Rebirth: Slice-of-life Cultivation Chapter 1708 - 931: Unbearable_2

Bai Yuxia jolted back to reality. How on earth had her mind strayed so far?

Right away, she began inwardly repenting for her spirit that had just veered into impurity.

"How about I go comfort her? I’m afraid if this keeps up, she might do something stupid!" Chen Siyu proposed. Her mind harbored naughty ideas, yet deep down she stayed a compassionate, decent girl.

Bai Yuxia: "You can, but... are you actually close to her? Sometimes concern from a stranger just comes off as presumptuous."

Chen Siyu felt somewhat guilty: "In a certain sense, she and I are still familiar with each other."

Bai Yuxia felt baffled: "How come I don’t know about that?"

Xin Youling was a transfer student who arrived later, and moreover she served as the class monitor handling discipline. ’Power’ corrupts people’s hearts.

Someone like that in a class truly struggles to form genuine friendships.

Chen Siyu began reciting "evidence": "Xin Youling and I didn’t know each other when we were little. When I was a kid, I played at my house, she played at her house. Isn’t that kind of a shared past?"

Bai Yuxia got choked up and launched a personal jab: "Your IQ is too low, I don’t want to talk to you."

Chen Siyu grew upset: "You said this morning my IQ was 140, and I even tested it. It really is 140!"

"I just said that casually, it doesn’t mean anything. Those online tests are useless too. Unless you got an IQ 140 from a hospital, then yeah, you’d be a genius." Bai Yuxia crushed her illusion.

Chen Siyu: "No way, it was a professional website. The test took a full half hour!"

...

Third period, English class.

Jiang Ning scanned with his Divine Sense; the English teacher Chen Haiyang was absent. He’d been pulled by the Chinese teacher Dai Yongquan as an ally, and now they were quarreling with the PE teacher in the principal’s office.

A clash among teachers was about to erupt.

Class 8 faced yet another self-study session, with Wang Longlong overseeing the whole class from the podium.

In the back row near the window, Wang Yong trembled uncontrollably.

’Fuck, where’s Brother Jin? How could you abandon me?’

Last period they had shared the suffering as brothers; this time Gong Jin had fled, abandoning Wang Yong alone in this sinister danger zone. Nearby, Wu Xiaoqi and Duan Shigang shot him pitying glances.

Wang Yong now panicked completely. He could only grab his English test paper and bury himself in study to dull the anxiety.

Wang Yong excelled as a shrewd social navigator, adept at handling superiors like Lin Zida and company. But facing lower-tier folks drained his patience instantly.

The weird murmurs from Pang Jiao and Wang Yan Yan seeped into his ears, relentlessly tainting his mind.

"I don’t dare wear makeup outside. I’m afraid guys will ask me for my contact info."

"My wish is to find a handsome one."

"Last time some guy confessed to me online. I turned him down. In real life he doesn’t even have the right to talk to me."

"I’m done. What’s it gonna take for them to feel inferior?"

Wang Yan Yan: "After you rejected him, what did he say?"

Pang Jiao hid her plump lips with her massive pig-hoof hands: "He said he lost at truth or dare. Hoh hoh hoh!"

"He totally flew into a rage from embarrassment!"

These fragmented snippets of talk slowly captured Wang Yong’s focus.

Heat stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, rendering people edgy. That’s a standard bodily response.

Endless racket also breeds irritability. And when the racket consists of utter brainless nonsense, it ignites an inner demon blaze even fiercer.

For no clear reason, that inner demon flared up in Wang Yong, and he abruptly exploded: "You ever think about it, him confessing to you is already a dare in itself?"

The moment the words escaped, silence blanketed the air.

Wu Xiaoqi and Duan Shigang gazed at him in awe, as if declaring: "Bro, you’re a real hero!"

The next instant.

Pang Jiao spun around fiercely and bellowed. She seized Wang Yong’s desk with both hands and overturned it, her immense power hurling the stack of books crashing onto his face.

At the podium, Wang Longlong sensed the chaos. His initial urge was to crumple the book in his grip, part his lips, and launch into live narration...

Then abruptly, a spark fired in his mind: ’Wait, no, I’m the class monitor!’

His role had completely shifted!

Wang Longlong shouted commandingly, "What are you doing, what are you doing!"

