When he was a child, he had also suffered injuries from falling, but the wounds, dripping with blood, would always heal on their own after a short while, leaving behind a faint gray mark, which would also fade away within a few hours. Naive and ignorant of the ways of the world, he once foolishly asked his grandfather about it. His grandfather, looking at him with loving eyes, couldn’t give a clear answer either—his mouth would twitch, and he’d mumble something vague about “a gift from the heavens” or the like.

Later, his grandfather died. He started cooking for himself, but as a clumsy child, he would sometimes cut his own fingers with the kitchen knife. Unexpectedly, he discovered that his fingers, just like the character in a Gu Long novel, would emit a faint metallic sheen when struck by the blade, turning into strange, blade-proof digits. Then he realized that his whole body was hard to injure, as if there was always some kind of layer protecting his skin…

On the night he discovered the secret of his body, he sat dumbly at his doorway, gazing at the stars in the sky, thinking for the entire night. Then he began to go mad, self-harming with any sharp object he could find in the house, stabbing at his arms and chest. All he managed to do was leave countless tiny grayish-white dots on his body, which, unsurprisingly, gradually faded away after a few hours.

A child who suffers such a shock can’t help but become a little unhinged. He ran to the courtyard of the Bureau of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry across from his little dark room, and in the pitch-black stairwell of the bureau building, he started jumping from the second floor. Nothing happened. So he tried the third floor, then the fourth… It wasn’t until he jumped from the highest, the fifth floor, that he finally felt a bit dizzy, probably from the impact.

But his body was completely unharmed.

“Damn!”

Standing in the courtyard of the Bureau of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, cursing at the star-filled night sky, he accepted his fate. He accepted his fate as a freak.

It was from that day on that he began to stand in high places, gazing at the crowds below… Not that he was physically standing high, but deep down, he had already labeled himself as a pitiful monster.

It was also from that day that David Foster began to become the school’s famous trash-picking loser. He let others bully him without ever fighting back. The logic was simple: none of us have ever seen a burly man running through the streets with a kitchen knife, hunting down the little ants that once crawled over his feet.

※※※

Early the next morning, David Foster brushed his teeth, sniffed his clothes to make sure there wasn’t any obvious odor, then took out a towel and carefully wiped down his increasingly rusty old bicycle before heading to school.

They were in Class 1, Grade 3, in the easternmost classroom on the third floor. Outside the window were the school’s plane trees. David Foster’s seat was by the window, so when he was bored, he would often stare at the leaves, dead branches, and caterpillars on the plane trees, watching them change color with the seasons…

With a whoosh, as he was spacing out, he instinctively sensed something flying toward him. His strange constitution not only gave him an inhumanly strong body, but also an incredibly sharp reaction speed. Before his mind could even register what it was, his body had already reacted on its own—his right palm shot out and firmly caught the object.

Except for him, all the other students knew what it was. When they saw him catch it so cleanly and effortlessly, they couldn’t help but gasp softly in surprise—of course, they were saying he was cool. Back then, Stephen Chow was all the rage, and “Fight Back to School” was every student’s favorite. Seeing him pull off such a cool move naturally drew a round of applause.

David Foster was clueless, so he looked down at what he had caught.

“A blackboard eraser?”

He gave a wry smile. Since he had caught the teacher’s favorite weapon, it looked like he was about to be hit with the teacher’s lion’s roar attack.

“David Foster!” The politics teacher and homeroom teacher, George Foster, finally stormed over, his triangular eyes flashing with class hatred beneath his black-rimmed glasses. His thin lips began to open and close rapidly, spewing out all kinds of aggressive words.

“How could you… how could you… daydreaming in class, how could you…”

David Foster looked at the homeroom teacher with an innocent face, but his ears were automatically filtering out the words. The only keywords he caught at the end were: parents, teachers, motherland, the Party, and so on.

He shook his head, but didn’t show the slightest hint of impatience on his face. He just quietly watched as the teacher’s spittle flew like a waterfall from Mount Lu.

The teacher’s surname was Yuan, his ancestral home somewhere in central Hubei, from Longquan, born into a poor family. He was the first university student in the village’s history, and was quite proud of his background. He often said that when he left the village for the provincial capital to attend university, the whole village came to see him off, and the village chief pooled money to buy him a watch.

David Foster sighed, knowing that Mr. Foster was about to launch into that same old story again, so he quickly stood up and said obediently, “I know I was wrong.”

Mr. Foster looked at him with utter disdain and said, “If you can change, even a sow could climb a tree.”

The whole class burst into laughter. Out of the corner of his eye, David Foster saw a look of pity on Emily Sullivan’s face, so he turned and gave her a reassuring smile.

Seeing that he could still smile at a time like this, Mr. Foster was so angry that he trembled all over. Pointing his finger at David Foster’s nose, he scolded, “You still have the nerve to laugh? With someone like you, you’ll spend your whole life picking up trash!”