My IQ has been increasing year by year.

1999, April 12.

The last day of the century.

The whole world seemed to be caught in a frenzy of revelry and inexplicable panic.

Television news reports were filled with coverage of the "Y2K bug" crisis, as if the moment the clock struck midnight, computers around the world would explode, bank deposits would be wiped out, and nuclear missiles would be launched automatically.

"Meet in 1998" is playing everywhere. Although it's a song from last year, it still feels particularly fitting at this time of welcoming the new century.

Winters in the south are damp and chilling to the bone.

The sky was overcast, as if a huge lead plate was pressing down on it, brewing a rare snowfall.

But on the Chen family's balcony, in that small space that had been converted into a study, the temperature was frighteningly high.

Seven-year-old Chen Zhuo sat at his desk.

He was wearing a thick cotton-padded coat, a red woolen scarf knitted by his mother around his neck, and a fountain pen tightly in his hand.

The pointer of the 500-type multimeter on the table was quietly pointing to zero.

But in Chen Zhuo's mind, the instrument needles had already reached the red danger zone.

Since discovering the shortcut of "physical perception of the body," he has become like a shark that has tasted blood, frantically devouring knowledge far beyond his age.

With a multimeter, he was no longer satisfied with the simple Ohm's Law.

He began to study electric power, Joule's law, and even began to try to derive simple electromagnetic field equations.

He took apart the radio and the electric fan in his house.

He measured the resistance of each resistor and calculated the charging and discharging time of each capacitor.

He not only needs to "know what it is", but also "know why it is".

This intense study put him in a state of extreme excitement.

It's like a 286 computer that could only run Minesweeper, which he forcibly used to render 3D blockbusters.

At this moment, a copy of "High School Physics, Required Course 1" is open in front of him.

Yes, high school physics.

He has already skipped the rest of junior high school.

For him, the basics of mechanics and electricity were as tasteless as plain water; he needed something more intense.

He was deriving the "kinetic energy theorem".

The formula is beautiful.

But in Chen Zhuo's mind, these were more than just letters.

He tried to construct a perfect physical model in his mind: a rigid body sliding on a smooth plane, experiencing forces, acceleration, and energy conversion.

He had to calculate the motion of every single molecule and simulate the heat dissipation caused by friction.

"This isn't right..."

Chen Zhu muttered to himself, his voice hoarse.

He felt the model in his mind vibrating.

The amount of data is too large.

In a seven-year-old's brain, the connections of neural synapses are not yet fully mature, and the degree of myelination is insufficient to support such high-speed signal transmission.

But he couldn't stop.

A near-pathological greed controlled him.

That was a vengeful thirst for knowledge from a mediocre person in a previous life.

In his previous life, he looked at these formulas as if they were gibberish. In this life, he can understand them and control them. This sense of control is addictive and irresistible, even though his brain feels like it's being stabbed with steel needles.

"Buzz—"

The tinnitus returned.

For the past few days, this high-frequency whistling sound has been accompanying him, like an overheated engine groaning.

The wind outside the window suddenly picked up.

The dry branches tapped against the glass, making a "tap, tap" sound, like urgent knocking on the door, or like a warning.

The sound of firecrackers came from downstairs.

That was the neighbors celebrating the arrival of the new millennium in advance.

"Crackling and popping—"

The sound of firecrackers drilled into Chen Zhuo's ears, instantly distorted into some kind of sharp signal interference.

Chen Zhuo frowned, and his pen suddenly drew a long ink mark on the paper.

In that instant, he felt the scene before him flicker.

The formulas in the book began to distort.

The ∆ symbol transformed into a rotating triangle, spinning faster and faster until it finally became a black hole.

"What's going on...?"

Chen Zhuo wanted to stand up and get a glass of water.

But he found that his legs wouldn't obey him.

An unprecedented sense of weakness surged from his very bones like a tidal wave, instantly overwhelming him.

It's not just about being tired.

It's hot.

He felt his eye sockets burning, and his breath felt like fire scorching his nasal cavity.

"Overloaded..."

This was the last clear thought that flashed through Chen Zhuo's mind.

