There's No Place for Me in the Underworld

When Zhang Zelin is twelve, his parents are sent to prison on suspicion of breaking the law. His older sister raises him, but when he reaches his third year of middle school, she has to travel inland for a year of work training and leaves him in the care of her close friend, Shen Weiwei. Zhang Zelin has a history with his sister’s friend, so the two are familiar with each other, and he has secretly been in love with her. One day, however, he sees four shifty-looking men outside Shen Weiwei’s apartment complex. They head upstairs and stop at Shen Weiwei’s door. When she opens it, the four men barge inside. Zhang Zelin rushes after them and slips into the apartment just before the door closes, only to discover that one of them is Deng Lang, who used to bully him terribly in elementary school. Zhang Zelin is afraid of him, but he still stands up to Deng Lang to save Shen Weiwei, making an enemy of him. After Zhang Zelin returns to school, Deng Lang makes his life difficult in every way and gets people to corner him. To survive at school, Zhang Zelin starts fighting back. He rises from being the little boss of his class to the top dog at Beiwan Middle School, then builds a gang-like company, the Zhang Corporation, in Sichanglin City. This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.