Chapter 3

Li Mingzhu’s movements were like lightning, with the momentum of flying over the eaves and walking the walls, performing the martial art Qinggong, like floating on water[1].

After two steps, Lu Yao swore: “Damn, still want to run!”

Lu Yao’s skill was higher than hers. This student also acquired the ability to fly over the eaves and walk the walls as early as the first year of junior high school. There’s nothing he can’t do on the walls. A good student like Li Mingzhu is a little worse than Lu Yao.

So after drifting less than ten meters, he was caught by Lu Yao’s chokehold.

Lu Yao hugged her in his arms, he was stunned for a moment, but quickly got filled with anger.

“Fuck!”

Li Mingzhu struggled hard, but the disparity in height was too great, to no avail.

She said: “You got the wrong person.”

“I can recognize you even if you turned to ashes.” Lu Yao gritted his teeth.

At such a highly dangerous moment, Li Mingzhu used both hands and feet to keep the lunch box in his hand safe and sound.

Lu Yao looking at her trying to protect the food wanted to laugh, but in order to maintain his dignity, he pursed his lips into a line.

The students around immediately gathered around.

“Brother Lu, drag him into the woods behind and beat him up!”

“Damn, weak chicken, I dislike good students the most.”

Lu Yao clasped her shoulders.

“Talk!”

Li Mingzhu forced herself to calm down and thought for a moment: “What do you want to hear.”

“An apology.”

Li Mingzhu thought for a while and after determining that she was doomed, she endured the humiliation and spit out three words: “I’m sorry.”

Lu Yao: “…”

Li Mingzhu was a person who was full of lies. Lu Yao already understood it when she was giving him remedial lessons.

A good student who was stubborn and bad-tempered, and refused to bow his head.

She never gave him a good look, and also never admitted defeat. But today it seemed as if her soul had been changed. He asked for an apology and the other party apologized.

Lu Yao thought of Li Mingzhu’s sinister and cunning character and had a chill run down his spine, he didn’t dare to easily relax, lest she did something more earth-shattering.

Li Mingzhu shouted: “Teacher Yuan!”

Lu Yao looked up.

This trick was really too unsophisticated, so unsophisticated that Lu Yao never thought that Li Mingzhu would use it.

He looked up, loosening his grip, Li Mingzhu slammed into him very hard, broke free from his arms, hugged the lunch box, and ran away faster than before, without turning his head, she disappeared in a blink of an eye.

Like a desperate rabbit.

But Li Mingzhu wasn’t a rabbit. When biting a person, she would tear off the flesh along the skin, revealing the white bones underneath.

Li Mingzhu ran away. Lu Yao stood still. The surrounding students, seeing this group of people, all took a detour.

“Brother Lu, should we chase after him?”

This group of students had their hair dyed and wore their uniforms messily, the school card on their chest read: Art A112.

They were Wu Cheng, Wang Miao, Sun Yu, Lin Junhui.

They were all art class students.

The military training had already finished during summer vacation, and in just seven days, Lu Yao’s reputation spread.

His name was very famous in the whole high school district of H City. Two years ago, his name had already spread among the junior high schools. There were legends of brother Lu everywhere he went, extremely cringy.

Lu Yao’s father was a high-ranking official in B City, and his mother was an artist who often appeared on TV.

With these two points, Lu Yao could do as he pleased in H city. Even the son of H City’s mayor would call him brother and fawn over him whenever they met.

During summer vacation, the principal of Yizhong High School already received the news that he would come to Yizhong High School from the attached junior high school. He personally went to Lu Yao’s house to extend his regards to him. At that time, Lu Yao was in a battle of wits and bravery with Li Mingzhu, it was a moment of great tension, so he had no time to pay attention to the principal with a receding hairline.

Yizhong High School’s principal got the cold shoulder, so he asked the old woman in Lu Yao’s house to introduce him: the old woman’s surname was Wang, she was the grandmother of Lu Yao who knows which distant cousin. She heard that Lu Yao had run away from home, so volunteered to take care of him.

Lu Yao was young and rebellious. He bought a plane ticket from B City to H City. He hadn’t gone home for two or three years. Lu Yao’s parents couldn’t do anything about it, except for sending every month’s living expenses, other daily life necessities were done by grandma Wang.

Wu Cheng spoke, trying to please him.

Even though he was one year older than Lu Yao, he shamelessly called him brother: “Brother Lu, how did this weak chicken offend you?”

“I just find him unpleasant.” Lu Yao sneered, his eyes not moving, staring at the place where Li Mingzhu ran away.

