Chapter 2: Old Friend

A pot of century egg and lean meat porridge and some side dishes were placed on the dining table by Yang Tianxing.

"Ouch, that burned me." Yang Tianxing shook his hands vigorously.

"I told you to take less, but you wouldn't listen, you're so careless." Gao Meilan also walked out of the kitchen carrying two dishes and gave Yang Tianxing a sidelong glance.

"The food is on the table and you're still watching TV!" Gao Meilan's scolding frightened Yang Jianjun into hurriedly turning off the TV and sitting down at the dining table.

"Empress Gao's cooking is still the best!" Yang Tianxing said while eating the dishes and gulping down the porridge.

"Slow down, who's competing with you! Are you a starving ghost reincarnated?" Gao Meilan tapped Yang Tianxing with her chopsticks.

"Go get the admission letter in a while and come back home early, you are not allowed to wander around the streets, nor are you allowed to run around everywhere, just get the letter back first," Gao Meilan said sternly.

Yang Tianxing was a bit impatient: "Fine, fine, fine, I will definitely bring the admission letter back for you."

Gao Meilan wanted to say something more but was interrupted by Yang Jianjun with a gentle shake of his head.

"What are your plans now that you're in university?" Yang Jianjun asked, looking straight at his son.

Yang Tianxing's hand holding the chopsticks paused: "In any case, I've thought it through. Except for the first semester, I won't ask you for tuition or living expenses in the future. I'll find a way to make money myself!"

Yang Jianjun nodded without saying anything; the education he had given Yang Tianxing since childhood was to cultivate his ability to do things for himself, so he still trusted Yang Tianxing very much.

To take a step back, if he really had no money, could we really not give him living expenses?

"You dare! You little brat, your wings have hardened, haven't they? You haven't even started university and you want to do what?" Gao Meilan slammed the table in anger after hearing this.

"What's there not to dare!" Yang Tianxing replied with his neck stiffened.

Although Gao Meilan was angry, seeing that her husband did not speak, she knew that he supported their son's idea.

Although the couple listened to Gao Meilan when they had disagreements on trivial matters, Yang Jianjun's attitude carried a lot of weight when it came to the major undertaking of raising children.

Yang Tianxing shook his head: "I'll just go to register by myself, you two go do whatever you need to do."

"It's over two hundred kilometers away, and there's thousands in tuition too!" Gao Meilan said with dissatisfaction.

"I'll carry it all the same." Yang Tianxing curled his lips in disdain, thinking to himself that he hadn't let them send him off in his past life, and it was even more impossible in this one.

Looking at the silent Yang Jianjun, Gao Meilan could only retreat and wait until they returned to the bedroom at night to settle the score with this man.

After finishing his meal, Yang Tianxing put on his shoes and rushed out the door: "Empress Gao, I'm leaving first, I'll be back in a while to bring you good news!"

"It's all learned from you! Acting like a hoodlum!" Gao Meilan glared at Yang Jianjun.

Yang Jianjun could only lower his head to eat, thinking: "Why do I suffer every single time."

Just as Yang Tianxing left the residential complex, he took out a Hibiscus King, lit one, and inhaled the fresh air mixed with smoke into his lungs: "Fucking great!"

He walked slowly down the street, the light from the rising morning sun scattering across the streets of the millennium.

Yang Tianxing looked around and admired the view; the millennium-style architecture that should only have been visible in his memories—the blue glass, the white tiles—made Yang Tianxing fall into a strange sensation.

"Little Yang! Little Yang!" This intimate form of address pulled Yang Tianxing back to reality. Yang Tianxing looked back and smiled knowingly at the slightly chubby, dark-skinned boy running toward him.

"Shao Ziyang, stick with me in this life, and I'll take you to the top." Yang Tianxing patted his panting brother and said.

"You dog, haven't we always been together?" Shao Ziyang cursed in confusion.

"Hahahaha, of course!" Yang Tianxing put his arm around Shao Ziyang's neck and walked toward Jinzhou No. 1 High School.

"Little Yang, why do you smell like cigarettes?"

"Because I just smoked."

"When did you learn to smoke? How come I don't know! You're bragging again, aren't you." Shao Ziyang looked at Yang Tianxing suspiciously.

Yang Tianxing smiled, took a cigarette from his pocket, put it in his mouth, and lit it.

"Holy shit, you're for real!"

Yang Tianxing didn't really want to pay attention to this silly brother beside him, so he asked directly: "Do you want one?"

Shao Ziyang hesitated for a moment, and after struggling for a while, he seemed to have made a great resolution to smoke one with his brother.

"Look at that constipated expression of yours, am I asking you to eat shit? Forget it if you don't want to." Yang Tianxing took back the cigarette.

