Dragon Clan: Lu Mingfei Returns from Japan

Chapter 716 Special Meeting
"Today is the first day of the preparatory class. Are you all getting used to it?" Angers, who was walking in front, asked in a very typical, kind tone of an elder asking a younger person.

“I’m used to it. There are far fewer classes than in middle school. If there were even fewer classes, I would be even more used to it,” Xia Mi answered first, without any hint of awkwardness.

This reminded Lu Mingfei of his past life, when Xia Mi and the principal first met; she seemed just as outgoing. This quirky little dragon girl seemed to have no social anxiety with anyone.

Angers laughed and said, "No matter what, I am the principal. Is it really appropriate to ask the principal to reduce classes?"

Xia Mi said, "We should reflect the students' true feelings to you, Principal. There's even a suggestion box outside the high school principal's office."

As we spoke, we arrived at the villa's living room. One side featured a massive glass curtain wall with a three-story high ceiling, offering a panoramic view of the entire Chinese-style garden landscape from the sofa.

Angers slowed his pace, and Louis stepped past him, leading the way into the living room.

Su Xiaoqiang followed behind her uncle and found a seat on the sofa. As everyone gradually settled in, she suddenly froze, realizing her boyfriend was nowhere to be seen. Principal Angers had also disappeared along with Lu Mingfei.

“How did you know I wanted you to come with me alone?” Angers smiled. “I don’t recall tapping you on the head three times.”

"Even if you are the Bodhi Patriarch, I am not Sun Wukong," Lu Mingfei said helplessly. "Would you believe me if I said it was just intuition?"

It was indeed Lu Mingfei's intuition. Lu Mingfei had dealt with this old fox principal for quite some time, and Angers' sudden slowing down and the glance he gave Lu Mingfei made him realize that Angers wanted to talk to him, and that these words were probably not to be heard by Miao Miao and the other girls.

"I believe."

Ang nodded: "Actually, dragon slayers and artists are the same; they both need a bit of inspiration. When I was young, I often had some inexplicable intuitions. I would feel that the weather was nice today and something good should happen, so I would pick up a collection of Yeats's poems and stand on Cambridge to wait. Then I would see the breeze blowing across the river, lifting the skirts of those girls and revealing pairs of slender and beautiful legs."

Lu Mingfei couldn't help but want to retort in his heart, "Principal, is that inspiration? You just wanted to look at legs, didn't you? You old pervert!"
"But that was 100 years ago. 100 years have passed, and no matter how beautiful the legs were back then, they are now just beautiful bones. I also no longer have the inexhaustible inspiration I had when I was young."

Angers, hands in his pockets, ascended the spiral staircase leading to the second floor. Lu Mingfei followed behind, listening as Angers continued, "But Mingfei, you're still young. You have inexhaustible inspiration and a youthful body."

"..."

For some reason, Lu Mingfei always felt that Angers was subtly referring to him...

Reaching the second-floor corridor, Angers stopped and slowly turned to look at Lu Mingfei. A door on the side of the corridor was being slowly pushed open. An elderly man in a floral shirt and a cowboy hat stood in the doorway, nodding slightly to Lu Mingfei.

He looked like an older Western cowboy with a beer belly, and from his cynical smile and the wrinkles around his eyes worn by time, one could vaguely see his past glories.

With both school board members and Principal Angers present at the villa, it's not surprising to see the vice-principal there as well.

Lu Mingfei followed the principal into the room. A reception room was, of course, standard for such a luxurious villa. Twelve high-backed leather chairs surrounded a round table, which inexplicably reminded one of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Hundreds of years ago, the Knights of the Round Table, like them, often held round table meetings in secluded places.

“The college’s vice-principal,” Angers introduced.

"Hello, Vice Principal," Lu Mingfei greeted. Although he already knew the Vice Principal, he still tried his best to act as if this was their first meeting.

"Is this our new S-rank?" The vice principal stared at Lu Mingfei for a while as if examining a product, then patted Lu Mingfei on the shoulder: "Not bad, quite handsome, with the style of mine back in the day. But once you enter the academy, your senior and junior sisters are probably going to suffer."