The people heard that but didn’t believe it.

Although it hadn’t been long since they got along with Lu Yao, he wasn’t the type to wilfully cause trouble for others.

That second year of the excellence class’ weak chicken, nobody knew how he offended Lu Yao. On the first day of school, Lu Yao inquired about him and took a group of people to the edge of the sports ground to block him.

Wu Cheng asked: “Should we go catch him back?”

Lu Yao smirked: “No need, he will come back.”

Lu Yao guessed right, Li Mingzhu really came to look for him.

On the afternoon of the first day of school, between the fourth lesson and the evening preliminary time (the twenty minutes given to prepare for evening self-study where all students were required to go back to their classrooms), there was a forty minutes dinner break.

Just at this time, Li Mingzhu walked to the fourth floor of the third building, the legendary art building where all kinds of rogues ran wild.

The art class’s classroom was on the fourth floor. At the end of the stairs, there was a toilet at the corner, two girls were there, wearing their school uniforms trousers shortened so much that their ankles were shown, and had tattoos on the back of their ears.

They had refined makeup on. One of them was smoking in the toilet. When Li Mingzhu came up, the girl glanced at her.

Li Mingzhu didn’t look sideways and went straight to her destination.

To go to classroom 112, she went through a dark and shaded corridor which gradually became clearer and brighter. She saw the classroom.

It was almost the evening preliminary time, the big classroom was almost empty. In the first row, two girls were wearing earphones and watching a video on the phone, and a girl on the side was putting on make-up. There was no one studying

When Li Mingzhu walked by, the two girls who were watching a video got surprised, they probably thought she was the teacher, and wanted to put away the phone, but looking out of the windows[2] they saw that Li Mingzhu was wearing a school uniform, so they boldly continued watching the video.

It was different from the excellence class, which was full at all times and everyone was working hard on their homework.

Li Mingzhu passed the windows, stopped by the door and knocked on the door.

Everyone ignored her.

Li Mingzhu stood there for a while then called out: “Lu Yao.”

Li Mingzhu didn’t speak much in school. Her voice was very neutral. After she lowered her tone, it was indistinguishable whether it was male or female. It seemed like a teenager that hasn’t changed his voice, and it was hard to tell that she was a girl.

Lu Yao was at the back of the classroom. He was sitting on the seat, wearing earphones and with his eyes closed lost in his thoughts.

On his side were sitting two beautiful girls trying to get his attention.

But to no avail, Lu Yao completely ignored them,

His face was carefully carved and depicted by God. During the summer vacation of the previous year, Li Mingzhu had already learned how deceptive Lu Yao’s face was, it covered up all his malicious, childish and domineering character.

Li Mingzhu called for him three times, but it’s not known whether Lu Yao didn’t hear or he purposely ignored her. Instead, the girl sitting next to him gave her a glance.

Li Mingzhu suddenly remembered, these two girls seemed to be the two that earlier have been smoking in the restroom.

Li Mingzhu slightly raised her tone: “Lu Yao!”

This time, Lu Yao moved, he took off the earphones and slowly put his gaze on Li Mingzhu.

Li Mingzhu was wearing a large uniform, her build was smaller than the average guy, like a wrinkled white-cut chicken. Lu Yao reminisced about the silky feeling when his fingers touched his skin when he held Li Mingzhu.

Lu Yao felt a little disgusted in his heart. A man looking so girly, with such girly skin and feeling so soft when hugged, that made a huge impact in his heart.

At this age, Lu Yao had had many girlfriends, but not one girl left such an impact, making him dizzy when hugging them.

However, a man managed to do it.

Lu Yao’s heart beat for a long time, and then he got disgusted to death. The expression in his eyes when looking at Li Mingzhu got bad.

Li Mingzhu saw Lu Yao staring at her, but she didn’t have mind-reading abilities, so she didn’t know what Lu Yao was thinking.

“Come out, we need to talk.” Li Mingzhu tried her best to sound nice.

Lu Yao didn’t give her face, he made an arrogant smile: “Why should I talk with you?”

Li Mingzhu took a deep breath and cursed him in her head, but for the greater good, she suppressed the irritation and disgust in her heart. She unexpectedly gave in: “Lu Yao, let’s talk.”

Lu Yao looked at her, the two stared at each other, no one letting go.

Li Mingzhu’s pupils were pitch black, like a pool of black ink that was being stirred up and wanted to push people deeper into the abyss.

Lu Yao waited a bit, then stood up leaving his seat.

The girl with the tattoo asked: “Lu Yao, who’s he?”

