8: Chapter 8 It Feels Like Another World

Hearing Jiang Lin's reply, Mom moved back over toward the kitchen.

The faucet was turned on, and tap water spewed from the pipe, splashing against the bottom of the stainless steel sink.

A few seconds later, the water was turned off again.

Then came the clicking sound of the electronic igniter when lighting the gas stove, followed immediately by the dull thud of the bottom of the pot hitting the stove rack.

Mom was busy preparing breakfast.

In the living room, the TV was on.

The volume was turned down low, playing the theme song of the morning news.

The pitter-patter of Dad's slippers on the tile floor stretched all the way from the master bedroom to the bathroom, followed by the quiet sound of the bathroom door closing.

These sounds were faint and scattered, yet every single one registered clearly in his ears.

There were no such sounds in the Wasteland.

In the Wasteland, there was only the sound of the wind.

The wind pressed down from above the broken wall, making the outer tent rustle loudly.

The wind swept over the dark red ground, swirling up gravel that rustled as it hit the tent.

More than forty days.

He hadn't heard the voice of any human other than himself.

No sound of Mom nagging him to get up, no sound of Dad pressing buttons to adjust the TV volume.

Jiang Lin stood in the middle of the bedroom, listening to these sounds, completely motionless.

Then came the smells.

In the air was the oil smoke from Mom's cooking, the scent of tea brewed by Dad, the aroma of fried dough sticks wafting up from the breakfast stall below the window, and the earthy smell of the potted pothos in the bedroom.

The air in the Wasteland smelled only of sulfur, acid rain, rust, and the sweat on his body.

Now these scents rushed into his nostrils all at once, every whiff reminding him: you're back.

He walked over to the window and pulled open a crack in the curtains.

The sky was just starting to brighten.

Lights flickered on one after another in the windows of the residential building opposite; looking from afar, they were like a few stars opening their eyes in the dark.

Downstairs, an early-rising old man was walking his dog. The dog stopped under a utility pole to sniff; the old man tugged the leash, and the dog reluctantly followed along.

This city was waking up.

Yet it made him feel as if the whole world had become unreal, like watching through a thin layer of glass.

He hid the duffel bag under the bed, grabbed clean clothes from the wardrobe, and hurried into the bathroom.

In the mirror, aside from his clothes being dirty and messy, his physical condition was no different from before he transmigrated.

If there was any physical change to speak of, it was that his eyes were redder and brighter.

That timid anxiety, suffocated under the vocational college score line, was gone, replaced by a calm composure after being baptized by a massive amount of basic questions.

Turning on the faucet, water gushed out—clear tap water with the smell of bleaching powder.

He put his hand under the faucet, letting the water flow through his fingers.

In the Wasteland, every drop of water had to be filtered, neutralized, and allowed to settle.

A single rainstorm was a grand event worth celebrating.

Rain fell on the tent, and he had to hurry out with empty buckets to catch it, then filter it, neutralize it with baking soda, let it settle, and test the pH level.

After going through the whole process, a few liters of water took up most of the evening.

Here, turning on the faucet meant unlimited water.

Jiang Lin suddenly felt very happy.

Letting out a long sigh of relief, he washed thoroughly in a hot shower.

It was so thoroughly satisfying and comfortable that he forgot the time.

The bathroom door was slapped loudly.

"Did you fall into the toilet? Hurry up, come out to eat breakfast and go to school."

"Be right out."

Jiang Lin snapped out of his reverie, quickly finished up, dried himself off, and put on his clothes.

Seeing him sit down at the dining table with wet hair, Mom couldn't help frowning: "Showering first thing in the morning—is there something wrong with you?"

Jiang Lin didn't explain and reached out to hold the bowl.

The porcelain bowl was warm, feeling very comfortable in his hands.

The porridge was cooked thick, with a thin layer of rice oil floating on the surface.

He picked up the spoon and took a sip first.

Piping hot.

It wasn't the mineral water in the Wasteland that was so cold you could feel the shape of your esophagus, nor was it a processed liquid with a bitter and astringent taste; it was warm, soft, white rice porridge with the aroma of rice.

With this single mouthful, his entire body felt warm and cozy.