Immediately afterwards, the switch called "rationality" tripped with a snap.

Darkness descends.

……

"Jianguo! Jianguo! Come quickly!"

Liu Xiuying's terrified scream pierced Chen Zhuo's fog of consciousness.

He felt himself being picked up.

Those hands were rough and strong, but they were trembling slightly.

"Why is it so hot! It must be at least forty degrees Celsius!"

"Don't panic! Quick, grab a blanket! We need to go to the hospital!"

The father's voice.

Chen Zhuo wanted to open his eyes, but he couldn't.

His eyelids felt incredibly heavy, and with the slightest effort, countless bizarre and colorful blobs would explode in front of his eyes.

He did not completely lose consciousness.

Or rather, his consciousness was trapped in a far more terrifying dimension.

fever.

For adults, a fever is just an illness.

But for someone with an adult soul trapped in the feverish brain of a seven-year-old, this is a logical disaster.

Elevated body temperature leads to changes in enzyme activity and disruptions in neurotransmitter transmission.

Chen Zhuo's brain began an uncontrollable "scrambled code frenzy".

At that moment, he felt as if he were not lying on the back of his father's bicycle, but floating in a huge void made of geometric shapes.

There was no air around, only flowing numbers.

"Chen Zhuo... Chen Zhuo..."

The mother's calls came in, but they turned into a drawn-out, low-frequency electronic sound.

Chen Zhuo tried to respond, but when he opened his mouth, what came out was not a sound, but a string of bubbles.

Each bubble contains a physical symbol.

Ω, λ, F.

These symbols squeezed and collided around him.

Suddenly, a giant gear appeared in front of them.

Those were planetary gears he had drawn in class.

But at this moment, it became enormous, like a steel mountain that blotted out the sky.

The gears started to turn.

"Boom!"

The sound of each tooth snapping together was like thunder.

Chen Zhuo was horrified to discover that he was right between these two meshing gears.

He is too young.

He was like a tiny ant, watching helplessly as those enormous steel teeth rolled down on him.

"No... I don't conform to the principles of mechanics..."

He screamed in his nightmare, trying to refute the illusion with logic.

"Based on the force analysis, there should be a lubricating oil film here... the pressure shouldn't be this high..."

However, the logic failed.

The enormous gears fell mercilessly, crushing him.

excruciating pain.

That wasn't physical pain; it was the pain of having one's mind forcibly formatted.

Then, the scene changed.

He fell into a river.

That's not water, that's electricity.

Golden, scalding electric current.

Countless blue electrons swarmed around like piranhas.

They have sharp teeth, each marked with "1.6 × 10^-19 C" (electric charge).

You've crossed the line.

An electron screamed at him.

"Your device cannot withstand this voltage!"

"Sizzle—"

An electric current passed through his body.

He convulsed violently during a hallucination caused by a fever.

In the real world.

Emergency room at the First People's Hospital of the city.

"Hold him down! The child is having a seizure!"

The doctor shouted.

Chen Jianguo was covered in sweat and held down Chen Zhuo's kicking legs tightly. Liu Xiuying was crying so hard she could barely stand, clutching the red scarf tightly in her hand.

"Doctor! What happened? She was perfectly fine when she went out!"

"Febrile seizures!"

The doctor gave Chen Zhuo an injection of a sedative while shining a flashlight into his pupils.

"His fever is too high, 39.8 degrees Celsius! If he had come any later, his brain would have been fried!"

Looking at his son, who was pale and burning hot on the hospital bed, Chen Jianguo felt as if his heart was being torn apart.

He was a rough man who knew nothing about medicine.

But he could sense that his son was going through something terrible.

Even while unconscious, Chen Zhuo was still muttering something incoherently.

Chen Jianguo leaned closer to listen.

He thought his son was calling for "Dad" or "Mom".

But what he heard were several words that sent chills down his spine:

"Damping...insufficient...overheating...system crash..."

Chen Jianguo's tears welled up instantly.

He suddenly remembered the look in his son's eyes when he licked the battery with his tongue that night.

It was a look of recklessness, a gaze that seemed determined to burn itself out.

"It's my fault...it's all my fault..."

