“Do you understand now?”
Chen Qiao licked his lips as he asked.
His mouth was dry from talking, and after a recent nosebleed, there was still a metallic taste of blood lingering in his mouth.
“No… I guess I should just give up. I’m too dumb.”
Lin Na glanced at Chen Qiao with timid eyes, worried that her stupidity might make him angry.
“Hmm…”Chen Qiao felt he had already explained it thoroughly, practically breaking it down into tiny pieces and spoon-feeding her.
He used to work part-time at a tutoring center during university, teaching elementary school kids.
It didn’t require much technical skill—just gentleness and patience.
If you got angry too easily, you’d burn out fast.
Getting scolded by parents was also a regular occurrence.
“Don’t rush into these high-level application problems just yet. It’s probably because you didn’t build a solid foundation before.”
With final reviews about to begin, the teachers had asked all students to bring textbooks from first to sixth grade to school.
Chen Qiao’s books were scattered everywhere.
He’d never taken good care of his old textbooks—some had lost their covers, and many were dirty, yellowed, or even moldy.
Only the main subject books for the current semester were properly wrapped, thanks to his sister helping him cover them.
Luckily, he and his sister used the same edition of the textbooks, so he could just borrow hers.
Her books were wrapped in newspaper, her handwriting neat and full of important notes—visually pleasing and easy to read.
Chen Qiao pulled out the first semester of the fifth-grade math book to test Lin Na’s current math level.
“But the teacher said we have to hand in our math homework first thing tomorrow morning. If I write all the correct answers, it’ll be obvious I copied. But if I write the wrong ones…”It’s hard to turn in work you know is wrong and then see it marked with red Xs.
“Mistakes are fine. The important thing is to understand the basics. Then you’ll be able to solve these application problems yourself later.”
“Shh, the teacher’s coming,” Lin Na whispered.
“It’s fine, we’re not chatting—we’re discussing homework.”
Still, when Yang Fang walked past them, they instinctively fell silent.
Before they knew it, the school bell rang, followed by the classic dismissal song Going Home.
Students near the back door were already itching to bolt, but no one dared move until Yang Fang dismissed the class.
Otherwise, they risked detention—or worse, dragging the whole class down with them.
“Class dismissed.”
“Stand up.”
“Thank you, teacher.”
Only after going through this routine were they officially dismissed.
In an instant, more than half the class had cleared out.
The students on duty for tomorrow had already started cleaning the classroom out of habit.
Since last year, evening self-study for sixth graders in primary school had been canceled.
Only the boarding students who lived on campus had evening study sessions, held over by the cafeteria.
No one was sure whether it was due to the small number of students or concerns for their safety.
By the time Chen Qiao’s cohort entered junior high, even military training had been canceled.
It wasn’t restarted until a few years later, after a new principal took office.
It was inconvenient to clean the classroom in the morning with everyone around, so the students on duty stacked the chairs on the desks to make sweeping easier.
“Chen Qiao, thank you for today. I’ll go home and spend more time reviewing the fifth-grade math book,” Lin Na said, bowing slightly as she thanked him.
Her oversized pink backpack weighed down her thin shoulders, causing her to hunch a little.
Her desk drawer was completely empty—she’d taken all her books home to avoid losing anything.
Chen Qiao had planned to go home empty-handed, but after a second thought, he stuffed his sister’s textbook into his Agumon-themed backpack.
He strolled slowly down the steps of the school building and saw Lin Na walking alongside a short-haired girl who was a full head shorter than her.
That must be the younger sister she mentioned—the one who would fall ill in the future.
But right now, she looked perfectly healthy and full of energy, skipping along with her bag rattling from the textbooks and pencil box inside.
Chen Qiao wasn’t in a rush to go home.
There was no one there anyway.
His sister still had fifteen minutes of class left, and even if she biked straight home, it would be another twenty minutes.
His mom wouldn’t be off work for an hour, and if his dad had taken a job driving, his return time was anyone’s guess.
He walked along the familiar streets.
The residential complexes in town hadn’t started construction yet—they were still in the planning phase.
The new developments would be near the middle school, targeting parents from outlying rural areas who wanted to be closer to good schools.
Even this small town wasn’t immune to the housing boom.
Chen Qiao lived in Shuitou Village, just across the river from Lanhe Town.
His house was right by the riverside.
During last year’s Dragon Boat Festival season, heavy rains lasted nearly a month.
The river overflowed its banks and flooded their home.
He remembered being shaken awake in the middle of the night by his sister to help sweep the water out.
The village still had many old houses built with rammed earth, black-tiled roofs, and phoenix-corner eaves—traditional architecture.
But more and more of these homes were being demolished to make way for Western-style villas and small mansions.
Only after the government introduced preservation policies were a few ancient homes spared.
Unfortunately, this delay caused Lanhe Town to fall behind in the race with other towns to win spots on lists like “Ancient Village” or “Model Town.”
As a result, they missed out on policy support and funding subsidies.
Some quirky shops were still open, like a gift store.
Even though Taobao already existed, the internet and logistics hadn’t developed much yet.