"Are you really not concerned about your image in the eyes of the students?" Angers sat down in a seat and gestured for Lu Mingfei to sit wherever he wanted.

"What image does a hundred-year-old man have to care about?" The vice principal shrugged, sat down, took out his cigar box, and lit a cigar.

The mere thought of the principal and vice-principal of Kassel College meeting with a single student is incredibly stressful. Fortunately, this wasn't Lu Mingfei's first time meeting with the principal and vice-principal, so he didn't feel too awkward and sat down on the empty chair next to him.

"You specifically asked me to come here, there must be something very important, right?" Lu Mingfei asked.

"Not being stage-frightened is an advantage," the vice principal said, grinning at Lu Mingfei while crossing his legs.

“Yes, it’s about Erii.” Angers took out a silk handkerchief to wipe his tortoiseshell glasses, then looked at Lu Mingfei again, his hands clasped on the table. “Let me think about where to begin this story.”

"That little girl's test report," the vice principal reminded her from the side.

“Yes,” Angers said. “Mingfei, you should know, right? Erii’s bloodline has always been unstable.”

“I know.” Lu Mingfei nodded. He was probably the one who knew Erii’s physical condition best. In the favorability system that Lu Mingze had given him, Erii’s bloodline always had a yellow warning sign.

“A few days ago, we did a simple bloodline test on Erii. The results were already quite bad; Erii’s blood sample showed characteristics similar to dragon blood. We also took a blood sample to a more professional laboratory for testing, and Erii’s bloodline was very close to… even on the verge of crossing the bloodline threshold.”

Angers paused, staring at Lu Mingfei: "You should know what this means, right?"

This means that if Erii experiences emotional fluctuations or any other unexpected event, her bloodline might cross that critical threshold, leading her to the abyss of becoming a Deadpool.

“However, there is now a possibility,” Angers continued, “a possibility that could change Erii’s bloodline.”

Upon hearing this, Lu Mingfei paused for a moment, and a name popped into his mind.

The vice principal immediately chimed in, "That might be called the Nibelungen Project. It can help that little girl change her bloodline, allowing her to maintain a high bloodline while keeping it stable within a relatively safe threshold range."

As expected. When it comes to changing Erii's bloodline, the only possibility that Lu Mingfei could think of was the Nibelungen Project. He just didn't expect that the side quest information that he didn't trigger until his sophomore year of college in his previous life would be known to him so early in his sophomore year of high school.

Angers said, "We'll tell you more about the Nibelungen Project later. In short, the Nibelungen Project may be the only way to stabilize Erii's bloodline."

“…What do I need to do?” Lu Mingfei asked.

Presumably, the principal and vice-principal's meeting with him wasn't just to tell him about the Nibelungen Project. It seemed they had reached an agreement to use the sole spot in the Nibelungen Project on Erii.

Meeting with me probably means there's something I need him to do.

The vice principal nodded: "Very clever. There are two things. First: The essence of the Nibelungen Project is to extract active serum from the bones of dragons and use it to suppress or balance the violent side of the dragon bloodline. To give a somewhat inappropriate example, it's a bit like curing snake venom by injecting it with the serum of a venomous snake."

This method is similar to Herzog's method of extracting serum from Deadpool and injecting it into Erii's body to help stabilize her bloodline.

The vice principal continued, "Therefore, the first step in implementing the Nibelungen Project... is to have a relatively complete dragon skeleton, and it must be a dragon skeleton of a second generation or higher. Dragon fossils that are hundreds or thousands of years old, like those found in dragon ruins, cannot be used to extract dragon serum."

"So, do I need to find a dragon skeleton of at least the next generation?" Lu Mingfei asked hesitantly.

This was the first time he'd heard of this condition. Mainly because… Kassel College in his previous life didn't lack dragon bones. In the ice cellar beneath the college library, there was a dragon bone cross—the dragon bone cross of Constantine, the King of Bronze and Fire. With genuine first-generation dragon bones available for serum extraction, why would anyone use second-generation dragon bones?

