Low-Grade Omega - Chapter 1

Rain hammered rhythmically against the surface of the umbrella, cascading down its edges. A thin wisp of blue smoke curled out from beneath the canopy, only to be instantly torn apart by the torrential storm.

Li Yao detested rainy days. The murky, dark atmosphere felt like a weight pressing down on his chest, making it hard to breathe. If he had any other choice, he wouldn’t have stepped outside in this weather at all.

Ding-dong… ding-dong…

The two notification chimes were faint against the roar of the rain, but Li Yao caught them regardless. He pulled out his phone for a quick look. One was a payment reminder from the hospital, a bill he didn’t even need to open to know he currently couldn’t afford.

The other was an entertainment news push: The new head of the Ji family is set to be engaged to the eldest daughter of the Yu family in the coming days.

It was concise and blunt, hardly fitting the usual style of a gossip column.

Li Yao’s mind drifted for a fleeting second, and the scar on the gland at the back of his neck began to throb with a dull ache.

The head of the Ji family…

A self-deprecating smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. He slipped the phone back into his pocket, took the half-burnt cigarette from between his lips, stubbed it out against the wall, and tossed it into a nearby bin.

With a determined stride, he walked forward and passed through a freshly painted iron gate.

This wasn’t a pleasant place; it was an underground boxing ring. However, unlike the chaotic, seedy black-market rings, this one was legal and regulated.

Though it was called an underground ring, a first glance made it look more like a bar. Only the octagonal iron cage standing in the center of a neon-lit stage, surrounded by VIP booths, revealed its true nature.

Li Yao fastened the straps of his boxing gloves. Having just finished his warm-up, his lean, fluid muscles were slightly pumped, and fine beads of sweat shimmered like broken glass under the lights.

“You shouldn’t have come.”

Behind him, Andre, the head referee of the arena, stood leaning casually against the doorframe with his arms crossed. His unreadable gaze drifted subtly toward the back of Li Yao’s neck.

Li Yao paused, lowering his eyelids. “If I don’t come, who’s going to give me money?”

If there were any other way, who would choose a place like this? Reality, however, had stripped him of the luxury of choice.

“You’re an Omega. Choosing to rely on an Alpha isn’t something to be ashamed of.”

Andre’s words were heavily pointed. This wasn’t the first time Li Yao had heard such suggestions from him, but without exception, he never took them to heart.

A faint scent of tobacco filled the air, carrying the sharp, domineering, and aggressive pheromones of an Alpha.

For an Alpha to use pheromones to pressure an Omega was hardly polite; in fact, it bordered on sexual harassment.

Li Yao rotated his wrist, his gaze turning cold and fierce as he looked at Andre.

He walked toward Andre without a word. The latter thought he had finally reached him, but before he could even feel a spark of excitement, the sound of a fist cutting through the air whistled past. He dodged instinctively as a fist, bulging with veins, grazed the skin of his cheek and slammed into the wooden door behind him with a heavy thud.

The strike missed its mark, and Li Yao withdrew his hand. He brushed past Andre, who was still wearing a look of shock after his near miss. Upon reaching the exit, Li Yao seemed to remember something. He turned back and said, “Keep your thoughts to yourself. Next time, I won’t pull my punch so easily.”

He spoke slowly but firmly, then stepped toward the octagonal cage in the center of the hall, never giving Andre another look.

Andre watched his figure disappear into the dancing, chaotic crowd for a long time. It was only the burning sting on his cheek that finally snapped him back to reality.

He hissed, touching his swelling cheek. “Damn, he’s spicy.”

But wasn’t it exactly this kind of Omega that fueled the desire to conquer and trample them?

While the music outside was deafening, a private booth on the second floor remained exceptionally quiet.

Yu Lie swirled the liquor in his glass, his resentful gaze landing on the Alpha across from him. The man seemed entirely unaffected by the environment, focused solely on handling official business on his virtual terminal.

“Brother Heng, I brought you here so you could enjoy your last bit of freedom before entering the marriage grave.”

Not to work!

Yu Lie had never seen an Alpha as workaholic as Ji Yixing. Aside from eating and sleeping, it seemed he lived for nothing but work; he hadn’t even shown signs of having basic physiological needs.

Could this top-tier Alpha be… dysfunctional in that department?

A flicker of gossip and curiosity flashed in his eyes. Just as he opened his mouth to ask a teasing question, Ji Yixing shut his terminal and stood up, looking down at him coldly.

His thin, somewhat aloof lips parted as he spoke with a chilling tone, “I will not be entering a political marriage with anyone. You don’t need to help the Old Man test my stance.”

Every word was indifferent and cold, giving Yu Lie no room for argument. If Yu Lie weren’t his childhood friend, Ji Yixing wouldn’t be here at all, let alone saying these things.

The Old Man wanted to use Yu Lie to probe his bottom line, and Ji Yixing, in turn, was using this opportunity to make the Old Man give up on the idea entirely.

The Ji and Yu families were connected by marriage. Although it was a commercial arrangement, Yu Lie still had to call the elder Mr. Ji “Uncle.”

Caught between an uncle who used his seniority to pressure him and a childhood friend who was also his cousin, Yu Lie didn’t dare offend either side.

