Volume One, Chapter 1: The Reborn One’s Cheat Code

“Crack!”

The sound of the belt slicing through the air made Gao Yuan shudder from head to toe.

His lower back burned with pain. Looking up, he saw his father, Gao Yuemin, trembling as he held the belt, his face flushed crimson.

“Are you determined to anger me to death before you’ll be satisfied? Don’t you have any idea what our family is going through? Your uncle is still in the cowshed writing self-criticisms. I’m nothing but a stinking intellectual. Who knows when I’ll ever get my teaching position back? Your mother is still working in the countryside as a barefoot doctor.

“It’s been four years. Your sister has been sent down to the countryside for four full years, and there’s still no telling when she’ll be allowed to return to the city!

“And you? You don’t do a single respectable thing all day long. Today you spend the night at a classmate’s house; tomorrow you’re taking liberties with some woman by the roadside. You’re young, but you’ve learned all the wrong things—smoking, drinking, harassing female classmates. How long do you intend to carry on like this?

“Can’t you give me a little peace of mind?

“You have a few drinks and suddenly forget how much you’re worth. What the hell were you doing, running to Qiao Shan’s house in the middle of the night? You’ve disgraced us completely!”

Looking at his furious father, at the profound disappointment written across the older man’s face, Gao Yuan first confirmed one thing:

He had been reborn.

He knew this scene all too well. It was buried deep in his memory, a moment he had never been able to forget—so vivid it seemed to have happened only yesterday.

It was the bitter winter of 1977. The night before, he had failed to come home yet again. He had stolen the family’s ration coupons and exchanged them for two packs of cigarettes and two bottles of liquor, then gone out drinking and carousing with his classmate Zhang Dalong.

Drunk and reckless, he had staggered to the window of his beautiful female classmate Qiao Shan’s home in the middle of the night and declared his love for her. He had frightened the girl so badly that she let out a scream, rousing her parents. Qiao Shan’s father and brother had caught him, and a beating had been inevitable.

He had damaged the girl’s reputation. If the two families had not been fairly familiar with each other, Qiao Shan’s father would have reported him to the police on the spot and had him charged with hooliganism.

Gao Yuan had spent the entire day consumed by guilt. He knew that sooner or later he would have to face the consequences. After gritting his teeth, stamping his foot, and steeling himself, he went home.

Sure enough, Qiao Shan’s parents had just finished reporting the matter to his family and left. The instant he stepped through the door, his father’s belt came lashing down.

To be reborn at this particular moment was truly…

“Dad…”

As he studied his enraged father, Gao Yuan’s throat felt stuffed with cotton. His eyes reddened, and a thousand conflicting emotions surged through him.

He noticed that the third button of his father’s Sun Yat-sen suit was coming loose, while the frayed cuffs had been worn smooth and shiny. The long fingers that had once written on blackboards now gripped the belt, blue veins standing out on the back of his hand.

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In his memories, that university lecturer who always kept his clothes pressed to perfection had, somewhere along the way, grown gray at the temples. The creases beside his mouth were deep enough to hold a piece of chalk.

Gao Yuan dropped straight to his knees. The floor sent pain shooting through his kneecaps, but he did not move an inch.

His eyes glistening with tears, he said in a trembling voice, “Dad, I was wrong. If beating me will help you vent your anger, then go ahead.”

He still remembered how badly this incident had affected everything in his previous life.

Confronted with his father’s fury, he had not only refused to repent, but had stubbornly rattled off a string of idiotic slogans about youthful attraction, love being innocent, and freedom in romance. He had angered his father into suffering a cardiac attack and being hospitalized. The man had nearly died before he could be revived.

Though his condition was brought under control, his father was left with a chronic illness. When Gao Yuan was thirty, the older man suffered a sudden heart attack and passed away.

On countless nights, Gao Yuan had secretly seen his mother weeping as she held his father’s portrait.

After that, his older sister had come to regard him as an enemy. In his previous life, they had remained estranged until death.

