Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei Returns from the Elden Ring

……

The golden tree's radiance was dim, and fine cracks appeared on the barrier, making Nidhogg's intrusion into the illusion inevitable.

The Supreme Will merely reshaped the illusion, sealing a timeline within it, without setting up any defensive mechanisms. For the Supreme Will, deduce the course of events was effortless; it simply set a point for Lu Mingfei and Nidhogg to make a choice, and no one else had the authority to do so.

Lu Mingze understood that nothing could be changed. His spirit detached from the dragon's body and followed Nidhogg into the rift in the illusion.

Just as he was passing through the rift, he suddenly felt a sense of being watched, and whispers and roars welled up from the depths of his mind. It was an extreme chaos with qualities completely opposite to reason.

When he listened carefully, he finally understood that there was no whispering, but simply the sound of burning flames. The flames, which seemed to come from nowhere, enveloped his mind, followed by an intense, indescribable pain that burned his soul from the inside out, as if every inch of his skin and soul were being torn apart.

Lu Mingze was horrified. As the Supreme Being, even the appearance of the White King could not affect his spirit to this extent.

Fortunately, Nidhogg was also affected by the flames. As the emperor who truly inherited the supreme power and authority, he merely released a domain composed of pure spiritual elements, which weakened the eerie influence. However, the flames remained active, like maggots clinging to bones.

Nidhogg accelerated its departure from the gap between worlds with higher-dimensional attributes. Finally, after fully entering the illusion, it got rid of that strange thing, and Lu Mingze also escaped a disaster.

Chapter 261 Dialogue

Lu Mingfei suddenly sat up in bed, covered in sweat and breathing heavily.

He had a bizarre dream, not quite a nightmare, in which he sat on a throne at the foot of a giant golden tree. As time passed, fallen leaves obscured everything in sight, and everyone he knew and everything he had ever seen was leaving him. The new world was full of vibrant life, but there wasn't a single person he recognized. Everyone spoke a language he couldn't understand, pointing and whispering about him, their faces filled with awe and longing.

Only the one who sits on the throne will live forever; there is no other.

Lu Mingfei looked out the window. Heavy rain lashed against the glass, and the wind howled. It was a perfect day for sleeping, yet he had woken up at six o'clock—a truly sad story.

The room was quiet, as if he were all alone, and the lingering unease from his dream surged up again.

Lu Mingfei got dressed and prepared to go out for breakfast. Qiao Weini usually got up earlier than Lu Mingfei to prepare a nutritious breakfast for him before school, and she could only sleep in like him on Sundays.

In order not to wake Lu Lincheng and Qiao Weini in the master bedroom, Lu Mingfei tiptoed to the bathroom. Without even turning on the light, he washed his face in front of the mirror. After washing his face with cold water, he was indeed more awake, and the content of the dream faded a lot.

"bang bang bang"

Lu Mingfei, who was still half asleep and wiping his face with a towel, suddenly snapped awake. He stared wide-eyed at the mirror.

The boy in the mirror was no longer the one with messy hair, but a knight in full armor, who bent his index finger and gently tapped the mirror.

"I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming..." Lu Mingfei suddenly closed his eyes, clasped his hands together, and muttered something under his breath.

“You are indeed dreaming,” the knight said.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Lu Mingfei snapped, throwing the towel at the mirror. "Brother, what exactly do you want? Tell me! Stop playing guessing games, okay? The mystery guy playing mentor plot is so outdated!"

"First, you are definitely dreaming... What are you doing?"

Lu Mingfei released his grip, his fingers now covered in saliva. Seeing that the surroundings hadn't changed and the knight hadn't disappeared, he felt slightly embarrassed. "Wasn't this just to accommodate you..."

“Alright, I’d almost forgotten what kind of person you are…” the knight said softly, then continued seriously, “Listen, Lu Mingfei, I can tell you the truth, but are you ready?”

Lu Mingfei picked at his ear, looking completely unfazed, and said, "Go ahead and tell me."

The knight remained silent for a moment, then spoke slowly.

“Lu Mingfei, it is neither moral nor rational of me to wake you up, but since I have brought you here, if you accept my help, you can leave the rest to me…”

"Stop, stop, stop!" Lu Mingfei scratched his head and said seriously, "Big brother, I really want to hear human speech."

