Chapter 1 Injured Teen

“The power of ten kings on horseback.” Su Wan dropped the black piece and looked at Li Cu proudly. “How about it? Pretty strong, right?”

In the evening study class, reference books were placed on the floor, and the desk was equipped with a small Go chessboard. The black spots on the board were already dominating, and in less than a few moves, the game would be over.

On one side of the chessboard, Li Cu cocked his head and looked out the window at the corridor where the head teacher was still chatting with his father. He was somewhat absent-minded as he pinched the spot between his eyebrows and made a casual move on the chessboard.

“You have no morals, do you? You’re moving my piece.” Su Wan grabbed Li Cu’s face so he could face the chessboard.

“Oh, did I? Sorry.” Li Cu came to attention, but couldn’t find which one he had just moved.

“It’s no use looking for it now. Let me tell you, your father is going to beat you until your skin comes off because of all the trouble you’ve caused. If you’re so scared, why did you look for trouble in the first place?” Su Wan scolded as he put the piece back.

Li Cu saw his father glance at him while still talking to the teacher. He immediately drew his head back, his sense of foreboding growing even stronger.

“Are you going to move or not?” Su Wan was impatient.

Li Cu sighed and shook his head: “Look for someone else. I think I have to slip away.”

“Hey, to slip away now would be even worse.” Su Wan said.

“You don’t understand my father. You see our boss,” he pointed to the head teacher, a young woman with a good figure who had just graduated from college and entered the high school to become a teacher. “As beautiful as flowers and pure as jade, my father won’t be able to control himself in front of such a woman. In order to maintain his male charm, he’ll violently beat me in public.”

“Escaping won’t fix anything.”

“My father is fifty years old and doesn’t have enough energy; his anger won’t last too long. I’ll wait for his fury to subside and get him some wine. He won’t care then.” Li Cu put his schoolbag on his back. “How much money do you have? Give it to me first and we’ll calculate the interest later.”

“Forget it, Brother supports you.” Su Wan pulled out a few red banknotes. His family was relatively rich, but he didn’t flaunt it. Rumors had even spread that he had more than ten thousand yuan on his card. Li Cu had never seen so much money in his life, so even a few hundred yuan seemed like an exaggerated amount to him.

Li Cu was still a little moved even though he knew that Su Wan was rich. He looked at the corridor, and saw that his father and the head teacher seemed to be wrapping up. He gave Su Wan a fist bump and then slipped his body out the back door.

As soon as he escaped the room, he reached the stairs and took them at a speed that made the wind whistle in his ears.

The classroom was on the second floor, and the bicycle shed was down the stairs. He quickly ran to his bike and hopped on, peddling to the school gate. As he left the shelter of the bike shed, he seemed to hear his father’s roar come from upstairs.

As Li Cu rode under the streetlights on the main road, he laughed. He wasn’t happy that he had escaped disaster, but thinking of what the head teacher would look like when she saw his father.

There wouldn’t be a next time.

He knew in his heart that his father’s anger was so terrible, that after seeing it once, the former head teacher never dared to call his parents over again. He was safe in school no matter what he did from now on.

When he went to play soccer that morning, he borrowed more than a dozen balls and deliberately kicked them into the girls’ dormitory building, knocking all the clothes the girls had hung up outside onto the ground. They were so angry that the dorm leader and a group of girls tied him up and took him to the teacher in charge.

The head teacher had only reported for duty for a month, so it was only natural that he kill the chicken in front of the monkey (1). Whatever happened next was also within his expectations.

He actually wasn’t a bad person, so doing such things was particularly stressful. But in order to have less trouble in the future, this kind of thing still had to be done regularly.

He suddenly remembered how Zhang Weiwei looked in the dormitory that morning— wearing a white vest and waving her two slender white arms in anger— and sighed. Anyway, a relationship with her would never be possible, so it was alright if she hated him.

Li Cu’s parents divorced six months ago, but he didn’t have the same kind of confusion as other children. For a family that fought and broke things every day and completely exposed their ugliest sides to each other, this kind of separation was like being liberated from torture. Li Cu had fantasized about the possibility of his parents getting back together before, but he later got bored and only wanted things to wrap up quickly.

