“Class, this is a critical time in your senior year. You absolutely cannot slack off. Tell your families that there will be no break this Saturday; we’ll have extra lessons.”

Ji Huai pushed up his glasses, the lenses reflecting a merciless, cold glint.

“Ahhh—”

Below the podium, faces numb and youthful, yet heavily ravaged by studying, opened their mouths wide, letting out waves of unwilling wails.

“Stop wailing and let’s get on with the class. Isn’t your teacher here with you, working 996? I’m just short of working 007 with you. As long as I can get you all into good universities, it would be worth it even if I died from overwork.”

It was rare for Ji Huai to joke with his students. At only twenty-six years old, his teaching performance had been the best year after year. The school leadership had high hopes for him. This was his first year as the head teacher for a senior class, so the pressure was immense.

In order not to disappoint the expectations of the school leaders and students, he wished he could split himself in two. He would accompany the students during their evening self-study until 10 p.m., check the dorms until 11 p.m., return to his teacher’s apartment to prepare lessons until 12 a.m., and then wake up at 5 a.m. Such a demanding work schedule was taking its toll on him, but he endured it with pleasure.

Fortunately, there was only a month left until the college entrance exams. As long as all his students could get into good universities, it would be worth it even if he collapsed and died from exhaustion.

Unexpectedly, right after setting this flag, Ji Huai died from overwork at the podium that very night.

An explosive pain from his heart caused Ji Huai’s vision to go black. His six-foot frame, as thin as a sheet of paper, crashed to the ground. Familiar faces were filled with panic and fear. The pain was so intense that Ji Huai couldn’t utter a single word. Before he died, he was still tightly clutching half a piece of chalk—the noble faith of his entire life.

*A person really shouldn’t go around setting flags…*

As he died, Ji Huai thought with some reluctance, *I still haven’t sent this group of students to their college entrance exams…*

“Quick, quick! Lin Heyu, save the Teacher! The Teacher isn’t moving in the water!”

A group of people clamored at once, their pleading gazes all turning toward a single youth. The youth had sharp brows and sword-like eyes, his posture tall and straight. He stood out conspicuously among the group of twelve and thirteen-year-old kids, and was implicitly their little leader.

The youth’s brows furrowed tightly. Hearing their words, he immediately jumped into the pond. His earlier playful smugness was completely replaced by anxiety and regret. His bare, strong arms firmly wrapped around the motionless Teacher in the water. With a swing of his body, his excellent swimming skills and robust physique allowed him to move easily in the water even while holding a grown man.

On the bank, a group of youths waited anxiously. As soon as Lin Heyu reached the edge, they all scrambled to help the motionless Teacher first. It was only after both were safely on shore that everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

“Lin Heyu, it’s all your fault! We told you the Teacher can’t swim, but you still deliberately led him into the water,” a round-faced, round-eyed youth complained to Lin Heyu, his cheeks puffed out as he spoke slowly.

“Shut up! He slipped and fell in on his own!”

Lin Heyu was tall and well-built. Soaked to the bone and glaring with wide, angry eyes, he looked like a rakshasa emerging from the water, utterly terrifying.

Lin Heyu laid the Teacher flat and pressed on his chest again and again, not stopping until all the water he had choked on was expelled. Only then did he anxiously check to see if the Teacher was waking up.

He had been forcibly thrown into this godforsaken little county by his father, ostensibly to be ‘reformed.’ He couldn’t get involved in a homicide case just a few days after arriving.

“Cough, cough—”

A cough filled with pain interrupted the half-grown boys’ terror. They instantly crowded around, looking at the Teacher who was slowly regaining consciousness on the ground.

Ji Huai hadn’t yet recovered from the sharp pain of his heart exploding when, the next second, the sensation of suffocation in his lungs filled his pain receptors. Ji Huai coughed violently. After a long while, he slowly opened his eyes.

Upon opening his eyes, his view, which should have been wide, was crowded with several round heads. Their expressions were all a mixture of joy and relief, except for one particularly handsome youth who wore a smug look.

As the sharp pain subsided slightly, Ji Huai reached out a hand, wanting to support himself on the ground to stand up. The next second, his arm was grabbed by the sullen-faced kid, who pulled him up with a single, forceful motion.

Ji Huai looked him up and down. *Whoa, this kid is even taller than me. Which class is he from?*

Wait!

Only then did Ji Huai get a clear look at his surroundings. This was no longer the classroom he was so familiar with. The children before him were not his flock of students waiting to be nurtured. The buildings were quaint and antique, with low brick houses and tiled roofs—distinctive architecture rarely seen in modern cities. He dazedly raised his hand. The wide sleeves of a scholar’s robe, soaking wet, clung tightly to his body. It wasn’t the white T-shirt he had worn for a long time and couldn’t bear to throw away.

Alright, it was time for the classic philosophical questions: Who am I? Where am I? What am I supposed to do?

“I…” Ji Huai gripped the youth’s hand tightly. The moment the hoarse sound left his throat, it was followed by a heart-wrenching cough.

The youth supporting him was clearly flustered. He was a head taller than Ji Huai and much stronger. He couldn’t walk quickly while holding Ji Huai, so he simply swept him up into a princess carry and strode quickly toward the house.

