The original novel behind the inspirational period school drama Young and Bright! When a bandit chief who strikes fear across the land kidnaps sixteen young ladies from an academy, he wants neither gold nor beauties. Instead, he insists on holding a “Palace Academy Talent Showdown”?! He sets one bizarre rule: each female student must be rescued by a male student. So the academy’s boys all spring into action. The son of the Vice Minister of War has a combat rating of minus 10,086; the Feng family’s young master stutters through his recitations like a tape played backward; the aloof heir’s face is so cold it could drop ice chips; and the eldest Xiangfu son keeps working his abacus until he’s sick of it... Who knew the Zhuxiu Academy, right under the imperial capital’s nose, was full of such oddballs? In the end, all the female students are rescued, except Wenren Juan, who is left staring down a burly, bearded bandit. Tears stream down her face. “Crying counts as time, too!”... The bearded bruiser becomes a jade-faced scholar, while the timid, talented girl becomes a bandit-taming expert! Watch the academy boys swoon over romance online, amid hilarious, chaotic daily life!