Chen Jianguo slammed his fist against the wall, causing his knuckles to bleed profusely.

"I should have stopped him sooner... He's only seven years old... How could I have believed him when he said 'I'm not tired'!"

……

I don't know how much time passed.

That chaotic nightmare, filled with geometric violence and digital attacks, is finally beginning to fade away.

The sedatives and antipyretics began to take effect.

Chen Zhuo felt as if he had been thrown out of that huge centrifuge and landed heavily on a soft cotton field.

The world is quiet.

The suffocating feeling of overload disappeared, replaced by an extreme weakness that came from being hollowed out.

It's like a forest after a great fire, leaving only smoldering ashes.

Chen Zhuo slowly opened his eyes.

The first thing you see is a stark white ceiling and an iron frame with an IV drip bottle hanging from it.

The droplets fell one by one.

"Drip...tap..."

Chen Zhuo subconsciously counted the seconds in his mind.

"Period approximately 1.5 seconds... Frequency 0.67 Hz..."

The moment the habitual calculation began, a sharp, piercing pain shot through my temples.

Chen Zhuo closed his eyes in pain and mentally slapped himself.

Stop.

He said to himself.

"Stop calculating, or the computer will crash."

A warm hand covered the back of his hand.

Chen Zhuo turned his head.

That was my mother, Liu Xiuying.

She was asleep by the bedside, with dark circles under her eyes and tear stains at the corners of her eyes.

She gripped Chen Zhuo's hand tightly, so tightly that it seemed as if she was afraid her son would fly away if she let go.

On the other side, the father, Chen Jianguo, sat on a small stool, leaning against the wall, head held high, mouth slightly open, emitting soft snoring.

His stubble had grown quite a bit, turning a dark bluish-black, and he hadn't changed out of his work clothes, which smelled of familiar engine oil and an even stronger smell of cigarette smoke.

Judging from the looks of it, he smoked quite a few cigarettes in the hallway.

The clock on the wall pointed to six in the morning.

2000 1 Month 1 Day.

The first rays of sunlight of the new century shone through the somewhat dirty glass windows of the hospital and fell on Chen Zhuo's pale face.

Chen Zhuo looked out the window.

There is no apocalypse.

The computer didn't explode, and the nuclear bomb wasn't launched.

The sun rose as usual.

Only he almost burned out his own intricate little machine on this night that marked the turn of the century.

Chen Zhuo moved his fingers.

The sense of disconnect between hardware and software has lessened, but it still exists.

This fever was like a violent forced shutdown, giving him a bloody lesson.

He always thought that being reborn meant returning to the starting village with a max-level account and slaughtering everyone.

He believed that as long as his willpower was strong enough, he could ignore the mediocrity of his body.

But he was wrong.

Big mistakes.

this is the truth.

Reality is gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, and the limits of biology.

Even if his soul were Einstein's, if he were inside a rabbit's body, he wouldn't be able to calculate relativity; he would only faint due to insufficient blood supply to the brain.

"I was too arrogant."

Chen Zhuo looked at the clear liquid in the IV tube and silently reflected on his actions.

"I've treated this body as a tool, as a consumable; I'm mortgaging my future."

If things continue like this, even if he learns calculus before the age of ten, he probably won't live to be twenty.

A genius who dies young is of no use to his family or himself.

"woke up?"

A hoarse voice.

Chen Jianguo woke up at some point and was staring at him with bloodshot eyes.

Chen Zhuo opened his mouth, his throat so dry it felt like it was on fire: "Dad..."

"Don't speak."

Chen Jianguo stood up, poured a cup of water from the thermos, scooped up a little with a spoon, tested the temperature on his own lips before bringing it to Chen Zhuo's lips.

"drink."

Chen Zhuo obediently took a sip.

The warm water soothed my throat, like rain after a long drought.

Chen Jianguo looked at his son's face, which had regained some color, and let out a long sigh. He slumped into the chair as if his spine had been removed.

"son."

Chen Jianguo took out a cigarette, and just as he was about to light it, he realized that he was in a hospital room, and irritably put it back in the cigarette pack.

