Chapter One: Time Never Says Goodbye

Was it Zhuang Zhou dreaming he became a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming it became Zhuang Zhou?

Ryan Carter opened his eyes on the desk. Bright and warm sunlight was streaming through the old locust tree branches outside the third-floor window, shining on his face.

An unidentified object, moving at high speed with precise aim, struck his forehead, making a crisp “pop!” as it collided with skin and bone, then bounced aside.

The air was filled with the scent of chalk dust, like Normandy after a great battle—far more tragic than the Incheon landing. Ryan Carter looked up; his deskmate beside him was staring at him with a head-tilted, wide-eyed look of disbelief, as if watching a horror movie.

Ryan Carter’s head was a bit dizzy, as if he hadn’t yet woken from a long dream.

He felt the face of his deskmate was very familiar, but couldn’t recall who it was for the moment.

He remembered that previous drinking party, which had taken him across half the city—from a private restaurant to the 80th floor of the Jinmao Tower, then all the way to a riverside seafood stall, and finally the showdown at Holiday Karaoke. One side sang, the other took the stage; people from all walks of life played drinking games and urged each other to drink, battling until the sun and moon lost their light. Sometimes it was his boss whispering in his ear, “Xiao Cheng, you have to step up. This project, it all comes down to this!” Other times it was a subordinate’s voice, “Old Cheng, I’m done for, it’s up to you to get us out of this…”

He’d fought through three days and nights of such drinking parties, sleeping less than five hours in total. At the very last moment, he only felt the blood rush to his head and the world turn red.

Everyone at the party was dumbfounded. In the end, they all rushed over, calling his name, slapping his face. These voices spun around him as the world whirled, and at that moment, he remembered his last thought: “Isn’t this that sudden death they talk about in the news?”

It’s said that before death, the brain produces many strange dreams. Could this be one of them?

If he’d known his life would end this way, Ryan Carter swore he would have eaten a few more bites before then. His stomach was full of booze from endless socializing—dying of hunger would be such an ugly way to go…

Of course, there were many more regrets, but this was a life bound to the chariot of survival, dragged forward with no chance to pause for breath.

“Ryan Carter, stand up right now!”

He looked up and saw he was in a middle school classroom. The room was a bit old, the walls covered in scratches and peeling paint. Standing at the podium in front of him was his homeroom teacher from back then, Zane Thompson, known as “the Butcher.”

He’d earned that nickname because, in those days, he dared to openly accept gifts from students’ parents, and he was extremely petty. Those who gave gifts or got close to him were placed in the best seats.

Those who didn’t give gifts, or whom he suspected of talking behind his back, or simply didn’t like, he would find all sorts of excuses to pick on, make things difficult for, and belittle.

There was once a top-performing girl in the class whose parents refused to give him gifts even after his hints. He then resorted to all kinds of sarcastic insults, causing her grades to plummet, and she never recovered from the shadow of it.

His pointer was a thin bamboo branch, the kind used for brooms, and when he swung it, it whistled through the air. He was always ruthless when he used it.

So the students privately gave him the fitting nickname—“the Butcher.”

He was feared throughout the school.

Even years later, everyone still remembered the terror of those three years under his rule, hating him to the core.

And now, the whole classroom felt as cold as an ice cellar.

So this is a final flashback dream... But why dream of this annoying The Butcher Thompson?

At this moment, Zane Thompson had one hand on his hip, his hair parted in the middle, glaring at Ryan Carter with a “let’s see how far you go” expression, biting his lip. His other hand was raised in the air—clearly, the chalk that hit him just now had been thrown from this hand, as skillful as a master from the Tang Sect.

Even in a dream, he’s still so arrogant...

He suddenly remembered the deskmate who’d been staring at him—turns out it was Shawn Hughes, one of his childhood friends from the same compound. Not only were they in the same class in middle school, but they were also deskmates, known back then as the two “barking heads.”

They’d spent many carefree days together, but after going to different universities, they each went their own way, eventually lost in the vast sea of people.

He never expected to dream of him again—maybe the intense work had made him nostalgic for the past.

Ryan Carter reached out and patted Shawn Hughes’s face in front of the whole class, smiling, “You rascal.”

Shawn Hughes touched his own cheek, mouth agape, staring at Ryan Carter in horror. Usually, sleeping, doodling, and joking in class was one thing, but this was the Butcher’s class!

And to make matters worse, their class’s ranking in the city had dropped compared to previous years in the latest mock exam. This directly affected Zane Thompson’s bonus, since the final exam results were tied to his pay! With The Butcher Thompson, if you touched his interests, it was a big deal.