He had no idea why his parents divorced. His father drank too much and had a bad temper, and his mother didn’t come home all day. Neither of them could escape the blame, but he didn’t care about that. After the divorce, he was awarded to his father who was a civil servant, while his mother went to another city. While his father usually had social gatherings and basically ignored him, Li Cu actually thought that his life was better than before.

When did he start to feel that it was better to live alone?

Perhaps it was because of Zhang Weiwei. When he first saw the girl, he knew that they must be the same type of person— rumor had it that she was also a child of a single-parent family. Unfortunately, they weren’t in the same class and there were too few places that they could interact. They were even separated by several rows during their morning exercises.

At this particular moment, he didn’t know where he should go, but he had 500 yuan in his hand and the options were unlimited. Maybe he would go to the internet cafe first. Even if there was no place to sleep at night, you could still rest on the sofa.

Just then, he heard a loud cry: “Stop!”

Before he could react, he suddenly felt a gust of wind behind him. A man grabbed his collar from behind and pulled him off of his bike. The bike lost control and rushed into the bushes by the side of the road as he was thrown and pushed face first onto the ground.

“Dad?” This was his first thought, wondering how in the world his dad could catch up. Was he actually the Flash? His dad fought with his mother and eventually divorced so as not to reveal his identity?

Before Li Cu could figure it out, he was lifted up and dragged to a nearby alley.

It was only then that he realized that something was wrong and started to struggle desperately. Li Cu usually played soccer, but he wasn’t the kind of person with very good physical strength. The other person was strong, and no matter how hard he struggled, it was useless. Soon, he was dragged further into the alley.

It was dark and there was only one incandescent street lamp. When he was thrown into the corner, he immediately shouted, “I have five hundred yuan! I’ll give it to you! Don’t rape me!”

“Don’t move!” A man’s voice came from the darkness. Li Cu looked up, and even though he couldn’t see the other party’s face clearly under the backlight, he could clearly see that the man’s head was covered in blood. The man fell to the ground almost at the same time, but his hand was still holding him tightly.

By the collar.

Li Cu was surprisingly calm when he saw this scene, since his father often fell over after drinking too much and came home bloody. At this time, he was simply filled with disgust and desperately tried to pull the hand from his collar. But the hand was like a pair of iron tongs, which couldn’t be loosened. The man became anxious and slapped him, which immediately caused Li Cu’s brain to buzz.

It was a robbery after all!

Li Cu often heard of robberies taking place near the school, but because he was usually dressed in rags and walked with Su Wan’s soccer team, he had never encountered such a thing. Unexpectedly, it actually happened during one of the few times he was alone.

He was very unwilling to think of Su Wan’s five hundred yuan. Why did nobody rob him at ordinary times when he didn’t have any money, but now he was being robbed just a few hours after he had money?! What kind of intelligence network was this? Were these robbers all CIA informants?

Thinking of this, he gave a loud roar, stared at the man’s hand that had just slapped him, and then bit it. The man obviously felt the pain and screamed, quickly letting go.

“Chance!” Li Cu crowed. He immediately got up to run, but almost at the same time, he saw the man pick up a brick from the ground and knock him on the head. Before he could even register the sharp pain, his vision went black and he collapsed to one side. Before he could try to stand up again, the other party took another brick and hit him again.

Li Cu fell to the ground. He didn’t feel anything, and didn’t know what was happening as he fell into a deep trance. In a daze, he seemed to feel some pain, but it wasn’t too bad.

“Am I going to be killed?” He thought a little regretfully in his barely conscious state.

Well, it seemed like death wasn’t so scary after all.

Li Cu completely lost consciousness.

“I’m sorry, I don’t want to implicate you either, but I really can’t help it.” The man who attacked him coughed a few times, wiped away the blood flowing into his eyes, drew a dagger from his pocket with trembling hands, turned Li Cu over, and began to cut open the back of the teen’s shirt.

<Introduction Part 2> <Table of Contents><Chapter 2>

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TN Notes:

(1) To make an example of somebody (by punishment) to frighten others.