Along the way, they picked up a bunch of fair-weather friends and two pretty underclasswomen they had just met, and the group headed off to a bar to let loose.
Yet the moment they stepped out of the campus gates and hadn't even walked two blocks, a massive mob of thugs armed with weapons poured out of the alleyways and surrounded them.
"What the hell, Brother Peng? What's going on?"
Terrified, Liu Di gave a start and quickly ducked behind Zhao Lipong.
Zhao Lipong was scared out of his wits as well. He swallowed hard a few times and stammered, "Don't panic! Don't panic. Gang turf wars are common, this has nothing to do with us! We just need to pretend we didn't see anything and sneak away."
"Let's go, let's go! Move fast!"
Hunched over and in full view of everyone, Zhao Lipong led his group toward the end of the alley.
The gazes of forty or fifty thugs shifted right along with them.
The alley was dead quiet.
"Brother Peng, I... why do I feel like something's not right..."
Liu Di trembled as he said, "Why does it feel like they're all looking at us?"
"Bullshit!"
Zhao Lipong turned his head to snap an insult, only to see a punk in a floral shirt wielding a machete stride forward and kick him square in the face!
Smack!
He sent him crashing flat onto the ground.
"So you're the fucker named Zhao Lipong? Heard you're a real badass who took down our gang's Leopard and Wolf. Pretty hot stuff, huh?"
The punk pointed his blade right at him.
"No, no, no, Boss, Boss, you've got the wrong guy. I'm not the person you're looking for..."
Clutching his bloodied nose, Zhao Lipong shook his head frantically.
Two lackeys immediately stepped forward and fished an ID card out of his pocket.
The punk picked it up, snapped it in half with a *crack*, and tossed it onto his face. "Brothers, this is Zhao Lipong! Beat the crap out of him!"
Chaos erupted on the spot.
Fifty-six thugs swarmed them. Tyson and Ngannou wouldn't have stood a chance, let alone Zhao Lipong.
Even Liu Di and their other fair-weather friends got severely beaten up.
"Hahahaha, Zhao Lipong from the Qing University Sanda Club? Turns out he's nothing special!"
"Let's move out, boys!"
Laughing, the punk led his men away.
Leaving behind Zhao Lipong, who had been beaten into a swollen mess, suffered fractures in over a dozen places, and taken several heavy blows to his backside and thighs...
"Brother Xiao, it's done!"
Shouldering his blade, the punk called Bai Xiao and boasted arrogantly, "I've already crippled that punk Zhao Lipong. He'll be bedridden for at least half a year."
"For real?"
In an entertainment club, Bai Xiao stood up in pleasant surprise. "Yang Kai, you're not messing with me?"
"Would I lie about something like this?"
The punk named Yang Kai sneered, "I even snapped his ID in half, Brother Xiao. If you don't believe me, I can head back right now, grab him, and snap a few more photos for you!"
"Hahaha, good!"
Bai Xiao burst into a happy laugh. "Yang Kai, I never realized you had it in you. Who would've thought you'd have some tricks up your sleeve! Get your ass over to Diamond right now, I'm going to reward you publicly!"
"Thank you, Brother Xiao! Thank you, Brother Xiao!" Yang Kai was overjoyed.
"Zhao Lipong, it was settled just like that?"
After hanging up, Wang Yinhua asked doubtfully, "Brother Xiao, could Yang Kai have messed up?"
"Relax, he didn't mess up. They checked his ID and everything."
Bai Xiao put his arm around her, a cigarette hanging from his lips, and sneered, "With forty or fifty guys all carrying hardware, even Wong Fei-hung and Ip Man would take a few heavy beatings, let alone one guy."
Hearing this, Wang Yinhua finally nodded.
***
Chapter 13: Which One is... Brother Xiao?
"Ning Chen, Ning Chen..."
Dozily, Ning Chen heard someone calling him and shaking his arm.
The voice was familiar—it was Su Wanwan.
"I actually fell asleep just like that?"