"You’ve flipped, Pang Jiao. Didn’t you get enough fighting with Song Sheng? Cut it out, now!"

He rushed down from the podium to halt the brawl.

Pang Jiao shot Wang Yong a fierce glare: "Apologize to me!"

Wang Yong's rage snuffed out immediately, as he abruptly recalled Pang Jiao's fearsome reputation.

He backed down instantly and squeezed out a justification: "Pang Jiao, what I meant earlier was that you're so stunning, his confession to you counts as a massive thrill for him already!"

The blaze of fury in Pang Jiao's big cow eyes slowly faded away.

Wang Yong wiped the chilly sweat from his forehead without thinking. Lucky for him, he dodged getting slammed down and pummeled.

Wu Xiaoqi and Duan Shigang wore looks of letdown. They had plainly spotted Wang Yong's spineless act: 'You bootlicking little bastard!'

The uproar gradually returned to tranquility.

Wang Yong sat by himself, feeling confined in his personal prison.

'Brother Jin, I regret this.'

...

Meanwhile, inside a dingy commercial office tower in the city district, the bargain rents had drawn a bunch of sketchy mini-firms dancing on the law's boundary.

Gong Jin glanced about. Walls stuck full of ads for quick loans, degree mills, and "home visits."

The suited fellow brought over several beefy, savage-faced thugs to welcome Zhuang Jianhui.

They groveled at once: "Young Master Zhuang!"

"Mm, you arrived early." Zhuang Jianhui stayed utterly indifferent; he regarded this crew with total disdain.

His dad stood among Yuzhou City's supreme bigshots. As a spoiled heir, barring some dirty work needed, these lowlifes would never glimpse his face in their whole lives.

Down the stairs they headed. The man in the suit ushered Zhuang Jianhui plus the other pair into a Mercedes, as the others crammed into a Buick van.

"That Wu dude owes us a hundred thousand and can't settle up yet. No fears, Young Master Zhuang, we'll make sure you're thrilled today," vowed the suited man.

That all-too-familiar family name hit Zhuang Jianhui's ears, prompting him to rub the arm mended from its break. The metal plate stayed screwed right into the bone. It marked his life's gravest humiliation.

Twenty minutes of driving later, the vehicle pulled up before a housing unit. Close by, mahjong pieces rattled behind the shutter door, joined by a guy's furious bellows.

The suited man jerked open the roll-up door. His hulking backups, gripping steel bars and cords, stormed right in.

A bald fellow smack in a mahjong round leaped up terrified. "What do you want!"

A steel pipe came whistling straight at his head.

Down the line, debtors hardly dreaded collectors. Violent enforcements had mostly vanished. Shamelessly play dead pig ignoring hot water, and they barely laid a finger on you. Debt? More like auctioning off your credit history!

Yet in this era, it remained 2015.

Once the vicious pounding ended, the bald man slumped across the ground like a limp hound.

One brute slammed his pipe: "Motherfucker, not paying your debt!"

Zhuang Jianhui hung back at the group's rim, hands pocketed, silently taking in the spectacle.

None of the Wu Brothers' goons would slip free.

Gong Jin tutted in awe next to him. "They're really going hard!"

"This is peanuts," said the man in the suit. "Next month ramps up the pain. We'll squeeze some real blood out of him for sure."

Wrapping up with the bald thug, they shifted to the following address, discovering it deserted.

The man in the suit fished out his cell, punched a number, and flipped on speakerphone.

He demanded, "I cut you slack over last month's New Year without hounding. This month I tossed you a week's extension and you dodge payment? Gone ghosting?"

A raspy, gravelly man's tone blared from the phone: "Got no money."

Man in suit: "You got no money, you still gotta pay. Where are you now?"

"No idea!"

Man in suit: "Fine. Don't let me find you."

"Come on, come find me. I'm about to have no money to eat anyway. I wanna see if you lot kill me first, or I kill you first! Come on!" The voice turned wilder by the second, rough and deep.

The man in the suit ended the call and offered a sheepish grin: "Young Master Zhuang, apologies for that farce."

Zhuang Jianhui: "It's fine."

He turned to Gong Jin. "Back to school now, or stick around for more fun?"

Gong Jin eyed the clock. Fourth period still dragged on at school. He rushed: "Let's keep playing, keep playing!"