A few minutes later.

Fang Cheng put down the empty bowl and grabbed a napkin to wipe his mouth.

He stood up, walked to the entrance, pulled down the canvas backpack hanging from the wall hook, and slung it over one shoulder.

Then he crouched down and changed into a pair of sneakers with slightly worn soles.

"I’m full, going to school."

Fang Cheng called inside.

His mother leaned half her body out from the kitchen, still holding a half-washed rag, and loudly instructed:

"The weather forecast says there’ll be rain tonight, take the black umbrella at the door, don’t catch a cold from the rain again."

"Got it."

Fang Cheng conveniently grabbed the long black umbrella leaning against the shoe cabinet and patted the side pocket of his backpack.

Then he passed through the garden with a few pots of roses, pulled open the iron gate, and stepped onto the slightly deserted street.

The iron door closed with a "clang", shutting out the coughing and TV noises from inside the house.

The small town in the early morning was shrouded in a thin layer of mist.

White steam rose from the steamer of the roadside bun shop, and the bicycle bells of people hurrying to work rang out in unison.

The surroundings were as familiar as usual, yet carried a faint sense of strangeness.

Fang Cheng felt somewhat uneasy, walking slowly along the riverside park path.

Whoosh—

A cold wind filled with moisture blew by, sweeping up a few dry yellow leaves that hit his calves.

He suddenly stopped, his gaze passing through sparse willow branches, looking toward the riverside.

In the shadow of the bridge, there seemed to be a distorted black silhouette standing.

The proportions of the figure were extremely bizarre, its torso twisted together like a pretzel, with hands so long they almost reached the ground.

Fang Cheng’s eyelid suddenly flicked, and he immediately raised his hand to rub his eyes.

When he looked again, the riverside was empty.

Only a piece of dry black wood was soaked in the muddy river water, bobbing up and down with the waves.

Was it an illusion?

Fang Cheng lowered his hand, his brows furrowing unconsciously.

The cold feeling as if being stared at by a cold-blooded creature still lingered on the skin of his back.

"Hey! What are you daydreaming about so early in the morning?"

His shoulder was suddenly slapped hard from behind.

Fang Cheng turned to look.

He saw a boy with thick-bottomed black-rimmed glasses and a bowl-cut haircut grinning at him.

This was his only friend in class, Zhou Ming.

"Hurry up, the first class is math with that menopausal Old Wang. If we’re late, we’ll definitely be called to stand in the hallway!"

Zhou Ming gave Fang Cheng a push and complained incessantly:

"Also, the afternoon PE class has a thousand-meter run test, it’s simply going to kill me."

"With our small builds, if we finish last, it’ll be so embarrassing to be laughed at by the girls."

Fang Cheng casually echoed a couple of sentences.

Zhou Ming was a chatterbox who couldn’t sit still; after complaining about class, he then excitedly leaned in closer:

"By the way, our school’s ’Supernatural Phenomenon Research Club’ still needs one more member, or it’ll be forcibly disbanded by the student council. Are you coming or not?"

"Let me tell you, someone from the neighboring county took a real UFO photo the day before yesterday, and someone heard a woman crying in the abandoned hospital..."

Seeing Fang Cheng’s indifferent expression, he immediately threw out a bigger enticement:

"As long as you join, I’ll immediately let you be the vice president!"

"No interest."

Fang Cheng flatly refused.

"Come on, do a brother a favor, you don’t have to work, just have your name listed..."

The two were bickering as they walked through the school gate.

A piercing class bell suddenly rang out over the campus.

Zhou Ming turned pale, screamed, and dragged Fang Cheng, sprinting toward the teaching building.

Once they rushed into the classroom and sat at their seats.

Fang Cheng just felt a burning pain in his chest like a bellows, and his legs were trembling.

He couldn’t help but sigh inwardly; the physical condition of this body was really appalling.

The first class was boring math.

The chalk scraped out a monotonous tapping sound on the blackboard, and the math teacher’s hypnotic voice echoed from the podium.

Fang Cheng supported his chin with one hand, gaze drifting over the windowsill, out to the gray sky.

The distorted shadow seen by the river in the morning clung to his mind like it had taken root.

His innate sharp instincts always made him feel that some inexplicable danger lurked in this seemingly peaceful small town.