Waking in a haze, Ning Chen rubbed his eyes and thought to himself that his primordial spirit injuries were too severe; they always made him drowsy.
If this were in the Lesser Southern Heavens, sleeping out in the wild without setting up defensive formations would have cost him his life eight times out of ten.
"Ning Chen, why are you sleeping here?"
A delicate, melon-seed face as fresh as a lotus emerging from the water entered Ning Chen's field of vision, filled with concern.
Su Wanwan stood gracefully in the sunset, breathtakingly beautiful.
"It's nothing, fell asleep by accident."
Ning Chen waved a hand, got up, and stretched his back. "Let's go eat at your place, I'm starving."
"Okay!"
Joy lit up Su Wanwan's face, her bright eyes curving into a pair of pretty crescent moons as she followed right behind Ning Chen, walking all the way out of campus.
Just then, the Xu Family's Rolls-Royce also rolled out the front gates.
Seeing Ning Chen, Jiang Tang gave Xu Shuyan an astonished nudge.
"Shuyan, look! It's Big Brother Mighty, and he's with a really pretty girl!"
"Don't tell me Big Brother Mighty is dating someone on his very first day of school."
Xu Shuyan instinctively looked over and spotted Ning Chen chatting and laughing with a pure, lovely girl.
"Hmph!"
Xu Shuyan felt an unprovoked wave of annoyance. "Little Tang, can you stop making a fuss every time you see this guy? He's not some big shot, is there any need to act like this?"
"Oh, right..." Jiang Tang stuck out the tip of her tongue.
The gourmet food street outside the campus.
As Su Wanwan was chatting with Ning Chen, she suddenly heard her mother Li Mei crying from inside their shop, accompanied by the cruel sneers of several thugs.
"Mom!" Su Wanwan hurriedly parted the crowd and ran inside.
"That gang of thugs again?" Ning Chen's expression darkened as well.
Inside Li Mei's Barbecue Stall.
Thugs led by Ma Kun had smashed the place to smithereens.
The proprietress, Li Mei, sat on the floor sobbing bitterly, utterly helpless.
"Stinking bitch, I'm telling you, that punk Zhao Lipong has already been crippled by our Brother Xiao! He'll never come to help you again!"
"Four thousand yuan in management fees—if you can't cough it up next month, we'll finish you off!"
"Let's move!"
Ma Kun still sported that pair of cross-eyes, and the thugs behind him all shared the same crooked mouths and squinting gazes.
The onlookers outside the shop were both terrified and perplexed, wondering why these thugs had such peculiar styling.
"Mom! Mom, are you alright?"
Weeping, Su Wanwan ran inside, flew angrily into Ma Kun's arms, and began pounding him with her fists. "Bad guys! Drop dead!!"
"Little brat, asking for a death wish..."
Ma Kun raised a hand to slap Su Wanwan, only to spot Ning Chen walking through the door, which startled him so badly he backed up three steps on the spot. "You! You?!"
"I must say, you people never learn your lesson."
With his hands in his pockets, Ning Chen strolled in slowly.
"Brother Kun! What's the deal? Didn't Brother Kai beat this kid into the hospital?" a thug asked.
"You're asking me? Who the fuck am I supposed to ask?!" Ma Kun's face turned pale as he bared his teeth.
Knowing he was no match for Ning Chen, he had no choice but to bow and scrape with a ingratiating smile. "Hehe, Brother Peng! It's a misunderstanding, it's all a misunderstanding!"
"I'll misunderstand your mom!"
With a single kick, Ning Chen sent Ma Kun flying all the way from the front entrance into the kitchen. After a series of shattering crashes, the man went silent.
"Holy shit!"
The onlookers and thugs stared in utter dumbfounded silence.
Sent flying over ten meters with a single kick—was this Wong Fei-hung reincarnated? The Shadowless Kick of Foshan?
Little did they know, Ning Chen had exerted utmost effort to suppress his strength; otherwise, a kick from a Nascent Soul Stage cultivator wouldn't just send a man flying—it could vaporize an entire street.