The knight, facing Lu Mingfei's glaring gaze, felt somewhat helpless.

Back then, in front of the whole class, his high school homeroom teacher said, "Lu Mingfei, are you really that useless? Are you a weight? You alone dragged down our class average by half a point. You're really weird." Lu Mingfei responded with those three white eyes, it was hard to tell whether it was dementia or stubbornness, which made the homeroom teacher's heart pound.

Lu Mingfei was confident that those three-white eyes were still quite lethal...

“This is a closed timeline. You are the protagonist of this world, and also the one who will be sacrificed, while I am the beneficiary of this sacrificial ritual,” the knight said. “Now my rival has also come to this world, and you are in danger.”

"Danger?" Lu Mingfei temporarily ignored the long, seemingly fantastical description before him and grasped the essence of the problem.

“You could have lived, grown old, gotten sick, and died in this timeline, but now you may not be able to enjoy the remaining decades of your life,” the knight said. “You can think of this ritual as an ascension ritual. If your nemesis is about to ascend, wouldn’t your best option be to do everything you can to disrupt this ritual?”

"I'm actually a very rare candidate for godhood?" Lu Mingfei's eyebrows twisted as if they were about to fight each other. "Forgive me for not being able to accept it. You have to understand that my biggest worries yesterday were things like analytical geometry and mathematical induction. And now you're telling me that a quasi-god is coming to hunt me down... and I was even having a dream?"

"He's not hunting you down, I suspect he wants to capture you alive and corrupt you."

"Damn, that sounds worse than being killed..." Lu Mingfei's lips twitched.

“Because of His previous impact on this world and your resistance, I have been rejected by this world and trapped outside of reality. I need your consent to enter reality,” the knight continued.

"Wait a minute..." Lu Mingfei came to his senses, "After saying all that, you still want something from me... Pah! What help? I think you're the one with ill intentions. What if you're my psychopath trying to possess me? Wouldn't I be doomed?"

The knight was silent for a moment, then suddenly chuckled, "You watch too many movies."

"Huh? Do you have the right to talk to me like that?" Lu Mingfei wanted to argue, but suddenly realized that the knight's figure had disappeared, and only he himself was left in the mirror.

He made a face at himself in the mirror, looking quite triumphant.

Just then, the earth shook violently, the bathroom floor cracked and the mirror shattered, emitting a piercing roar.

Lu Mingfei sprang out of bed, facing the sunlight streaming in from outside, and remained silent for a moment.

It was a dream within a dream.

He turned off the alarm clock by the bedside. The door to the room opened, and Giovanni poked her head in. "Your dad and I thought you weren't awake. Hurry up and wash up and come out for dinner. Do you want to go hiking this afternoon?"

Lu Mingfei nodded vigorously.

After climbing the mountain and sweating it out, he probably wouldn't have the energy to have nightmares. He dressed and washed up just like in his dream, but the ominous knight didn't appear in the mirror again; everything was normal.

Just as Lu Mingfei was staring blankly at the mirror, a crisp sound startled him. A crack extended from the top of the mirror, quickly cutting through the entire surface and splitting Lu Mingfei in two.

"I..." Lu Mingfei's mouth dropped open, "Holy crap..."

Then the bathroom light flickered and went out.

Lu Mingfei nervously backed away, his back pressed against the bathroom wall. Just as his attention was drawn to the light bulb and the mirror, a gust of wind blew open the window, and a strong, fishy stench wafted in.

It turned out to be a jet-black python coiled on the window frame, having eaten some dead rat or something similar, its open mouth emitting a foul stench.

Lu Mingfei hurriedly opened the bathroom door and fled, closing it tightly before heading to the living room to seek Lu Lincheng's help. Perhaps he should call the property management; considering the snake's size, it seemed even two grown men might not be able to handle it.

Chapter 262 Black Serpent

The moment the door closed, Lu Mingfei heard laughter. The deep sound penetrated the concrete wall and glass door, so subtle yet so clear, like the chilling air rising from a deep well. He turned around abruptly, and a rustling sound began in his ears. Something was clinging to his back—no, to his neck… A chill ran down his spine!

Lu Mingfei frantically shook his clothes to no avail, so he simply unzipped the jacket and threw the whole thing out.

