1: Chapter 1 Countdown on the Optic Nerve

"Jiang Lin, your grade report."

A lightweight slip of paper, like a withered leaf beaten by frost, fluttered down onto the desk in a spin.

Chinese 96, Mathematics 90, English 92, Physics 62, Chemistry 60, Biology 65 — Total score 465.

Class Rank: 18

Grade Rank: 71.

Jiang Lin stared at the 71 printed in bold black font, feeling rather upset in his heart.

What kind of place was Jiangcheng No. 7 High School?

An ordinary high school in the city.

The quality of its students and college entrance examination admission rates were quite average among all the middle schools.

Every year, only about ten people could break past the tier-one university admission line in the college entrance examination.

Ranking 71st, within this school's ecological niche and according to previous years' admission situations, was basically just touching the edge of a private undergraduate institution or a public tier-two institution in a remote area.

With even the slightest slackening, he might even fall into the junior college batch.

"Hey, Lao Jiang, hovering around the tier-two line again, huh?"

His deskmate, Sun Ming, leaned over to take a glance and shook his large head.

He didn't harbor any malicious intent; he was just sighing out of habit.

Sun Ming was a fat guy whose weight was approaching 180 catties. At this moment, he was hiding his phone behind a thick Gao Dashan English dictionary, his thumbs frantically rubbing against the screen, where the dim light of Defeat flickered from time to time.

"Tell me, what are you even trying to achieve?"

While cursing his own jungler for being incompetent, Sun Ming muttered in a lowered voice.

"You arrive earlier than a rooster and sleep later than a dog every day. During recess, I play Honor of Kings while you grind problems; during lunch break, I sleep while you recite vocabulary words. How come your score just won't go up? If you ask me, the two of us should just accept our fate. Next year, let's go to Lanxiang to learn how to operate an excavator, or go to New Oriental to wield a big spoon. At least it's a trade skill, and you won't starve anywhere you go."

Jiang Lin didn't respond. He just silently folded that thin grade report in half, and then in half again, tucking it into a mistake notebook.

Not to mention that he didn't want to learn how to operate excavators or wield big spoons; even a tier-two university wasn't something he was willing to accept.

He was far too eager to test into a good tier-one university.

That was not only a springboard for him to change his fate, but also the only path he could think of to let his parents cast off their heavy burdens.

However, if this thought were spoken aloud, it would probably be treated as a joke.

Even his head teacher, Lao Liu, would probably look at him as if looking at Sisyphus pushing a rock up a mountain.

Lao Liu was an old man who had been teaching for more than twenty years. His hairline had long since receded to the back of his head, and he saw people and matters very clearly.

He had privately evaluated him with other subject teachers.

This student's study attitude was impeccable, but his comprehension was average, and his ability to break through difficult problems was insufficient.

Yes, although he was universally recognized in the class as a willing workhorse, given his slow comprehension ability and an ordinary person's energy, merely maintaining the 71st rank had already exhausted all his strength.

6:30 in the evening.

Jiang Lin pushed open the door to his home. Two dishes and a soup were already set on the dining table in the living room.

His mother, Zhang Xiufen, was just untying her apron. She was forty-five years old this year and worked as a cashier at the Jujia Supermarket on the street corner, earning a fixed salary of three thousand yuan a month. Years of standing had made her varicose veins very severe.

His father, Jiang Jianguo, was sitting on the sofa watching TV.

He worked as a night-shift sorter at a seafood wholesale company. His monthly salary of 4,800 yuan was traded for inverted days and nights and arthritis from being soaked in water year-round.

He was an honest and obedient man with few words. Seeing his son return, he just smiled honestly: "Jiang Lin is back, wash your hands and eat."

At the dining table, Jiang Lin remained silent for a long time before finally taking out the monthly exam report card.

Zhang Xiufen didn't look at the report card, but she saw the desolation in her son's eyes. She hurriedly picked up a chopstick full of shredded pork into his bowl and comforted him in a soft tone: "It's fine, isn't it just a monthly exam? This is only the beginning of the third year of high school, there's a long way to go. As long as you've tried your best, that's enough. If worse comes to worst, testing into an ordinary university is fine; your mom and dad can afford to support you."