"Looks like I need to settle things once and for all today."
Ning Chen looked at the thugs who were already kneeling on the ground and said calmly.
Half an hour later.
Diamond Club, the largest nightclub in the West District.
Ning Chen dragged a bloodied Ma Kun in by the collar.
As for the remaining thugs, Ning Chen had each of them write a thirty-thousand-word self-reflection essay with zero typos, threatening to finish them off if they failed to finish it.
For punks who hadn't even finished junior high, this was nothing short of psychological torture.
"Alright, now my good brother Yang Kai will present a song for my boss, Brother Xiao!"
Inside an imperial private box, Yang Kai was howling into a microphone.
Suddenly—
*BOOM!!*
The door of the private room was kicked off its hinges.
Bai Xiao, Yang Kai, Wang Yinhua, and the others stared in stunned disbelief at Ma Kun and Ning Chen standing in the doorway.
"Which one is... Brother Xiao?"
Ning Chen tossed Ma Kun aside and swept his gaze across the room.
"I am! What do you want?"
Patting his chest, Yang Kai shouted directly into the microphone.
"You're Brother Xiao? Excellent."
Without wasting a single breath, Ning Chen flashed forward, rushed right up to Yang Kai, and started raining heavy slaps across his face.
Smack! Smack! Smack! Smack!
Every single blow sounded like firecrackers going off!
Ning Chen's speed was so blinding that by the time the real Brother Xiao and Wang Yinhua reacted, Yang Kai had already been beaten into a swollen mess, his nose spraying blood and his front teeth completely knocked out.
"Damn it! Take him down!"
"Get him!"
Roaring with rage, Bai Xiao watched as the dozen or so thugs inside the room—along with another dozen who rushed in from outside—all swarmed toward Ning Chen.
Crack, slam, smash!
In less than a minute, there wasn't a single patch of empty floor left in the private room; bodies were strewn everywhere.
The coffee table was smashed, and glass shards littered the floor.
These gang members either had broken limbs or were knocked out cold on the spot in profound shock. The scene was nothing short of horrific and tragic.
"Who... who the hell are you..."
Slumped against the sofa, Bai Xiao stared at Ning Chen in absolute shock.
"Weren't you looking for me?"
Ning Chen had figured out long ago that this person was the real Brother Xiao.
"You're Zhao Lipong!"
Bai Xiao's eyes bulged. "No, that's not your name—Yang Kai got scammed! Who the hell are you?!"
"Guess you've got a bit of brains."
Ning Chen vanished the moment he finished speaking, reappearing right beside Bai Xiao.
The box's lighting was dim, and his movements were as ghostly and untrackable to the naked eye as a phantom.
"So fast!"
Crouched in the corner, Wang Yinhua's pupils contracted violently.
Scared out of his wits, Bai Xiao let out a bizarre scream and tried to flee, only to be firmly pinned down by Ning Chen's hand.
"As for who I am, a petty punk like you isn't qualified to know."
Ning Chen threatened:
"You only need to know that I regularly eat at Li Mei's Barbecue Stall. If you ever send small-time trash to bother me while I'm eating again, I'll blow your dog head apart, you hear me?"
"Speak! Did you hear me or not, did you hear me, did you hear me?!"
Finding his reaction too slow, Ning Chen slapped him three times across the face—*smack, smack, smack*—sending a geyser of blood flying from his nose as he collapsed onto the sofa in agonizing shrieks.
"I heard you, I heard you!!!"
Letting out a squeal like a slaughtered pig, Bai Xiao nodded frantically.
"I'm a bit short on cash lately. Hand over another two hundred thousand."
Grabbing him by the collar, Ning Chen said viciously.
***
Chapter 14: Nipping the Buds of Romance Early
"Quick! Yinhua, transfer it to him!"
Knowing this guy was not to be messed with, Bai Xiao had no choice but to comply for now; a wise man yields to circumstances.
"B-Big Brother, what's your bank account number? I'll transfer it to you right now."
Trembling, Wang Yinhua got up from the corner and pulled out her phone.
