20: Chapter 20 Identical

The days after his return were like a long, realistic illusion.

In December in Jiangcheng, a light powdery snow fell, turning into icy moisture before snowflakes even hit the ground.

Inside and outside the classroom, radiators emitted dry heat, and a layer of white condensation covered the window glass.

Sitting by the window, Jiang Lin would occasionally reach out to wipe away a small patch of mist to glance at the world outside.

The holly bushes along the roadside were neatly and uniformly trimmed by sanitation workers.

Having spent ten years in the Wasteland, Jiang Lin still looked at these bushes with a kind of physiological craving.

Such good fuel and green manure, just planted here to be looked at in vain—it was far too extravagant.

This temperature difference in civilization constantly bombarded his nerves throughout this past month.

He grew exceptionally fond of every single piece of paper.

Even for a casually handed-out small test paper, he habitually wrote in small, neat characters, reluctant to waste even a single corner of blank space.

Sun Ming always teased him as if he had suddenly contracted some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Jiang Lin would just smile.

Time flew by amidst the scratching sound of pen tips against test papers.

The number counting down to the Gaokao in the upper right corner of the blackboard grew smaller and smaller.

In mid-January, the approaching first mock exam loomed like a massive shadow over the heads of every senior student at Jiangcheng No. 7 High School.

"Old Jiang, did you take the wrong medicine recently?"

Sun Ming chewed on a two-yuan pack of spicy strips, looking at Jiang Lin with a complicated expression.

For some time now, Jiang Lin had changed.

He no longer stayed up late, packing his bag and leaving on time the moment the bell rang every day.

In class, he rarely took frantic notes like before; most of the time, he would prop his chin with one hand, looking calmly at the blackboard, occasionally making a few dots on his scratch paper—a posture that strongly resembled an idle bystander watching old men play chess in the park.

"What is wrong?"

Jiang Lin lifted his head from the English text.

"Look at the atmosphere in our class; even those buddies who usually love playing basketball are huddled in their seats grinding practice problems."

Sun Ming pointed around.

"Look at you, I saw you reading a book called "Chinese Agriculture and Crop Cultivation" during evening self-study yesterday, and today you switched to "Natural History". Is that the kind of stuff a high school student should be reading? I am starting to wonder if you plan to go back to your hometown to lease dozens of acres of land and become a farmer right after the Gaokao."

Jiang Lin closed the magazine "Natural History" in his hand, which introduced the drought-tolerant characteristics of desert plants, and looked at Sun Ming's round face, which had broken out in two angry pimples due to anxiety, a long-lost warmth welling up in his heart.

This kind of anxiety for exams, filled with the trivial hustle and bustle of ordinary life, was truly wonderful.

"It is just the first mock exam, relax a bit."

Jiang Lin patted Sun Ming on the shoulder.

"What do you mean by 'just the first mock'? Old Liu just said yesterday that the first mock scores basically set the baseline; this is the primary lifeline of senior year."

Sun Ming lowered his voice and said mysteriously, "I heard that this mock exam is a city-wide joint exam, and the difficulty of the questions is hell-tier. You better watch out, don't bomb it and end up having Lao Liu invite you for 'tea' again."

Jiang Lin smiled noncommittally.

If it were the old him, his heart would probably be racing right now, even developing a sort of physiological panic.

The evening before the first mock exam.

Jiang Lin pushed his bicycle out of the school gate, passing the familiar braised food stall at the mouth of the alley.

Dark brown master stock churned in the braising pot; the rich fragrance of star anise, cinnamon, and bay leaves mixed with soy sauce aggressively pierced into his nasal passages on the freezing winter night.

Jiang Lin swallowed a mouthful of saliva and stopped in his tracks.

Then he bought a braised duck neck and two braised chicken feet, standing under the street lamp and slowly eating them bite by bite.

His teeth tore open the firm duck meat, feeling the complex spices and abundant salt explode layer upon layer on his taste buds.

This cheapest, most ordinary worldly seasoning in modern civilized society was, to him, a supreme delicacy.

