Zhou Heng narrowed his eyes.

“Yeah. The principal gave me a day to settle this privately. He said I should pay them off, but he never said I couldn’t use other methods. They set me up, then forced Wang Ping, that two-faced snake, to commit perjury? Fine. I’ll show those two scumbags why juvenile crime remains one of society’s persistent problems.”

Zhou Heng moved closer to Lu Yile, draped an arm over his shoulder, and leaned against him.

“As for finding those two scumbags and figuring out what weaknesses they have, I’ll leave that to you.”

Lu Yile knew plenty of people outside school and got along with them well. If he could use his connections to find out more about Wang Yang and Xu Jin—their personal details and any weaknesses they might have—Zhou Heng was sure that, with his own fists and a mix of threats and promises, he could get those two punks to crack.

Meanwhile, over on Lu Yile’s side…

The young student suddenly caught a strange scent. It was sweet and fragrant, with an almost bewitching allure.

And then there was Zhou Heng’s cheek, pressed against him—a face with a touch of feminine softness…

Lu Yile shook his head, thinking he must be going crazy. For a moment there, he’d actually thought Zhou Heng—the guy he’d always remembered as the very definition of manliness—was a pretty girl.

Still, if Zhou Heng were a girl, that might not be so bad…

No. What the hell was he thinking?

Zhou Heng treated him like a brother, and here he was wanting to get into his pants.

Perhaps feeling guilty and repulsed by the thought he’d just had, Lu Yile pushed Zhou Heng’s arm off his shoulder and turned his head away. Then he pulled his phone from his pocket.

He took a deep breath, banished the improper thoughts from his mind, and opened the social group he’d spent ages building up.

It was one of his main sources for gossip and inside information from outside school.

Beside Zhou Heng, Lu Yile’s ingratiating voice kept ringing out.

“Hey, Brother Wang? I’ve got something I wanted to ask you.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s Little Lu. I went with my dad to toast you, Brother Zhang, over New Year’s.”

“Right, right. I need a little help finding two outsiders. It’d be even better if you could get me some solid information on them.”

“You don’t know? No worries. Sorry to bother you.”

“Wait, don’t hang up! I’ve just got one question. Is two hundred enough? Three hundred—surely that’s the most, right? What, five hundred? Why don’t you just rob me?”

…

At last, he finished negotiating with the final person.

Lu Yile slipped his phone back into his pocket.

Zhou Heng eagerly asked,

“How’d it go?”

Lu Yile spread his hands.

“There’s good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

“The bad news?”

Lu Yile pursed his lips.

“I didn’t get anything useful about those two punks.”

Zhou Heng’s expression darkened.

Finding the two punks wouldn’t be hard, and neither would beating them up. The hard part was finding some leverage so he could threaten or bribe them. Just resorting to violence might land him in even deeper trouble than paying tens of thousands in compensation.

“Then what’s the good news?”

Lu Yile grinned teasingly.

“The good news is, I heard from your class monitor that this morning, before those two extortionists even showed up, someone was already spreading rumors that you’d gotten into trouble outside school and were about to get taken down. They even said you might get expelled. I’d say that person knows a lot of what’s going on.”

Zhou Heng brightened and called out,

“Who?”

“His name’s Tang De.”

Tang De was in a great mood today.

It wasn’t just because the man he hated most had gotten into trouble and wouldn’t be able to get out of it. More than that, ever since their homeroom teacher, Zhang Zhu, had taken Zhou Heng away that morning, the whole class had been talking about exactly the sort of thing Tang De loved.

Plenty of students swore they’d seen Zhou Heng fighting, brawling, vandalizing school property, and committing all sorts of other crimes.

Others confidently recounted Zhou Heng’s completely made-up dark past.

Like some internet celebrity who’d suddenly shot to fame, Zhou Heng had become the topic of conversation in the entire classroom. Nobody cared whether the stories were true. People always filtered out what they didn’t want to hear and chose to believe what they did.

And then there was Tang De, who loved nothing more than stirring up trouble.

The classmate in front turned around to face Tang De again, eyes bright with gossip as they asked about Zhou Heng.

Usually, Tang De couldn’t stand the bookworm who sat in front of him. He’d answer in a nasty tone, as if he were always on the verge of exploding.

But now they were talking about one of Tang De’s favorite subjects. His expression softened at once, and even his voice turned as warm as if they’d been close friends for decades.

“Oh, you mean that Zhou Heng? He’s a delinquent who’s always fighting and picking on the weak. Don’t let the fact that he hasn’t done anything in our class fool you. He just doesn’t shit where he eats. Go ask around the other classes—how many people do you think he’s extorted?”

“Don’t believe me? I saw Zhou Heng myself, waving a little knife at an upperclassman and forcing him to hand over a whole month’s lunch money as protection fees…”

“You know Wang Ping, right? The top student from Class 4, Grade 10—the one who ranked fifth in the whole grade on the entrance exam? Zhou Heng must’ve had a screw loose to pick on him. So Wang Ping reported him…”

“Zhou Heng’s in the principal’s office right now, getting questioned about all his lawbreaking. But with the school’s higher-ups smoothing things over whenever anything happens, that old bastard Zhou Heng will probably get off with a disciplinary warning…”

“Man, it’s infuriating. Some students kiss their girlfriends because they can’t help themselves, and they get slapped with a warning. But Zhou Heng, that delinquent who’s always causing trouble, cheating people, and swindling them, gets reported and all he gets is a meaningless warning. Tell me, isn’t that an insult to the law?”

After going back and forth with the classmate in front of him for a while longer about Zhou Heng’s entirely fabricated dark past, Tang De felt some pressure in his bladder. He gave a casual reply, then slowly left the classroom and headed for the restroom.

Two students Tang De didn’t recognize were standing at the urinals.

Tang De walked over beside them and had just lowered his uniform trousers when the student closest to him said,

“Hey, hey, did you hear? Another student got hauled into the principal’s office.”

The other student, who’d been peeing with his head lowered, lifted it a little and grinned.

“Yeah, yeah, I heard. Which class was he from again? I remember his name was Zhou Heng. Think he got taken in for fighting.”