To be fair, whether it’s music, movies, or TV dramas, Henry Thompson is absolutely the kind of person who, once he falls in love with something, will obsess over it to the extreme. Even though he hadn’t made much of a name for himself well into his thirties, he really did know a wide enough range of things, and his tastes were broad enough. He was especially familiar with the music, film, and television of that era.

So, after spending more than a day getting a rough understanding of the arts and entertainment world of this time and space he now found himself in, the light in his heart began to shine brighter and brighter.

Yeah, it was at least 100 watts now—specifically, the brightness of a 100-watt LED.

To be specific, everything in this era—literature, art, film, music, painting, and so on—was broadly the same as the era Henry Thompson had once experienced, but different in the details.

By “broadly the same,” take literature and film as examples: maybe the stories, the language, and the cinematic techniques were different, but the spiritual core was subtly aligned. The same went for music—the songs and melodies were different, but the spiritual pursuit and the direction of the soul were in sync.

And this was true both in the East and the West. Western arts had generally followed the developmental path Henry Thompson was familiar with, without much deviation. The closer it got to 1644, that turning point in Eastern history, the more the trajectory matched what Henry Thompson knew. Many famous artists and works of art fit perfectly into the history in his mind. But in China and the East, things had changed much more.

As for the differences in the details, that was simple. For example, the movies, TV shows, and songs Henry Thompson knew from his previous life—there was almost no overlap with those in this life!

Of course, just because the song titles didn’t overlap didn’t mean the melodies wouldn’t, and just because a movie didn’t exist didn’t mean there weren’t similar scenes in other films. But… this was already more than enough!

As a seasoned amateur singer and a semi-experienced third-rate actor, he knew exactly what it meant that only he in this world possessed those melodies and images from his memory.

……

A day later, Sunday night, 11:30 p.m.

Henry Thompson lay in bed, his mind racing with thoughts, his eyes shining with excitement.

Henry Thompson’s mom, Helen Clark, came out to use the bathroom. She noticed the light leaking from under the door and couldn’t help but knock. “Little Henry, why aren’t you asleep yet? Don’t you have class tomorrow?”

Henry Thompson quickly jumped out of bed. “I’m going, I’m going, I’ll sleep right away. I just suddenly wanted to write something down, I’ll be done in a minute!”

“Writing? Don’t try to fool me with your dad’s old tricks. You’re still so young, and you’re already using ‘inspiration’ as an excuse to stay up late? If you really have that much energy, the final exams are coming up—just don’t end up in the bottom three again! Now, go to sleep!”

No more arguing. Whether he’d taken off his clothes or not, Henry Thompson reached out and turned off the light.

He listened to the footsteps fading away. Henry Thompson figured his mom, Helen Clark, had gone back to her room. After waiting a bit longer and making sure it was quiet outside, he turned the light back on, crawled under the bed, and started rummaging around. Soon, he pulled out a guitar case covered in dust.

Not caring about the dirt, Henry Thompson excitedly opened the case…

Well, two strings were broken.

……

It has to be said, some ways of thinking ingrained in a nation’s bones are really hard to change. For example, even though times had changed, in 1995 in this world, Jinan National No. 13 Senior High School still had key classes and regular classes—in the second year, classes one, three, and five were the key classes.

Key classes meant top students and excellent teachers. Everyone—inside and outside the school, teachers and parents—had only one expectation: since you’re in a key class, getting into Guozijian University is your goal! At the very least, you can’t possibly fail to get into Shandong National First University, right? After all, you’re from the key class of Jinan National No. 13 High! We’re one of the top ten high schools in Shandong Province, and our predecessor was the Jinan Prefecture Academy of the Shun Dynasty, known as the “Little Guozijian of Shandong”!

Monday morning.

The fourth period for Class 5, Year 2 was Chinese.

Henry Thompson’s seat was in the third row from the back. At this moment, the teacher was lecturing passionately, the students were listening attentively, but Henry Thompson was half-lying on his desk, bored, his gaze fixed for a long time on the back of the girl sitting in the middle of the third row.

She was Grace Miller.

At first, Henry Thompson had been quite curious about the teaching methods, approaches, and standards of this world, but after flipping through all the textbooks for the second semester of sophomore year in one morning, his interest was quickly exhausted.

For example, this fourth period Chinese class—the textbook was almost no different from the Chinese class in his previous life, except that there were more and longer classical Chinese passages, and they made up a larger proportion of the curriculum. What they were studying today was something Henry Thompson had already learned in his previous life: a famous piece by Grand Historian Sima Qian—“Letter to Ren An.” So, before he knew it, his mind started to wander.

“Henry Thompson, stand up!”