Chapter 32 I will deal with all of you alone!
Liang Qu went home, found some clean clothes to change into, and jogged towards Pingyang Town.
The leaves piled up on both sides of the road were getting thicker and thicker, the upper layer was red and yellow, and the lower layer was black and brown.
The wind blowing on his body felt like ice knives, but Liang Qu felt endless energy, neither cold nor hot. The thing burning in his chest was called passion.
Liang Qu raised his head. The huge setting sun was setting little by little, turning his pupils into a brilliant rainbow gold.
The setting sun gradually takes away the sunlight from the earth. The pale red woods turn into dark red. Soon night will fall. This is the last glimpse of the sunset.
He suddenly felt that this world was not bad. There was no pollution, no cages, and the air was fresher.
A short period of desolation is not a bad thing. As long as you are heading in the right direction, frying and boiling are both ways to make things delicious. So is cheering. There will always be a day when you can get out of this.
"Ho!"
Liang Qu shouted.
The mule pulling the cart on the side of the road was frightened and tried to run into the woods with the cart. The driver whipped the mule several times before it got back on track, cursing, "Idiot."
Did this word appear so early?
Liang Qu was stunned, but not angry. He just smiled back. Seeing this, the driver left cursing, thinking that he had really met a fool.
When they arrived at Pingyang Town, Liang Qu guessed that Li Libo and Chen Jiechang might be hungry, so he bought a few buns and took a familiar shortcut to the Yang's Martial Arts School.
The entrance to the martial arts hall is brightly lit. There is a large oil lamp every few meters after entering, and a lantern every ten meters.
Liang Qu carried the oil-paper bag and walked through the corridor with ease.
There were a lot more people on the martial arts field, about fifty or so.
Many people will go home and practice on their own after learning boxing, and meet again at the end of the month. The thirty people I met on the registration day were not all of them.
But there seemed to be no serious martial artists among the crowd, only apprentices.
Liang Qu thought that the martial artists might have something to do, or they might have gone to visit Master Yang in advance, so he didn't think much about it. However, many people secretly glanced at him intentionally or unintentionally.
"Strange, why are they all looking at me?"
Liang Qu was puzzled. He was down and out and no one paid any attention to him. He was willing to make friends with him, but no one would stare at him.
Am I late?
He remembered that when he was in high school, he got up late one time and was caught by the homeroom teacher who came to supervise the morning reading. Many of his good classmates pretended to read but were actually watching a play, just like now.
Liang Qu had no choice but to pretend that he didn't see it and went to the corner of the flower bed alone to find Li Libo and Chen Jiechang.
Hearing footsteps, the two men raised their heads, and when they saw Liang Qu, they lowered their heads at the same time, but the bruises on their eye sockets and swollen cheeks could not be hidden.
Knowing that the two of them liked to annoy each other, Liang Qu thought they had gone too far: "What's going on? Are you two fighting? Are you so cruel?"
The two looked at each other in silence.
Liang Qu realized something was wrong, squatted down and asked in a low voice: "What's going on?"
A moment of silence.
Chen Jiechang broke the silence.
His swollen cheeks made his voice unclear: "After you left, Lu Tingcai brought a group of people to ask us for money, saying that we smelled bad and affected their martial arts training, and demanded two taels of silver per person as compensation. We were so angry that we started a fight with them."
Two taels?!
Liang Qu was shocked.
Is this asking for money?
This is going to kill him!
"What about the guy surnamed Lu?" Liang Qu had no respect for Young Master Lu, and anger rose in his chest. "And Senior Brother Xiang, didn't you look for him? Senior Brother Xiang should have helped, right?"
"That guy surnamed Lu didn't even look at us straight in the eye." Li Libo gritted his teeth, "He just turned around and left! We don't know where Senior Brother Xiang is. From noon until now, we are the only apprentices left in the martial arts hall."
Liang Qu couldn't believe it. How could it be such a coincidence today?
"Originally, I knocked one out with my hammer, and with Brother Chen, it was two against three, so we weren't going to lose. But then three more people came to help them, and we lost the fight."
Upon hearing this, Chen Jiechang snorted coldly. He was very dissatisfied. He could have seriously injured Xue Dingyi, but he didn't expect that the other party had helpers. In the end, he only left a few bloody marks on Xue Dingyi's neck.
"Now they want us to collect ten taels of silver, otherwise they will come to us every day to 'compete', tsk~"
Chen Jiechang laughed at himself. He did not regret anything, but felt regretful. He regretted that the three people behind him came too quickly and he did not have the chance to strangle Xue Dingyi to death.
It was useless to say anything at this point. He sighed, "We have discussed it. The fight was caused by us, so we will make up for the extra four ounces."
