Chapter 1: He Says He’s Sheng Xingming—As If Anyone Would Believe Him!

Page (1/3)

Before bed, Pang Shuai was twisting himself into a pretzel over a wish-fulfillment novel on his phone.

“Nothing is more satisfying than a maxed-out expert returning to the novice village!”

“If that were really the case, then ordinary people like us would just become cannon fodder for him to bully. What’s so satisfying about that?”

Frowning, Xia Chiyi knelt at the head of the bed and fixed a commemorative basketball poster beside his pillow.

“You could date the expert and win by lying down!”

“Isn’t living off someone else’s success a little humiliating? Why not say you absorb the expert’s experience points and lead him back to the summit as the protagonist?”

Pang Shuai grinned teasingly. “Remember your ambition! Maybe tonight, Sheng Xingming will be reborn from the poster by your bed and call you up to take you on as his underling!”

“Why not say Michael Jordan will be reborn?”

“I don’t understand basketball, but I do know Jordan is still alive.”

“I don’t believe in transmigration, reincarnation, or doomsday prophecies. If someone claims to be Sheng Xingming, I’ll tell him I’ve already downloaded an anti-fraud app.”

Pang Shuai’s mouth must have been blessed by fate.

“Brrr—brrr—brrr.” His phone began to vibrate.

Xia Chiyi groped around beside his pillow for a long while. Drowsy and half-asleep, he mumbled, “Hello… hi… who is this?”

“I’m Sheng Xingming.”

A cool, clear voice rang out, firm and unwavering as it traveled through the radio waves straight into Xia Chiyi’s eardrum, making his heart tremble in resonance.

Xia Chiyi woke with a start and sat bolt upright, only then realizing that it was half past midnight. What kind of bizarre call was this?

“I’m Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Are you going to send me money?”

Xia Chiyi hung up. For a moment, he suspected that Pang Shuai was playing a prank.

But Pang Shuai, on the other side of the room, had already begun to snore softly.

Xia Chiyi turned his head and opened his eyes. On the poster beside his bed, Sheng Xingming radiated a silent, imposing pressure, like a guardian deity in the darkness.

The moment Xia Chiyi touched the poster, his phone rang again. It was the same number, and it seemed determined to keep calling until he answered.

Was this ever going to end?

Xia Chiyi drew a deep breath and made his tone three shades fiercer. “Buddy, take out your ID card and recite your own name ten thousand times, will you?”

There was a distinct pause on the other end.

“My ID says Zhou Zhexiao.”

Xia Chiyi exhaled and pressed hard against the corner of his eye.

Damn, Zhou Zhexiao! Wasn’t he the guy Mom had mentioned—the one who had damaged his brain in a car accident and spent every day imagining that he was Sheng Xingming?

Buddy, you really need to stay on your medication.

Before enrollment, Xia Chiyi had promised his mother that he would look after Zhou Zhexiao. He had even specifically requested that they be assigned to the same dormitory. Whether the other boy had indigestion or was suffering from menstrual cramps, Xia Chiyi couldn’t simply leave him to fend for himself.

Straightening his attitude, Xia Chiyi asked in a customer-service voice, “How may I assist you, fellow student Zhou Zhexiao?”

“I’m at the airport. Someone took my suitcase by mistake, and my wallet was inside it. I’ve been waiting for three hours, but the other person hasn’t contacted the airport.”

Zhou Zhexiao’s voice sounded emotionally stable, logical, and perfectly coherent. There was no sign at all that anything was wrong with his mind. In the cavernous airport, his voice even possessed a deep, strangely beautiful quality, as though he stood apart from the world.

Xia Chiyi sighed. “I understand. Is your WeChat account linked to your phone number? I’ll add you and transfer some money right away.”

Page (1/3)

Page (2/3)

“I don’t have WeChat.”

Xia Chiyi was momentarily speechless. In this day and age, were there really eighteen-year-olds who didn’t use WeChat?

“Then what do you use?”

“A Nokia 5230.”

Xia Chiyi gave a helpless laugh.