In places like small towns, it was still hard to buy things online.
Many households didn’t even own a computer.
Android smartphones had only just started appearing.
The trendiest and most common phones were still Nokias.
There might be a business opportunity in doing purchasing agent work.
Golden Key Bookstore was the town’s only bookstore.
Besides selling workbooks and practice exercises, they also rented out novels and manga.
The novels were mostly cheaply printed bootlegs of Huang Yi’s works with yellow covers.
The paper was so rough it felt like toilet paper.
That was Chen Qiao’s first exposure to fiction.
He wouldn’t realize until high school that those Huang Yi books were pirated print versions of online novels.
The book titles…The titles were all made up—completely mismatched and misleading.
Some books, if you searched by the protagonist’s name, you could still find the original online novel, which left people feeling a strange mix of nostalgia and frustration.
By next year, the bookstore would start a big clearance sale—five yuan for a novel, two yuan for a pocket manga.
Pocket manga included titles like Pokémon, Wulong Yuan (Master Q), and Dragon Ball, but the collections were incomplete, just scattered volumes here and there.
Honestly, reading novels at shady internet cafes was cheaper than renting books.
Speaking of internet cafes, there were five unlicensed ones in town, one legal one, and one run-down arcade.
Back then, no one needed an ID check, but the legal internet café was just a little more expensive than the black-market ones, with better machines.
However, it was always the first place parents and teachers checked when hunting for truant students.
The black-market internet cafes near the middle school were especially prone to raids.
There was one black-market café that had just opened—a sort of secret base.
It was the same place Chen Qiao had streamed from just before his rebirth.
Right now, it hadn’t yet been converted into the umbrella factory.
The young female owner rested her chin in her hands, eyes half-closed, yawning lazily.
Her daughter ran into the store with her schoolbag shouting, “Mommy, mommy!”
He’d come back here tonight to go online!
Crossing the stone arch bridge that connected the town and the village, Chen Qiao could already see his house—a two-story brick home with a makeshift shed on the roof and a drying rack for clothes.
In front of the house was a row of pigsties.
The house had been built a long time ago, on a piece of land allocated by the government around the year 2000.
The neighbors had similarly square-shaped plots, making this one of the more orderly areas in the village.
Back then, it wasn’t common to build indoor bathrooms.
Instead, toilets were built together with the pigsties.
A long row of pigpens stood right in front of the house.
The smell was quite strong—even planting osmanthus trees only helped a little.
From afar, Chen Qiao spotted a little girl playing by the sand pile, digging tunnels in the dirt.
Who else could it be but Xinyu?
She was wearing a pair of jeans so faded they were nearly white.
The cuffs were rolled up because they were too long.
Her T-shirt’s printed letters had mostly peeled off, leaving only their outlines.
On her feet were green rubber sandals, their broken straps melted back on with a hot iron.
Her clothes were mostly hand-me-downs from his older sister, never new.
When she was even younger, she’d worn some of Chen Qiao’s old clothes too.
“Xinyu!”
Chen Qiao called.
“Little uncle!”
Chen Xinyu turned and ran toward him with a big grin.
Her face was dirty, and her hands were covered in sand.
“Call me big brother.”
“Big brother? But aren’t you my little uncle?”
“Just call me big brother. If you do, I’ll buy you candy,” Chen Qiao said, taking her tiny hand and brushing off the sand.
Suddenly, he felt a bit guilty—like he was bribing a little girl.
“Little uncle, you shouldn’t waste money. Making money is really hard,”
Xinyu replied in her childish voice, reciting lines with surprising maturity.
Chen Qiao hadn’t expected to be lectured by a little kid so soon after being reborn.
“I don’t eat candy—it causes cavities,” Chen Xinyu said with a toothy grin, revealing a set of pearly white teeth.
Her front teeth had just fallen out, so there was a gap where the wind could whistle through.
Because she didn’t get to eat candy or drink AD calcium milk, she ended up with almost no cavities.
Chen Qiao wasn’t sure whether to be happy or sad about that.
“Do you want to eat candy?”
“I do…”Xinyu quickly corrected herself, “I don’t want to.”
“Your grandma? She’s inside playing cards?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Xinyu, do you remember us sitting in the car, and then being hit by a train that fell from the sky?”
Since he had been reborn, could it be that Xinyu, who was also in the car, had been reborn too?
But Chen Qiao hoped not.
He wanted to give her a happy childhood.
If she had also been reborn, she wouldn’t get to enjoy a pure, innocent childhood.
Instead, the painful memories would continue to follow her.
“Little uncle, what are you talking about? I’ve never been in a car before. Is that from a cartoon?”
“Yeah, from a cartoon. Let’s go buy some candy.”
“Little uncle, I really don’t want candy. I’m not lying.”
“But what if I want candy, huh?”
Chen Qiao scooped her up and laughed.
Such a light little girl—her arms and hands were so thin.
If you lifted her shirt, you’d probably see her ribs.
“Careful, cavities!”
Xinyu poked him in the cheek.
“No matter how sweet it is, I’m not afraid—because I’ve already had enough bitterness.”