Chapter 2: CH 2

The bell rang at the end of the class, and Lu Rong stood up, mixing in with the crowd of students rushing towards the cafeteria. He seemed like a normal high school student.

As a matter of fact, he was the legendary “Big Bro” of Chengnan High.

Every school had a gang like this – they didn’t study obediently and did things that were not in line with the school rules all day – even Chengnan High was no exception. However, this year, students couldn’t sense the existence of this ‘black force’ anymore.

If it was a few years ago, the nearby internet café owner would have shivered at the mention of Chengnan High’s Boss.

The last Boss ruled Chengnan High for four whole years, right from the first day of school, he didn’t care much for juvenile protection law and meddled with the private belongings of other students. After class on a certain day, when Lu Rong was in the second year of middle school, he was unfortunately stopped by the boss on the way home, and the boss forced him to pay tax, or else—

“Extermination.” The boss punched the wall, forming a hole as big as a bowl.

Lu Rong: “I want to give something to the boss.”

Boss: “?”

Lu Rong took out his wallet with two of his fingers and shadily stuffed it into the boss’ pocket.

Boss: “…”

The boss had travelled in Jianghu for so many years, yet he had never seen such a miserable person; he couldn’t help but take a few more glances at him. At that time, Lu Rong had already matured—he was tall, delicate and pretty, and distinctly contrasted against the one being blocked alongside him – Liang Wendao – who was frightened to the extent of shivering, tears gushing out, and almost peeing in his pants.

“Only… only this much?” The boss was a little bit embarrassed by asking, but according to his standard process, he still had to viciously ask once more.

Lu Rong answered indifferently, “Just this much. I’m sorry, Senior. However, I have a plan to have Senior earn money while lying down.”

Boss: “What?”

Boss clenched his fist, his mind was comparatively simpler. He was rampant at school, when actually he struggled to use his physical strength to earn only a small amount of money. As a school tyrant, he often needed to represent Chengnan High to fight with other school tyrants. In each fight, sacrificing some blood was unavoidable, and sometimes, the protection money wasn’t enough to cover his medical expenses. While it seemed grand on the surface, his daily life was actually quite hard.

Especially after Alipay and WeChat were popularized, not many people carried cash anymore. Sometimes the boss thought in the middle of the night: this school tyrant is too much of a failure!

This time, when Lu Rong mentioned that there was a way to earn money while lying down the boss felt moved and asked Lu Rong to elaborate on his method of earning money.

Lu Rong said, “Relying on your power to rob will rouse the complaints of others, it can’t be used for long. If you want them to be willing to give you money, you have to make an exchange with them—give and take. Give them what they want based on their needs, you won’t need to threaten them, they will offer it themselves by every means possible. In my opinion, among students nowadays, there is a market for copying homework.”

At first, he proposed one homework for 1 yuan, 6 yuan for all subject packages, 20 yuan for a monthly package. The inflation that year was not very serious, and middle schoolers didn’t have much money; his price list put students’ wallets into consideration.

The boss was extremely angry. ”F**k! You want me to help others write homework?”

Meaning: if I could do it, would I be here, robbing?!

“Of course, this doesn’t need big bro to do it yourself.” Lu Rong slipped away from the shortie that couldn’t stop crying. “Coincidentally, this is the first of our grade, Liang Wendao. If Big Bro can trust me, just let me take care of these things. Big Bro will get the benefits, and we will just keep a little of the production and labour costs; Big Bro won’t need to worry about anything.”

The gang had no precedent for this; the boss pretended to consider for a while.

Lu Rong said, “This is better than letting everyone wander about.”

A burly man stepped forward. “Why look down on us! I earned 1000 yuan yesterday!”

Lu Rong turned towards him. “How did you earn it?”

The burly man looked at his boss, obtaining his permission, and he fiercely said, ”Yesterday I got a legendary combat weapon from Wang Dao[1], it sold for 1000 yuan!”

Lu Rong’s eyes shone, and he earnestly asked, “What’s your name?”

Burly man: “Old B.”

Lu Rong looked at him, scanning up and down. “Bro B, you don’t seem like a student from Chengnan High.

Old B’s face reddened. “I was.” But after he graduated from middle school, he worked at a factory nearby.

Lu Rong made a “Hn” sound, and instead of looking down on him, he arranged a task for him. “In the future, you won’t need to do physical work anymore. Just sit in an internet café, and later on, I’ll see whether I can help you build a specialized team for acquiring legendary combat weapons. You are so impressive; farming for others shouldn’t be a problem, right? How many brothers like this are around you? Bring all of them to organize farming work, is this possible?”

Old B: “Huh?”

Lu Rong turned towards the boss. “Internet business; even pigs can fly with the wind.”

