Chapter 1: If the spring breeze has pity for the flowers, could it grant me my youth once more?

Tuesday, March 27, 2018.

Suitable for today: Traveling, seeking offspring, consecration, matchmaking, rebirth...

Outside the window, the sun is bright. It is early spring, a time of lingering chill, and college students are actively dragging themselves outside to soak up the sun and welcome the arrival of spring.

"There are pliers on the left, there are pliers on the left, pick up the pliers!!!"

The frantic shouting of his roommate in his ear wakes Xu Beifang up. He sits on his bed, feeling a bit dazed. If he remembers correctly, this must be about CS: GO.

"Why is it so hard to rank up in C-tier?"

His roommate, Wang Xiaoming, gets up to complain. He cannot fathom the absurd play his teammate just made during the match point. The defuse kit was literally one step to the left, but the random teammate just couldn't react. Then, two seconds later, the teammate gave up on defusing to go pick up the kit, and in the end, they ran out of time. The score stopped at 14:16, just one step away from overtime.

It was so damn abstract!!

After the anger subsides, he is able to calm his emotions; after all, this isn't the first time he's dealt with these cursed C-tier promotion matches.

Looking at the brightness outside the window, Xiao Ming adjusts his mood, steps on the ladder to pull his quilt down from the bed, and asks without looking back, "Beifang, I'm going to air out my quilt, are you coming?"

"Forget it, I woke up too abruptly, I'm going to sleep a bit more later."

"Then do you want to duo queue when I get back? I'm feeling super sharp today."

"We'll see."

Xiao Ming doesn't ask again. He hugs his quilt and heads toward the sports field. The sun is rare today, and the students' quilts will likely cover the entire campus. He needs to go claim a "prime spot."

Having rejected his roommate's proposal to air out his quilt, Xu Beifang finds he can't fall back asleep at all.

He sits on the bed, back against the railing, eyes fixed on the window looking into the balcony. The air is filled with peace and tranquility, occasionally broken by the sounds of college classmates offering "kind greetings" to teammates on the other side of the internet.

How long has it been since I enjoyed the beauty of life like this?

One year—

Two years—

Or two and a half years?

Memories of his past life flash through his mind.

After graduating from college next year and finding a job that seemed decent, he suddenly became busy.

The boss painted a bright future, making them look forward to what was to come.

In reality, he was earning five or six thousand a month, doing work that made no sense.

On top of that, he had to wake up earlier than the chickens and sleep later than the dogs.

Eight hours of daily work plus "voluntary overtime" forced his life into a two-point-one-line routine. Every day when he returned home, he would fall into a baby-like sleep, with not a shred of personal time.

Even the dog Xu Beifang raised started to get "emo," and was forced to be sent back to his hometown to guard the house for his grandparents.

Then, the high-intensity work environment, combined with a chronic lack of sleep, caused Xu Beifang to fall asleep while riding a shared bike to work.

In a daze, he only heard the sound of a large vehicle's horn. When he opened his eyes and woke up, he was already lying on his college dormitory bed.

The scene inside the dormitory is both strange and familiar to his eyes.

He sits on the bed, feeling melancholy for a long time. He thinks about how he once wanted to strive for a career, putting family, health, pets, hobbies, and everything else on the back burner, only to find his career had no improvement, and he eventually became a statistic for a mud truck.

Thinking again about how after five or six years of hard work, his salary—including all performance bonuses—was less than 7,000, he found it hard to speak when asked by his aunts and uncles during the New Year.

Having given up so much, only to end up like this, he now doubts whether his original choices were correct.

"Regardless of whether I can achieve success in the future, this time, I only want to live for myself!"

Starting everything over, Xu Beifang feels a sense of thorough enlightenment.

His gaze sweeps across the window.

Under the bright sun, those long, slender legs are full of vitality. Xu Beifang climbs off the bed and walks out of the dormitory; he wants to properly experience the college life he once missed so dearly.

After wandering around campus for a while, looking at those clear yet foolish eyes—

His somewhat restless mood gradually calms down.

He doesn't continue wandering, because his body is already slightly sweating.

Although college life is good, the physical condition of college students is really not great.

Returning to the dormitory, it is still empty. He checks the class schedule and finds he has no classes all day.

Could classmate Xiao Ming be airing his quilt downstairs at the girls' dormitory... Xu Beifang thinks to himself with a dark sense of humor.

Recalling the frantic shouting from Xiao Ming earlier, he turns on his computer, feeling the computer games he has been away from for many years.