“Wow. Where did you dig up that antique?”

“It’s almost out of power, and the charger is in my suitcase.”

“You… aren’t pulling some kind of prank, are you?” Xia Chiyi asked, frowning.

“I’m in the McDonald’s at Terminal One of the airport.” Zhou Zhexiao paused for a second, then added, “It’s not a prank.”

Xia Chiyi nearly choked. He tried to reason with him patiently. “Brother, it’s half past midnight. The iron gates of our university dormitory have already been locked! I suggest you call your parents…”

The next second, the phone emitted a series of beeps. The other party had suddenly disconnected—or perhaps his battery had died.

What the hell?

Xia Chiyi stood there in a daze. After ten full seconds of inner struggle, he wondered whether he should simply call the police. But his mind uncontrollably conjured up a scene that had not yet happened.

A police officer would arrive at the airport’s McDonald’s in the dead of night and find an eighteen-year-old boy sitting by the window, waiting for a companion who would never come. The airport air-conditioning would be freezing, and he wouldn’t even have a coat.

His parents were far away in another city, beyond their reach. All he had was a dead Nokia, and he couldn’t even use a portable charger. He was practically one newspaper away from curling up on a McDonald’s sofa for warmth…

How utterly tragic.

People with high moral standards were simply too easy to persuade.

Xia Chiyi rose quickly, grabbed his phone, portable charger, and coat, and stuffed everything into a sports shoulder bag. As he left, Pang Shuai, who had been sleeping across from him, actually woke up. He leaned over the edge of the upper bunk and watched Xia Chiyi with an accusing stare.

“I knew a handsome guy like you couldn’t possibly be single. Who are you sneaking out to meet in the middle of the night—a seductive vixen?”

“I really have something to deal with. I’ll be back in the morning and tell you all about it.”

Pang Shuai reminded him with complete sincerity, “Boys need to be careful when they go out too.”

“Huh? Careful of what?”

“You—you’ve got a narrow waist, long legs, and defined abs. Your eyes are so clear and easy to seduce. You’re perfect prey for a vixen seeking to drain your masculine essence and replenish her yin.” Pang Shuai wore an expression that said he was being completely serious.

“Fine. In that case, I hope a whole dozen of those vixens come my way.”

Pang Shuai said, “Male vixens are in fashion these days.”

“Get lost!”

Tsk. Zhou Zhexiao really was a man.

Under a moonless sky and rising wind, Xia Chiyi hurried through the quiet dormitory grounds. The iron gate was truly very high, as though it could reach up and poke the moon.

He backed up, took a running start, and vaulted upward with practiced speed. The instant his foot pushed off against the bars, his body became like a taut bowstring. In the blink of an eye, he had flipped over to the other side.

A fellow sitting by the stairwell was smoking. The instant he flicked away his ash, Xia Chiyi landed smoothly on the ground.

The force and elegance of the scene elicited a heartfelt, “Holy crap—”

Xia Chiyi turned and smiled at him, placing one finger to his lips in a gesture for silence.

The smoker stood there in a daze, his mind probably replaying that audacious scene on an endless loop.

Page (2/3)

Page (3/3)

Xia Chiyi left through the school’s main gate. At this hour, everything outside was pitch-black; the lights of every restaurant and shop had been turned off.

He glanced at the distance between the university and the airport on his phone. It stretched across the entirety of Ningchang City, so he immediately abandoned the idea of riding a shared electric scooter and booked a rideshare through an app.

When he saw the estimated fare on the screen, Xia Chiyi felt a stab of pain.

Zhou Zhexiao, you’d better really be as miserable as I imagine, or I’ll make you swallow that Nokia 5230 whole!

Once he got into the car, the driver joined in the teasing. “Little handsome guy, heading to the airport to pick up your girlfriend?”

“Not my girlfriend. A fool with a damaged brain.”

The driver chuckled.

Xia Chiyi sighed. To be honest, he didn’t even know what Zhou Zhexiao looked like now.