"Do I look like an idiot? Cash!" Ning Chen glanced at her.
Transfers left evidence, and Bai Xiao could sue him for extortion.
He didn't want trouble, and memory-wiping spells consumed spiritual energy.
Before long, a few lackeys fetched two hundred thousand in cash, and Ning Chen pocketed it and walked out.
"Remember, messing with Li Mei's Barbecue Stall is the same as smashing my rice bowl. Watch out or I'll blast your dog head wide open!"
"Don't think I'm joking."
With these parting words of warning, Ning Chen left.
Bai Xiao clearly hadn't taken the threat to heart.
If every time he said "watch out or I'll finish you off" meant someone had to die, his feet would have long been wading through a sea of blood and standing upon piles of white bones.
"Ning Chen... you little bastard... nobody has ever dared extort money from me! Just wait, you're fucking dead!!"
Bai Xiao roared furiously inside the private room.
Wang Yinhua, however, said cautiously, "Brother Xiao, looks like this Ning Chen is a Martial Artist. We can't afford to provoke him."
Smack!
Bai Xiao struck Wang Yinhua across the face, sending her staggering and nearly causing her to fall to the ground.
"Nothing we can do about it?! So what if he knows martial arts? If I had practiced my 'Bai Family Iron Sand Palm' since childhood, I could've beaten three pounds of shit out of him just now!"
Brandishing his hand, Bai Xiao bellowed.
Sinking back onto the sofa, a sinister smile crept across his face as a plan seemed to form in his mind. "If we can't beat him in the open, we can do it in the dark..."
He failed to notice the glint of malice flashing in the eyes of Wang Yinhua as she lay on the floor.
***
Back at Li Mei's Barbecue Stall.
The thugs had already cleaned up the place.
Ning Chen walked straight up and handed one hundred thousand yuan to Li Mei.
"Little Chen, what is this..."
Seeing such a thick stack of bills, Li Mei didn't dare take it. "Where did you get so much money?"
"I went to reason with Brother Xiao just now. He agreed to compensate you for the damages and promised not to collect protection fees anymore," Ning Chen lied smoothly.
"Really?!" Su Wanwan's bright eyes lit up.
"This..." Li Mei remained half-skeptical.
"Just take it and renovate the storefront."
Ning Chen shoved the money directly into the woman's hands, then rubbed his stomach. "I'm hungry. Anything to eat?"
"Yes, yes, I'll go make you something right now, just wait."
Li Mei turned toward the kitchen, wiping the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand.
With a soft inward sigh, Ning Chen pulled up a chair and sat down.
Su Wanwan sat across from him, her expressive, sparkling eyes slightly moist. "Ning Chen, will Brother Xiao and his gang really never come back to harass me and Mom again?"
"Shouldn't." Ning Chen couldn't offer absolute guarantees.
"How did you pull that off?"
Su Wanwan asked curiously, "You didn't beat them all up, did you?!"
"As if, there were dozens of them."
Ning Chen replied offhandedly, "I just reasoned with them using virtue."
"Wow, Ning Chen, you're amazing! Not only can you fight, but you're also so well-spoken!"
Looking at him with absolute adoration, Su Wanwan rested her chin in her hands, her pretty face flushing. "I don't even know how to thank you..."
"Just don't annoy me."
Ning Chen dropped the remark out of nowhere, choking Su Wanwan right on the spot.
A sudden sense of grievance and confusion welled up inside her.
At school, boys were asking for her WeChat every single day; how come when it came to Ning Chen, she was such a nuisance?
Ning Chen had no intention of apologizing for what he just said.
As an old monster who had lived for over two thousand years, he could read a hint of romantic infatuation in Su Wanwan's eyes. If things kept progressing this way, this girl would sooner or later fall for him.
Affection was the greatest shackle on the path of immortality.
It was better to nip the buds of romance in the bud as early as possible.
***
Classes had officially begun, and the Clinical Medicine Class 2 schedule was tightly packed. Yet Ning Chen didn't listen to a single lecture, spending every day either dozing off at his desk or reading novels.