Moreover, since waking up this morning, the intense sense of incongruity had lingered on his mind.

It’s like being amidst layers of fog, with some important memory being obscured.

"Fang Cheng!"

The voice from the podium suddenly rose, interrupting his thoughts.

"Stand up and explain how to draw the auxiliary line for the three-dimensional geometry problem on the blackboard!"

Fang Cheng snapped out of it, pulled out his chair, and stood up.

Faced with the dense geometric figures and function symbols on the blackboard, his mind was blank.

There was a sudden suppressed laughter around him.

A few naughty boys sitting at the back even whistled gleefully.

"Don’t zone out in class. If you don’t know it then..."

The teacher on the podium shook his head, a trace of disappointment flashed in his eyes, and he waved his hand, preparing to let him sit down.

At that moment, Fang Cheng’s gaze slightly focused.

In the depths of his mind, a faint spark seemed to suddenly flash by, briefly tearing through the fog.

The geometric figures, initially as complex as a celestial script, instantly broke down into basic lines and surfaces in his eyes.

A vast calculation logic leapt into his mind instinctively.

Without the slightest pause, he calmly spoke:

"Taking point D as the origin, establish a spatial rectangular coordinate system, connect point P and point A..."

The boy’s voice was not loud, yet it was clear and organized.

Every step precisely hit the core of the problem.

The previously noisy classroom became quiet all of a sudden.

The laughter abruptly ceased.

The students who were waiting to see him make a fool of himself turned their heads, looking at Fang Cheng standing at his seat as if he were a monster.

The math teacher on the podium slightly opened his mouth, his hand holding a half piece of chalk froze in mid-air, his face full of shock and disbelief.

This was the last big problem on the mock exam that came out from the city yesterday.

He only wanted to leverage the problem to rebuke Fang Cheng for zoning out in class, never expecting any student to solve it.

"Teacher, do you need me to continue to find the cosine value of the dihedral angle?"

Fang Cheng’s tone remained calm.

No... no need, completely correct, very clear thinking.

The math teacher stammered for a moment, then coughed to cover his lapse.

His gaze at Fang Cheng grew a bit odd, but also contained an undeniable admiration:

"Sit down. Pay attention in class; with your learning talent, as long as you put in the effort, you can definitely get into the city’s key high school."

Fang Cheng nodded calmly, pulled out his chair and sat back down.

Beside him, Zhou Ming was completely dumbfounded, mouth agape, staring at him as if he were an alien.

The rest of the class and the afternoon’s PE test went smoothly without any further incidents.

The mundane campus life was quickly passing by unnoticed.

Night soon enveloped the small county town.

The sky was gloomy, and a drizzling autumn rain began to fall.

After saying goodbye to Zhou Ming, Fang Cheng held a long-handled black umbrella and walked home on the wet street.

Pushing the iron gate of the yard open and entering the house, a hot dinner was already laid out on the table waiting for him.

After dinner, Fang Cheng was urged by his parents to go upstairs to his bedroom to do homework.

In the living room downstairs, the TV was playing the evening soap opera, occasionally mixed with the sound of parents arguing over household expenses.

Sitting at his desk, Fang Cheng chewed on his pen, staring at his textbook for a while.

He couldn’t concentrate at all.

The twisted shadow he glimpsed under the bridge by the river in the morning, and the scene of him solving difficult problems in math class as if aided by gods, kept alternating in his mind.

The rain outside was getting heavier, raindrops striking the glass, making a dense "pattering" sound.

A gust of cold wind slipped through the gap in the window, making the papers on the desk rustle.

Fang Cheng stood up and walked to the window to close it.

As his hand pushed the aluminum window frame, a few drops of rain blown by the wind splashed onto the back of his hand.

Fang Cheng paused slightly.

Under the glow of the desk lamp, he saw that the droplets on his hand were not transparent, but had a cloudy, gelatinous texture.

He immediately gripped the aluminum window handle, pulled it hard, and locked the latch tightly.

Then turning around, he pulled a tissue from the box on the desk and wiped it across the back of his hand.

The surface of the tissue immediately spread out a black stain, like ink.

Suddenly, a strong, rotten fish stench assaulted his nose.

This rain, was black!

Fang Cheng’s eyes narrowed slightly.