I was a third-year Chinese language and literature student who died a hero while saving a child from drowning.
When I opened my eyes, I was a ten-year-old left-behind child in an ancient farming household. Actually, I was the deluxe version of one: honest parents, an awful grandmother, a vampire of an uncle, and a whole family treating me like a leek to be harvested.
The original owner had been bled dry. Now I was taking over.
The good news: I had awakened a photographic memory.
The bad news: this golden finger was only good for my own private enjoyment.
So my daily life went like this:
By day, Grandma called me a jinx, and my uncle laughed that a dirt farmer like me had no business studying.
By night, I hid under the covers, reciting the Four Books and Five Classics from memory while figuring out whether my family could make it into the Guinness Book of Records for sheer awfulness.
When the family split up, all I got was two dilapidated houses at the village entrance. The whole village gathered to watch, convinced our family was finished.
I looked up at the leaky roof. “Great. Good ventilation.”
Later, I went into town to buy brushes and ink and ran into my uncle, who supposedly was “studying the sages,” drinking with a woman at a restaurant.
He threatened me, telling me not to say a word.
I said, “Go ahead, Uncle. I'll just watch and keep quiet.”
And after that...
I passed the county exam, then the prefectural exam, then the academy exam...
“Congratulations, Master Lin, on passing the provincial examination!”
“Congratulations, Master Lin, on passing the metropolitan examination!”
“Congratulations, Master Lin, the emperor has named you top scholar at the palace examination!”
Grandma and the whole family blocked my door, weeping that blood ties were thicker than water.
I smiled and asked, “You didn't say that when we divided the family back then.”