His classmates shook their heads whenever they caught sight of him.
Studying medicine was unlike other majors—you couldn't just coast through. The coursework was heavier than senior year of high school. Skipping lectures and refusing to memorize textbooks like Ning Chen practically spelled academic suicide.
"Ning Chen, aren't you afraid of failing all your finals like this?"
After a physiology class concluded, Fang Xiaopang couldn't help asking as he watched Ning Chen shove his phone into his pocket, preparing to head to the cafeteria for lunch.
"Studying medicine is too brutal. Ten exams at the end of the term—I already regret this."
Zhang Dachun hugged a stack of books with a depressed look on his face.
"Isn't studying medicine just memorizing text? I'll just cram before the finals."
Acting as though it were no big deal, Ning Chen turned and walked out of the classroom.
Glancing at him, Li Xuanming sneered, "With over a dozen books, let's see you cram for the finals. Just wait to fail your classes, you idiot!"
Mortals could never fathom how terrifying an immortal cultivator's memory truly was.
Nor could these students imagine that Ning Chen was actually a divine physician possessing supreme medical arts. He simply looked down on Western medicine, a discipline with a mere history of two hundred years.
The Lesser Southern Heavens boasted hundreds of thousands of years of medical history.
At noon in the cafeteria, while standing in the lunch queue, Ning Chen suddenly felt a fierce glare boring into the back of his head.
Turning his head, he saw Xu Shuyan.
"Ning Chen, you jerk..."
Xu Shuyan grew furious the moment she laid eyes on him.
For the seven days of military training, this guy had spent every single day eating ice cream and playing on his phone under the shade of the trees by the basketball court—he was definitely doing it to torture her!
"Hi, Big Brother Mighty!"
Standing behind Xu Shuyan, Jiang Tang waved a greeting.
Instantly, numerous surprised gazes from male students landed on Ning Chen.
Ning Chen nodded back in acknowledgment to Jiang Tang.
Just then, a wave of female squeals erupted from the cafeteria queue.
Following the sound, Ning Chen spotted a tall, handsome boy holding a basketball as he walked toward the line.
"Is that Xing Xufei from junior year? He's as handsome as the rumors say."
"Xing Xufei used to be on the school track team before heading to provincial training. I heard his family is super rich."
"I am so totally in love with this kind of sunny, handsome guy."
"Look! He's walking toward Campus Belle Xu!"
The girls standing ahead of Ning Chen chattered endlessly.
True to their words, the boy named Xing Xufei, accompanied by a few buddies, walked right up and took a spot in line directly behind Xu Shuyan and Jiang Tang.
"Underclasswoman, you must be Xu Shuyan, right? You're quite famous."
Urged on by his friends, Xing Xufei smiled and greeted Xu Shuyan.
As the wealthy heiress of the Xu Group, Xu Shuyan had zero interest in Xing Xufei; she preferred mature and steady men.
However, noticing that Ning Chen was looking over too, an idea popped into her head. She flashed Xing Xufei a brilliant smile. "Senior, I'm Xu Shuyan. Hello~"
"Hello, hello, underclasswoman! What do you want to eat? My treat!"
Xu Shuyan was simply too stunning.
Her delicate features, snow-white skin, tall, straight, beautiful legs, and the aristocratic aura of a pampered heiress who had grown up in luxury flattered even Xing Xufei, a self-proclaimed veteran of the romance game, into a state of pleasant surprise.
"How could I let senior spend his money?" Xu Shuyan said with a charming smile.
"It's nothing, really!" Xing Xufei scratched his head.
Watching the two chat so happily, Jiang Tang was baffled. Didn't Shuyan like the domineering CEO, super-big-boss type? Why was she being so warm to a jock?
"Could it be... she's trying to make Big Brother Mighty jealous?"
Catching Xu Shuyan glancing at Ning Chen every now and then, Jiang Tang instantly figured it out and giggled to herself.
Shuyan was really so childish.