Volume 2: The Source of Life Chapter 1: The Wheel of Helplessness

  Bang!!

  The quilt was lifted up and his buttocks were heavily slapped by someone.

  "Lazybones, get up."

  I lay on the bed, my mind still dazed and confused, not yet fully awake from the shock of reincarnation. Without opening my eyes, I knew that it was my gentle and kind mother who was calling me to get up.

  I didn't make a sound, and Mother grumbled a bit, wearing her favorite little red flower slippers, "tap tap tap" went downstairs.

  After lying there for several minutes, I opened my eyes and stared blankly at the ceiling, with nothing on my mind. It wasn't until Mother called out again from downstairs that I got up, smiling wryly to myself in front of the mirror as I dressed.

  Yesterday I was still sleeping in the mountains like a savage, but now, in the mirror is a delicate and weak young man with a height of about 1.76 meters, neither strong nor thin. To put it simply, this is a person who can't make a splash even if thrown into the sea of people.

  However, who would have known that such an ordinary person, seemingly dull and unremarkable, actually harbored unparalleled life experiences and energy within.

  "Yes, back to seventeen years old again."

  I'm not very sad, angry, sorrowful, confused, helpless... and other negative emotions have left me for a long time. What I have is only numbness.

  He listlessly went downstairs. His mother was carrying a vegetable basket out the door to buy groceries. On the table, milk and bread were laid out, along with a note.

  I ate my breakfast at a moderate pace, without even glancing at the note, whose contents I was already familiar with. It just asked me to come home early tonight, as she would be buying eel to make an eel burger for my birthday.

  But she definitely didn't think that this time going to the vegetable market would lead to her being kidnapped.

  I'd rather not say too much about this matter.

  Before that, I had also stopped her from going to the vegetable market, but a series of subsequent kidnappings and injuries made me very annoyed. Within a few days, my father's construction company went bankrupt.

  It turned out later that those thugs were hired by my father's creditors. The only quick solution was to find the creditor and take him down directly.

  But for me now, it's not easy to achieve these things either.

  Rather than this, kidnapping is just kidnapping!

  As for the indifference to kinship, I don't know which cycle it started from. Perhaps it was after several cycles of practicing Buddhist dharma. At first, in order to escape the shackles of such repeated cycles, I spent several cycles studying Buddhism, Taoism, various schools of thought, Western theology and other miscellaneous classics.

  In the end, except for failure, the seven emotions and six desires have also gone away. Family affection, love, friendship, all are no more. But my conscience as a human being still exists, facing someone who is good to you every day, I am always grateful in my heart.

  I've said before that my memories are complex and vague, so the reason I remember these things so clearly is because every time a reincarnation begins, for a period of time, my life is completely identical.

  It's a bit exaggerated to say it's accurate to the second, but saying it's like the back of one's hand is absolutely no problem.

  It has happened hundreds of times, and I still can't forget it no matter how hard I try.

  After having breakfast, I walked slowly to school. It was still the same as before, standing halfway up a small hill as a key middle school in the city, overlooking a large river, and after crossing the bridge, I arrived at the first high school with a university student wholesale market.

  It is said that once you enter this high school, it's equivalent to having one foot already in the university.

  Class 6 of Senior Three is my class, when I walked into the classroom, the noisy and quarrelsome voices did not stop, to them, I am still the me of yesterday.

  I sat down at my seat and leaned back, thinking quietly to myself. September 21st, 1999, what a distant day it was.

  "Hmph, prodigal son." A scornful cold laugh came from beside him.

  She is my deskmate, Class Monitor Lin Hongyi. A girl wearing glasses, with fair skin and a slightly chubby face.

  Lian Hongyi saw that I didn't fight back, and a hint of surprise flashed across his face, but he didn't say anything else. He stood up and shouted to the people around him: "Everyone, hand in your homework! Those who need to copy, hurry up and copy, those who need to write excuse notes, move faster, I want everything handed in before class starts."

  As soon as the words fell, the classroom suddenly became chaotic. Some people were looking for others to copy their homework, while those who had skipped class yesterday and begged for mercy from Lian Hongyi were making all sorts of noises that filled the air.

  In such a chaotic situation, I can surprisingly hear everyone's conversation clearly, and even what they are going to say next is very clear to me. Sometimes, this contrast can cause mental confusion.

  In fact, in a few of my reincarnations, I was indeed crazy.

  No need to cover my ears, I just gently closed my eyes, and the sounds around me suddenly disappeared cleanly. With a single heart reading the books of saints, two ears do not hear the affairs outside the window. This should be the state I am in.

  "Hey, Fang Cheng, where's your homework?"

  My body was roughly pushed by someone, I opened my eyes and looked at Qian Hongyi, saying faintly: "Not written." After that, I didn't close my eyes again, because I knew things hadn't ended yet, and Qian Hongyi hadn't been angered to tears and running away.

  "Haven't written?" Lian Hongyi hummed coldly, "Went out to play all night again yesterday, didn't you? Looking at your unspirited appearance, isn't it just relying on your old man having some dirty money for donations and charity? Otherwise, you would have been expelled long ago."

  I still didn't make a sound, and Lin Hongyi's lines were exactly the same as before. At this time, a short and stout man and a tall and strong young man walked over.

