Chapter 422: Attracting a Bully-Prone Physique

Gui Ce Yuan Elementary Department, Wednesday afternoon.

The fourth period PE class ended fifteen minutes early; the instructor was urgently summoned to a safety meeting, leaving a group of twelve- to thirteen-year-old trainees to freely move about the field.

Most of them went in small groups to the tuck shop, while a few lay under the shade scrolling on their phones.

Chen Yao didn't go.

She squatted by the flowerbed at the corner of the field, using a stick to draw a force diagram on the dirt. There was a bonus question on the morning physics test she couldn't solve, and she felt frustrated, wanting to straighten out her thoughts while the memory was still fresh.

"Yo."

An amused voice came down from above.

Chen Yao's stick stopped.

She didn't lift her head.

"Chen Yao, are you building a highway for ants?"

Laughter surrounded her from all sides, not just one person. She glanced around with her peripheral vision—four of them, two boys and two girls.

The girl leading them was Zhou Ting from Class C; her family made medical devices and had made a fortune supplying emergency equipment to the quarantine zone after the Weird Domain outbreak. The boy beside her surnamed Sun was well-built; it was said someone in his family was a mid-level officer in the Special Forces. The other two were lackeys, whose names she couldn't be bothered to remember.

Zhao Lingfei's incident had been over for almost two weeks.

The official story was that Zhao and her father had been attacked by a wild Weird in the Old District, their bodies unrecognizable. The news spread among the trainees for a few days, causing panic, before being drowned out by new gossip.

No one linked Zhao Lingfei's death to Chen Yao.

But the niche left by Zhao Lingfei wouldn't stay empty for long.

In a place like school, there's never a shortage of people who want to step on others to climb up.

What's lacking are people with a physique that attracts bullies, like Chen Yao.

She's practically a rare animal.

"I hear you eat lunch alone in the library every day? How miserable." Zhou Ting squatted down, her tone laced with that condescending pity that's more nauseating than outright insults, "Want to join us? All you have to do is copy next week's rules homework for us."

Chen Yao slowly stood up, and the stick in her hand fell to the ground.

She kept her head down, shoulders slightly hunched, her left hand unconsciously gripping the hem of her uniform, knuckles whitening.

She had done this set of movements too many times. Every angle had been finely tuned: the curve of her bent back just right to signal "I don't want trouble," the degree of her downcast gaze precisely in the "scared but not breaking" range.

A perfect prey posture.

"I, I'm not really good at copying..." her voice was so faint it was almost inaudible, with just the right tremor.

"You can't copy? Then what can you do?" The boy surnamed Sun stepped forward, placing his hand heavily on her shoulder, "With your tiny frame, you still got third on the test? Did you cheat?"

"No..."

"No? Then go return the borrowed gear to the equipment room. We need to pick something up there anyway."

Zhou Ting gave the two lackeys behind her a look.

Chen Yao was half-pushed, half-shoved by the four of them toward the equipment room; passersby either pretended not to see or pulled out their phones to record a couple of seconds before guiltily slipping them back into their pockets.

The equipment room was at the back of the teaching building, a blind spot for the surveillance cameras.

The door swung open, and a smell of rubber and rust hit them. Piles of gymnastics mats were stacked in the corner, dust lay on the vaulting box, and a few javelins leaned against the wall, their tips already rusted.

"Close the door," Zhou Ting said.

The sound of the latch falling echoed in the cramped space.

Chen Yao was shoved to the farthest corner, her back hitting the edge of the vaulting box with a dull thud.

She bit her lower lip, and her eye sockets began to redden.

Just reddening—no tears fell.

All her physiological signs said she was a frightened thirteen-year-old girl.

But beneath the two layers of her uniform, no one saw that the fingertips of the hand clutching her hem were steady.

Not a single finger trembled.

"Be good, little junior." The boy surnamed Sun stepped forward and reached to grab her backpack strap.

