"Ma’am, don’t slander me. Who have I been bullying?" Xue Rui raised an eyebrow.

"You know perfectly well," the old woman snorted. If anyone was being bullied, it was her granddaughter. She was constantly being ordered around by Xue Rui. Sometimes, when the grandmother woke up in the night, she would see her granddaughter still sitting at the computer, working.

Besides, with Xue Rui’s personality, who could possibly bully *him*?

The old woman thought her granddaughter was worrying for nothing.

Xue Rui raised an eyebrow. Of course, he knew who she was talking about, but when had he ever bullied Lin Ruoxi?

He was a boss who had given his employee 27 million at once. You couldn’t find a better boss even if you searched with a lantern.

Besides, he hadn’t taken advantage of Lin Ruoxi. If anything, she was the one taking advantage of *him* every day. The world was turned upside down.

At that moment, Lin Ruoxi was still hovering around Xue Rui, looking him over and touching him here and there...

"If someone beat me up, what would you do?" Xue Rui asked with a smile.

’What is this girl worried about all the time?’

Lin Ruoxi thought for a moment. If Xue Rui got beaten up...

The young woman’s shoulders slumped and she clenched her small hands tightly. She didn’t know what she would do...

Seeing Lin Ruoxi looked like she was about to cry from holding it in, Xue Rui quickly said, "Don’t worry, no one can bully me. If I ended up with injuries, the other person would be in much worse shape. You think I’d let myself get the short end of the stick?"

Lin Ruoxi froze. ’What does Xue Rui mean? Did he beat up Gu Muxue, too?’

"Let’s not fight, okay?" Lin Ruoxi said weakly.

Xue Rui’s heart softened. ’This girl always asks me with an ’okay?’, just like a girl acting cute.’

And with those genuinely pitiful eyes, what man could possibly refuse?

"I definitely won’t be the one to start it," Xue Rui promised.

He felt they couldn’t continue this conversation. Lin Ruoxi always imagined the worst.

Xue Rui remembered what the old woman had just said. He turned and tattled to Lin Ruoxi, "Your grandmother was just calling me out. She said I bully you."

After speaking, he went into Lin Ruoxi’s bedroom and closed the door behind him.

Lin Ruoxi froze. ’Is that what Grandma meant? But Xue Rui doesn’t bully me.’

"Grandma, Xue Rui doesn’t bully me. He’s very good to me," Lin Ruoxi said.

The old woman sighed. Her granddaughter was becoming more and more biased. Her words had less and less effect.

Lin Ruoxi would treat even a casual joke from Xue Rui as an imperial edict to be carried out.

Everyone else praised her granddaughter for being smart, but she knew her granddaughter was missing a screw.

So, faced with Lin Ruoxi’s rebuttal, the old woman didn’t even want to answer. Lin Ruoxi couldn’t understand subtext.

Lin Ruoxi continued, "There’s a girl at school who bullies Xue Rui, but he said he didn’t get the worst of it. I don’t know what to do..."

The old woman’s heart jolted. The more she heard, the more something felt off.

’Isn’t this just flirtatious bickering?’

"I just... I’m really unhappy when I see Xue Rui get hit," Lin Ruoxi said, her brow furrowed.

"Don’t worry about it. Xue Rui deserves it," the old woman said.

She didn’t know the whole story, and that boy Xue Rui was as slippery as an eel. She figured she wouldn’t be able to get it out of him anyway.

’Could it be that Xue Rui likes another girl?’

’Mm... sounds like something that little rascal Xue Rui would do.’

’But what about my granddaughter?’

She was just a bag of old bones. Even going downstairs was a problem, let alone standing up for her granddaughter.

They had no other relatives. If she died, Lin Ruoxi would be truly alone and helpless in the world.

"Xue Rui shouldn’t be hit..." Lin Ruoxi muttered.

"Ah, men. They’re all like that when they’re young. Later on, he’ll realize who truly cares for him," the old woman sighed, looking even older than before.

She felt that her granddaughter only had eyes for Xue Rui. There was no way Xue Rui couldn’t have noticed.

When Xue Rui grew up a little more, he would eventually settle down. At that time, he would realize how blissful it is to have a beautiful and obedient woman by his side.

"Grandma, what are you talking about? I don’t understand," Lin Ruoxi said, tilting her head. She thought her grandmother’s words were very strange.

The old woman smiled kindly and reached out to stroke Lin Ruoxi’s cheek. "Silly granddaughter."

"But Grandma, Xue Rui says I’m smart," Lin Ruoxi pouted.

Just then, Xue Rui opened the door and happened to hear this. He chimed in, "That’s right. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met."

Hearing Xue Rui praise her, the corners of Lin Ruoxi’s eyes couldn’t help but curve upwards.

The old woman turned her head away, sighing silently in her heart.

...

「The days passed peacefully, and the weather gradually grew warmer.」

After the 100-day pledge ceremony, the countdown on the blackboard had entered the double digits.

After the first mock exam, Xue Rui ranked forty-ninth in the grade.

Lin Ruoxi was still the unshakeable number one, but this time, Gu Muxue had taken second place.

Xue Rui wondered if that foolish boy, Hong Zihan, had thrown the test...

After all, that kid was capable of doing something as crazy as shouting his lungs out for her.

In the classroom, no one went out to play during the third-years’ activity time. Most students were immersed in their studies, with only a few stopping to take a short break.

"What was your rank this time?" Xue Rui asked the two beside him.

Qiu Mengze puffed out his chest. "You shouldn’t ask that. You should ask how much I improved, and then I’ll answer that I moved up two hundred spots."

