Someone chimed in, "I heard his dad hooked up with a rich woman, and he's benefited from it all. I thought it would be harder to find him, but he just walked right into our hands. We're going to teach him a lesson this time!"

The thugs ran off quickly, and Lu Yingzao pulled Lu Chuqing aside to wait for them to pass.

After passing by, Lu Chuqing followed Lu Ying upstairs, vaguely hearing the group of people behind her say, "That guy surnamed Xi is asking for trouble. He knows it's Sunday and we're all home, yet he still dares to argue with Qiangzi and his gang. We'll beat him to a pulp later!"

Someone else said, "Did you guys see those two women at the bottom of the stairs? They're both really slutty..."

Upon hearing the conversation, Lu Chuqing had a sudden intuition and said to Lu Ying, "Mom, go upstairs and see if anyone is there. I'll go outside and check."

Lu Ying guessed what she meant, and thinking that there were quite a few boys, she said, "Mom will go and take a look, you go upstairs and take a look."

"Okay, Mom, be careful."

"The baby too."

After saying that, Lu Chuqing ran up the stairs, while Lu Ying, holding an umbrella, headed in the direction where the group of thugs had disappeared.

Upon finding the resident, Lu Chuqing knocked on the door. After waiting for a while without any response, she knocked twice more and called Xi Qingxu's name through the door.

The neighborhood is old, and many people no longer live here. On the third floor, only the innermost apartment is occupied by an elderly woman who, upon hearing the commotion, shakily came out, leaning on her cane.

"Don't shout, baby. No one has come back to this house for months. They've all moved away."

After calling out a few times without any response, and recalling what had just happened, Lu Chuqing figured there was no one inside. She turned to thank the old lady, "Thank you, Grandma. I didn't know there was no one inside. I'll go look somewhere else first."

Knowing that no one was inside, Lu Chuqing took out her phone to call Lu Ying, who happened to call back.

"Qingqing, Mommy couldn't catch those delinquents. Is anyone upstairs?"

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded very anxious, and you could tell just how anxious the woman looked without even looking at her.

Lu Chuqing answered truthfully, "I called several people but no one responded, so they must not be home."

Lu Ying was really panicking. She couldn't get through on the phone, there was no one in the house, and Xi Qingxu was running a fever. Where could he have gone?

If he really gets into a conflict with those delinquents, he'll definitely suffer because he's all alone.

The more Lu Ying thought about it, the more serious it seemed. Without stopping, she called Xi Jun again, explained the situation, and asked the man if there were any other places Xi Qingxu might have gone.

The man named several places where teenagers often worked part-time; judging from the locations, they were shops in the old neighborhood.

Xi Jun knew what kind of people would be in those places, so she hurriedly said, "Don't panic. I'm not too busy here and can leave early. I'll go there now. You and Qingqing go to the old lady's house at the end of the third floor and wait for a while. I'll go over there right away and we'll look for her together."

Lu Ying couldn't possibly remain calm, but given the current situation, neither she nor Lu Chuqing were familiar with this area. Finding people blindly was one thing, but losing them was another.

After a moment's thought, she had no choice but to return the way she came and find a place to settle her daughter first.

Lu Chuqing went down to the second floor and stood at the window at the corner of the stairs to look out. Although the floor was low, she could see the back of the community from this position.

The old residential area was built with buildings facing each other. The side of Xi Jun's building faced a dark alley behind it. The buildings were also not tall, and the wall just blocked the view outside.

Lu Chuqing remembered that the thugs went to the left side of the building. She was not familiar with this area, so she could only guess that there might be a small door there that led to a dark alley behind.

Thinking of this, she grabbed her umbrella and ran downstairs.

Just as Xi Qingxu had knocked the two men to the ground, unable to get up, five more people arrived from behind.

The leader, a blond man with a mohawk, saw that the boy was unharmed except for some dirt on his trousers. He shouted to the men behind him, "Brothers, get him! This kid's so arrogant, we have to teach him a lesson and let him know that we brothers aren't pushovers!"

The boy, whose hair was slightly damp, looked up at them, his eyes devoid of any emotion. His slightly hoarse voice slowly uttered a few words, "Then let's do it all at once, it'll be perfect to get rid of it all at once."

Seeing that he was unharmed, the henchmen behind him were a little scared and hesitated to go up after the man with the rooster-like haircut finished speaking.

Hearing this, the anger of being humiliated instantly overwhelmed their fear, and the group roared, "Brothers, let's go! Let's get him!" Several oddly dressed delinquent youths rushed towards Xi Qingxu.

These people are all residents of the old neighborhood. When Xi Qingxu was first brought over by Xi Jun, the other children were all very familiar with each other and often gathered downstairs to play, while he would sit on the balcony of his home, lost in thought.

There's only one school nearby, and all the kids in the neighborhood go there. Xi Qingxu doesn't like to talk and doesn't play with them, so over time they started to maliciously isolate him.

The boy is precocious but lacks emotional intelligence.

He knew those people were bullying him, but he found it boring and childish, so he ignored them.

However, those people saw his behavior as showing off and looking down on them, so they started to escalate their actions.

Xi Qingxu was beaten up as a child, so he wasn't afraid of fighting at all. Perhaps because he was beaten up as a child, he also had some experience in fighting, and those people never got the slightest advantage from him.

It had been a long time since Xi Qingxu had seen them. When Xi Jun learned that he had gotten into a fight with them in elementary school, she transferred him to another school. He was a good student and was transferred to the elementary school opposite No. 11 Middle School.

After changing schools, he didn't go out often, so he didn't run into them very often after that.

But they were still in the same neighborhood. Ever since Xi Qingxu started working part-time in his spare time when he was in sixth grade, he would occasionally run into them, who had become hooligans, in the alleys near the small shops in those old neighborhoods.

They hadn't forgotten the humiliation they'd suffered, and they started blocking Xi Qingxu's way home again, but each time their plan backfired.

Later, Xi Qingxu moved to Lu Chuqing's house, which was far away, and she gradually stopped coming here for part-time jobs. She hadn't run into them for several months. But today, when she came back to pick up some things, she ran into two of them on her way out.

They're practically acquaintances; they can't leave without a fight if they meet.

Therefore, Xi Qingxu directly chose a small alley behind the residential area. Just after he finished dealing with the two people, five more people arrived.

It looks like he'll be going home late today.

The alley was in chaos, filled with curses and screams of pain, the dull thuds of bodies falling to the ground echoing one after another, and the boy's tousled hair was completely soaked by the rain...