Volume One: Years of Youth

Chapter 1: A Strange World

A bizarre sense of temporal and spatial confusion rampaged through his mind.

The stars spun in the sky, everything seemed both real and unreal.

Henry Thompson slapped his forehead hard, but the more he slapped, the more his head hurt.

“Hey, Henry Thompson, are you really okay? Do you want us to take you to the hospital?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine, really, I just need to rest for a bit.”

Waving off James Carter, Henry Thompson shook his head vigorously, then widened his eyes and looked around.

If the memories in his mind weren’t wrong, this was the basketball court of Jinan Prefecture National No. 13 Senior High School. James Carter and the others playing basketball not far away were his classmates from Class 5, Grade 11. And today was the 55th year of the Republic, May 17th, Saturday, lunar year Yihai. Oh, right, in the Western calendar, it’s 1995.

Yes, you read that right, this is Jinan Prefecture, not Jinan City.

Here, the years are counted by the Republic calendar, similar to the era names in ancient China.

Recalling carefully, Henry Thompson found in his mind the clearly recorded history from his textbooks: In 1644 AD, Li Zicheng entered Beijing, the Ming Emperor Chongzhen hanged himself on Coal Hill, then Li Zicheng marched out of Shanhai Pass to face the allied forces of Dorgon and Wu Sangui, and won a great victory. In the following twenty years, the founding emperor of the Dashun dynasty campaigned east and west, successively pacifying the Manchus, Mongols, Hui, and Taiwan. For a time, the Dashun dynasty flourished to the extreme...

Alright, it’s all very confusing and bizarre.

Compared to the history Henry Thompson had studied before, history took a huge turn at the Dashun dynasty of Li Zicheng.

And then, as always, the corruption and decline of the dynasty was inevitable, the first industrial revolution in the West arrived as expected, and in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, the Chinese nation indeed fell into the predicament of “backwardness means being beaten.” Even Hong Kong was really snatched away by the British for eighty or ninety years. But miraculously, in 1865, the Dashun dynasty actually launched a top-down reform, known in history as the “Yichou Reform.” From then on, though there were setbacks and reversals, the Chinese nation ultimately embarked on the road of capitalist reform.

Then, although time and space were already extremely distorted, China still followed a roughly similar path. The difference from the other history in Henry Thompson’s memory was that here, China carried out reform and opening up very early, becoming the world’s first socialist country to announce reform and opening up. In the following decade, led by the red big brother in the north, more than a dozen countries in the red camp announced varying degrees of internal reform and opening up to the outside world.

From then on, the world’s two major camps shifted from military confrontation in the Cold War to regional cooperation and economic rivalry in an economic war. The speed of the third technological revolution accelerated greatly as a result.

Oh, by the way, the northern Bear Empire hasn’t collapsed yet!

Henry Thompson’s thoughts remained in chaos...

This really is a world that seems both real and unreal, and unreal yet real!

He rubbed his forehead hard, muttering to himself in a low voice, “The problem is, wasn’t it just that the wire malfunctioned and I fell? It wasn’t even that high, how could I have died from that? And now, not only did I die, but I’ve crossed over to such a bizarre and chaotic world...”

When he first woke up, Henry Thompson almost thought he’d developed schizophrenia from the fall. It wasn’t until his understanding of this world in his mind became clearer and clearer that he finally became certain that all of this was actually real—he had come to a strange time and space, and had become a high school junior also named Henry Thompson.

Alright, Beijing isn’t called Beijing, it’s called Shuntian Prefecture. Nanjing isn’t called Nanjing, it’s called Yingtian Prefecture. As for Shanghai... it’s called Songjiang Prefecture...

What a pain.

He instinctively searched through several pockets before remembering that he didn’t know how to smoke yet. So he rummaged through the school uniforms that a few classmates had taken off nearby, and finally found half a pack of cigarettes called “Daming Lake.” He took one out and lit it.

He took a deep drag, choked a bit, and couldn’t help coughing.

“Yo, yo, look, look, Henry Thompson is actually smoking too!”

“Hey, Henry Thompson, didn’t you say you hated your dad smoking the most? How come you’re smoking now?”

“Damn, Henry Thompson, I only have half a pack left, and you don’t even know how to smoke. Don’t waste them, okay? If you smoke one, that’s one less for me!”

“Come on, do you have to be so stingy? This is Henry Thompson’s first cigarette ever!”

“It’s not that I’m stingy, you all know I’ve run out of pocket money for the week. This half pack is all I have to get through today and tomorrow. If I finish them, where am I going to get money to buy more?”

With the cigarette dangling from his mouth, Henry Thompson picked up his school uniform, patted the dust off his butt, and stood up.