Chapter 1: The Big Boss

“Pang Qian!”

Hearing someone call my name, I turned my head and saw a beautiful girl waving at me with a bright smile. I said lazily, “So it’s Grace Bennett, the class monitor. What do you need from me?”

“Do you want to go home together after school?”

“Sure!”

I agreed without hesitation.

At our school, Grace Bennett is definitely a goddess-level girl—she’s beautiful, has a great figure, excels academically, is amazing in PE, can sing and dance, and is very popular. There are as many boys chasing after her as there are fish in the river.

Compared to someone as outstanding as Grace Bennett, I’m pretty lacking. Aside from being absolutely number one in sports—whether it’s basketball, soccer, long-distance or short-distance running, single or double bars, no one can beat me, and I’m also undefeated in fights—but my grades are terrible. As for popularity… well, you can imagine what kind of reputation someone rumored to be the big boss of underground gangs across five nearby middle schools would have.

Even though I’m not actually involved in any gangs—I just skip class occasionally to play games.

We’re from completely different worlds, and it’s almost impossible for us to have any real connection.

After graduating from middle school, I might not even get into a decent high school. I’d either end up in a vocational school, a technical school, or just find some job. Grace Bennett is definitely a candidate for the city’s top high school, and might even get into a nationally renowned university in the future. Then she’d either join a big company as an elite white-collar worker, or keep studying for a master’s, a PhD, and become an academic star.

But… the complexity of the world lies in the fact that you can never predict how fate will change.

Speaking of my relationship with Grace Bennett, that’s a long story.

There was a local thug near our school who happened to see Grace Bennett at the school gate one day. His hormones immediately went wild, and he insisted on making Grace Bennett his girlfriend, blocking her at the school gate several times. Of course, Grace Bennett would never agree—this guy is as far from being Prince Charming as Earth is from Namek. Grace Bennett’s parents went to the school several times, but the school couldn’t do much. Back then, Grace Bennett was always on edge after school, constantly changing her route home and even asking classmates to cover for her.

As the saying goes, it’s not the thief you fear, but the thief who keeps thinking about you.

Although Grace Bennett managed to evade this thug’s ambushes many times, it just so happened that one day, she let her guard down and got cornered at the school gate by the thug and more than ten of his cronies. The thug swaggered and said, “I’m going to get you, and I’d like to see who dares to interfere.”

He really scared a bunch of students who only knew how to study. They had the numbers, were armed, and were much older than middle schoolers. For a moment, no one dared to step up to help Grace Bennett.

Honestly, I didn’t intend to play the hero and save the beauty—I was just annoyed that these bastards were blocking my way and causing trouble at our school. So I took a ten-meter running start and kicked him straight in the face, sending the bastard flying five meters and knocking him out cold. They say he didn’t wake up for three days and was hospitalized for over a month.

Once someone started fighting, all the boys and girls in the school got braver and rushed in. Hundreds of students beating up a dozen thugs was no big deal.

Apparently, two of the thugs had bullied our classmates too many times, and someone took the chance to seriously injure them. Since no one could find the culprits and the ones who got hurt were troublemakers at the school, the police didn’t want to get involved. Even though the thugs’ families took it to court, nothing came of it in the end.

This incident had two consequences: one, Grace Bennett and I suddenly became very close; and two, which is a story for another time.

After getting out of the hospital, the thug was furious about losing face and immediately gathered a group to ambush me.

Although I’m good at fighting, I’m not some invincible general or a Three Kingdoms hero who can take on a hundred men alone. I can handle three or five guys, but a dozen is too much. But just because I can’t beat that many doesn’t mean I can’t outrun them. The two times I got ambushed outside school, I reacted quickly—grabbed a brick and my backpack, took out the weakest-looking ones, then ran for it. They couldn’t catch me at all.

After being ambushed a few times, I got pissed off and gathered more than ten classmates to start ambushing those bastards in return. If they had the numbers, I wouldn’t fight, but if any of them were alone, I’d lead my guys to beat them up.

These guys had done too many bad things, even extorting protection money from nearby schools and intimidating lots of people. No one dared mess with them before, but once we started going after them, students from other schools secretly tipped us off. At our peak, we ambushed those bastards five times in one day and sent twelve of them to the hospital.

From then on, my reputation as the big boss of underground gangs across five nearby middle schools spread wider and wider, and no matter how much I tried to deny it, I couldn’t shake it off.