Chapter 1: Zhou Zhuoyuan: A person like him not only didn’t go to hell, but…

It hurt so much.

He lay sprawled on the ground, hands clasped protectively over his head. An enraged roar pounded in his ears—someone shouting, the voice deafening yet muffled, the words lost in the haze.

So noisy. It hurt so much.

He couldn’t pinpoint the source of the pain. His entire being seemed trapped in a foggy haze.

This couldn’t go on. He wanted to fight back—to stand, to hurl curses, to drive the man away.

But his body wouldn’t budge. He had no control over it.

What should he do? What could he do?

In his panic, a cold, trembling woman’s voice cut abruptly through the ugly bellowing.

“I never should have brought you back into the family.”

His body finally stirred. He jerked his head up and locked eyes with a gaze brimming with hatred and bitter regret.

Zhou Zhuoyuan jolted awake.

It had been a terrible dream—one so vivid that he was still gasping for breath when he came to.

Zhou Zhuoyuan had been living in this northern town for five years now. The low cost of living had made it the perfect refuge back when his wallet was paper-thin, enough to cover his bus ticket with a little left over for food and a place to crash.

It was the New Year. Despite the biting cold outside, it couldn’t dampen people’s festive spirits. Children’s laughter and the sounds of them romping in the snow filtered in, bringing a touch of life to his otherwise lonely rental apartment.

This year felt exceptionally frigid. Zhou Zhuoyuan huddled under his quilt, utterly lacking the will to get up.

Even in his first year here, when he couldn’t afford the heating bill, it hadn’t felt this cold. The weather was getting worse, he thought.

Only when cramps twisted in his stomach did he finally force himself out from under the covers. It was the result of years of irregular meals—if he skipped eating on time or ate something less than fresh, his gut would seize up like this. He’d grown used to it. The factory cafeteria didn’t cater to special diets, and he couldn’t justify splurging on an extra lunch every day.

But he didn’t regret it. He never would.

Zhou Zhuoyuan was selfish and envious. He had caused the death of his parents’ beloved youngest son, and in turn, his family had cast him out. His friends despised him. This was how he’d ended up.

He was the novel’s sole despised clown, convinced that everyone was out to get him. Hatred was the fuel that kept him alive—if he lost it, he might drop dead the next instant.

When his feet hit the floor, a wave of nausea and dizziness crashed over him. He was chilled to the bone and only then realized he must be running a fever.

After five years of living alone, Zhou Zhuoyuan had plenty of experience handling this sort of thing.

He dragged his limp body to the kitchen, cooked up a bowl of porridge, and mixed a dose of medicine. Then he settled back into bed to savor the rare downtime.

The rental apartment was rundown and in need of repairs. Two cracks snaked across the ceiling, as if they might give way at any moment and come crashing down on him in shards. Zhou Zhuoyuan stared at them, feeling himself pulled into some kind of whirlpool.

Was it an illusion? Or something else?

Exhaustion overtook him, and he blacked out amid the swirling pull.

When he came to again, the dingy yellowed ceiling was gone. In its place arched a pale blue dome. For a dazed moment, Zhou Zhuoyuan thought it looked just like the ceiling in his old bedroom back at the Zhou Family home.

He had lived there for two years—less time than he’d spent in the rental apartment.

It was a dream, intensely realistic and utterly bizarre.

Zhou Zhuoyuan lay still, gazing up at the chandelier overhead.

He’d thought he’d moved on long ago, that he no longer pined for the Zhou Family’s lavish life. Yet here he was, dreaming like this.

No one in the world knew but him, and still shame washed over him. How pathetic—to talk a big game about being free-spirited while secretly yearning to crawl back.

That shame only made his body burn hotter. At last, Zhou Zhuoyuan couldn’t take it anymore. He shoved the quilt aside and sat up.

He froze.

You weren’t supposed to feel the quilt’s texture in a dream.

To be sure, Zhou Zhuoyuan pinched his thigh hard. Pain creased his brow.

This wasn’t a dream. It really wasn’t!

What on earth had happened? Had he actually returned to the Zhou Family?

A sudden knock sounded at the door, accompanied by voices—one of them familiar, though Zhou Zhuoyuan couldn’t place it.

The knocking paused, then resumed in steady rhythm, like some ominous toll.

Zhou Zhuoyuan hesitated before dragging himself over to answer it.

The moment he saw Zhou Zhuoyi, he flinched back a step in shock and fear.

What the hell?

“What’s wrong, Brother? You look awful,” Zhou Zhuoyi said, his brows knitting slightly in apparent concern.

Zhou Zhuoyuan stared at the figure before him. The man looked exactly as if he’d never died at all. Or perhaps he had died, and this was some emissary from the underworld sent to claim his soul.

Or maybe his own time was finally up—this final burst of clarity letting him glimpse someone who didn’t belong in this world?

Only now did Zhou Zhuoyuan begin to wonder. Was he truly so irredeemable, so steeped in evil, that in his last moments they’d send the one person he hated most to drag him away?

A cool hand suddenly brushed the corner of his eye, shattering his frantic thoughts.

“Were you just crying?”