What Gao Yuan regretted even more was that after his father was hospitalized, he had learned nothing from the lesson. Instead, he convinced himself that his father’s illness had been caused by the Qiao family’s malicious report against him. In his anger, he harassed Qiao Shan even more viciously.

In the end, Qiao Shan, who had already been admitted to university, could no longer bear the torment and withdrew from school. She later went abroad to continue her studies.

Enraged, Qiao Shan’s father, Qiao Yuan’nan, had struck back at Gao Yuan. No matter what organization Gao Yuan worked for, Qiao Yuan’nan used his influence to place obstacles in his path, ensuring that he would amount to nothing throughout his life.

Half a lifetime passed in frustration, and he remained alone.

Looking back on the misery of his previous life, Gao Yuan wanted nothing more than to give himself a vicious beating. Heaven’s punishment might be forgiven, but self-inflicted ruin could not be survived.

He had been the very embodiment of bringing disaster upon himself.

The trembling of a seventeen-year-old boy’s frail body now carried the weight of a sixty-year-old man’s weathered soul.

At that moment, Gao Yuan clenched his fists and silently swore: Since Heaven had given him another chance, he would live this life to the fullest.

He would make up for the regrets of his previous life. He would never again make his parents worry themselves sick over him. He would not become entangled with Qiao Shan again. And he would repair his relationship with his sister.

After hearing Gao Yuan’s words, Gao Yuemin suddenly lost his voice. He stared at his son in a daze, as though he no longer recognized him.

“Xiaoyuan… you really know you were wrong? You’re not just fooling your old man, are you?” Gao Yuemin asked tremulously after a long pause.

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Gao Yuan raised his head and looked at his father earnestly.

“Dad, I really know I was wrong. Just as you said, after a few drinks I lose all sense of proportion. I shouldn’t have gotten drunk and gone to Qiao Shan’s house to make a fool of myself.

“Don’t worry. I’ll go to the Qiao family and apologize to their elders and to Qiao Shan herself.

“And I shouldn’t have stolen the family’s ration coupons to buy liquor, either. Our family is already struggling so badly, and my selfishness nearly left us without food. What I did was unforgivable.”

Gao Yuemin took two steps forward, bent down, and seized Gao Yuan by the shoulders. After sighing, he said, “It wasn’t quite bad enough to leave us without food. But if you can recognize your mistake and are willing to correct it, then you’re still a good boy.

“Get up. The floor is cold. Come on, get up.”

Gao Yuan rose to his feet. He helped his father to a chair, then fetched a small stool from beside the stove and sat down in front of him, ready to listen to his father’s instruction.

The kerosene lamp sputtered and flared.

Looking at his son’s handsome face, Gao Yuemin still harbored doubts about the sudden change in his temperament. He decided to probe further.

“So tell me, what do you plan to do next? Find a job and start working, or…”

At that moment, the old clock on the wall began to chime.

Gao Yuan suddenly understood. He fixed his father with a blazing gaze and said firmly, “Dad, this is what I think. Even if I pass the recruitment examination and get a job, I still won’t be able to escape labels like ‘son of a black-category family’ or ‘remnant of the stinking intellectuals.’

“If I want to change my fate, there is only one path: I must take the college entrance examination.”

“You want to take the college entrance examination?” Gao Yuemin was utterly incredulous.

News that the college entrance examination was being restored had already spread across the country. The examination dates for students in the capital had been set for December 10 and 11.

And today was December 1.

Gao Yuemin felt that although Gao Yuan was a graduating student, his academic performance during his two years of high school had been a complete disaster. To imagine that he could change his fate through the college entrance examination was pure fantasy.

But Gao Yuan did not think so.

“Not only am I going to take the examination, I’m also going to write to my sister later and persuade her to take it as well. The time left for preparation is rather short, but I’m confident I can get a good score.”

There was one thing he kept buried in his heart:

He knew what this year’s examination papers for the capital would contain. Getting a high score would be effortless. That was the greatest advantage of being reborn.

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