Yu Lie smiled bitterly. “Seriously, why drag me into your father-son drama? I’m caught right in the middle here.”

Though the process was different from what he had imagined, the Old Man’s goal had been achieved, even if the result wouldn’t satisfy him.

But what did that have to do with him?

“Let’s stop talking about that nonsense.”

“I spent a fortune today to poach a fighter from Mingtai’s black-market ring. Since you’re here, you might as well watch. Don’t be such an old-timer all day; have some vitality.”

Yu Lie set down his glass and pressed a button under the armrest of the sofa. The wall facing the stage slowly rose, revealing a layer of transparent glass. From the booth, one could look down and see the octagonal cage in the center of the stage perfectly.

The fighters had already entered the ring, and the atmosphere was at its peak. Even though the booth was soundproofed, the earth-shattering roars of the crowd still bled through faintly.

“No, watch it yourself.”

Boxing was a bloody, wild, and violent sport. Yu Lie was obsessed with it, but Ji Yixing had zero interest.

His well-defined fingers hooked his tie, loosening it slightly. He leaned over to grab his coat from the sofa, draping it over his arm. As he turned to leave, his eyes inadvertently caught the figure in the octagonal cage—slim waist, long legs.

He stopped dead in his tracks. A top-tier Alpha’s senses were far more acute than an average person’s. Even though the stage lighting was dim and chaotic, he could tell at a single glance that the upright young man was an Omega.

He turned back, his expression shifting subtly as he looked at Yu Lie. “That’s an Omega. You’re letting an Omega fight for you?”

The Omega in the cage seemed to sense something. He tilted his head up toward the second-floor booths, though naturally, he saw nothing.

This allowed Ji Yixing to see the Omega’s face clearly. That face, partitioned by the hexagonal wire mesh, was strikingly beautiful yet carried a sharp, aggressive edge, it was hauntingly familiar.

The Omega in the cage looked exactly like the one who had appeared in his dreams countless times, the one who played hard to get and eventually abandoned him time and time again.

Finding nothing unusual, the Omega quickly withdrew his gaze. Ji Yixing, however, seemed to be under a spell, unable to look away from the Omega’s back.

Unaware of the turbulent emotions beneath the surface, Yu Lie explained with a laugh, “Don’t underestimate him just because he’s an Omega. He’s quite famous in the boxing world.”

“Forget Omegas, even Alphas rarely fight as ferociously as he does. He fights like his life depends on it.”

Ji Yixing’s dark pupils contracted uncontrollably. His knuckles whitened as he clenched his fists, his expression becoming unreadable.

“What is that Omega’s name?”

The Omega in his memory had always been like a dodder flower, fragile and greedy, clinging to him and sucking away his money and power like nutrients to survive.

But the Omega before him looked fierce and resilient, as if nothing could break him.

A flicker of doubt crossed Ji Yixing’s eyes. Perhaps they just looked alike; perhaps it wasn’t the same person.

How could such a status-seeking, fragile, and scheming inferior Omega end up in an octagonal cage filled with blood and violence?

“Li Yao. I think his name is Li Yao.”

Yu Lie’s certain tone shattered the last bit of denial in Ji Yixing’s heart.

Ji Yixing clenched his fists so hard his veins bulged.

Li Yao didn’t like rainy days, and he didn’t like boxing, but he had no other choice. He needed money, a lot of it. For him, other than selling his body, the fastest way to get cash was in the ring.

His opponent for this match was a muscular Alpha nearly two meters tall. As an Omega, he was naturally at a disadvantage.

The muscular brute didn’t take the seemingly thin Omega seriously at all. Naturally, he ended up losing spectacularly.

Li Yao’s entire body was screaming in pain. The wound on his forehead was bleeding profusely, droplets hanging from his eyelashes and falling one by one, making him look like an asura crawling out from the depths of hell.

Driven by adrenaline, Li Yao could no longer feel the pain. He had his arm locked around the brute’s neck in a chokehold, his knees pinning the man’s ribs down. The brute was turning purple from suffocation, his desperate struggles failing to dislodge the Omega on top of him.

In the final second before the countdown ended, Li Yao delivered a heavy elbow strike to the brute’s temple, knocking him unconscious and ending the match decisively.

Li Yao straightened his back, his heart thundering in his ears alongside his ragged breathing. The cheers from below were so intense they threatened to blow the roof off the arena.

He reached up to wipe the blood from his eyelashes, his light brown eyes still burning with a lingering ferocity. He looked at the arena manager waiting outside the cage and said, “I won. Tell your boss to pay up.”

Then, he turned and walked out of the octagonal cage.

In the locker room backstage, Li Yao didn’t tend to any of his wounds. He leaned against a locker, his hand clutching a cigarette trembling slightly from the pain.

After several failed attempts to spark his lighter, he clicked his tongue in frustration. The movement pulled at the cut on his lip, causing him to hiss in pain.

At that moment, the door to the locker room was pushed open. Li Yao caught a glimpse of the visitor from the corner of his eye, and the moment he saw who it was, he froze completely.

He heard the visitor let out a soft, mirthless chuckle.

“Long time no see, ex-boyfriend.”

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