Lu Rong’s calm and composed manner probably awed the boss, or maybe the boss was tired of the Jianghu’s disputes; either way, the boss was moved. In the alley where Chengnan High’s people were often robbed, there was a big revolution in Chengnan High’s school tyrant history; even the boss’ muddled heart was reformed by the young Lu Rong.

Afterwards, in the upcoming months, Lu Rong brought ‘best scholar’ Liang Wendao and sworn brother Li Nanbian everywhere, spreading news of the homework-copying industry throughout the entire grade. The homework-copying industry was monopolized by the school tyrant, the funds steadily flowing to Boss’ Alipay account.

At that time, the job was easier; simply let Liang Wendao answer the papers, then let others copy the correct answers. Liang Wendao’s appearance was undistinguished and unattractive, and he was often bullied by the school tyrant before; now, he had become the core of the school tyrant’s group—because he was truly… too capable of answering questions!

Liang Wendao was a talented person that could get full marks on all subjects, even liberal arts, he could get exactly the same answer as the standardized ones. Even the very experienced teacher asserted that, although he had seen excellent students, he had never met one with this kind of off-the-chart learning ability. Lu Rong used this opportunity to create a “study god” image for him. Liang Wendao’s formidable learning ability, along with Lu Rong’s ‘adding fuel to flame the character’ actions, swiftly made Liang Wendao’s genius image spread throughout the entire school. Who would have thought that the character design was too successful, everyone was frightened to the extent that they didn’t even dare to call his name, usually using “that guy” to refer to  him.

In the beginning stages, because the answers were unified, the homework-copying industry was discovered by the teachers and encountered suppression. Learning from his experience, Lu Rong modified the industry’s progress. He found the mental arithmetic genius, Yan Gou, introducing a scoring system to the answers. Henceforth, everyone gets unique papers if you want 60 points then you’ll get one with 60 points, and if you want 90 points you’ll get one scoring 90 points.

After the second year stabilized, Lu Rong took the boss to copy the second-year papers. They found the best students of each grade, using the carrot-and-stick strategy to force them to join their grey industry chain. Due to the boss’ fists and Lu Rong’s persuasion, the best students needed to do their papers anyway, so why not cooperate?

After Lu Rong stabilized this industry, he ran to the internet café with Old B for a month.

In this one month, with the help of his mother, Lu Rong had understood all of the market’s most popular games, as well as their characteristics and mechanics. He analysed how to earn money in them, some through their in-game currency, some by farming character levels for others, and some through selling equipment and accounts.

In Lu Rong’s opinion, with their current capability, they could only farm; they helped Old B get a bank account and a Taobao shop, and they lurked in various games everyday to get orders. Upon receiving one, they wouldn’t complete it themselves, but instead, they would look for an expert player who could clear it and take a 40% commission.

In this way, they became a proxy platform; Old B’s phone had more than a hundred game groups, and most new players wanted to find a farmer. There were many expert players on his list, depending on games to make money. Old B received and dispatched orders, earning big money from the percentage they took.

Lu Rong reminded him not to form any type of community at all costs. “The buyers are your clients, the players are your suppliers, and as long as they can’t find each other, you will always gain profit.”

Old B: “OK!”

After one semester, the boss brought Lu Rong to drink ‘til he dropped in a KTV, he uttered a Liu Bang-like[2] sigh. “Today I finally know the value of being a school tyrant!”

It was worth a lot!

Lu Rong sat beside him, took out a thermos mug to pour a cup of Ceylon tea for himself, then drained his glass in a calm and composed manner.

Several school tyrants truly understood that ‘knowledge is power’ from Lu Rong; they started to study diligently. A few years later, they were successfully accepted into undergraduate courses, and they didn’t stain Chengnan High’s undergraduate entrance rate.

Upon graduating, the boss passed the school tyrant position to Lu Rong and also left a strong fighter to protect him—a guy called Deng Te.

There was no dispute over the school tyrant’s inheritance because it had long become mere figurehead; the ones in power were Lu Rong and his people. It was as if they were bidding farewell to the elders in the gang.

Half a year had passed since Lu Rong was enthroned, and until now, he had never used Deng Te. Lu Rong was not widely known; he was ordinary during class, he utilized Li Nanbian to manage his business and earned money quietly, to the point where students at Chengnan High had forgotten that they used to have a school tyrant.

Like Jin Menglu, most of them only knew that the school had a grey and gigantic homework-copying industry…

However, Lu Rong didn’t know that his dream to “quietly earn money” and pass his days peacefully would end today. He obliviously ran towards the small fish cake stall in the cafeteria on the third floor with Yan Gou.

[1] name of a game

[2] Liu Bang is a commoner who later became the first emperor of Han