-disciplinary topics... African national independence, soil erosion, rural agriculture, and I think there was also something about the technological revolution and industrial structure...
Bian Xuedao also knew that the essay topic in the Chinese exam was about "integrity," and the English essay was writing a letter to a foreign friend.
Quickly writing down a few lines, he searched around the desk but didn't find the textbooks he was looking for. He shouted, "I'm going to school," and rushed out of the house, pushing his bicycle.
The whole afternoon, Bian Xuedao was like a person possessed.
He flipped through this book, flipped through that book, sometimes marking a bit, staying in his seat during breaks, not raising his head during class, no matter which teacher was speaking, he was busy with his own things, completely immersing himself in the dream of high school.
At one point, the math teacher called on Bian Xuedao to answer a multiple-choice question on the paper.
Then, his deskmate, Guo Dong, saw Bian Xuedao casually flipping through a history book, got up without blushing or feeling nervous, and answered: "A."
He was guessing!
Although he hadn't looked at the math paper, although he didn't know the answer, Bian Xuedao, as a 30-something-year-old man, was much more composed than the high school kids in the classroom.
Guo Dong asked him several times: "What are you busy with?"
Bian Xuedao muttered a few sounds, gesturing to Guo Dong to look at the teacher on the podium, indicating it was class time, and not to talk.
Guo Dong thought it was boring and muttered to himself: What's so interesting to look through, as if you know the exam questions.
Guo Dong would never know that the questions Bian Xuedao was marking were the ones that would appear on the national college entrance exam 40 days later.
At 5:10 PM, it was time for another break.
People in the classroom gradually thinned out.
Bian Xuedao stood up from his seat, stretched, looked at the compact, chaotic, yet warm high school classroom, then leaned against his desk, gazing out the window at the tree tops and the red clouds in the sky, lost in thought.
He wasn't thinking about anything in particular, just daydreaming.
The first class in the evening was self-study.
During self-study, some students were frantically memorizing questions, some were secretly reading novels, and others were whispering in groups of two or three.
He had marked all the questions he could find, but most of them were from the "X" section of the "3+X" exam.
For the main subjects of math, English, and Chinese, there were very few markings.
This couldn't be blamed on Xu Shangxiu, even after participating in the college entrance exam, no one could mark every question, because math, English, and Chinese were subjects that required practical application, and there were very few questions that came directly from the textbook.
Overall...
Chinese was okay, after all, Bian Xuedao had worked in a newspaper and dealt with words ever since he graduated from university.
English was also passable.
Over the years, during his night shifts, Bian Xuedao had watched countless original English TV shows and movies, from Friends to House, 24, Prison Break, The Big Bang Theory, 2 Broke Girls, The Walking Dead, and so on. His vocabulary, listening, and sense of English were as good as they had been in high school, and now all that was needed was to reinforce some common exam grammar traps.
The hardest was math.
He hadn't touched it for thirteen or fourteen years, and had forgotten all the formulas. Trying to relearn math in the next 40 days was a task that would make even a genius vomit blood. For someone like Bian Xuedao, who was terrible at math, this was undoubtedly an impossible task.
Knowing time was limited and understanding his own abilities, Bian Xuedao clarified his review plan as quickly as possible: focus on the big picture and let go of math.
As a 33-year-old man who had worked for nearly 10 years, Bian Xuedao told himself: don't get bogged down, don't wait to die, those who are brave live, those who are timid starve, find a way.
His gaze wandered around the classroom, finally stopping on a boy named Zhou Hang.