However, Constantine's urn is probably still hidden in the Bronze City in the Three Gorges, and the Bronze City is still in Nibelungen, whose entrance hasn't been opened yet. Not to mention its Nibelungen itself.

As for Norton... Old Tang hasn't awakened into the Dragon King yet; he's still just a gamer nerd. We can strike while the iron is hot and take him down before he awakens...

But to stab your own brother in the back just to save your woman, isn't that a bit too disloyal?

...Okay. Actually, Old Tang doesn't have that many brothers, compared to how important Erii is to him.

That being said, going to stab Old Tang would probably be the worst possible option for Lu Mingfei, even though he knew that Norton was the real one and Old Tang was just a secondary personality that Norton had lost in human society before his awakening. But Lu Mingfei still couldn't see Old Tang as Norton.

It is said that dragons and humans have always been irreconcilable enemies, and their conflict is inevitable... but didn't he still manage to do it?

The dragon king named Jormungandr, now known as Xia Mi, has been by his side ever since.

Moreover, Kassel College is teeming with talent. Although A-level students are rare, after decades of establishment, the Executive Department has accumulated dozens of executive specialists with A-level bloodlines. How did the task of finding dragon remains fall to him? He wasn't even enrolled yet and wasn't even a formal student at Kassel College; he was just a preparatory student.

At this moment, Angers spoke up, shaking his head and saying calmly, "There's no need to go out of your way to find one. Borrowing a skeleton of a dragon of the next generation or higher will suffice."

"borrow?"

Lu Mingfei was stunned upon hearing this.

Please, these are the remains of a dragon from a second-generation or higher species! Where can you borrow them? In a museum? Even if a museum does have them, would they lend them to you? Besides, you yourself said that fossils aren't acceptable.

That's worse than letting him go find it; at least he'd know where the Dragon King really is. Or I could just give you, Principal, Old Tang's name, age, and identity information, and you can just come and give him a good whack. Although the Seven Deadly Sins are still in Bronze City, Principal, your folding knife seems to be specifically designed for dragon attacks; taking down Old Tang shouldn't be a problem.

But this was just idle rant. How could Lu Mingfei really stab Old Tang twice just to save Erii?

Even if we were to make a move, it wouldn't be now; we'd have to wait until Old Tang becomes Dragon King Norton before it could be done legitimately.

“Mingfei, don’t you know where we can borrow the remains of a second-generation dragon?” Angers smiled.

"How could I possibly know..."

Lu Mingfei was about to make a sarcastic remark, but he immediately stopped himself. He seemed to have thought of something; a name popped into his mind.

"...The Zhou family?"

Ang nodded: "Back in February, the academy and the Zhou family collaborated on the 'Eye of Kuimen' mission. This was the first formal collaboration between the two sides since they first made contact. Mingfei, you were not only one of the specialists on that mission, but you also personally severed the tail of Samson, the Dragon Servant."

"Did the Zhou family manage to salvage Samson's tail in the end?"

"Yes. These conditions were clearly stated in the original cooperation agreement, and the academy does not possess large-scale salvage capabilities in China. China is the safest place in the world, so safe that no mixed-race force can reach in. More than a hundred years ago, mixed-race forces in Britain tried to extend their reach into this hidden land through the British East India Company, but Lin Zexu cut them off. Later, they tried to force their way in with artillery fire and came close to success, but countless young people like your great-grandfather Lu Shanyan stood up and blocked their guns."

Angers paused for a moment: "That's a bit of a tangent. In short, Samson's half of his remains did indeed fall into the hands of the Zhou family. The vice principal, Charlotte, and Louise discussed that extracting just a small amount of serum from those remains would be enough to help Erii resolve her bloodline issue."

"Why me?" Lu Mingfei asked. He meant why he had to step in and "borrow" Samson's remains from the Zhou family. Logically speaking, wouldn't it be more convenient for the academy to borrow them directly from the Zhou family? He was just a lowly student in the academy, with little influence.

“Because it was you, Mingfei, who cut off Samson’s dragon tail, so if you were to do it, the success rate might be higher,” Angers said. “Of course, there is another reason: the Lu family and the Zhou family... also have some history.”

……

(End of this chapter)