Chapter 1005 — Underground Boxing Ring (Part One)

"Wei Zhao! Lei Zhenyu! If I, Xie Yufeng, don't kill you both, I swear I'm not a man!"

"The poor thing. Who knows how he got on the wrong side of some gangsters? Beaten up like that—I wonder if he's hurt?" a passerby said with a sigh.

"Yeah, he can't be dying, can he? He'd better go to the hospital and get checked out, before some internal injury does him in!" another passerby chimed in.

"What are you looking at!" Xie Yufeng glared at the onlookers, gnashing his teeth. With a snort, he hurried away.

He no longer had the face to go back to Wei Zhao's private room. The only place he could go was his own.

As soon as Xie Yufeng walked in, everyone was puzzled. In that room, Xie Yufeng was the main event—after all, he was the one treating everyone, and his classmates all treated him as the center of attention. Seeing him come back with a bruised and swollen face, they were momentarily stunned.

Li Panghu and Wang Congming rushed over, practically tripping over themselves, and looked at Xie Yufeng with concern. "Young Master Xie, what happened to you? Your face..."

"It's nothing. The ground was slippery, and I slipped and fell," Xie Yufeng said with a wave of his hand, rather sullenly.

"Slippery?" Li Panghu and Wang Congming knew Xie Yufeng's strength. As a master at the peak of the early Mystic-rank stage, how could he have taken a bad fall because of a slippery floor? But since Xie Yufeng clearly didn't want to talk about it, they had no choice but not to press further.

Wei Zhao had only said that casually. After returning to his private room, he never went out again. He had merely been scaring Xie Yufeng. If the guy wanted to hide his strength, let him keep on getting beaten.

Inside the room, Shen Yushu and Feng Xiaoxiao were locking horns again, chattering and arguing about something. Wei Zhao could only smile wryly. Those two were evenly matched opponents, neither willing to concede, each trying to prove she was the better one.

The topics of their conversation had flown all over the place—what had started as a dispute over Wei Zhao had shifted to who was more impressive.

"I once taught Sister Yaoyao's suitor Zhong Yongliang a lesson. I made him run a kilometer to buy me grilled squid!" Shen Yushu said.

"What's so impressive about that? I once scammed a man into treating me to a meal worth hundreds of millions!" Feng Xiaoxiao refused to be outdone.

Seeing how caught up the two were in their conversation, Gu Mengyao didn't interrupt them. When she got tired of singing, she handed the microphone to Tang Yun. "Would you like to sing for a while?"

"Me... I'd rather not?" Tang Yun had never been to a place like this before. She didn't sing at home either. She listened to some pop songs, but only casually. If she were asked to sing, she would probably make a mess of it.

"Why don't you give it a try? Otherwise I'll be singing alone..." Gu Mengyao looked at Xiao Shu and couldn't help shaking her head. Then she lowered her voice and asked Tang Yun, "This Feng Xiaoxiao... what exactly is going on with her?"

"Let Wei Zhao explain tonight. It's not a good place to talk here..." Tang Yun was being very careful, afraid that Feng Xiaoxiao might notice some flaw.

"Oh... all right." Gu Mengyao nodded. Since Tang Yun had said that, there must be some hidden circumstances behind the whole thing.

"Aren't you two tired?" Wei Zhao looked at the high-spirited Shen Yushu and Feng Xiaoxiao. "You get along so well, just go ahead and form a duo. Who knows, maybe you'd even win a big prize."

"No way. I don't like people too similar to me," Shen Yushu said, shaking her head and refusing at once.

"Two tigers can't share one mountain. Do you think I like you?" Feng Xiaoxiao refused as well.

"Heh..." Wei Zhao smiled. "So are you two singing or not? If not, let's go back and sleep!"

"Sing? Of course I'll sing!" Hearing that, Shen Yushu jumped right up, glanced at Feng Xiaoxiao, and said, "Now it's time for Singing Shu to perform..."

Under the night sky, Songshan City was ablaze with neon and shimmering lights. Cars filled the spaces outside every entertainment venue as people came and went in bustling splendor. Yet amid that prosperous and joyful night, there was one place steeped in blood and darkness.

"Nice hit! Kill him! Purple Wolf will win! Go, Purple Wolf!"

"Left hook, right hook, kick him in the head! Kill Purple Wolf! Black Bear will win!"

This was an abandoned factory workshop that had been converted into an underground boxing arena. Rows upon rows of spectator stands surrounded the ring, packed with young people screaming wildly. In the VIP seats at the front, however, sat a number of composed, boss-like men, cigars between their lips, watching the bloody scene below with faint smiles at the corners of their mouths.

"Boss Li, who did you bet on today?" a fat man with a cigar asked the middle-aged man in sunglasses beside him.

"Who else but Purple Wolf? He's won three straight already—I've got three million riding on him today!" said the man called Boss Li, grinning. Yet even as he said he had three million on the line, he didn't seem in the least like someone who cared about that amount. It was as if three million were nothing more than a game.

"Heh heh, I bet on Purple Wolf too, but not as much as you—only a paltry two million!" the fat man with the cigar laughed. "A little wager is just for fun. If I lose, I'll just think of it as having drunk a few bottles of red wine."

"You're right. What we enjoy is this thrilling process! This boxing arena is great—really exciting. Those fixed fights can't compare to this at all. Here, they really beat each other within an inch of their lives!" the man in sunglasses said, nodding.

In the middle of the arena, two men wearing hoods with different colored patterns were locked in close-quarters combat.

One wore a hood with a purple wolf pattern—this was clearly the Purple Wolf those people had been talking about. The other wore a black bear-patterned hood, and he was the one they called Black Bear.

Black Bear was already covered in blood from the fierce attacks of Purple Wolf. Another heavy blow sent Black Bear flying, and he crashed heavily onto the ring floor.

The whole venue erupted in cheers—some people were thrilled, others dejected. Naturally, the thrilled ones were those who had won their bets, while the dejected ones were those who had lost. Of course, most of the crowd hadn't placed any bets at all but had come to watch the fights and chase a thrill.

Of course, even for thrill-seekers, the two-hundred-yuan entry fee wasn't cheap. This factory's stands could hold tens of thousands of people. Aside from the first few days when it wasn't completely full, word spread from one person to another, and more and more people were introduced to the place. As a result, every show was packed to the brim, and tickets had long since become impossible to get.