Mom sat beside him peeling an eggshell, still nagging: "Did you stay up late again last night? Your eyes are so red. Don't push yourself so hard all the time; what's the point if you ruin your health?"

Jiang Lin lowered his head to drink his porridge, staying silent.

He was afraid that if he spoke, he wouldn't be able to suppress the choke in his throat.

He tore open the steamed bun, stuffed a bit of pickled mustard tuber inside, and chewed slowly. The saltiness, wheat aroma, and heat of the white porridge surged up together; a breakfast as ordinary as could be tasted like a luxury in his mouth.

Mom looked at him twice and said suspiciously: "Why are you eating so slowly today? Usually you rush as if running for your life."

"A bit hungry." Jiang Lin smiled slightly.

"If you're hungry, eat more, don't zone out." Mom put another peeled egg into his bowl.

Jiang Lin nodded and lowered his head to continue eating.

He really was zoning out.

Not because his mind was blank, but because of everything before his eyes.

The bowls and chopsticks on the table, the peeled eggshells off to the side...

They all made him feel an overwhelming sense of warmth and familiarity.

In the Wasteland, it wasn't that he hadn't thought of home.

It was just that most of the time, that longing was buried in his heart like a nail, invisible on normal days.

Now that he was back, he realized that this longing was actually a bowl of hot porridge, a steamed bun, and an impatient urge.

After eating, Jiang Lin put on his backpack and went out.

In the stairwell, a neighbor's child was dragged downstairs by an adult, wailing that they didn't want to go to kindergarten.

On a December morning.

The cold wind blew against his face.

It was not the dry, sharp cold of the Wasteland that cut the skin like knives.

The cold in Jiangcheng was damp, moisture creeping into the collar of his school uniform, clinging to his skin and seeping in gloomily.

He pulled in his neck and zipped his school uniform all the way to the top.

The breakfast stall downstairs had long been fired up, sizzling in the oil pot, with white mist-like steam rising outward along the doorway.

The hand-pulled pancake cart was parked by the roadside, dough spread on the iron plate, spatulas clattering loudly.

Several students in school uniforms talked as they walked, their voices loud enough to wake half the street.

The world suddenly became full.

Jiang Lin rode his bicycle along the street toward the school, passing traffic lights, passing fruit shops, passing pork stalls...

People on the street brushed past him, no one giving him a second glance.

Everyone was living an ordinary morning.

No one knew he had just returned from another world.

The school entrance was still the same.

The iron gate of Jiangcheng No. 7 High School was half-open, lights were on in the guardroom, and the duty teacher stood at the entrance inspecting.

A few students sprinting at the last second ducked inside while shouting good morning to the teacher.

Normally, when Jiang Lin saw this kind of scene, his heart would subconsciously tighten, as if pushed forward by something.

Today that feeling was still there, but much fainter.

He looked at the school gate, at the fluttering school flag, at the lit windows behind the classroom building, and suddenly felt an indescribable calmness.

It wasn't that he didn't care about the Gaokao anymore.

Quite the opposite.

It was because he knew so clearly what he was going to do next, so those anxieties that usually made it hard to breathe were instead pushed to the back.

Entering the classroom, a hum of noise washed over him.

Someone was reciting vocabulary, someone was catching up on homework, someone was copying answers, someone was napping on the desk, someone was squeezing pimples into a small mirror, and someone was threading earphone cords out of their uniform sleeves, pretending to rest their chin while listening to music.

His deskmate Sun Ming was looking down, secretly fumbling with his phone in the desk drawer. Seeing Jiang Lin arrive, he winked at him: "Why are you so late today? I thought you asked for leave."

Jiang Lin put down his backpack: "Not late, the bell hasn't rung yet."

Sun Ming looked him up and down, tsking: "You seem a bit off today."

"How so?"

"Can't tell." Sun Ming scratched his head, "Feels like you didn't sleep well last night, but also doesn't look like you didn't sleep well. Anyway, just weird."

Jiang Lin smiled and didn't take the bait.

The morning reading bell rang.

Sparse sounds of pages turning echoed in the classroom.

Jiang Lin opened his English book, his eyes sweeping across the vocabulary page.

abandon, ability, aboard, abroad, absence...