In the Wasteland, he only had Pumpkin vines boiled in plain water and roasted potatoes with an intense earthy smell.

Nowadays, even just a mouthful of spicy braised broth made him feel that being alive was an immensely enjoyable thing.

He sucked the bones completely clean, threw them into the trash can, and then contentedly straddled his bicycle to go home.

When he got home, his parents acted even more nervous than he was.

After dinner, his mother Zhang Xiufen specially cooked a bowl of red date and lotus seed soup, saying it could calm the nerves and nourish the brain.

"Jiang Lin, the first mock exam is tomorrow, go to sleep early tonight."

She always felt that her son had changed a lot recently; the whole person was always unhurried, talked less, and smiled first whenever he encountered anything.

He was so optimistic that it made her feel a bit too at ease.

"Got it, Mom."

Jiang Lin took the bowl and replied with a smile, "You should rest early too."

Back in his bedroom, Jiang Lin indeed did not open any test papers.

Nearly ten years of farming and studying, those pieces of knowledge carved into his bones were now quietly dormant in his cerebral cortex.

Closing his eyes, he could see that massive tree of knowledge.

From mechanics and electromagnetism to atomic Physics.

From conic sections and derivatives to complex number operations.

Every single branch was clearly visible.

He did not need to cram at the last minute; he just needed an outlet.

January 12th, Thursday, the first senior high school mock joint examination in Jiangcheng City officially kicked off.

Morning.

Carrying his schoolbag, Jiang Lin ran into Jiang Yao once again.

This time, Jiang Yao had a light pink scarf wrapped around her neck, and the warm air she exhaled formed a faint white mist in front of her.

"Morning, good luck with the exam."

Recently, the number of times she ran into Jiang Lin in the hallway was more than the past two years combined.

But no matter when she saw him, he always seemed to be in an extremely stable frequency.

His condition was almost too good.

"You too."

Jiang Lin returned a simple smile, "The road is a bit icy, ride your bike slowly."

An hour later, Jiangcheng No. 7 High School.

The first session, Chinese.

Jiang Lin took the test paper and gave it a rough glance first.

Classical Chinese reading, an excerpt from "Memorial on Expressing Feelings".

His gaze flickered slightly, and an arc appeared at the corners of his mouth.

In that dark red mud house, listening to the storm outside that was enough to tear the ground apart, he had recited this article no less than a hundred times.

Those words and sentences were no longer test questions; they were anchors that accompanied him through countless dark nights and helped him fight against mental collapse.

He picked up the black gel pen.

The pen tip touched the paper surface, emitting a pleasant, smooth sensation.

The first multiple-choice question, the second, the third...

He did not need to deliberately recall or analyze the options; the linguistic logic system in his brain automatically eliminated those low-level distractor options the moment he saw the questions.

Reaching the essay section.

The prompt was a discussion on "Time and Resilience".

Jiang Lin stared at the prompt for a minute.

In this one minute, he replayed nine years of the Wasteland in his brain.

That youth waving an engineering shovel on the red earth, that old farmer deducing formulas on the sandy ground with a sharpened wooden stick, that dying man on the brink of organ failure.

He picked up his pen, writing fluently and eloquently in one go.

Afternoon, Mathematics.

The moment the test papers were handed out, a suppressed gasp echoed inside the examination room.

The questions were indeed extraordinarily difficult.

Starting from the very first multiple-choice question, the test creators had buried tedious computational traps within the stems.

Those questions that could originally be solved directly using elimination were all wrapped in complex disguises.

Sun Ming in another examination room had beads of sweat densely seeping from his forehead, scratching his hair anxiously without stopping.

Jiang Lin, whose success came naturally, advanced like a knife through bamboo.

Soon, he reached the final derivative wrap-up question.

That was an old friend he had dealt with for ten years.

On the mud walls of the Wasteland, he had deduced and rehearsed this type of function monotonicity discussion tens of thousands of times.

Parameter separation, categorized discussion, implicit zero-point substitution...

These problem-solving paths that ordinary senior high school students had to rack their brains to construct automatically connected into the shortest and most direct straight line on his retina.