He looked at Chen Zhuo with a complicated expression.

It conveyed both heartache and a seriousness between men.

Do you know what happened to you last night?

Chen Zhuo nodded: "He has a fever."

"It's not a fever."

Chen Jianguo shook his head and pointed to his temple.

"The doctor said it's because your brain works too fast and your body can't keep up. It's like that old machine tool in our factory. We insisted on putting high-speed steel blades on it, and what was the result?"

The knife didn't break, but the bed collapsed.

This analogy is accurate and hardcore.

Chen Zhuo fell silent.

"Dad understands that you want to do well in your studies."

Chen Jianguo held Chen Zhuo's small hand, which still had an IV needle in it. The hand was so thin, it was heartbreaking.

"But we can't abandon the car just to get to our destination. What's the point of running fast if the car breaks down?"

Chen Zhuo looked at his father.

This man, who is usually carefree and only knows how to fix machines, spoke the simplest philosophy at this moment.

"Dad, I was wrong."

Chen Zhuo lowered his head; this was the first time he had truly admitted his mistake since his rebirth.

It's not to appease adults, but to bow to the laws of life.

"If you make a mistake, you have to correct it."

Chen Jianguo took a piece of paper out of his pocket.

That was Chen Zhuo's "daily schedule" that he had previously posted on the wall.

The page was covered with dense writing: memorize vocabulary at 6 a.m., do physics problems at noon, derive formulas in the evening...

There was only sleeping, no rest, and no play.

Chen Jianguo took the form and tore it up in front of Chen Zhuo.

"Sizzle—"

The sound of paper tearing was particularly clear in the quiet hospital room.

"From today onwards, follow Lao Tzu's arrangements."

Chen Jianguo pulled a small notebook out of his pocket; it was what he had written while keeping watch in the corridor last night.

"First, you must get at least ten hours of sleep every day. If you're even a minute less, I'll burn all your books."

"Secondly, I've confiscated that multimeter. I'll return it to you when you pass the standing long jump test."

"third……"

Chen Jianguo paused, a malicious smile appearing on his face.

"Starting tomorrow, get up and run with me every morning. Five kilometers, not a single step less."

Chen Zhuo was stunned.

Run?

Why make him, a mental worker who would rather sit than stand, go for a run?

"What? You're not happy about it?" Chen Jianguo glared.

Chen Zhuo looked at his father's unshaven face, and then at his mother who was still fast asleep beside him.

He took a moment to feel his weak, feverish, and nearly broken body.

He recalled the gear in his dream last night that broke because it had no lubricant.

What is lubricating oil?

It's a rest.

What is a steel structure?

It's about physical strength.

"willing."

Chen Zhuo smiled.

Although the smile was still a bit pale.

"Dad, running alone isn't enough."

"Oh? What else do you want to practice?"

Chen Zhuo glanced at the rising sun outside the window, his gaze hardening once more. But this time, the fervent restlessness had vanished, replaced by a profound tranquility.

"We still need to eat meat."

Chen Zhuo said earnestly.

"I want to eat beef and drink milk. I want to grow taller."

Chen Jianguo was taken aback, then burst into laughter, the sound of which shook the IV bottle.

"Fine! Eat up! I'll sell everything I own to make sure you eat meat every meal!"

Liu Xiuying was awakened by the laughter. She groggily raised her head and asked, "What's wrong? Who wants to eat meat?"

"Mom, I want to eat meat."

Chen Zhuo looked at his mother, a hint of tenderness in his eyes.

"I want to grow as strong as my dad."

That way, I can protect you.

In this way, I can stand firmly in this turbulent century to come and reach for those higher, farther, and more dangerous truths.

The first day of 2000.

Chen Zhuo lay on the hospital bed, watching the snowflakes finally fall outside the window.

Ruixue is a prosperous year.

He silently rewrote the underlying code of his "biological computer" in his mind.

Survival priority is raised to the highest level.

That year, Chen Zhuo was seven years old (eight years old by the traditional Chinese age reckoning).

He lost his multimeter and his ability to skip grades.

But he found the only secret to surviving in this world and winning in the end.

That is:

Alive.

Live strong.