For most people, the college entrance exam is an extremely important turning point in life.
Especially for someone like Tong Yang, who could only pin her hopes on academic success, the exam felt like an event where you either go insane from studying or die trying.
It was midnight, and not a single light was on in the old residential area.
The densely packed buildings stood in a row like neatly arranged coffins. The wind howled through the empty rooms, carrying with it the groaning sounds of old, shaky doors and windows.
On her desk, a candle flickered as the cold wind sneaked in through the window gaps, making the flame dance. In the alternating shadows of light and dark, Tong Yang, who was scribbling furiously, suddenly froze. She had written the wrong stroke in a character. The pen hovered over the page filled with handwriting, unmoving.
Her teacher had once mentioned that neat handwriting was an often overlooked but crucial aspect of the college entrance exam. Not making a single mistake on the exam paper was an almost unattainable goal.
“Ugh! So close, yet so far!”
Tong Yang buried her head in her hands in frustration. This was the closest she’d ever been to perfection!
Even though getting a perfect sheet wouldn’t necessarily earn her extra points, her nerves had reached a breaking point.
“Ding-dong—”
Suddenly, the sound of a message notification snapped her back to the painful reality.
“Ding-dong—”
“Ding-dong—”
She reached for her phone, which had a cracked screen. Strangely, despite the power outage in the area, the signal bar, which usually showed no signal, was now full. A message popped up from the group chat “Melon Eating Netizen 007.”
A couple of days ago, she had scanned a QR code to get a red envelope and got pulled into this gossip group.
Tong Yang wasn’t interested in anything other than money and the college entrance exam, so she was just about to switch back and curse the unscrupulous ad company when she noticed that the group chat showed it was created in May 2026. But in reality, it was clearly May 2024. Could this group have been created two years in the future?
Tong Yang figured it was a bug. After joining the group chat, she asked the other members if she was the only one seeing this strange phenomenon. After she voiced her question, the other group members all confirmed that the group was indeed created in May 2026, and it wasn’t a bug at all.
Out of curiosity, Tong Yang didn’t leave the group. She would occasionally check in to see what was going on. Every day, the group shared fresh gossip, but what puzzled her was that none of the gossip aligned with reality. For example, the group was currently discussing something completely off-kilter.
[Holy crap!!! Did you see Weibo???]
[I saw it! Oh my god, I can’t believe it!]
[Jia’en Ji actually died?? I was just watching her live stream the other day!]
[I really liked her first role after debuting. How could this happen!]
[Did you guys see the video? She died so horribly, covered in blood!]
[You have it? Share it with us!]
Jia’en Ji was a rising starlet whose posters were plastered all over town. A few classmates even talked about her all the time.
She died? How could that be?
“Ding-dong—”
[The content is under review. Please be patient.]
[Ah… I can’t send the video. It’s being flagged as too graphic.]
[Damn, are the reviews that strict now?]
[I want to see it! Can you share it via a cloud drive?]
[Don’t even think about it. Cloud drives are cleaner than your face now. The content will just get blocked.]
[Screenshots, screenshots! I heard they last for a minute.]
[Let me try.]
The chat fell silent. Tong Yang exited the group and opened Weibo, searching for the keywords “Jia’en Ji death.”
#Jia’en Ji wraps up filming, tears flow for her emotional performance
#Jia’en Ji’s tearful death scene in character compilation
#Jia’en Ji recreates her character’s death on variety show, bringing the audience to tears
#Jia’en Ji says wrapping up filming is not death
…
Tong Yang skimmed through a few news articles. All of them were about her character’s death; they had nothing to do with Jia’en Ji herself.
So, a bizarre situation had emerged: in the group chat, Jia’en Ji had died a tragic death, but in reality, her career was soaring.
Tong Yang firmly believed in the reality she lived in. She chalked up the group member’s behavior to overactive imaginations or some weird middle-school phase, fabricating strange events to satisfy their curiosity and vanity.
However, the pressure of the upcoming exam had made these bizarre stories a rare form of entertainment for her.
“Ding-dong—”
“Ding-dong—”
Just as she was about to exit the app, several messages popped up.
[Picture.jpg]
[Picture.jpg]
[Picture.jpg]
…
One group member sent seven or eight consecutive screenshots. Tong Yang, thinking “might as well take a look” clicked on the latest one.
The image showed a dimly lit bedroom, enough to make out the room’s contours. In the lower left corner was a blurry figure. Tong Yang zoomed in on the picture, but it remained unclear.
Swiping to the previous image, the scene became slightly clearer. It was a woman lying on the ground, her back to the camera, covered in blood.
“How can anyone tell that’s Jia’en Ji?” Tong Yang muttered. But she had to admit, for a made-up story, these photos were impressively realistic.
Tong Yang casually swiped to the next image, and her gaze suddenly froze.
The woman who had originally been facing away from the camera had now turned around under some external force. Her delicate face was pale and filled with fear, her eyes staring directly at the camera, as if through the phone screen, locking onto Tong Yang.
“Holy crap!!” Tong Yang was startled and almost threw her phone. Fortunately, she reacted quickly and caught it again, avoiding the destruction of the only electronic device in the Tong household.
[This image is no longer available.]
The next second, the image turned into a flash of lightning and was blocked by the review system.
[Did you guys see that?!]
[Ahhh, help! So scary!]
[It must have been murder! I hope the police solve the case soon, not like before!]
[Ugh, I hate that I clicked too fast. Now I’m too scared to go to the bathroom.]