“You… cough, cough, cough!” The coughing, which had just started to ease, was triggered again by the youth’s action and wouldn’t stop. In his twenty-six years of life, this was the first time Ji Huai had been carried like a princess, and by a youth who was clearly younger than him!

How could this not make Ji Huai feel ashamed?

Unfortunately, he had been in the water for a long time and his body was weak. His struggles were as feeble as a kitten’s.

Lin Heyu held the cold, thin body in his arms securely and steadily carried his Teacher to the bedside.

“Lin Heyu, Granny Li from next door is here to complain!” the round-faced boy shouted before turning tail and running. Seeing that things were not looking good, the other companions also fled in a flash.

Startled by the round-faced boy’s words, Lin Heyu’s hands loosened, and he dropped his half-drowned Teacher onto the bed, which was about half a foot below his arms.

The breath Ji Huai had just managed to catch was knocked out of him by the fall.

Lin Heyu stumbled back a few steps. Seeing the Teacher’s handsome face scrunched up in pain on the bed, he apologized profusely, “S-sorry, Teacher. I-I’ll go get a doctor for you right now.”

After throwing out these words, the youth named Lin Heyu ran off and disappeared. Ji Huai’s vision went black, and he felt that his end was probably near.

He was soaked through, curled up on the bed. His mind was groggy. Through eyes blurred by pond water, he surveyed the inner room. It was simple and elegant, yet exuded an indescribable sense of history. The more Ji Huai looked, the heavier his heart became. *Where on earth is this?* One moment he was teaching his students, the next he opened his eyes and was in the water.

Before Ji Huai could figure anything out, a fiery old woman burst through the door. Her coarse linen clothes were wrapped around a portly body. Her face was etched with deep wrinkles carved by wind and frost, and her brows were knitted in a perpetual frown. But upon seeing the weakening Ji Huai on the bed, her expression turned entirely to worry.

“Master Ji, what’s happened to you? Was it that gang of little rascals bullying you again?” The old woman’s grip was incredibly strong. She hauled Ji Huai up from the bed with one pull and shook him back and forth.

And so, after this series of torments, the pitiful Ji Huai finally lived up to expectations. His eyes rolled back, and with a snap, he fainted completely.

When he woke up again, the only person in his sight was the youth named Lin Heyu.

It was already dark. The youth was alone, leaning over the table and playing with a lit candle. A spark from the flame popped, startling him. He turned his head and saw Ji Huai’s lifeless face, which looked even paler in the candlelight, like a beautiful ghost coming to claim a life. He was startled again.

“T-Teacher, you’re awake?” Lin Heyu cautiously approached, picking up a wrung-out cloth hanging by the bed. His face was a struggle between guilt and indignation.

Having been a teacher for so many years, it wasn’t difficult for Ji Huai to see through a student. With a little thought, he knew that the ordeal he had suffered today was likely the handiwork of this youth.

Ji Huai had fainted, woken up, and fainted again. He had thought it was all a long dream, but to his surprise, he was still in this place when he opened his eyes again. Ji Huai had no choice but to stand at the crossroads of materialism and take a turn toward idealism. Otherwise, there was no way to explain with natural science why, after the pain in his heart, he would wake up in such a strange place.

It might not even be his own era, or his own country.

“What… cough… what time is it?” Ji Huai didn’t want to alert the boy, needing to hide his own identity. They all called him Teacher, so he should still be a teacher. However, the term *fuzi* was a form of address for teachers from at least a hundred years ago. Could it be that he…

Had transmigrated?

“It’s the hour of Xu. You have a fever. Granny Li went to brew some medicine. You’ll be fine after you drink it.”

Lin Heyu’s eyes darted away, not daring to look at his sickly Teacher.

Nor did he dare to look at the beautiful face with its knitted brows, made all the more striking by the flickering candlelight.

Ji Huai didn’t notice Lin Heyu’s unease. He raised his eyes and looked directly at the youth before him. The oppressive aura of a modern teacher washed over him. Lin Heyu froze for a moment, his eyes wide. In the end, he still stubbornly stuck out his neck and reluctantly admitted his fault.

“I know I was wrong. I shouldn’t have played a prank on you, Teacher. I really didn’t know you couldn’t swim. But look, when I saw you fall in, I immediately jumped in to save you. Besides, it’s not like anything serious happened to you, Teacher…”

*But because of your prank, you killed the original owner.*

Ji Huai’s face was expressionless, but inwardly he mourned for the original owner. He himself had died from overwork at the noble podium. He believed that the original owner, also a teacher of the people, would certainly not have wished to die because of a student’s prank, only for his body to be taken over by a soul from the 21st century.

The cuckoo occupying the magpie’s nest—

An end also meant a new beginning. He hoped the original owner could realize his ambitions in a wider world, instead of being trapped here and meeting such a misfortune.

Feeling the lingering pain emanating from his fragile body, Ji Huai’s sorrowful mood was momentarily distracted by this mischievous youth.

After just a brief exchange, Ji Huai was alarmed by the youth’s delinquency and felt a pang of heartache for his unjustly deceased colleague.

Ji Huai didn’t dare say much more, for fear of exposing his identity. The youth before him was mischievous, but he didn’t seem stupid. It was inevitable that he might become suspicious.

He would have to slowly gather more information about this dynasty.