Having not played for too long, thinking about the mind games and kills in CS: GO, Xu Beifang can't help but feel a bit itchy...

Much like *Dungeon & Fighter*, the charm of CS: GO in the FPS genre is quite immense. Although many people quit to play other games every year, after a while, they always end up coming back to it...

He finds the 5E Battle Platform on the desktop, opens Steam, finds the ladder matchmaking, and removes all maps except for the "Old Three."

Start matchmaking!

After waiting for about 20 seconds, accompanied by a "ding-ding-ding" sound.

【Match Ready】

【Please Prepare (29s)】

【1/10】

Xu Beifang waits quietly until the number of prepared players at the bottom becomes 【9/10】 before clicking confirm, and the match officially begins.

The map is Mirage, a favorite among Chinese players. The rank is C, and the intensity is "abstract."

Since he started working, he hasn't had time to play games, only occasionally watching matches. But the practice he had in the past still allows him to understand some basic operations, such as counter-strafing mechanics and some basic movements...

But if you're talking about throwing various utility, he can only show you what a "World No. 1 Utility Player" looks like.

As soon as he enters the game, Xu Beifang feels the controls are very floaty, lacking the comfort of long-term operation. Whether it's the DPI or the feeling of walking and shooting, it makes him, as the operator, feel very "clunky."

Yet even so, this C-tier match was eventually won. And Xu Beifang, who hadn't touched CS: GO in years, got the match MVP with a stat line of 26/4/20, and his score went from 1633 to 1662.

Sure enough, even if the platform is different, the C-tier rank is still just as abstract.

Getting an MVP in the first game after rebirth, it seems my gaming talent is still very high. If I had put my heart into this in the past, maybe I would have had a chance to become a professional player... Xu Beifang thinks with a bit of narcissism.

Looking at the final stats of the match, he is even more satisfied.

Finally, he downloads the demo of the match, picks out his own POV clips, edits them slightly with PR, opens Bilibili, and edits and sends it out directly.

"21-year-old genius boy, 1200 hours, preparing to crush professional players!"

Xu Beifang's Bilibili doesn't have many followers; after all, he isn't a content creator, but a viewer.

This video of his isn't a joke, but just a record of the first thing that made him happy after his rebirth.

After sending it out, the 30-plus minutes of gameplay content, from the perspective of someone who came from the short-video era, is destined not to be watched by many people.

As for the title, the first part is a habit he brought from the short-video era.

As for the second, perhaps this is also a dream he once didn't even dare to speak out loud.

Anyway, in his understanding, the final result of this video will only be like a stone sinking into the sea, receiving no feedback.

But Xu Beifang seems to have forgotten that 2018 was still a relatively slow-paced era. The audience on the internet hadn't been impacted by fast-paced short videos. People's rhythm for surfing the internet was slow, Bilibili was still the Bilibili of the past, and everyone was very serious!

After posting the video, Xu Beifang's stomach starts to growl. He originally intended to ask his roommate to bring him a bowl in the group chat, but after thinking about it, he went to the cafeteria alone.

Moreover, Xu Beifang also needs to consider his future plans; after all, he has already been through a round in society, and he doesn't want to walk a similar path after his rebirth.

But he is already 21, a sophomore, studying financial accounting at a bottom-tier 211 university.

A mediocre accountant might stabilize at six or seven thousand after a few years of hard work. As for the better accountants, who knows why they started "sewing machines" (prison labor).

"Why didn't I rebirth earlier? That way I could have studied hard and changed my fate through the college entrance exam."

Xu Beifang thinks about the possibility of taking the postgraduate entrance exam or joining the military as a college student while shoveling the last bite of rice.

But he was also a failed candidate who took the postgraduate exam twice. Thinking of those days when his heart was ravaged, he still feels some resistance.

He knows his own situation; his learning ability might not be very strong.

As for joining the military as a college student, although he didn't participate in his past life, looking at the brown birthmark on his left calf, he sighs again.

Just as he is at a loss, a crisp voice suddenly sounds in his ear—

【Ding!】

【Detected that someone has offered a suggestion to the host, the Listen-to-Advice System is officially activated.】

【One suggestion has been recorded (long press to collapse/expand)】

PS: The "Old Three" are also called the "Old Three Items," now respectively Inferno, Mirage, and Dust II.

In '18, it was Mirage, Cache, and Dust II.

5E also has a ranking mechanism, but it was at the end of 2020. It appears here mainly for plot needs; in 2018, Perfect World hadn't started public testing yet.

New author, new book, seeking collections and follows!

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 2 =====