Tong Yang didn’t find it particularly frightening, just confusing. There wasn’t a single mention of Jia’en Ji’s death on Weibo, yet the woman in the screenshots clearly looked like Jia’en Ji. Even if it was computer-generated, it was too realistic.
Could this group chat and its members really be from two years in the future?
On this very day, two years from now, did Jia’en Ji really die?
After a while, Tong Yang opened the chat box, hesitating for a moment.
She didn’t know whether to ask for next week’s lottery numbers or the 2024 Yaocheng Science Exam questions.
—Of course, in the end, she asked nothing.
Who was she kidding? She was a student who had received nine years of compulsory education and firmly believed in materialism. How could she believe in such bizarre things?
Tong Yang didn’t dwell on it. She put her phone on silent and fell asleep.
The next day passed uneventfully as she went through another ordinary day as a third-year student. Tong Yang returned home, exhausted.
She lived in Dongyang Residential Area, an old neighborhood in Yaocheng’s old district. The facilities were severely outdated, and every night at eleven, they would cut off electricity and water in preparation for the upcoming summer heat.
It was just her and her younger brother Tong Le at home. As for their parents… they had died in a car accident.
This semester, she had been too overwhelmed with studying for the college entrance exam to take care of Tong Le, so she simply applied for him to stay in the school dorms, only coming home once a week.
After quickly washing up before the power and water went out, Tong Yang lit a candle and got back to her math problems.
Whether it was a group chat created two years later or Jia’en Ji’s tragic death, nothing could distract her from the college entrance exam.
As long as she met the school’s expectations and ranked within the top 50 in the province, she could get a scholarship and attend university for free!
Even if the tragically dead Jia’en Ji were standing right behind her, Tong Yang wouldn’t look back.
Nothing on this earth had a stronger aura of resentment than a third-year student!
After finishing a few more math problems and double-checking them for any mistakes or omissions, Tong Yang straightened up and stretched.
She picked up her phone and checked the time. It was 12:07 AM.
“Strange…” Tong Yang mumbled to herself. The signal in the residential area was usually poor. After the power was cut, you couldn’t even make an emergency call, yet for two consecutive nights, the signal had been full.
Tong Yang didn’t think much of it. She turned on mobile data, and notifications from the group chat “Melon Eating Netizen 007” popped up.
As expected, the only group active at this late hour was “Melon Eating Netizen 007.”
[Jia’en Ji’s death case is so creepy… the same as those murder cases in Yaocheng two years ago.]
[So scary! Could it really be some supernatural event?]
[Ahhh, I don’t believe it! Prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, patriotism, dedication, integrity…]
[But the police released the surveillance footage. After the killer murdered Jia’en Ji, they disappeared into thin air in the hallway.]
[No one was seen in the hallway, on the rooftop, in the elevator, or in the corridors. It definitely wasn’t human! The authorities are stumped.]
…
The killer disappeared into thin air?
Tong Yang’s expression froze. Come to think of it, two months ago, a bizarre murder case had occurred in Yaocheng. The police report was baffling, claiming the killer had seemingly appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared without a trace after the murder.
The case had caused quite a stir, and for a while, it had sparked public fear.
And from what Tong Yang knew, similar cases had happened abroad as well, but they hadn’t attracted as much attention.
[Could it be a malfunction in the surveillance? Otherwise, there’s no way to explain it.]
[But how did the killer enter and exit the hotel where Jia’en Ji was staying, with all those security cameras and guards? The police still can’t figure it out.]
[This mystery is getting too spooky for me. I don’t want any part of it.]
[No one even knows if it was a person or a ghost.]
[There’s a shadow in the surveillance footage, so it must be a person.]
Their conversation seemed so certain, but Tong Yang was still skeptical.
Studying is for Making Money: [Sorry for the abrupt question, but what time is it where you all are?]
[00:10]
[00:10]
[00:11]
Studying is for Making Money: [What year is it?]
[It’s 2026, what’s up with you?]
[2026]
[2026 + 1]
[2026 + 2]
Tong Yang swallowed hard. Mysterious murder cases, killers disappearing into thin air—none of that mattered right now!
If these people really were from 2026, there was something very important she wanted to know.
Tong Yang had scored over 710 in the first, second, and third mock exams. Although she had never told anyone, deep down, she believed that if she performed well on the real exam, she might even become the top science student in the province…
Studying is for Making Money: [Was the 2024 top science student in Beiwang Province someone named Tong Yang?]
[Tong Yang?]
[Tong Yang from Dongyang Residential Area in Yaocheng’s old district??]
They actually knew her? Tong Yang’s confidence shot up. Aside from becoming the top science student, she didn’t think she’d ever done anything worthy of making the news.
Studying is for Making Money: [Yes, her. Was she the top science student in 2024?]
[Sis, how can you not know?]
[The 2024 Yaocheng had two murder cases, both of which were classified as unsolved. One was the bakery murder on March 19th, and haven’t you heard of the other one?]
Tong Yang was speechless. It was only halfway through 2024, and it was still the end of May. How was she supposed to know what would happen later?
She did know about the March 19th bakery murder, though—that was the recent unsolved case.
She couldn’t care less about any murder cases; nothing was more important to her than the college entrance exam at the moment.
Studying is for Making Money: [So, was Tong Yang the top science student in Beiwang Province or not?]
[…]
[You really don’t know.]
[Tong Yang never took the college entrance exam…]
[She died just a few days before the exam!]
Be my Patron ~ Buy me Ko-Fi
✨Be a part of the story – support my translations✨
✨Buy me some Ko-FI | Paypal to support my effort✨
✨✨Advance chapter at Patreon✨✨
