The Midnight Scare and a School Wake-Up Call

It was precisely midnight.

In a fleeting moment, the dark figure vanished without a trace.

Saburo the Scarred was convinced he had merely imagined it, but the few underlings beside him had already begun to waver, wanting to retreat.

“Boss, something feels off.”

A chill wind swept through.

From afar, the eerie cries of an unknown seabird echoed—“Gaa gaa gaa gaa gaa”—sounding particularly piercing in the quiet stillness of the late night.

“Afraid of your mother?! Smash it, damn it!! A clear conscience fears no shadow…”

He seemed to have uttered something he shouldn’t have.

Just as Saburo the Scarred raised his steel pipe, a pitch-black figure abruptly appeared from behind the convenience store’s glass door, coming face-to-face with the bald, burly man.

“…”

“…”

“Aaaah! There’s a ghost!!!”

His scream was more heart-wrenching than anyone else’s.

Saburo the Scarred’s legs gave out, and he collapsed onto the ground.

As the burly man’s shriek reverberated, the convenience store’s glass door, previously shut, suddenly burst open, its lock clattering to the ground.

Then, gusts of intensely cold, eerie wind swept through.

At the same instant, his underlings were instantly seized by terror.

The streetlights behind them suddenly flickered out, plunging the entire street into complete darkness in an instant.

!!!

Had they truly encountered a ghost?!!!

Saburo the Scarred tried to push himself up from the ground, roaring for his underlings to help him.

Yet, to his surprise, these spineless fellows fled faster than the wind.

Each of them let out a yell before scattering in every direction.

While Saburo the Scarred was still struggling on the spot, a sudden beam of intense light pierced the darkness, revealing that the minivan parked at the roadside had abruptly started.

Saburo the Scarred could only watch.

Under the shroud of such profound darkness, the minivan, its headlights blazing, drove straight towards him.

Astoundingly, the driver’s seat was completely empty; there was no one driving the car at all!!

“Oh my god, it really is a ghost!!!”

As Saburo the Scarred watched the minivan hurtle directly towards him, an overwhelming surge of survival instinct erupted within him, and using both hands and feet, he quickly scrambled away, disappearing down the long street in a desperate, rolling crawl.

Leaving behind a damp trail.

****

The world.

Fell silent.

A few minutes later, having confirmed that Saburo the Scarred and his crew had indeed fled,

Chen Ran rubbed his head.

He emerged from behind the minivan.

Hmm…

The “ghost” from moments ago, of course, had been Chen Ran himself, acting the part.

The moment Saburo the Scarred and his group drove into the old street, they had already been spotted by Chen Ran, who was lurking in the shadows.

His plan was simple: wait for this group of late-night vandals to arrive, then impersonate a ghost to scare them away.

So, seeing them park their car by his family’s convenience store,

Chen Ran decisively unlocked the door, theatrically hanging the lock on the glass door, then swiftly circled around, entering the convenience store through the back door—after all, if he entered through the front, he couldn’t have made it look like the lock was still on the outside.

He then waited for Saburo the Scarred and his men to approach the convenience store.

Using his skill [Invisible Man] (TL Note: The skill name in Chinese is ‘透明人间’, literally ‘transparent person’ or ‘invisible person’), since its current level was still LV1, he couldn’t become truly transparent, but only a small, shadowy figure.

A skill that was originally considered utterly useless now proved to be incredibly effective for scaring people.

And so.

The scene that had just unfolded took place.

Leveraging the speed granted by his current 15 points in Agility,

Chen Ran first delivered a “face-to-face scare” to Saburo the Scarred, then swiftly pushed open the convenience store’s already-unlocked front door, dashed out at an incredible pace, and used the pre-prepared gravel to smash the streetlight.

For the sake of the effect, he had to make a small sacrifice.

Then.

Chen Ran pushed the minivan himself, creating the illusion that it was speeding towards Saburo the Scarred and his group—fortunately, Saburo the Scarred hadn’t removed the keys when they got out, allowing him to easily turn on the headlights.

Although he wasn’t yet eighteen and didn’t possess a driver’s license, turning on headlights was certainly within his capabilities.