These words, he had copied, memorized, and silently recited many times under the light in the Wasteland.

At that time, he sat in the tent with a thin layer of canvas behind him, wind outside, and a warm white camping light above his head.

Now he sat in the classroom, with fluorescent lights overhead, surrounded by the sounds of classmates reciting books.

The scene changed, but the words didn't change.

He lowered his head and read along slowly with the textbook.

The girl in the front desk suddenly turned around and asked softly: "Jiang Lin, did you do yesterday's cloze test? Did you choose A or C for question 3?"

"C." Jiang Lin answered instinctively.

After saying it, he froze for a moment.

That question was something he had casually scanned through last night—no, for him, over forty days ago when organizing English vocabulary.

The girl in front uttered an "oh" and turned back.

...

The first class was Physics.

The first class was Physics. The Physics teacher was named Zhou, in his 40s, tall and thin, wearing silver-framed glasses, and liked to throw chalk stubs at distracted students during class.

Last week he had just set a record, throwing seven chalk stubs in one class with 100% accuracy.

He walked into the classroom, placed his lesson plan on the podium, raising a small cloud of chalk dust.

"Take out the test paper handed out yesterday."

A sound of rustling through backpacks rang out in the classroom.

Jiang Lin spread out the test paper.

It was a special exercise on electromagnetic induction, handed out during evening self-study yesterday, which he hadn't had time to do yet.

No, not didn't have time.

Before transmigrating, he didn't intend to do it at all.

Because electromagnetic induction was his weak spot; every time he did it, it was full of red crosses, making doing it equivalent to not doing it.

But now he opened the paper and read it from the beginning.

The first multiple-choice question.

A single rod cutting magnetic induction lines, finding the direction of induced current.

He read the question.

The conductor rod moves to the right, and the magnetic field direction is perpendicular into the paper.

Right-hand rule, thumb points in the direction of motion, four fingers point in the direction of current.

Current flows from top to bottom.

Select C.

The second question.

The N pole of a magnet is inserted into the coil, asking for the direction of induced current.

Magnetic flux increases, the induced magnetic field hinders the increase, direction opposite.

[part:gemini-3.5-flash-lite]

The magnet's N pole is facing down, the magnetic field direction is downward, and the induced magnetic field is upward.

Right-hand screw rule, thumb pointing upward, four fingers counterclockwise.

Counterclockwise.

That rebellious-phase coil diagram drawn inside the Wasteland tent floated up from his mind.

The magnet is pushed inward, and the coil says, "I refuse," generating a reverse magnetic field.

The magnet is pulled outward, and the coil says, "I definitely will not," generating a magnetic field in the same direction.

Choose B.

"For the third question, let a classmate talk about the thought process." Teacher Zhou said on the podium, tapping the blackboard with a piece of chalk.

A few hands went up sparsely across the class.

A few sitting in the front rows, the Physics class representative, and a few others with consistently good grades.

Teacher Zhou's gaze swept past, skipping those raised hands, and landed on someone who did not raise their hand.

"Jiang Lin."

Sun Ming's head whipped around sharply, his eyes widening like copper bells.

In his memory, the last time the Physics teacher called on Jiang Lin to answer a question, Jiang Lin stood up, stammered for half a minute, and finally said he did not know, blushing all the way to the root of his neck.

That happened in the first semester of the second year of senior high school.

Ever since then, Teacher Zhou rarely called on him.

Jiang Lin stood up.

His palms began to sweat.

It was not that he did not know how; it was that he was not used to speaking in front of so many people.

On the Wasteland, he had spoken many words to himself.

Talking about lenzs law, talking about Faraday's experiment, pretending to explain problems to Sun Ming.

But those words were spoken facing the inner wall of the tent, facing the broken wall, facing the dark red Wasteland.

No one heard, and no one looked at him.

Now more than forty pairs of eyes in the whole class were looking at him.

"First, use the Right-hand rule to determine the direction of the induced current. The conductor rod moves to the right, the magnetic field is perpendicular to the paper inward, the right thumb points to the direction of motion, and the four fingers point to the direction of the current, so the current is from top to bottom."

Teacher Zhou looked at him, neither nodding nor shaking his head.

