Chapter 1: The Divine Punishment System

"Don't underestimate the high school entrance exam, everyone. The kind of high school you get into might decide your entire future!" A skinny, middle-aged teacher stood at the podium, passionately giving a motivational speech to the students who had just entered their third year of junior high. Suddenly, he snapped the chalk in his hand in two and hurled it hard at a student sleeping on his desk in the last row: "Henry Carter, get up! Sleeping on the first day of school, you have absolutely no shame!"

The hit Henry Carter lifted his head, drowsily looking at his surroundings. The spot where the chalk had struck his head still hurt, and the pain made it clear that this was no dream.

Seeing him get up, the homeroom teacher didn't say anything more and continued with his previous topic. He had basically given up on this student with terrible grades.

But as Henry Carter looked at the environment around him—familiar yet a bit strange—and at his once again slender hands, he realized he had transmigrated.

A flood of information surged into his mind at that moment, making his head ache so badly it almost gave him a nosebleed! The information left by the original owner made him realize this wasn't some kind of rebirth, but that he had suddenly arrived in a parallel world, transmigrating into another "himself."

At this moment, he was still a third-year junior high student.

In his previous life, Henry Carter had lived quietly until the age of 26, without any major ups or downs, and without any real achievements. Until one day, he suddenly woke from a dream and began to seriously question his entire life. That was when he saw a sentence: Don't spend your whole life muddling along and then claim that "an ordinary life is true happiness."

Yeah, in that life, he really had just muddled along. Henry Carter felt utterly disheartened.

Then his consciousness grew more and more blurry, until he fell into darkness, and then transmigrated here.

Henry Carter frantically sifted through the information flooding his brain: history had actually followed the same path, with no real differences. Qin Shi Huang unified China, and it was still the People's Republic of China now—no difference at all. In fact, the country's legal system and regulations were even more complete than in his previous life, especially in the area of intellectual property.

There had been piracy in this world too, but the culture was so underdeveloped that the country had to take strict measures to protect original works. Only then could people create with peace of mind, even supporting their families through original work. When originality could make money, more people would pursue it.

But the most important thing was: the Chinese textbooks had changed!

The pieces that should have been in the third-year Chinese textbook—like "Memorial to the Throne," "Snow—To the Tune of Qin Yuan Chun," and two foreign poems—were all gone, replaced by new content! Content that Henry Carter had never seen before!

Because of his love for "Memorial to the Throne," Henry Carter had a deep impression of the third-year Chinese textbook from his previous life. He had always liked literature, both classical and modern, even online literature.

And he also had a super useful brain. He'd heard that the founder of New Oriental English could memorize an entire legal code in a few hours, and reciting an English dictionary was a breeze. People were amazed by this, but Henry Carter wasn't, because he could do it too.

But this kind of memory wasn't limitless. Being able to remember didn't mean you could remember forever—after all, the brain's capacity was limited.

Henry Carter had a certain suspicion: in the cultural field of this parallel world, something had gone off track, so the things once considered classics were all gone.

For some unknown reason, the cultural industry in this world was also thriving, but its level wasn't as high as on Earth.

The simplest example: there were ancient poems, but not so many lines that had been passed down for thousands of years and were on everyone's lips.

As for online literature, it was even more exaggerated. It seemed to still be in the stage of just breaking away from traditional literature, and not even the typical "leveling up" tropes existed.

He looked at his deskmate, thinking it was best to confirm a few things: "Have you ever heard of Song Jiang, Tang Monk, or Sun Wukong?" The TV shows that teenagers liked most were nothing more than "Water Margin" and "Journey to the West," so asking about characters from these two masterpieces was more reliable.

His chubby deskmate looked calmly at Henry Carter through thick glasses: "What are you talking about?"

"Nothing, nothing, just saying you're really handsome." The look on his deskmate's face was priceless—someone actually called him handsome! But inside, Henry Carter was overjoyed. Wasn't this exactly what he was best at?

The cultural tracks of the two worlds had diverged like train rails at a certain point, creating huge differences. And Henry Carter had transmigrated with all those classic literary works in his mind.

Even if he didn't copy those classics, Henry Carter could still become wildly popular just by relying on the web novel tropes in his head that were ahead of this era.

Thinking of "Memorial to the Throne," lines from it began to surface in Henry Carter's mind: "When the late emperor began his enterprise, it was not yet halfway complete when he died..."