And for him, with his current 15 points in Strength,

Pushing a car was incredibly effortless.

Done.

The minivan, of course, stopped right in front of the convenience store; Chen Ran would never push a car into his own family’s shop.

What followed.

Was a war of attrition.

Chen Ran certainly didn’t believe that these yakuza (TL Note: ‘极道’ refers to Japanese organized crime, often translated as yakuza or gangster) would give up after just one scare.

But.

What if he scared them every single day?

In any case, he was now staking out the street every night; whenever he spotted them coming to cause trouble, he would impersonate a ghost to frighten them, and eventually, these guys would naturally learn to be afraid.

If they remained stubborn, he wouldn’t mind showing them a bit of “color” (TL Note: A Chinese idiom meaning to teach someone a lesson or show them who’s boss).

Having encountered a ghost, wouldn’t it be perfectly normal for them to end up missing an arm or a leg?

Chen Ran harbored no sympathy for such societal scum.

And so…

****

…

After a night passed, Chen Ran, who had spent the entire night staking out the street, anticipating that those yakuza factions might return,

Immediately collapsed onto his desk and fell into a deep sleep upon arriving in his school classroom the next day.

Saintly Angel Academy was a top-tier aristocratic private school, and naturally… its disciplinary rules were exceedingly strict.

The concept of “happy education” simply didn’t exist there.

On the contrary, the more aristocratic the students, the more intense the competition, even rivaling the “gaokao factory” (TL Note: ‘高考工厂’ refers to a high school focused solely on preparing students for the highly competitive Gaokao, China’s national college entrance examination, often with a grueling academic environment) he remembered he was supposed to attend.

At the very least.

Students were required to stand and greet the teacher at the start of every class.

This made Chen Ran, still sprawled asleep on his desk, incredibly awkward.

“Student, what exactly are you doing?!”

Upon hearing his furious homeroom teacher call his name, Chen Ran had just been dreaming that he saw Jiang Zilin looking at a ‘sister-complex’ (TL Note: ‘姐控’ refers to a person with a strong adoration or obsession for older sisters, a common trope in anime/manga/novels) doujinshi, then insisting he “act it out”…

Ugh.

Lifting his head.

Chen Ran rubbed his eyes, seeing his stern-faced homeroom teacher, Ms. Aili, standing directly in front of his desk.

She was indeed a foreigner.

She possessed shoulder-length auburn hair and healthy, alluring tanned skin; her tight teacher’s uniform perfectly accentuated her impressive figure, slender waist, and the long, straight legs beneath her bodycon skirt.

Hmm, a textbook example of a tanned ‘onee-san’ (TL Note: ‘御姐’ or ‘onee-san’ is a Japanese term referring to an older, mature, and attractive woman, often with a strong personality).

But Chen Ran currently had no mind for admiring beauties; he merely scratched his head under the gazes of Ms. Aili and the other female classmates who had already stood up and were now covering their mouths, secretly snickering at him.

He scratched his head again, then casually blurted out a fabrication.

“I pulled an all-nighter studying last night, teacher…”

“…”

Pfft.

Some female classmates couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

Ms. Aili’s expression visibly soured; her face cold and silent, she turned and walked back to the podium.

Just as Chen Ran thought the matter was settled,

As he sat down, intending to resume his sleep, Ms. Aili’s stern voice once again reached his ears.

“Chen Ran!”

“…”

Opening his eyes, he saw that in just a brief moment, the tanned ‘onee-san’ teacher had already written an incredibly difficult problem on the large multimedia blackboard.

“You said you studied all night, so come solve this problem.”

“Alright…”

He replied weakly.

Chen Ran walked to the front of the class, took the stylus from the teacher’s hand, and then, in merely three seconds, wrote down the answer.

For a moment.

The entire class fell silent.

The female classmates who had been anticipating Chen Ran getting punished and were ready to laugh, along with Ms. Aili, the homeroom teacher who had just been full of sternness,

All stared at Chen Ran with expressions of utter disbelief.

Not only had he solved it.

But he had done it so quickly?!

In response, Chen Ran simply yawned again, then rubbed his face and spoke.

“Teacher, may I go back to sleep now?”