"Then determine the direction of the Ampere force: the current is from top to bottom, the magnetic field is inward, Left-hand rule, the four fingers point to the direction of the current, the magnetic field passes through the palm, the thumb points to the left, and the Ampere force is to the left."

The classroom fell silent for a fraction of a second.

"Correct, sit down." Teacher Zhou said, drawing a checkmark next to the question with the chalk.

Jiang Lin sat down, his heart beating fast, and his temples throbbing.

But his mind was clear, not because he got it right, but because he discovered something.

Every step of that problem, he could find the corresponding picture in his mind. The picture of the Right-hand rule, the picture of the Left-hand rule, the picture of lenzs law. Every single picture was drawn stroke by stroke on the Wasteland spending who knows how much time.

"Holy shit."

Sun Ming lowered his voice, leaning his big head over, his mouth forming an O shape.

"Did you secretly sign up for tutoring classes?"

Jiang Lin shook his head: "I did not sign up."

"Then how the fuck did you suddenly figure it out?"

In Sun Ming's view, this was getting enlightened.

Usually timid and unable to emit a single word even after being beaten with three sticks, he suddenly became capable; apart from sudden enlightenment, there was no other explanation.

But Jiang Lin knew it was not.

So he did not say anything more either.

The last two periods of the morning were mathematics.

The math teacher walked in with practice papers to lecture on analytic geometry.

Ellipse, straight line, intersection, chord length, eccentricity.

The blackboard was quickly covered with formulas written in a rustling rush.

In the past, Jiang Lin feared this kind of problem the most.

Not because it was the hardest, but because it was especially easy to get tangled up and stuck by the third or fourth step.

The points were set up nicely in the beginning, and there was no problem with the simultaneous equations either; halfway through the derivation, one wrong positive or negative sign would cause everything to collapse afterward, so even though he clearly spent the most time, the score he got was the most miserable.

Today, halfway through the lecture, the teacher casually assigned a variant problem for everyone below to try first.

Jiang Lin lowered his head to calculate.

Set points, simultaneous equations, Vieta formulas.

The tip of his pen stopped at that crucial step.

He looked at the symbol about to be written on the paper, and the draft paper in statuesque style within the Wasteland tent flashed through his mind.

Right here, last time he got the positive and negative signs backwards.

He took a breath, looked at the question again, confirmed the conditions, and continued writing downward.

Still very slow.

But orderly.

The math teacher walked around the classroom, stopped by his desk, lowered his head to glance at his draft, without saying it was right or wrong, and just tapped gently on his paper with his knuckles: "Do not rush this step, the previous train of thought is correct, continue to derive downwards."

After speaking, he walked away.

Jiang Lin looked up at the teacher's retreating figure, then lowered his head to look at the calculations on his paper.

The previous train of thought was correct.

Just that single sentence.

It could not even count as praise.

Yet falling into his heart, it was much heavier than the usual generalized talk of everyone working harder and grasping the foundation better.

Dismissed at noon, the cafeteria was still crowded with people.

The lines at the windows were very long, dishes were ladled spoonful by spoonful into iron trays, and steam fogged up the glass.

Jiang Lin stood in line holding his meal tray; the two classmates in front were discussing yesterday's battle for the top spot in the Western Conference between the Warriors and the Suns, and someone behind was complaining that today's shredded potatoes were too salty.

He lowered his head to glance at his own meal tray.

Rice, shredded pork with green peppers, stir-fried cabbage, plus a small spoonful of scrambled eggs with tomatoes.

That small spoonful of scrambled eggs with tomatoes was mixed in a large patch of red oil, its appearance was actually quite average, and the eggs were fried a bit too old.

Yet Jiang Lin looked at it for two seconds, then extended his chopsticks to take a bite first.

The sweet and sour tomato juice wrapped around the eggs fell into his mouth, and compared with the unchanging biscuit taste on the Wasteland, it almost felt like some kind of holiday limited edition.

He lowered his head and shoveled a large mouthful of rice.

Sun Ming sat opposite, still nagging about that morning's Physics problem: "No, explain it to me again, why is the Ampere force to the left? I clearly aligned my hands correctly."

"Because you got your left and right hands mixed up again." Jiang Lin said.

"Damn, I should not have grown two hands." Sun Ming looked in agony.

