Chapter 19: Isn’t that pervert you?

“I SAID, LET GO OF HER!!”

Gu Chen’s eyes turned ice-cold, his tone thick with fury.

No matter how much Tang Ziya clashed with him at school, she was still a classmate.

Was he really going to let some outsider bully her?

Besides, he was the one who had brought her out for dinner.

If anything happened, he would be the one held responsible.

He reached out a slender hand and gripped the bald man’s wrist, attempting to force it off her.

However, he found that even with all his strength, he couldn’t budge the man.

A flash of irritation crossed his face.

‘Damn it. In the past, I could have handled this easily. To think I’ve regressed this much!’

Left with no choice, Gu Chen pressed his fingertips into a pressure point on the man’s wrist and pushed down hard.

“AH!!!”

The bald thug finally felt the sting of pain and let go, screaming.

Tang Ziya broke free from his grip and looked at Gu Chen, her chest heaving with lingering fear, unsure of what to say.

“You little brat, you’re dead!”

Losing face to a guy who looked like a mere fledgling sent the bald man into a total rage.

He swung a massive, heavy punch toward Gu Chen’s face.

Gu Chen didn’t panic.

While his strength had faded, his reactions and speed were still intact.

He wouldn’t go down that easily.

He ducked under the heavy blow and immediately launched a counter.

*Thud!*

He lifted his right leg and executed a perfect step-side kick, concentrating every ounce of his power into a single point.

The kick landed squarely in the bald man’s stomach.

The man’s face twisted in pain as he doubled over, gagging repeatedly.

Gu Chen didn’t give him a chance to recover.

He drove his knee sharply into the man’s chin.

With a distinct *crack*, the man’s head snapped back, and he collapsed, losing all ability to move.

The entire sequence was seamless.

‘Good. My skills are still there.’

Gu Chen let out a sigh of relief.

“OLD THREE!!”

Seeing things turn sour, the other two thugs charged forward.

Their vicious expressions made it look like they wanted to tear him to shreds.

As they lunged, Gu Chen’s expression hardened.

He snatched the half-eaten dinner, plates, and utensils from the table and hurled them.

One plate smashed right into the face of the scarred thug leading the charge.

“AH!!”

Scalding sauce smeared across the man’s face.

He clutched his eyes and wailed, falling straight to the ground.

The last thug reached Gu Chen a moment later, raising a glass bottle toward his head.

His intent was just as murderous.

Gu Chen scrambled backward, but a second strike followed instantly.

*Crash!*

He used a nearby folding chair to block, and the bottle shattered upon impact.

Tang Ziya stood nearby, frozen in shock.

The violence and blood before her eyes were her first taste of true terror.

She was just a student, after all.

She had never seen anything like this.

“WATCH OUT!”

Gu Chen shouted a warning.

The third thug was lunging toward her with the jagged remains of the bottle.

Those sharp glass edges were enough to kill!

Realizing she wouldn’t be able to dodge, Gu Chen pulled Tang Ziya into his arms and leaped aside.

The glass grazed his arm, and blood began to flow down his skin.

*Whack!!*

He swung the folding chair with a backhand strike, and the last man fell to the floor.

The surrounding onlookers couldn’t help but mutter their praise.

“Nice chair! Truly worthy of being called the number one of the seven hidden weapons…”

“Run!!”

Gu Chen was panting heavily after dealing with the three thugs.

If they managed to get back up, he wouldn’t be a match for them again.

He grabbed Tang Ziya’s hand and fled the scene.

—

They didn’t stop until they were far away.

Both of them were exhausted.

“You… you’re bleeding?”

Tang Ziya finally snapped out of her daze.

Her expression became complicated when she saw that Gu Chen had been injured while saving her.

“It’s just a scratch. It doesn’t matter. I’ll just wrap it up.”

To someone with years of fighting experience, this was nothing.

He hadn’t even noticed it until the adrenaline began to fade.

“We need to treat it first. What if the wound gets infected?”

Tang Ziya said.

“Fine, I’ll listen to you.”

Fortunately, there was a health station nearby.

After an exam, it was confirmed to be a shallow cut.

It only required disinfection, a bandage, and two days of rest to scab over without leaving a scar.

“See? I told you it was nothing. Come on, we still have to do the shopping. Let’s not waste any more time,” Gu Chen said.

“Yeah, okay…”

Faced with Gu Chen’s dismissive attitude, Tang Ziya hesitated several times as if she wanted to say something, but she remained silent.

After such a major event, it was impossible for her to be completely at peace.

Once they finished gathering the supplies, Tang Ziya took it upon herself to carry everything, including the three replacement brooms.

Gu Chen didn’t insist on helping.

‘What should I do? I feel like my strength is getting weaker by the day. This isn’t going to work.’

On the way back, Gu Chen was preoccupied with his own worries.

He wasn’t concerned about anyone else, but the problem was his scheduled fight with that pervert, Li Fugui, this Friday.

If his strength kept dropping, his chances of winning would vanish.

If he lost, he would be completely humiliated!

“Gu Chen… about what happened… thank you.”

As they entered the school grounds, Tang Ziya finally spoke.

She had spent the entire walk gathering the courage to say it.

“What?”

Gu Chen looked up.

He had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t heard her.

“You… you’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you!”

Tang Ziya gritted her teeth.

She wasn’t going to say it a second time.

If she didn’t owe him such a debt of gratitude, she wouldn’t have said those words even if her life depended on it.

After all, their status as bitter rivals hadn’t changed.

“I’m not. Whatever,” Gu Chen replied, feeling helpless.

He had no idea what he had done to upset her now.

Moreover, after the fight, Tang Ziya was questioning herself more than ever.

Gu Chen had defeated three thugs in an instant with strikes that were both ruthless and precise.

Now, she was even more certain that he had killed someone before…

She just didn’t understand why, whenever they fought, they always seemed to be on equal footing.

‘Could it be that… he was letting me win all along?’

No matter how slow Tang Ziya was, she had finally realized the truth.

In fact, that was exactly what had happened.

First, Gu Chen didn’t want to bully a girl.

Second, he always held back for the sake of their class teacher.

If it weren’t for this incident, Tang Ziya would have graduated believing she was the true nemesis of the criminal Gu Chen.

“Let’s go. We’ll hand the receipts to Teacher Li, and then we’re done.”

Because they had been held up, evening self-study was over by the time they returned.

The students had all gone back to their dorms, and the campus was silent.

“Go back to your dorm. I can go by myself,” Tang Ziya said.

“I’ll walk you. There’s a pervert near the artificial lake. I don’t want you running into him.”

Gu Chen decided to finish the job just in case something happened.

The last time she had kicked that guy in the crotch, it was only because he had been completely unprepared.

A trick like that wouldn’t work a second time.

“Hmph, isn’t that pervert just you? Stop acting,” Tang Ziya said, still stubborn.

She was certain that Teacher Li had provided a fake alibi for him, even if she couldn’t prove it.

“Fine. If you run into a pervert later, don’t expect me to help.”

Gu Chen was genuinely annoyed.

He had said it eight hundred times — he wasn’t some flasher.

Why wouldn’t she believe him?

Was his image really that terrible?

They walked past the artificial lake without any trouble and handed the receipts to Li Yanqiu.

‘The pervert didn’t show up today. It really was Gu Chen in disguise!’

“AH!!!”

Just as Tang Ziya was feeling smug about her conclusion, a girl’s scream rang out from up ahead.