Zhou Zhuoyuan flinched in shock, shoving him away on instinct. “Don’t touch me!”

Zhou Zhuoyi staggered back a couple of unsteady steps before the man at his side caught him.

It was Zhou Zhuoli. He’d been standing in Zhou Zhuoyuan’s blind spot the whole time, silent—no doubt because he didn’t trust Zhou Zhuoyi to come alone.

Once he’d steadied his brother, Zhou Zhuoli immediately checked him over with anxious eyes. Only when he was satisfied that Zhou Zhuoyi was unharmed did he unleash his scolding, laced with barely concealed anger. “I told you not to bother with him, but you wouldn’t listen! What if this makes your condition worse?”

His words were aimed at Zhou Zhuoyi, the tone harsh, yet brimming with heartache and tenderness that he couldn’t quite hide.

Pushed like that, Zhou Zhuoyi’s face had gone pale. He offered a feeble explanation. “Don’t be mad, Big Brother. It’s just… I’ve never seen Brother sleep in this late before, and there’s the citywide mock exam today…”

Mock exam? What mock exam?

Zhou Zhuoyuan had been watching their brotherly warmth in a daze when those words landed like a blow, grinding his sluggish thoughts to a complete halt.

Zhou Zhuoli didn’t spare him so much as a glance. He simply tugged Zhou Zhuoyi firmly downstairs.

That was how he’d always been. Ever since Zhou Zhuoyuan had been brought back to the Zhou Family, Zhou Zhuoli had never shown him a shred of kindness. After catching him bullying Zhou Zhuoyi a few times, he’d stopped speaking to him altogether.

But that wasn’t right.

Zhou Zhuoyuan had killed Zhou Zhuoyi. Zhou Zhuoli shouldn’t have been this calm about it. He should have wanted to skin him alive—not merely regard him with cold disdain.

No, what was even more wrong was Zhou Zhuoyi himself. He was alive?!

Zhou Zhuoyuan shut his bedroom door and shuffled slowly over to the desk. His vision was blurry, so he shook his head hard until things sharpened a little.

Zhou Zhuoyi really hadn’t died. His hand had felt cool, but it was still warm to the touch. Had everyone lied to him back then? Had Zhou Zhuoyi merely been on the brink of death—or turned into a vegetable—and only now been saved?

The thought filled Zhou Zhuoyuan with a storm of complex emotions. His gaze drifted across the desk, and suddenly he froze solid.

There, emblazoned across the calendar, were the words “Mock Exam,” hitting him like a hammer and leaving his head spinning. For a moment, he wondered if he’d merely dreamed a nightmare—or fallen into some kind of illusion.

In the upper left corner, clear as day: “Gaokao Countdown: 253 Days.”

The school had given every senior one of these calendars at the start of the year. But before Zhou Zhuoyuan left, Zhou Fuxuan had torn his to shreds, sneering that trash like him would only become a bigger scourge to society the more he learned.

This calendar shouldn’t exist anymore.

An absurd notion flashed into his mind. To test it, Zhou Zhuoyuan hesitantly pulled open the drawer.

What he saw inside drained all strength from him. He slumped bonelessly into the chair.

It was all too familiar.

The placement of the test papers and textbooks, the colors and number of pens—everything yanked long-buried memories back to the surface. No one could have recreated it this perfectly. Not even him.

Had he never truly made the choice to leave? Never struggled alone in some distant city for five hard years?

No. Zhou Zhuoyuan suddenly remembered a far more fitting term: rebirth.

If this was rebirth, then it all made sense. He’d returned to the age of eighteen, to a time before any of it had happened. Zhou Zhuoyi was still alive. He was still living in the Zhou Family. He could keep going to school, keep preparing for the Gaokao.

It meant he suddenly had all the time in the world—and the wisdom of experience—to make up for his past regrets.

If he threw himself into his studies and made it into a top university, he could support himself properly after leaving the Zhou Family. At the very least, he wouldn’t have to pinch pennies on meals until his stomach gave out.

A plot straight out of some trashy web novel, unfolding in his own life? Unbelievable. A man like him hadn’t just avoided hell—he’d been granted a second chance at life?

Zhou Zhuoyuan tried to curve his lips into a smile.

He couldn’t.

In that instant, a shrill beep pierced straight through his mind.

“BEEP—”

As the shrill cries grew ever sharper, his headache intensified, as if countless awls were viciously hammering his fragile nerves inside his skull. Even he, inured to pain as he was, found it nearly unbearable.

Zhou Zhuoyuan ground his teeth with a harsh clacking sound, barely stifling the scream rising in his throat. He no longer had the mental bandwidth to puzzle out what was happening—he could only endure it.

It might have lasted a day, an hour, or just a fleeting minute. At last, the agony receded, and a fragment of consciousness that was not his own appeared in his mind.

Zhou Zhuoyuan couldn’t make sense of it at first, right after it flooded in. But once he calmed down and grasped the key details, a sensation of inevitability washed over him.

So that’s how it was.

The inexplicable rebirth, and Zhou Zhuoyi’s immediate “reminder” about it—suddenly, everything clicked into place.

No wonder, after a lifetime of rotten luck, he had somehow hit the jackpot with a second chance at life.