Jiang Lin could not help laughing a little.

As the last class of the afternoon ended, people in the classroom swarmed out noisily.

Jiang Lin sat motionless in his seat, unzipped his schoolbag, and pulled out a draft paper folded twice from the very bottom.

On the paper was that double-rod electromagnetic induction problem that he had repeatedly gotten stuck on in the Wasteland.

Two rods, rails, different speeds, equivalent circuit.

Next to the problem was a single character written by him with a red pen.

Question.

Jiang Lin stuffed the draft paper into the exercise book, stood up, and left the classroom.

The office door was not closed tightly; inside, teachers were grading papers, and students were holding homework and queuing up to ask questions.

Jiang Lin stood at the doorway, his heartbeat inexplicably a bit fast, as if it was his first time doing this kind of thing.

The Physics teacher was lowering his head to grade papers.

He walked over: "Teacher."

"Hm?" The Physics teacher looked up, "What is it?"

Jiang Lin opened the exercise book and pushed it forward a bit: "For this question, I can do it up to here in the front; I can list the induced electromotive forces separately, but I always draw the equivalent circuit wrong in the back. As soon as the current direction changes, I get confused. I have thought about this place for a long time, but still have not figured it out."

The Physics teacher casually took it over, his gaze pausing on the draft paper for a moment.

It was densely packed above with diagrams drawn by Jiang Lin himself, formulas listed, crossed-out attempts, and several sticking points marked with a red pen on the side.

"These parts in the front, did you think of them all by yourself?" The teacher asked.

"Mm."

"How long did you think about it?"

Jiang Lin paused for a moment: "Quite a while."

He could not possibly say more than forty days.

The Physics teacher glanced at him, did not pursue it further, just picked up a pen and added a couple of strokes for him on the edge of the draft paper: "Your confusion here is because you treated the two rods as a single piece. In fact, separate them first, look at the induced electromotive forces generated by each, and then look at how the circuit is connected. Look, it is equivalent to this."

The teacher did not speak fast.

Jiang Lin stood by, staring at the movement of that pen, listening very carefully.

Halfway through the explanation, a certain place that had stuck him for a long time suddenly opened up.

It was not that kind of sudden flash of complete enlightenment, but rather like a door that could never be pushed open, finally finding the right crack, giving it a gentle push, and opening.

"Do you understand?" The teacher asked.

"Understood." Jiang Lin nodded, thought about it, and added another sentence: "I always connected this place in parallel wrongly before."

"Normal." The Physics teacher returned the exercise book to him, "This problem is naturally easy to get confused; being able to think of the previous step on your own is already pretty good. In the future, for such problems stuck in the middle, do not keep it to yourself, come and ask more often."

"Thank you, Teacher."

Jiang Lin took the exercise book and walked out of the office. As the wind in the corridor blew, he realized that a little sweat had actually broken out on his back.

It was from being nervous just now.

He looked down at that question in the exercise book, suddenly feeling that a certain hardened place in his heart had relaxed a bit.

Turns out asking a teacher was not that scary.

Turns out when you do not know something, you are not forced to just stubbornly endure it alone.

Returning home at night, the sky was already dark.

Mom was cooking in the kitchen, the pot was sizzling, and the aroma of scallions and ginger being sautéed floated in the air.

Jiang Lin called out Mom, returned to his bedroom, and closed the door.

He pulled out a brand new notebook from the drawer, opened to the first page, and wrote a few characters at the very top.

Second Wasteland survival review.

Halfway through the review, the pen tip stopped.

Because he suddenly thought, if he possessed infinite food and water over there, would he not be able to stay as long as he wanted?

The only question was, how would infinite food and water come about?

Water was easy enough to solve.

Since he could find one puddle, he could find two, three, many puddles.

Not to mention, it would rain over there.

As for the matter of food, it had to be discussed in the long term and from the beginning.

Where did food come from?

Fundamentally speaking, it was grown by farmers.

If I could farm like a farmer, would I not be able to have endless food to eat?

Self-sufficiency, after all.

The problem of seeds was also easy to solve.

He still had some savings, just buy them.

The only question was, could crops be grown over there?

"Jiang Lin, time to eat!"

"Coming."