Hearing Qiu Mengze’s self-directed Q&A, Yi Bing’s head shot up. "You improved by two hundred spots?"

It seemed like everyone around him was racing forward while he was just running in place, firmly holding his position as last in the grade every time.

However, whenever he fell into a spiral of anxiety, Xue Rui would just tell him to eat what he wanted and drink what he wanted...

"Yi Bing, don’t listen to his bragging. You also improved by over a hundred spots," Xue Rui said with a laugh.

Yi Bing pointed at himself in disbelief. "I improved?"

He spent every day hunched in the back of the classroom playing on his phone until his neck hurt. How could he have improved?

Xue Rui said with a straight face, "After we started the third year, over a hundred people left the grade. So of course you moved up by over a hundred spots."

"..." Yi Bing went back to burying his head in his phone.

’No wonder Qiu Mengze dared to say he improved by over two hundred spots.’ But he thought it was still pretty amazing. While everyone else was buried in their books, Qiu Mengze actually managed to move forward.

In reality, a student like Qiu Mengze had left such a strong, negative impression on his classmates that everyone thought he wasn’t cut out for the college entrance exams.

Whenever he was immersed in studying, someone would joke, "Yo, Mengze’s starting to study hard?"

Qiu Mengze always felt like these people were making fun of him. He didn’t realize you just had to get used to it. For example, when Xue Rui first started to change, people would joke with him in the same way.

But Xue Rui’s mindset was different from Qiu Mengze’s. He didn’t pay any attention to the gossip and would even retort sometimes.

After a while, those making sarcastic remarks shut up on their own.

However, Qiu Mengze’s mentality was too twisted. He was afraid of everyone around him surpassing him, yet he was unwilling to completely let go and fall into degeneracy like Yi Bing.

As a result, he wouldn’t ask for help when he ran into problems he couldn’t solve, and his grades remained mediocre.

"Xue Rui, why aren’t you going to Gu Muxue for tutoring yet?" Qiu Mengze asked. The reason his grades had improved this time was because Gu Muxue had been assigning him work.

Yi Bing frowned. "What are you thinking, kid? That’s Brother Rui’s special privilege."

"Just shut up. I’m really going there to study," Qiu Mengze cursed.

"Alright, let’s go," Xue Rui said, crooking a finger to signal for Qiu Mengze to follow.

For the past few days, he had been taking Qiu Mengze to get tutored. To be precise, Gu Muxue just assigned Qiu Mengze a pile of work, and he would do targeted practice on the problems he got wrong. It didn’t take up much of Gu Muxue’s time.

Xue Rui would also explain some problems to Qiu Mengze when appropriate, so Qiu Mengze had gotten used to studying by the back door of the classroom.

That girl Gu Muxue already had her goal set. Her scores were high enough to guarantee her a spot in Chang’an Jiaotong University, so she had gradually started to relax.

Xue Rui felt that Qiu Mengze was just a masochist. If no one assigned him tasks, he was completely incapable of taking a single step...

"Keep it up. Based on your mock exam results, getting into a second-tier university shouldn’t be a big problem," Xue Rui said with a smile.

"Muxue," Qiu Mengze greeted Gu Muxue.

Feeling the surprised gazes of those around him, he felt a delightful sensation in his heart. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly, his expression filled with an irrepressible smugness.

It was because he hadn’t used her full name when calling out to his goddess.

Because Qiu Mengze was Xue Rui’s childhood friend, he interacted with Gu Muxue quite frequently. Coupled with the fact that he and Gu Muxue had been classmates for over ten years, he actually could have started calling her that long ago. But because of the intimidating aura Gu Muxue naturally had, he was always hesitant...

’What a fucking idiot,’ Xue Rui cursed internally. ’He just called her by her first name, and he can barely contain his grin.’

"Mengze, do this test paper," Gu Muxue said, handing a paper to Qiu Mengze.

After Qiu Mengze finished the paper, he would give it to Xue Rui to grade. When Xue Rui graded it, it was equivalent to him redoing the test himself. Then, it would be handed to her for a second review. This way, she could find Xue Rui’s weaknesses.

It was even more efficient than just having Xue Rui do the test paper himself...

Xue Rui had just sat down when he picked a fallen strand of hair off the back of Gu Muxue’s school uniform. "Found another puppy hair."

Gu Muxue’s brow furrowed. Xue Rui was teasing her about her habit of biting people again.

She was so angry her teeth itched. She reached out and grabbed Xue Rui’s wrist, but just as she was about to bite down, she saw the faint scar on his wrist.

"I’ll let you off today," Gu Muxue said, averting her eyes and releasing his wrist.

Xue Rui thought this girl was getting bolder and bolder. She even dared to try and bite him in front of so many people, completely disregarding her own image.

He wondered if it had something to do with Mei Lili being so immersed in her studies.

Looking back, he saw Mei Lili and Qiu Mengze sitting together, heads down, working on the same test paper.

The strangest thing was, it was like they were racing. While doing the problems, they would occasionally glance at each other’s progress, as if competing to see who would finish first...

Xue Rui looked at the faint scar on his wrist. He felt it definitely had something to do with Gu Muxue.

Recently, after the weather had turned warmer, Gu Muxue’s attitude toward him had actually improved a little.

’Wasn’t it the same way last year? Are girls gentler in the spring?’

’No, that’s definitely not it. The problem must be with me.’

Xue Rui thought for a long time. If there was anything different about this season, it was that the scar on his wrist was now visible...

Once the weather got hot and the scar’s color gradually blended in with the surrounding skin, the little vixen would become unrestrained again.

’Mm, that explains it.’

"Muxue, this scar..."