Soul Returns to Hong Kong: From Tailor Shop to Richest Woman

After the news of the extra screenings of "Death by Light" sold out in São Paulo, Class 1 of Grade 4 was excited for several days.

Some students had gone to the theater with their families and, during breaks, imitated the male lead, Ah Shun, running around in the corridors carrying a rooster. Others hadn't seen the movie at all, but had only heard their families discussing the nine-year-old screenwriter, and then came in groups to ask Lin Ying about it.

"Lin Ying, is making movies more fun than doing homework?"

"Is there something ghostly on set?"

Lin Ying would always reply with just one sentence: "Finish your homework first."

At first, the homeroom teacher, Mr. Luo, didn't say anything about this. But in late February, he started to pay more attention to Lin Ying, intentionally or unintentionally.

In Chinese class, he specifically chose tricky fill-in-the-blank questions from classical Chinese texts that Lin Ying had to answer. After math class, the math teacher specifically called Lin Ying to the blackboard and gave her a challenging sixth-grade math Olympiad problem.

Even her English teacher somehow heard about the movie and called on her to read an entire passage of political reading in English during class.

Lin Ying was able to complete everything smoothly.

The teachers were still uneasy. A nine-year-old girl had suddenly earned a large sum of money through her intelligence, her name was printed on the movie screen, and she was surrounded by classmates and parents praising her excessively. At that age, it's easy for her to become restless and irritable.

São Paulo has never lacked geniuses; this school has seen many who shone brightly in their childhood, gradually became complacent, and ultimately missed out on the path to private secondary schools.

One day in early March, in the instructor's office, Mr. Luo was looking down at Lin Ying's homework.

The math teacher, holding an enamel mug, came over and asked, "How about it?"

"Steady handwriting." Mr. Luo turned the page. "No frivolity, the vocabulary used in the essay is even more solid than last semester."

The English teacher walked over and glanced at her: "She wasn't distracted in class. Mr. Shao from the computer class told me yesterday that she's even starting to ask about the underlying architecture of the program logic, and she's progressing extremely fast."

The math teacher breathed a sigh of relief, but still frowned: "But I heard the movie's box office is booming. What if she gets carried away and keeps writing those things, neglecting her proper studies?"

Mr. Luo slammed the notebook shut.

Whether they write or not is their own choice. As long as their grades don't drop, São Paulo has no reason to stop them; the papers will speak for themselves after the second full-subject monthly exam at the end of March.

This statement came true very quickly.

At the end of March, the second monthly general exam in São Paulo began.

This semester, extracurricular classes have officially entered a tiered assessment system, with computer classes and math olympiad classes relying entirely on consistent performance.

Tang Shiya sat next to Lin Ying and said, "Lin Ying, I will definitely do the big questions at the end of the general knowledge section first this time, and I will never miss a question again."

Lin Ying lined up three sharpened pencils in a straight line. "Hmm, look at the marks first when you see the questions. Skip the ones you don't know."

I stayed up for two days straight to take the exam.

This year's exam was even more challenging than last semester's final exam. The Chinese composition topic was "Something That Made Me Understand the Rules"; the last major math problem was a mixed path tracing problem personally created by the math olympiad teacher, with the question stem spanning half a page; the general knowledge section directly included the latest organizational restructuring diagram of the Hong Kong government and a simple mechanical principle diagram. The English listening comprehension section was fast-paced and intense…

After the bell rang for the end of the exam, a chorus of sighs filled the classroom.

"It's over."

"The last math problem is simply inhuman!"

"This time, my dad will definitely whip me to death with a belt."

Lin Ying didn't say anything, neatly put away the pencils, and cleaned the table.

The next morning, during the first class meeting.

Mr. Luo strode into the classroom carrying a thick stack of test papers, and the whole class immediately fell silent.

Mr. Luo slammed the report card on the podium: "This month's exam was more difficult than the last one. The highest score in the entire grade was 397 points."

A collective gasp rippled through the audience below the podium.

Mr. Luo picked up the blackboard eraser and slammed it heavily on the desk: "Lin Ying, 100 in Math, 100 in English, 100 in General Knowledge, and 97 in Chinese. First in the entire grade."