Chen Yao shrank back, her shoulder knocking over a storage bin as a basketball rolled across the floor.

Zhou Ting laughed, a sound laced with superiority and a desire to control—the kind of noise familiar to every creature at the top of the schoolyard food chain.

"Stop dawdling, hand over your backpack; the notebook's inside, right?" She jerked her chin at the boy surnamed Sun, "Help her get it."

The boy surnamed Sun seized Chen Yao's wrist.

Chen Yao let out a sharp, short "Ah." She desperately tried to pull her arm back, curling up, but accidentally scratched the boy surnamed Sun with her nail.

"You dare?!" The boy surnamed Sun's fingers clenched tighter.

His other hand rose, palm open—angle, force, trajectory—a standard slap.

The wind from the palm brushed Chen Yao's bangs.

Then it stopped.

It wasn't him stopping it.

It was being held.

No one saw clearly what had happened.

There was only a clean joint dislocation sound—not the exaggerated "crack" common in movies, but a finer, more real "click", the dull thud of the radius head slipping out of the socket after the ligament was stretched to its limit.

The boy surnamed Sun's right arm was twisted backward at an impossible angle by a hand.

His elbow joint was hyperextended.

His wrist joint was counter-rotated.

His entire center of gravity collapsed in 0.3 seconds, his knees slamming into the concrete floor with a heavy thud of flesh.

Then the second person also went down.

The lackey by the door had just turned around when he caught a precise low kick to the shin—outer ankle, his supporting leg losing balance. His shoe scraped a black mark on the floor as he sprawled sideways, the back of his head hitting the gymnastics mat.

Two seconds.

Two of the four bullies standing in the equipment room fell.

The remaining Zhou Ting and the female follower froze in place, mouths open, their eyes not knowing where to look.

Chen Yao also froze.

This time it was genuine shock.

She saw a teenager standing half a meter in front of her.

He wasn't very tall, about the same age as her, wearing Qiu Ce Yuan's standard uniform, but his cuffs were rolled up to mid‑forearm, revealing a proportionate, solid forearm. His skin was wheat‑colored, not the kind from a gym, but the tan from long‑term outdoor activity.

His features were clean. The brow bone wasn't high but had sharp lines, the nose bridge straight, the lips somewhat thin.

He was clapping his hands.

He casually clapped his palms twice, shaking off the dust.

The movement was relaxed to an unreasonable degree.

He had already knocked down two boys a size larger than him within three seconds, yet his posture now seemed as if he were merely picking up a pen for someone.

"Y‑you—who are you?!" Zhou Ting's voice rose an octave, carrying the instinctive sharpness after being frightened.

The teenager tilted his head slightly and gave her a glance.

"Lu Yu. Transfer student. First day reporting today."

His voice was soft, his speech a bit slow, his enunciation loose, the ending tinged with a southern accent. After speaking, he flashed a smile at Zhou Ting.

The smile was sunny— the kind that evokes a sports meet, lemon soda, and a summer evening playground. A textbook "model child" smile.

But his eyes were not smiling.

His pupils were dark‑colored, and in the dim light of the equipment room the boundary between iris and pupil was almost indistinguishable.

Those eyes held a depth that didn't match his age. Not cold, not sharp—just deep.

So deep that a glance made people instinctively look away.

The Sun boy on the floor clutched his dislocated elbow, gritting his teeth as he tried to get up, and Lu Yu looked down at him briefly.

Just a glance.

No threat, no intimidation.

But the Sun boy's knee felt like it was filled with lead, stuck in place.

"Instructor said the equipment room can't be locked," Lu Yu walked over, pulled the latch open, stepped aside to clear the passage, "You all go first."

Zhou Ting opened her mouth, trying to think of some dramatic line to retort, like "Just you wait" or "Do you know who my father is?"—the classic comebacks.

But when she looked up into Lu Yu's calm eyes, the words in her throat were all swallowed back.

The four of them left.

The Sun boy was being carried away by two girls.