Lu Yao didn’t reply, the girl pouted.

“Where?” Lu Yao asked Li Mingzhu.

“The rooftop, it’s near here.” Li Mingzhu left.

Lu Yao sneered: “What, if the negotiations break down, you plan to threaten me by jumping off?”

Li Mingzhu was walking in front, but she stopped when she heard this: “It’s you who is threatening me.”

Lu Yao almost laughed from anger, he said: “You reap what you sow.”

These five words stabbed Li Mingzhu’s heart.

She really reaped what she saw.

Li Mingzhu believed that she had pretty good luck. Since she was a child, whenever she did misdeeds, she never got caught. It turned out that there was Lu Yao, this devil incarnate, waiting for her!

She grew up so big, only during junior high school did her head got smothered by cement, that she did such a silly thing. She thought that as time passes, it would eventually pass. How could she know that time faded her but redrew Lu Yao with thick ink and heavy brush.

Li Mingzhu suppressed her anger: “You investigated me?”

Hearing this, Lu Yao was even more disdainful: “Don’t put feathers in your cap.”

Li Mingzhu frowned, she thought that Lu Yao had investigated her and found out that she was a student here, so intentionally came here to study.

But after thinking about it, it felt a little unreasonable.

She indeed did some misdeed to Lu Yao, but it wasn’t to the point that he would go out of his way to find her school and follow her to school to take revenge on her.

If Lu Yao wanted to take revenge, he could have just sent some people to her house.

Li Mingzhu believed that Lu Yao didn’t have such a leisurely mood, so there was only one reason left: she had bad luck.

Lu Yao simply got admitted to Yizhong (Li Mingzhu was still doubtful about this, as Lu Yao’s grades were too poor). She got unlucky and met him on the first day of school.

Having his enemy sent before him, Lu Yao was by no means the type of person to make concessions to avoid trouble.

Li Mingzhu was excellent in both character and study in school, and she had to get the scholarship to subsidize her family. If Lu Yao exposed the immoral things she did in her junior high third-grade summer vacation, she would be in serious trouble.

The most important thing was: Li Mingzhu knew that Lu Yao was a person she couldn’t offend.

In the past, she couldn’t offend him, but she was young, impulsive, and bold, a newborn calf wasn’t afraid of tigers.

Now that they are in the same school, even more, she couldn’t offend him, not only couldn’t offend him, but she had to hide as far as possible.

However this time the fortune goddess wasn’t on her side. She hadn’t had time to hide, as she already bumped into Lu Yao.

Li Mingzhu has been a slick person since she was a child, she knew how to maximize her benefits, and knew when to be humble and when to be assertive. She thoughtfully considered all possible, impossible, and unknown factors then decided to give in and talk to Lu Yao.

“The things that happened before…” Li Mingzhu prepared a draft in her head, determined to make a lengthy speech and repent her past crimes with tears in her eyes.

Lu Yao directly interrupted her and mocked her: “I’ve seen teacher Li’s ability to talk, it’s very amazing.”

“But now is not the time to talk about the past.” He said smiling.

Li Mingzhu’s speech got stuck in her throat.

Lu Yao believed that he was a ruthless person and also came up with a good idea. He arrogantly turned around and left: “I’m a bit thirsty, go to the convenience store and bring me a bottle, I want it lemon flavoured, oh, also bring me the Liuliu Plums endorsed by Yang Mi[3], buy two packets.”

Li Mingzhu thought: ‘What does he mean?’

Lu Yao turned back to look at her, and then looked at his watch worth thousands: “Good student, there are five minutes left before the evening self-study bell rings, from the fourth floor to the convenience store you need to go through two buildings, if you don’t want to be late, I recommend you to run.”

Li Mingzhu’s pupils slightly widened, suddenly she understood. She ground her teeth.

Lu Yao looked at her with a gentle smile on his face, and leisurely shook his watch, unhurriedly counting down for Li Mingzhu.

On the first day of school, Li Mingzhu for the second time… took to her heels!

Notes

1. ‘Flying over the eaves and walking the walls’ meaning very quick and nimble. ‘Qinggong’ is a martial art technique that greatly improves one’s ability to run, jump, dodge and manoeuvre, one can even stand or move on objects that normally cannot bear weight and can lift into the air through small objects. Li Mingzhu doesn’t really have qinggong, but she ran so fast as if she had it. return

2. In China, the classrooms also have windows on the wall facing the hallways, people in the classroom can see who is in the hallways and vice versa. return

3. Liuliu Plums are a Chinese snack similar to prunes. Yang Mi is a Chinese actress. return