The boy in the front row with round glasses muttered under his breath, "It's her again..."

"The movie's already out and making tons of money, and she's still getting first place?"

Tang Shiya looked at Lin Ying with nothing but admiration in her eyes.

Lin Ying took the Chinese language test paper and flipped it to the back. She'd lost three points this time. One point was for a sentence in her essay that seemed too mature for her age; the grader circled it and wrote, "Too profound." The other two points were for a missing punctuation mark in her reading comprehension.

After she finished reading it, she picked up a pencil and made correction marks next to it.

After class, Mr. Luo returned to his office and handed the summary sheet directly to the math teacher.

The math teacher glanced at it and laughed: "Alright, this girl isn't getting cocky."

The English teacher breathed a long sigh of relief: "Not only did it not drop, it widened the gap between the later scores even further."

The entire teaching staff was finally relieved.

Meanwhile, Su Zhihao also calmed down; he stopped thinking about the heavy pressure brought by the box office bet.

"Die in the Light" started with midnight screenings as a trial, and the box office trend continued to grow as more screenings were added. The period after the Lunar New Year is usually the off-season for the film market, but this supernatural comedy managed to keep the fragmented screenings in several major cinemas in Hong Kong completely sold out, thanks to word-of-mouth's mix of fear and laughter.

A tabloid ran it as the headline story in its entertainment section for three consecutive days.

[A low-budget supernatural comedy breaks through the competition!]

[A guy who's squeamish about blood fights zombies; laughter drowns out screams in the theater!]

[New director Zou makes a comeback; Kowloon City's Hao Ge has a keen eye!]

The last sentence, "Brother Hao has a discerning eye," is something Su Zhihao reads eight times a day.

He folded the newspaper neatly and carried it in his suit pocket every day; whenever someone mentioned this piece of paper while he was socializing at a nightclub in the evening, he would immediately take out the newspaper and slam it on the table.

"See that?! A discerning eye! What is a discerning eye?!" Su Zhihao exclaimed, his face flushed and puffing out smoke rings.

The henchmen nearby immediately surrounded him with their wine glasses to show their support.

"Brother Hao is sharp!"

"Brother Hao will be a movie mogul on Victoria Peak from now on!"

"Following Brother Hao means you'll get to eat meat!"

Su Zhihao was sweating profusely from drinking when he slapped a henchman next to him, whose arms were covered in tattoos, on the shoulder.

"Stop thinking about grabbing knives and taking over turf all the time! Times have changed! You can make big money making movies too! Got it? You don't have to risk your life every day, and you don't have to worry about the police raiding your places every day!"

The henchman nodded repeatedly, "Got it, got it! Brother Hao will lead us brothers ashore!"

"Let's get ashore!" Su Zhihao picked up his glass and downed it in one gulp. "From now on, I'll do honest work and earn clean money!"

He spoke with great passion.

When Su Zhihao returned to his Causeway Bay mansion reeking of alcohol, it was already 1 a.m.

He pushed open the door, his suit jacket casually draped over his shoulders, his tie askew. The flush on Hao Ge's face hadn't faded yet, and he exuded a kind of spiritedness rarely seen in his past street fights.

The middle-aged man sauntered into the living room, turned his head, and froze.

Su Jun was wearing pajamas, slumped over the dining table in the living room, yawning as he copied English words into a notebook.

Hearing the door open, Su Jun greeted, "Old Dou, you're back."

Su Zhihao walked over and rummaged through the notebook. The handwriting was still crooked and messy, but it had indeed filled two pages.

This father, unusually, didn't scold anyone. Instead, he reached out and rubbed Su Jun's head hard twice.

"Not bad. Your grades have been more stable lately. Keep up with Lin Ying and don't embarrass me."

In the past, if Lao Dou had praised him like that, Su Jun would have been overjoyed and would have definitely taken the opportunity to ask for pocket money.

But now, as he was being rubbed by this rough, large hand, he felt a growing sense of panic.

Old Dou is living the high life now.

The more successful and wealthy he is, the more young and beautiful women will be eyeing him.