Chapter 3: Now You Bring Milk, After the Baby's Dead!

The next day.

Across the country, more than ten million candidates and their parents sat at computers checking scores. Some cried; some laughed. Joy in one household, misery in the next.

At Fucheng No. 99 High School, a ten-meter-long red banner with yellow lettering already hung high above the gate, in the most conspicuous spot available.

[Warmest congratulations to our outstanding graduate Ji Bai, Fucheng’s top-scoring science-track candidate!]

The banner went up. The entire street went quiet.

A boy arriving at school on a shared bicycle had been looking down at his phone. Catching a splash of red at the edge of his vision, he glanced up at the gate.

Then rode straight into the roadside shrubbery.

“What the fuck?!”

He climbed out, not even bothering to brush off the leaves. His mouth hung wide enough to fit a fist.

“The city’s top scorer?? Our school???”

He rubbed his eyes and looked again.

“Am I still asleep…?”

He pinched his thigh hard enough to make himself grimace, then whipped out his phone, took a picture, and sent it to his class group chat.

“Guys, something huge just happened! There’s a banner at the gate saying our school produced the top scorer!!!”

Three question marks appeared at once.

“Are you drunk?”

“Photoshopped, right?”

“Is it April Fools’ Day?”

But more and more people passed the gate. More and more saw the banner.

A middle-aged man dropping off his daughter in a Wuling Hongguang pulled over, lowered his window, and read it. Then he turned to the back seat.

“Sweetheart, did you enroll at the wrong school? Your school can produce a top scorer?”

“Did the sun rise in the west?”

Beside him, a parent on a Yadea electric scooter stopped too. Taking off their helmet, they stared at the banner as though watching a science-fiction film.

“No. 99 produced the top scorer? I’d be burning incense in thanks if my kid just made it through every gaokao paper. Whose ancestors pulled off a miracle here?”

“Could they have made a mistake?”

“Maybe it’s someone with the same name? Or a student from a good school who’s just studying here temporarily?”

The surrounding parents nodded. Now that was a reasonable explanation.

Even the neighborhood residents were stirred up.

An elderly man out walking his toy poodle glanced at the banner and stopped. He took out his reading glasses, put them on, and looked again.

“No. 99 produced the top scorer?”

He looked at the school’s rusty gate, then at the wall beside it, half its tiles missing, then back at the brand-new red banner. His expression said he had seen a lot in seventy years, but this was a first.

“A dump like this produced the top scorer?” He patted the poodle’s head. “Doudou, you and I are witnessing history.”

The poodle barked at the banner. Whether in celebration or disbelief was anyone’s guess.

The liveliest crowd was the students gathered by the gate.

They clustered beneath the banner with their heads tilted back, chattering loudly enough to lift the whole street off the ground.

“Ji Bai? Which Ji Bai? The one in Class Seven?”

“Yeah, yeah! Him! The guy who’s even been in one of those ridiculous remix videos!”

“Him? The city’s top scorer? Isn’t he usually near the bottom?”

“A secret boss. Definitely a secret boss!”

“Impossible! Absolutely impossible! I sat in the same exam room as him. He handed in every paper early! You’re telling me the guy who handed in early came first?”

“You don’t get it. Actual exam gods don’t need to check their answers. Finish, hand it in, spend the rest of the time looking down on whoever wrote the questions.”

Students, parents, passersby—everyone at the gate had been knocked senseless by that bright red banner.

Putting ‘No. 99 High School’ and ‘the city’s top scorer’ together created a contrast more outrageous than an underdog’s rise in a novel.

Everyone had the same question: Who the hell was Ji Bai?

Meanwhile, Ji Bai had only just woken up.

Thoroughly satisfied with last night’s feast, he had come home, fallen into bed, and slept straight through until morning. Not even a dream.

Sunlight squeezed through a gap in the curtains and fell across his face. He rolled over blearily, about to doze for a little longer, when a translucent screen popped up before his eyes.

[Ding! Daily Choice System activated!]

[If you had ten yuan, how would you spend it?]

1. High School Mathematics Mastery (3 yuan)

2. High School Physics Mastery (3 yuan)

3. High School Chemistry Mastery (3 yuan)

4. Mastery of singing, dancing, and rap (3 yuan)

5. Excavator operation mastery (3 yuan)

6. The complete song “The You of Yesterday” (1 yuan)

Ji Bai stared at the six options. His expression slowly froze.

After five full seconds, he let out an anguished roar.

“Now you bring milk, after the baby’s dead! Wait till the snot’s halfway across the river before you wipe your nose, why don’t you!”

The gaokao was over, and now it was giving him mastery of high school math, physics, and chemistry?

Where the hell had it been before?

He could complain all he wanted. His hand knew what it wanted.

“Fine. One, two, three, and six!”

The gaokao might be over, but how did that saying go? Master math, physics, and chemistry, and you could go anywhere without fear!

Besides, if he really did go to Peking University, that was no laughing matter.

What kind of place was Peking University?

A gathering of the sharpest minds in the country.

If he went in knowing nothing, armed with nothing but a system-altered score, the very first advanced mathematics class would expose him.

The professor would be up front teaching calculus while he sat below, unable even to recognize a differentiation symbol. Too painful to picture.

[Ding! Choices confirmed. Please come back tomorrow!]

The next second, all sorts of strange knowledge flooded his mind.

“Odd multiples change the function, even ones don’t; the quadrant tells you the sign!”

“Oxidation number up, electrons lost: oxidation, reducing agent. Number down, electrons gained: reduction, oxidizing agent!”

“Hydrogen, chlorine, potassium, sodium, silver: valency one. Oxygen, calcium, barium, magnesium, zinc: two. Aluminum three, silicon four, phosphorus five!”

“Left hand for force, right hand for current. Lenz’s law: oppose what’s coming, hold on to what’s leaving!”

Countless formulas, theorems, and problem-solving methods seemed to engrave themselves in his brain. Everything clicked together, ready for him to use.

Then a familiar melody began playing in his head.

“Once I dreamed of roaming the world with a sword, seeing all its splendor. A young heart is always a little wild; now you make your home wherever you go…”

It was Xu Wei’s “The You of Yesterday.”

He remembered.

“The girl who once made your heart ache has quietly vanished without a trace. Love always leaves you yearning and troubled; once it left you covered in wounds…”

Ji Bai hummed a few lines. To his surprise, his eyes grew hot.

Three years.

At last, he had found a little piece of that world again.

He took a deep breath, pressed down the emotion welling in his chest, and climbed out of bed to wash and make breakfast.

Noodles he cooked himself, with a poached egg and a handful of chopped scallions. Simple.

After breakfast, he climbed onto his secondhand bicycle—the one where everything made a noise except the bell—and rattled leisurely toward school.