Li Libo nodded. They all felt a little guilty, thinking that it was they who had to go up and fight, causing one person to become more than three taels. The situation of Liang Qu's family was not good to begin with, so naturally they had to make up for the extra gap.
There was silence in the corner of the flower bed.
Without the human voice, the crickets in the flowerbed felt safe again and began to chirp intermittently. Their voices were not clear, but rather sounded very old.
It is early winter now, and mid-winter is less than half a month away. The cricket can no longer chirp - it is dying, perhaps frozen to death on some night when the temperature drops suddenly.
In the martial arts arena, people who were exchanging and training would often look down at the corner of the flower bed that they had never paid attention to.
Some were playful, some were indifferent, and some found it funny.
Mr. Zhao San, dressed in gorgeous clothes, looked at the flower bed and then looked to another corner.
Lu Tingcai and others there were also silent.
Can they get anything good when things have turned out like this?
Impossible. Zhao Xueyuan knew very well that they would be punished, even more severely.
In the past, this group of people were able to receive protection fees because the bullied people did not dare to speak up.
Moreover, all the fights took place outside the martial arts gym. Only today, the martial arts masters were not here, so the situation was different.
People at the bottom of society are used to feeling inferior and are naturally afraid of people of higher status. After being deceived by Lu Tingcai's rhetoric, they dare not ask martial artists for help.
Most people wouldn’t think of reporting to the authorities when they suffer a loss, right?
Relying on a combination of cheating and fighting, these guys were always successful. Unexpectedly, they ran into two tough guys who hit them with bricks.
I just don’t know whether the last apprentice from my fellow villager is a tough guy or a soft-hearted one.
Zhao Xueyuan was very curious.
Lu Tingcai and others now only feel regret and fear, but their brother was stabbed in the head and their blood boiled, so they didn't care about so many things at that time.
Now they have given up hope, like desperate gamblers at the end of their rope, and are more dangerous than ever.
The difference is that the deceived people are still kept in the dark.
Everyone is watching the show.
The training ground, made of rammed earth, was illuminated in an orange-yellow hue by the oil lamps. Liang Qu stood up, and the light stretched his shadow very long, casting it on the wall, flickering slightly.
Li Libo and Chen Jiechang looked up and saw two oil paper bags in front of them.
"Take it."
"This is."
"Take it!"
The crickets in the flowerbed fell silent.
Li Libo and Chen Jiechang reached out to take it, feeling the warmth inside the oil paper package and the aroma emanating from it, and guessed that there was food inside.
Liang Qu turned and walked towards the center of the martial arts arena.
Everyone looked over.
Liang Qu looked around.
He had never been here before, let alone enjoyed the attention of the public.
tired,
So tired.
I used to work overtime until midnight and was as tired as a dog, but never as tired as I am now.
The scoundrel who acts like a scoundrel can live, the ruffian who monopolizes water sources can live, and the petty official who kicks the bucket can also live.
Rather!
Those who want to live well cannot live!
The entire society is like an impenetrable net, trapping all those who want to climb up.
Everyone who tried to pass through was squeezed into the narrow hole, with their faces distorted and their skin and flesh blurred.
Those spiders, poisonous insects, and centipedes hung on one large web node after another, waiting for their bloody prey to struggle to exhaustion and fight for blood.
Liang Qu looked at the other corner.
Everyone was there, Lu Tingcai, Xue Dingyi, Yu Weilong, Xiang Quji.
These... poisonous insects!
Liang Qu's gaze suddenly changed and became very quiet. He stretched out his hand and pointed at the seven people.
"I want to fight you!"
The martial arts arena was as silent as death.
"laugh"
Someone laughed.
Liang Qu stared at him expressionlessly.
"cough……"
The atmosphere was dead silent again.
Under the pressure of the gazes, Lu Tingcai and others had to stand up, and the crowd slowly parted to make way.
Even if I regret it, it would be too cowardly to just sit there facing such an arrogant provocation.
"Are you alone?" Lu Tingcai looked funny with a white gauze wrapped around his head, but with the six people behind him, no one would find it funny. "You can't figure out your own..."
"Shut up you idiot!"
Lu Tingcai was stunned, and everyone was stunned.
They were like chickens with their necks pinched, their veins bulging, but they couldn't utter a more powerful swear word to refute.
How cheap.
Liang Qu felt a tightness in his chest. The feeling of being filled with anger but having nowhere to vent was like a volcano burning in his heart.
He took a deep breath, his chest heaving, suppressing his volcanic rage, and the sound of the wind quieted down.
"I am enough! I can defeat all of you by myself!"
(End of this chapter)
