Reborn: The Top Student Goes on a Rampage

On her thirtieth birthday, Wei Mengmeng stood outside Chen Lin and Zhou Wan’s wedding, tore the gold-embossed invitation into four pieces, and threw it in the trash. As she turned away, a white car came hurtling toward her. When she opened her eyes again, a piece of chalk struck her forehead. Xu Cheng, the physics teacher, stood at the lectern. On the blackboard was a notoriously difficult final problem from Tsinghua’s independent admissions exam. No one in the class could solve it. Wei Mengmeng stood up, picked up a piece of chalk, and wrote out the answer in three lines. The classroom fell utterly silent. Her deskmate, Chen Lin, offered her a White Rabbit candy, his ears turning red. He seemed like a completely different person from the groom at the wedding when she was thirty. “Keep it for yourself,” she said. In her previous life, she had turned down Chen Lin’s confession and gone to Peking University. He went to Tsinghua and married Zhou Wan. She earned her PhD in America alone, stayed up late in the lab alone, and received that invitation alone. In this life, she had returned with the physics knowledge of a thirty-year-old and a body weighed down by exhaustion. This time, she wasn’t going to revolve around anyone. She would get into Tsinghua. Not for Chen Lin, but for herself. She would major in physics, win the national scholarship, and do the best research. As for Chen Lin… he could follow if he wanted or leave if he wanted. She wouldn’t wait for him again. But Chen Lin didn’t seem inclined to leave. On the first page of her notebook of mistakes, Wei Mengmeng wrote: “153 days until the college entrance exam. Goal: Tsinghua, Department of Physics. This time, no one is getting in my way.” Chen Lin stopped her in the corridor, his eyes red. “Wei Mengmeng, are you giving up on me?” She looked at him and remembered the text message that had gone unanswered at two in the morning in her previous life. “Chen Lin, get into Tsinghua first. Then we’ll talk.”