"I'll smoke!" Shao Ziyang snatched it and put it in his mouth.

Yang Tianxing chuckled, took out a lighter to light the cigarette, rolled up his pant legs, sat on the curb, and began to puff away, squinting his eyes to size up the students coming and going.

He rolled his eyes at Shao Ziyang, who kept the cigarette in his mouth, and said: "No fire for your smoke, you'll never get it right," then tossed the lighter over.

Shao Ziyang was still a student at heart; after quickly lighting it, he took a small puff and pinched it in his hand, exhaling the smoke sneakily.

"Look at that pathetic look on you, like a thief." Yang Tianxing joked.

"Little Yang, why are you so cool when you smoke?"

Yang Tianxing flicked the ash casually: "You'll be like this too if you smoke more."

Yang Tianxing's nonchalant answer made Shao Ziyang feel he was a bit cool, but he also really wanted to punch this guy who loved to show off.

"Little Yang, how are things between you and Tan Zhizhi now?"

"Who is Tan Zhizhi?" Yang Tianxing found the name somewhat familiar but also felt a bit confused.

Shao Ziyang slapped Yang Tianxing hard: "You're still pretending with me? You failed your confession at the graduation ceremony and now you're pretending not to know her?"

"I did something that stupid? Why didn't you come up on stage to beat me back then?" Yang Tianxing found it unbelievable.

"Who doesn't know you've liked Tan Zhizhi for three years? Everyone thinks it's normal..." Shao Ziyang began to chatter on the side.

Yang Tianxing finally remembered a little bit about what happened back then; he only remembered that Tan Zhizhi did indeed seem very beautiful, a unique existence wherever she was.

"Alright, stop your fucking yapping, you're like a gossiping woman." Yang Tianxing threw away the cigarette butt, patted the dust off his butt, and walked into the school.

Seeing his brother leave, Shao Ziyang also hurriedly threw away the cigarette in his hand.

"Li... Little Yang." When they reached the school gate, Shao Ziyang grabbed Yang Tianxing's clothes.

"Why didn't I notice you were so coy before? What the fuck do you want?" Yang Tianxing cursed.

He followed the direction of Shao Ziyang's finger and saw a group of boys and girls looking at them together.

"What's wrong? Your enemy?" Yang Tianxing asked in confusion.

"No... it's not, it's Tan Zhizhi looking at you," Shao Ziyang whispered.

Yang Tianxing carefully looked at the girl in the center of the crowd.

This young girl was truly pretty; her floral knee-length skirt fluttered gently in the evening summer breeze, radiating a bright and lively air. She was at least 1.67 meters tall, and because of the heat, her face was flushed with a faint rosy glow. With a straight bridge of the nose, rosy lips, and a rounded chin, her eyes beneath thick eyelashes were clear and bright, and her silky hair hung naturally down to her shoulders.

"Whoa, not bad at all." Yang Tianxing looked at the beautiful girl opposite him as unscrupulously as a hooligan, even preparing to let out a whistle.

At this moment, a rather tall and decent-looking boy pushed a bicycle out: "Yang Tianxing, do you have so little class? Even if Zhizhi rejected you, we are still friends; what is this hooligan attitude of yours?"

Yang Tianxing stepped forward, his height even towering over the boy who had spoken by a shoulder; he stared fixedly at the boy who had just spoken, the arrogance and ruffian air between his brows flowing wantonly.

Until the boy felt completely uncomfortable and dared not meet Yang Tianxing's gaze anymore, Yang Tianxing asked in an interrogative tone: "Who the hell are you?"

The aura of a superior from before his rebirth was fully unleashed; a little brat who had just graduated and hadn't yet entered society naturally couldn't hold up against it.

"You... you are so disappointing." The boy threw down a sentence with a fierce expression but a cowardly heart, then quickly slipped into the crowd and said to the beautiful girl: "Zhizhi, let's go quickly, don't talk to this hooligan anymore."

Yang Tianxing looked at the boy with that kind of face and suddenly laughed out loud, thinking: "Is the first villain I've encountered after my rebirth only at this level?"

Yang Tianxing ignored this group of people and strode toward the inside of the school.

Some girls in the crowd said to Tan Zhizhi: "It's a good thing you didn't agree to him, Zhizhi. Look at that hooligan appearance of his..."

"Exactly, I didn't see it before, but he really exposed his true nature as soon as he graduated!"

"Why do you all like gossiping behind people's backs so much! Zhizhi, don't listen to their nonsense. Yang Tianxing is actually quite a good person; it must be that you rejected him last time and it put him in a bad mood." A girl wearing glasses pulled Tan Zhizhi and said.

Tan Zhizhi nodded, looked at the departing Yang Tianxing, and also pushed her bicycle toward the inside of the school.