He vaguely remembered that, as a child, Zhou Zhexiao had possessed huge eyes and long, upward-curving eyelashes. He had been pretty enough to look like a porcelain doll.

But he had been domineering. Every time the children played with their toys, they had to hand them over to him. He would return only the ones he disliked, beginning his “selection of consorts” with their toys.

Xia Chiyi, however, had never intended to indulge him. In front of everyone, he had simply taken back his own little car.

Zhou Zhexiao’s position as ruler had been shaken. He had lunged forward and bitten Xia Chiyi on the head.

A boy’s head could break and his blood could flow, but his dignity could never be surrendered. Xia Chiyi had stared furiously at Zhou Zhexiao through a face covered in blood until the other boy finally let go.

Come to think of it, should he have gotten a rabies shot afterward?

Hopefully, the kid had grown into something a little more human than he had been as a child… though that seemed unlikely.

According to Mom’s reliable information, Zhou Zhexiao had been praised by numerous coaches since childhood for possessing extraordinary basketball talent. His parents had invested a fortune in developing it. Unfortunately, the boy was deeply rebellious. His reckless exploits were like chives: cut down one crop, and another would immediately spring up.

His parents had divorced by mutual agreement six months earlier. After learning the news, Zhou Zhexiao had taken his rebelliousness to its extreme, partying with a group of worthless friends. They had wrecked the car in a crash, and by the time rescue workers dug him out, his heart had stopped beating on the way to the hospital.

Then, just after the doctor had checked his watch and announced the time of death, he had woken up.

And here was the extraordinary part: ever since waking, Zhou Zhexiao had stubbornly insisted that he was Sheng Xingming. His family had hired several neurological and psychological experts, who could only conclude that the brain trauma had caused a disturbance of consciousness.

Before the accident, Zhou Zhexiao had probably worshiped Sheng Xingming to an extreme degree. Deep within himself, he had desperately wanted to become Sheng Xingming, which was why he had developed this disorder of identity after regaining consciousness.

Because of the accident, Zhou Zhexiao had lost his scholarship, been rejected by an elite private university, and seen his once-promising basketball talent rendered meaningless. His future had grown bleak.

Strangely, when Zhou Zhexiao heard his mother mention Xia Chiyi, he had asked where Xia Chiyi intended to apply for university. He had then resolutely taken the Overseas Chinese entrance examination and somehow been admitted to Ningchang University.

Even Zhou Zhexiao’s parents had been stunned. Wasn’t their son an academic failure?

Perhaps Sheng Xingming had protected his fan from beyond the grave.

As for Sheng Xingming, he was a legend in the hearts of countless basketball fans—and the unattainable ideal engraved in Xia Chiyi’s soul.

At eighteen, Sheng Xingming had received a scholarship to Duke University, an old powerhouse of the NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association. He had entered the starting lineup of the college basketball league during his freshman year, and by his junior year had been selected third overall in the NBA draft.

Unfortunately, the media of the so-called beautiful country, which prided itself on freedom and equality, did not like him. They claimed that this young man had earned the NBA’s favor through an excessively beautiful Eastern face and the broadcasting fees paid by Asian television networks.

No one could remain invincible in the NBA. But Sheng Xingming had fought his way through every obstacle, shredding the jeers and barking taunts of those who challenged him.

His court vision, seemingly granted by the perspective of a god; his breathtaking, perfectly timed passes; and his three-point shooting percentage, ranked among the top three in the league—these were undeniable skills. Even the fans and media who disliked him had no choice but to admit that he was the outsider who had gone the farthest and achieved the most in the NBA.

The final shot Sheng Xingming made in the championship series had immortalized him in a single battle.

The passing lane was sealed off. He dribbled alone, using several feints to weave past two opponents before plunging toward the basket like a drawn blade.

Two opponents standing over two meters tall leaped into the air beneath the hoop, forming an insurmountable wall. Even the camera captured the shadows they cast over Sheng Xingming—a colossal natural barrier, as though declaring that explosiveness and hang time were a gulf Asian players could never cross.