In a mountain village in western Henan in 2000, Zhang Cheng's name was always tied to three things: the stamp of his uncle's drunken belt, the perfect mark on his homework book, and the muddy pond at the entrance of the village that could swallow everything. When he walked towards the Crooked Neck Tree with the admission notice from the county high school in hand, Li Wangyi, a wild Taoist priest who emerged from the mountain temple, pierced the blade hidden in his sleeve with his fingers stained with incense ash - this was the first encounter between two people who had been abandoned by the world.
No one knew that the boy who had been kidnapped by his aunt and stuffed eggs secretly would use mathematical formulas to calculate the optimal solution to the gang war ten years later; no one expected that the wild Taoist priest who stole the offerings would teach him to use darts made from talismans to pierce the throats of his enemies. When the mud-covered Jiefang shoes stepped onto the neon lights of the city, and when the abacus beads crackled in the bloody setting sun, Zhang Cheng finally understood: the so-called rivers and lakes are just bigger muddy ponds.
With the lamp and ink calculations of the mountain temple, he wrote down the cruelest rules of survival in the shadow of swords and swords: using geometric theorems to plan escape routes, using probability models to predict the opponent's trump cards, and using Taoist breathing skills to adjust his breathing in the hail of bullets. The belts that were slapped on his body, the torn certificates, and the spit that mocked his "mud legs" will eventually turn into concrete for the throne.
This is not a heroic epic, but a bloody record of a loach transforming into a dragon. When the police badge and the gang badge appeared on his desk at the same time, Zhang Cheng rubbed the scar on his palm from a suicide attempt, and suddenly remembered the prophecy that Li Wangyi said back then: "If you lack fire in your life, you have to burn it with blood."
For whom are the crematorium chimneys smoking now?
