Chapter 1

"Uh..."

In the endless darkness, Xiao Qi suddenly sat up.

Sweat drenched his head, and the feeling of weightlessness still hadn't disappeared. It took him a while to recover from the shock.

As Xiao Qi regained his composure, his eyes slowly focused on the front.

A typical 1990s double-glass door bookshelf stood there, filled with books of various sizes. To the left was a wide-open door, the yellow wooden door looking very old, just like the one in his home over ten years ago.

Xiao Qi subconsciously glanced at the wall next to his bed, where a vigorous calligraphy piece, "Diligence is the path to the mountain of books, and hard work is the boat to the sea of learning," hung above.

The bookshelf by the bed, the balcony outside the small door... everything was just like the furnishings in his home far away in Yanyin City!

Strange, wasn't his family's house demolished in 2012, last year, and then turned into a high-rise building?

Could it be that he was seeing these things in his dream because he had been thinking too much about his parents recently?

While he was musing, a woman suddenly walked into the room and said quickly, "Xiao Qi, get up quickly. I'm waiting for you to have dinner. How are you feeling? Is your cold better?"

"Mom!" Xiao Qi found it amusing to see this woman, "I was just about to call you, and you appeared in my dream. How are you doing recently... Oh, damn, why do you look so young? Did you have plastic surgery?"

"Rubbish!"

The woman, who was in her forties, frowned and quickly came over to feel Xiao Qi's forehead, "You're not feverish. Why are you talking nonsense? My dear, are you still half-asleep?"

Xiao Qi was also stunned.

The real warmth of her hand didn't feel like something you'd experience in a dream.

And his mother's face, so clear right in front of him, didn't look like something you'd see in a dream, where faces are usually blurry.

Xiao Qi suddenly shivered.

He remembered that he was on a trip to the Grand Canyon National Park with his colleagues when he saw a little girl almost fall off a cliff. He pulled her back, but hit his head on a rock and passed out.

Even if he had woken up, he should be in the hospital, right?

Why didn't he see anything from the hospital, but instead saw a younger version of his mother?

In the next moment, Xiao Qi trembled and extended his hand.

These clearly much smaller, tender hands were completely different from his rough, calloused hands from years of physics experiments!

Xiao Qi suddenly jumped off the bed and opened the wardrobe door. The mirror inside clearly reflected the face of a handsome teenager around seventeen or eighteen, not the disheveled face of a 26-year-old otaku doctor.

"Mom, hit me!" Xiao Qi turned his head and said to his confused mother.

Chen Yulian, who was naturally a bit impatient, seeing her son acting like he was possessed, panicked and slapped him on the head, "My dear, wake up!"

"Ouch!"

Xiao Qi, whose head was now filled with golden stars, winced in pain.

But apart from the intense pain, his appearance didn't change, his mother didn't disappear or get older, and the furnishings in the house didn't disappear either!

That proved one thing.

He wasn't dreaming!

Since he wasn't dreaming, then...

Could it be that he had gone back in time?!

My God!

What on earth... what on earth is going on?!

Xiao Qi was an engineering student, accustomed to physics experiments, and he didn't believe in reincarnation or time travel.

But the fact was, he was indeed back in his high school days, in his old home in Yanyin City.

"Is this child sick and delirious? Should we see a doctor tomorrow?"

Sitting at the dining table, Chen Yulian, looking at her son who was eating and smiling foolishly, was quite worried.

Her son was good in every way, but he was a bit timid and indecisive. Now, with the college entrance exam approaching, the pressure was immense, which was really a terrible thing.

Xiao Qi's mother, Chen Yulian, had the same name as a Hong Kong actress. She was still working as a logistics cashier at the headquarters of the Construction and Development Bank in Yanyin City, not yet retired.

"Son, getting into college is important, but your mental state is even more important. Don't make yourself miserable over the college entrance exam, okay?" After much thought, Chen Yulian still gave Xiao Qi this advice.

"Okay, I know, Mom." Xiao Qi replied casually, not really taking it to heart.

Because he knew that in the winter break six months later, a friend of his father would send his children to study in the United States, and he would also be persuaded to go, thus starting his seven years of study in the U.S.

Thinking back to his past, he had struggled through various exams for half a year, only to suddenly cross the narrow bridge of the college entrance exam, a mix of excitement and disappointment that he still remembered.

Xiao Qi was a high-IQ person and had almost completed his Ph.D. in the U.S. in seven years.

American Ph.D. programs were notoriously difficult to complete. One of his colleagues was a Ph.D. student when Xiao Qi started college, and by the time Xiao Qi passed his Ph.D. exam, this person was still hanging around his advisor.

Just before he was reborn, Xiao Qi had completed a project and won an award in the most authoritative German mechanical and industrial joint magazine.

His advisor, delighted, signed off on his graduation and offered him a generous contract as a university teacher and research assistant.

His colleagues were happy and celebrated for Xiao Qi, taking him, who rarely left the campus, on a trip to the Grand Canyon National Park in the northeast, where they encountered an accident, and he was sent back to this time.

Now, Xiao Qi was wearing a thin shirt and shorts, and summer was not yet over.

Looking at the window next to the dining table, the sky had already turned dark. His mother mentioned that he had felt a bit stuffy in the nose at noon, took some medicine, and slept until it was dark.

At this time, his father should be in the position of the office director of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, a deputy section-level official with a lot of work.

Because the security situation in Yanyin City had been very poor in recent years, various cases and disputes were frequent. His father, when busy, would eat at the police station's canteen and only come home to sleep at night.

This complex and dark environment would only change two years later, when the criminal gangs had fought and suffered enough, and a new party secretary arrived to enforce the strictest crackdown, gradually improving the situation.

Speaking of his father, Xiao Xu, his colleagues and friends praised him as a capable person. He was very reliable, wrote beautifully, and had a very gentle and unassuming personality.

However, Xiao Xu's overly gentle nature meant he never sought advancement and was always content with whatever he had. Normally, he would only reach the level of a deputy section-level official by retirement.

Thinking about the timing, Xiao Qi was now in his senior year of high school, and his father was already 44 years old but was still only a deputy section-level official, not even a full section-level.

After the promotion of younger officials, there were two famous hurdles in the Chinese political system.

The first hurdle was the gap between section-level and department-level. Generally, if you hadn't reached deputy department-level by the age of 40, you would never rise higher than a full section-level official and would never truly enter the political arena.

The second hurdle was the gap between department-level and provincial-level. This wasn't just about age; you needed both opportunities and ability. Without either, you wouldn't be able to move from department-level to provincial-level.

Of course, there were special promotions, but they required significant opportunities to achieve significant leaps.

But looking back from 2013, with a bird's-eye view of this era, the period from 2005 to 2012 was still a grand and tumultuous time, with its richness and diversity not inferior to any brilliant era of the reform and opening up.

Thinking about his mother's occasional sighs, saying that with his father's abilities, he should at least have been a full department-level county party secretary, Xiao Qi had a bold idea: Could he take advantage of some good opportunities to push his father to a higher position, giving him more room to showcase his talents?

Thinking to this point, Xiao Qi felt even more excited.

What could be more exciting and joyful than changing his and his family's lives for the better?