Chapter 2

As time passed, Wang Peng grew bit by bit. After his vocal cords developed, he immediately started speaking, and he was naturally bilingual in Chinese and English. This truly highlighted the importance of the environment. In his previous life, Wang Peng had spent his entire life studying, starting from elementary school and continuing through college, always struggling to pass his English exams. After more than ten years of studying, he still found it difficult to write in English, let alone converse.

However, after his reincarnation and living in the United States, where everyone spoke English, even his Chinese-American parents spoke English at home, rarely using Chinese. At first, with his limited English skills, Wang Peng found it as difficult to understand adult conversations as listening to a foreign language. Like other infants, he could not understand what adults were saying and could only rely on his own understanding and guesses.

But as time went on, through constant exposure, Wang Peng learned English in less than a year. While there were still some issues with writing, he had no problem understanding and conversing. This made him realize that the years of English study in his previous life had been in vain.

Wang Peng's "outstanding talent" amazed the adults. When other children, whose vocal cords had just developed, could only babble and mimic simple words, Wang Peng could already speak fluently and converse with adults. Moreover, when other children were just beginning to stand and walk unsteadily, Wang Peng was already running around and even helping with household chores. This shocked his parents and everyone who knew him. In China, this might be considered normal, but in the West, it was highly unusual.

However, things did not go as Wang Peng had imagined. His parents did not praise or reward him; instead, they took him to the hospital to see a doctor, suspecting that he might have a condition. The final result, of course, was that everything was normal.

But this was just the beginning. In his previous life in China, Wang Peng was a lazy, homebound man who had never seen much of the world or traveled abroad. He only knew from online chats with netizens that the education system in the West was vastly different from that in China, with a gap as wide as the difference between heaven and earth.

However, Wang Peng never imagined that the gap would be so extreme. A week after starting kindergarten, he discovered something astonishing: kindergarten was all about play, with no learning involved. Teachers played with the children and even took them to the park.

This was something that would never happen in Chinese kindergartens. In Wang Peng's memory, kindergarten was already a place for learning, with classes in Chinese and math, and even multiplication and division.

One day that Wang Peng would never forget, he was in the kindergarten, watching the young children babble and the teacher ask simple questions. When the teacher asked the children what one plus one was, Wang Peng, unable to bear the frustration, blurted out that one plus one equals two, and two plus two equals four, and so on.

The teacher was stunned, almost speechless, and immediately went to the principal. The principal then asked Wang Peng some simple math questions, which he answered without hesitation.

Afterward, the principal, along with a police officer, found Wang Peng's parents and even brought a court notice, suspecting that his parents might be abusing him. Both Wang Peng and his parents were shocked, and he still did not know how the matter was resolved.

However, because of this incident, Wang Peng skipped grades and went directly to elementary school, earning the title of a prodigy. However, life in a skipped grade was not as rosy as he had hoped, mainly due to the differences between Eastern and Western education systems.

In China, teachers would be very accommodating to such a prodigy, as it directly affected their bonuses. In the West, while teachers might show some care, they generally adopted a laissez-faire approach.

Moreover, school bullying in the West was rampant. Older and stronger students often bullied younger and weaker ones, a common occurrence in American movies and TV shows.

Despite his prodigious reputation, Wang Peng, still a child, could not escape the threat of bullying. A few days into elementary school, he was cornered in the bathroom. Fortunately, a teacher rescued him before his head was pushed into the urinal.

After that, Wang Peng hired a private tutor and began training in combat skills. After more than half a year of training, he returned to school and personally pushed the bully's head into the urinal.

Gradually, Wang Peng, who had always planned to live a carefree life, discovered the joy of learning. Western education was very engaging, encouraging independent exploration and self-directed learning, which was a stark contrast to the rote learning in China.

Moreover, Western education did not require a broad range of subjects. In China, students had to study chemistry, geography, Chinese, math, history, and more, while in the West, students could focus on subjects they were interested in, which supported specialization.

Perhaps due to the better genes of his new body or the different teaching methods, Wang Peng felt his learning progress rapidly, no longer relying on his past knowledge.

Additionally, Wang Peng developed a strong interest in archaeology and adventure, and his studies focused entirely on archaeology. In the process, he truly discovered the joy of learning, a feeling he had never experienced in his previous life, which was deeply engrossing.

At the age of twelve, when others were still in elementary school, Wang Peng successfully obtained a Ph.D., a legitimate degree that allowed him to supervise graduate students, not just a doctoral student.

After obtaining his Ph.D., Wang Peng left school and, with great excitement, flew to an archaeological site to experience real archaeology. Normally, graduate students could already accompany their mentors to archaeological sites, but due to his young age, he had always stayed in the laboratory to avoid any potential harm.

Of course, Wang Peng's parents were worried and accompanied him to the archaeological site. At twelve, he was still a child, and other children his age were still in elementary school, struggling with multiplication.

Wang Peng, however, was going to a potentially dangerous archaeological site to work, which made his parents both proud and anxious. No parent would not be happy to see their child succeed, but Wang Peng's young age was a significant concern. If he were twenty-two instead of twelve, his parents would not have been so worried.

However, everything went smoothly. Wang Peng, the twelve-year-old archaeologist, was warmly welcomed and loved by his fellow archaeologists, especially the female workers, who found him very cute.

After that, Wang Peng's parents accompanied him to several more archaeological sites before gradually letting him go on his own, with an assistant to take care of his daily needs.

Thus, Wang Peng worked for five years, growing from a twelve-year-old child to a seventeen-year-old young man. Due to his travels and interactions with locals, he learned several languages. Years of fieldwork in the sun also gave him a bronze complexion and a well-built physique.

Moreover, his five years of archaeological experience made him a well-known figure in the field, even appearing in newspapers and on television, and being interviewed for programs. Many people, even those much older than him, called him "teacher."

Everything went smoothly until a few months ago, when Wang Peng discovered an ancient tomb in Egypt. While excavating with his friends, he suddenly fainted, shocking his colleagues.

When the unconscious Wang Peng was taken back, the doctor said he was just exhausted and needed rest. However, if it were that simple, it would have been better...