"That's right, don't put too much pressure on yourself, your health is most important." Jiang Jianguo also comforted him at the same time.

His parents' comfort didn't carry any hint of blame, but heard in Jiang Lin's ears, it made him feel more suffocated and anxious than any harsh scolding.

Three thousand plus 4,800—those 7,800 yuan were the family's entire monthly income.

His parents were lifting him up with their blood and sweat money; how could he be reconciled to exchanging it for nothing more than a completely uncompetitive private tier-two diploma?

After dinner, Jiang Jianguo sat down to drink a sip of tea and, before even eight o'clock, went off to his night shift.

Zhang Xiufen tidied up the bowls and chopsticks, washing and rinsing everything.

Jiang Lin locked himself in his tiny bedroom and switched on the yellowish desk lamp.

The desk was piled high with various review materials such as Five Years of Gaokao, Three Years of Simulation.

He opened the Physics test paper and forced himself to concentrate on those mistaken questions.

However, anxiety blocked his chest like a tangled mess of hemp.

Those complex formulas and combination problems of electromagnetic fields and kinematics turned into a bunch of unparsable garbled code in his mind.

Over and over again, he looked at the solution process, trying to understand the leap in logic within the standard answers.

"Why can resistance be directly ignored here, and why does this step use the work-energy theorem instead of the conservation of energy..."

Time slipped away minute by minute. His brain was like an overloaded single-core processor, running extremely slowly and inefficiently.

Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock.

Unawares, the time reached eleven o'clock at night.

The bedroom door was gently pushed open, and Zhang Xiufen walked in holding a plate of sliced apples.

"Jiang Lin, eat some fruit and go to sleep early. Don't push yourself too hard."

His mom placed the plate on the corner of the desk and glanced at the densely packed red crosses on the test paper on the desk, a flash of undisguised heartache sweeping across her eyes.

"Look at that boy from Old Li's family next door; he hangs out blindly with a bunch of friends every day and is quite happy. As for our family, Mom doesn't ask for you to attain great wealth and nobility. If you can test into a local junior college and steadily find a job in the future to support yourself, that's already pretty good."

"I know, Mom. I'll go to sleep right after I finish this Physics problem. You should rest early." Jiang Lin didn't raise his head, and his hand didn't stop drawing the force analysis diagram.

The door closed.

He was left alone in the room once again.

Jiang Lin dejectedly put down his pen and rubbed his aching, throbbing temples.

For a full four hours, he had only thoroughly understood a few mistaken questions.

Such efficiency, in the seconds-count-in-Senior-Three high school year, was no different from committing chronic suicide.

Was a thing like talent really this unreasonable?

"If only I could have more time."

Jiang Lin leaned against the back of his chair like a deflated ball.

A massive sense of exhaustion, like rising tide seawater, washed up from the soles of his feet all the way over the top of his head, submerging his entire being.

He turned off the desk lamp and, carrying an extreme greed for time and a sense of powerlessness against reality, crawled into bed in the dark and fell fast asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

6:00 in the morning.

The old-fashioned mechanical alarm clock on the bedside table punctually emitted a harsh ring.

Jiang Lin sprang up almost reflexively, slamming his hand down to turn off the alarm.

Last night he had been overly anxious, falling asleep and waking up repeatedly, so that his head felt as though it was stuffed with a water-absorbing sponge, groggy and heavy.

Habitually, he rubbed his eyes, preparing to get out of bed to wash his face.

However, the moment he opened his eyes, his entire body abruptly froze.

At first, he thought it was an illusion of floaters or hypoglycemia caused by getting up too abruptly.

But after he blinked hard a few times and even rubbed his eyelids fiercely with his hands, that line of translucent numbers still clearly existed in the upper right corner of his field of vision.

[29:23:58:50]

[29:23:58:49]

[29:23:58:48]

The numbers were still rhythmically ticking down.

The preceding 29 represented the days, the middle represented hours and minutes, and the last represented seconds.

Jiang Lin's heartbeat skipped a beat in an instant.

This seemed to be a thirty-day countdown.