Only two people remained in the equipment room.

Lu Yu turned around, looking at Chen Yao curled up beside the jump box.

The little girl still kept a curled posture, arms hugging her backpack, head tucked above her knees, shoulders trembling.

"It's okay now," Lu Yu squatted down, unhurriedly, extending his right hand toward Chen Yao.

Palm up, five fingers slightly spread.

"Can you stand up?"

Chen Yao slowly lifted her head. Her eye sockets were indeed red, tear marks still clinging to her cheeks, the tip of her nose slightly pink, her whole frame thin and tiny, utterly pitiful.

She reached out, placing her hand on Lu Yu's palm; her fingertips were icy.

"Th‑thank you......"

Her voice was so light it seemed about to shatter.

Lu Yu pulled her up.

"You're welcome. I was just passing by," he let go, brushed the dust off his school trousers, then added, "You've got dust on your hair."

Chen Yao hurriedly touched her hair; the hairpin was crooked, and she quickly straightened it.

It was that Old Hairpin wrapped in copper wire.

Lu Yu glanced at the crudely made hairpin, asking nothing further.

"What's your name?"

"Chen Yao."

"Chen Yao," Lu Yu repeated, nodding, "Then, where's the classroom? It's my first day, I'm not familiar with the routes."

Chen Yao blinked her still watery eyes, "Are you... a transfer student?"

"Yes. Assigned to Class A. And you?"

"I'm also in Class A."

"That works then."

Lu Yu smiled, bent down to pick up the stationery case that had fallen on the floor, and handed it to her.

Chen Yao took the case with both hands; the backs of her hands still bore the red marks left by the Sun boy's grip.

She said no more thank yous, merely lowered her head, eyelashes drooping, and slipped the case into her backpack.

"I—I'll take you to the classroom."

Qiu Ce Yuan faculty office area, third floor.

Su Ming flicked his third finger on the right hand back and forth on the mouse wheel seven times, his gaze fixed on the screen's center where the image had been magnified enough that individual pixels were visible to the naked eye.

He switched the equipment room's surveillance to a hidden camera—this feed wasn't listed in Qiu Ce Yuan's security system; it was a micro probe he accessed alone with a covert whistle permission. Pinhole‑grade, embedded behind a ventilation grille in a ceiling corner; even a flashlight would only reveal a dust‑caked screw head.

He replayed the footage frame by frame back to the three seconds when Lu Yu made his move.

Frame one. Lu Yu's left foot steps onto the edge of the frame, stride normal, cadence steady. No acceleration can be seen.

Frame two. His right hand has already grasped the wrist of the boy surnamed Sun. Su Ming extracts this frame alone and enlarges it four hundred times—Lu Yu's five‑finger grip is precise to the millimeter, the index and middle fingers press the lateral side of the radial styloid, the thumb hooks into the ulnar groove, and the ring and little fingers naturally lock the back of the hand.

A textbook‑level grappling ready position.

But it's not entirely textbook.

Su Ming's eyebrows knit.

The standard military‑style grip presses the thumb above the distal radioulnar joint gap, making the torque evenly distributed and most efficient.

But Lu Yu's thumb is positioned two millimeters lower.

He makes an extremely subtle tweak to the standard move, with a single purpose—to make the opponent's pain hit harder and more suddenly, thereby creating an instant psychological shock that halts any resistance before it can arise.

This isn't something the academy can teach.

Su Ming leans his back against the chair.

His right hand leaves the mouse and habitually reaches for his left wrist—a subtle ring of protrusions there is the trace left by the Time Marrow Worm as it winds beneath the skin during dormancy; feeling that pattern steadies him, like some people twirl a string or spin a pen.

He opens another window.

Transfer student enrollment form.

Name: Lu Yu.

Gender: Male.

Age: 14.

Native place: —

After seeing the personal details below.

Su Ming's eyebrows lift slightly.

"Somewhat interesting..."