  "Yo yo yo, Lin Daban is showing off his authority again." The fatty puffed out his chubby face with a sly smile and leaned against Lin Hongyi's desk. "Little girl has entered puberty, huh? Hehe, isn't it that special day recently, temper not small at all."

  Lian Hongyi slapped the table and stood up suddenly: "Gao Shengping, this has nothing to do with you."

  Fat boy sneered: "Cheng Ge's affairs are my, High Fat's affairs. What's wrong, want to put on an official air? Your old man is just a police chief, my old man is the deputy mayor, and he happens to be in charge of the police system too, don't pretend to be a little princess."

  Lian Hongyi's face turned red and white, she suddenly stomped her foot and covered her face, crying as she ran away. The classroom was suddenly quiet in a terrifying way, Lian Daban, who was usually known as the "mother tigress", had actually been made to cry?

  Gao Pangzi was also stunned, his beady little eyes staring straight at me.

  I patted him on the shoulder and said, "Don't worry, she'll be back by herself before class."

  Actually, things aren't complicated. Before yesterday, to be exact, before September 21st, 1999, I and Jian Hongyi were old nemeses, often bickering and fighting. Although the winner was always me, she was like a stubborn fighter, repeatedly defeated but never tired of it.

  This gave everyone a wrong impression of her, as if she was born to be a strong and fearless woman who wasn't afraid of competition. But little did they know that today, after being scolded by Gao Pangzi, she actually shed tears and left.

  What's wrong, still don't understand?

  Okay, I admit it, she later became my wife in my previous life.

  Hehe, sounds like fun.

  But now, I don't feel anything anymore.

  Before class started, Lin Hongyi indeed returned, and when she walked into the classroom, the tear stains on her face had been wiped away, replaced by her usual proud and good student demeanor.

  After I sat down, she didn't even glance at me. However, I knew that this high attitude of hers could only last until noon, and when I still hadn't apologized by the time my afternoon class started, she began to use her arm to probe across the 38th parallel, advancing towards my abdomen.

  What disappointed her was that I didn't react at all to this overstepping behavior. To be exact, I didn't react much to anything today.

  In the afternoon chemistry class, I came back to myself from a vacant state, ready for the next little episode.

  On the podium, the beautiful female teacher was passionately explaining something, I didn't bother to listen to a single sentence, although I knew that soon she would call me up to solve problems.

  I'm too lazy to find a classmate to learn from first and steal their methods. Compared to the consequences of saying I don't know, learning how to solve problems is too much trouble.

  A piece of paper was passed forward from the front row. I opened it and pretended to take a look, then made a "K" gesture with my hand towards the tall and fat kid in the front row.

  Every time I start a new cycle, I have to pretend to be the same as before. It's really painful, but if I act too different, there will be more trouble.

  The note said that Gao Pangzi and the tall and strong young man named Wang Fujun were betting on the color of their beautiful teacher's underwear, with the loser helping the winner carry his school bag for a month, and I was asked to be the witness.

  "Fang Cheng, you come and solve this problem."

  Suddenly, the beautiful teacher pulled out a pink chalk and looked at me with full expectation. I thought, she must know that I am the representative of not loving to study in the class, planning to open a breakthrough from me.

  I stood up with a disappointed look and said: "Sorry, teacher, I don't know how to do this question."

  She frowned and smiled: "Then let's change a simple one."

  "Sorry, teacher, there's no question in the textbook that I can solve."

  "Alright!" The beautiful teacher got angry and shouted loudly.

  My face was expressionless, standing upright, the atmosphere in the classroom suddenly became very strange. Although she is a teacher, she also knows that it's not suitable to continue like this at this moment.

  "Alright, sit down first."

  After school, I was unexpectedly pulled by her. She stood upright, with that pair of full breasts, and looked at me seriously, saying: "Fang Cheng, do you know how terrible your attitude was before?"

  I calmly said: "Teacher, I was like this a few hundred years ago."

  "She...". She was suddenly infuriated by me, mistakenly thinking that I was intentionally talking back to her. Her large chest heaved up and down, taking deep breaths several times before suppressing the urge to scold me.

  Actually I didn't have the mood to intentionally annoy her, but if I don't let her die of teaching my determination, then in the future every day in class she'll come find me to solve problems, isn't that annoying?

  "Teacher, I'm telling the truth!" I added fuel to the fire with a sincere face. In fact, I didn't lie either.

  "Shut up!" She finally couldn't help but shout loudly, "Fang Cheng, do you know that if you don't behave yourself and study well, the prison cell will be waiting for you in the future."

  "Go to jail?" For some reason, my numb heart skipped a beat, and a sarcastic sneer rose to the corner of my mouth. What prison could be harder to sit in than the one I've already been sitting in for hundreds of years?

  I couldn't be bothered to deal with this passionate female teacher about education, I bid farewell and left directly. As I passed by the two of them, I said lightly: "Red!"

  This is my first day of school life, and for nearly a month afterwards, I still have to live like this.

  To me, life is like a classic movie that makes people cry, although it's wonderful, I've watched it for over a hundred times and the only thing I can do is to hold back my urge to go crazy.

  Is living like this not a pleasant way of committing suicide?