The back of the coat was covered with baby snakes, each one completely black with golden eyes. The baby snakes flicked their bright red tongues and made hissing sounds, which together sounded like low laughter.

Lu Mingfei had never seen such a bizarre scene. When he lived at his uncle's house, he had only seen snakes in the stairwell leading to the rooftop. In the gaps between those dusty cardboard boxes, broken motors, and discarded sofas and wooden coffee tables, small snakes would sometimes flash by. It was hard to tell whether the snakes were afraid of people or people were afraid of snakes.

"Dad—" Lu Mingfei started wailing and howling before he even reached the living room.

No one responded.

When Lu Mingfei arrived in the living room, he felt as if his head was about to explode.

A damp, musty smell wafted through the air. The wallpaper was peeling off from the ceiling seams, its brown streaks stained by rainwater. The leather sofa was also infested with fungal hyphae, the cotton wadding on the armrests bursting open, and clusters of fungi peeking out from the cracks.

A crystal chandelier hangs diagonally in the center of the living room, with only a few light bulbs remaining, and cobwebs and dust covering the crystal pendants.

A cold wind howled, and the tempered glass of the French windows had long since disappeared. Ivy crawled in through the gaps, climbing up the tattered curtains. The green carpet of leaves swayed in the wind, like a group of snakes reaching out their heads.

A strange memory surged into his mind: Lu Lincheng and Qiao Weini had never returned. His uncle and aunt's family had sent him to a mental hospital. After escaping from the mental hospital, he had been living here ever since. The big meals Qiao Weini made every day were actually small animals and plants from the abandoned building.

"How could this be..." Lu Mingfei was shocked and stood there for a moment, not even reacting when the snakes behind him approached.

This was his fear, a fear that had been deeply ingrained in his mind ever since the knight appeared, and the more he tried to refute it, the more deeply rooted it became—it was all a lie, that he was insane.

"Lu Mingfei, think about why you are alive."

The gentle voice woke Lu Mingfei at just the right moment. He looked at the dilapidated door, and just as soon as he glanced at it, the sounds of doctors, nurses, and ambulances came from outside. The pain of electric shocks and injections immediately surfaced in his mind, and those clear pains seemed to be stabbing his head every moment.

Enduring the chaotic whispers, Lu Mingfei resolutely crossed the ruined living room. He didn't have the courage to look back at his nightmare again; he only wanted to escape.

As soon as the door opened, all the sounds vanished.

It was pitch black outside, and the rain was pouring down. It was under the eaves of the teaching building. Everyone had left, and Lu Mingfei sat alone on the steps under the eaves, oblivious to the water splashing onto his trousers. There was no Lu Lincheng, no grand battle between gods and demons; he was still Lu Mingfei, nothing more.

He glanced back and saw that the open door was clearly the classroom door, which was completely empty.

"Do you feel more afraid of loneliness than the devil or madness?"

Lu Mingfei suddenly raised his head.

Shadows lurked in the pitch-black rain, and the newcomer drew closer—it was the knight.

Through the rain, the knight stepped forward, bowing down to look at Lu Mingfei, who was huddled up on the stairs with his legs drawn up to his chest. A flash of lightning streaked across the distant clouds, and the instant light illuminated the knight's visor. Through the slits in the armor, the two looked at each other; one was trembling, while the other was tall and imposing.

"Wake up!" the knight said.

These words struck Lu Mingfei like a heavy blow. He felt dizzy and everything around him was distorted. Strange arcs and spirals of light spun rapidly before his eyes. Time seemed to slow down, yet it also felt like many years had passed in an instant. Everything he could see looked like shimmering light floating on an oil film.

Lu Mingfei opened his eyes and found himself unconscious at the bathroom door, with a terrible headache.

The ruined houses and the long night beneath the school building were all just a dream; in reality, only a few seconds had passed.

He looked back and saw countless snake shadows dancing on the glass door of the bathroom, just like the old curtain covered with ivy in his dream.

Lu Mingfei's hands and feet were ice cold. He took two steps at a time, almost using both his hands and feet to escape to the living room.

“Hey you…hey you!” he shouted.

The instant his words fell, a few milliseconds overlapped between reality and illusion. The knight, sitting in the shadows, suddenly drew his sword and thrust it out. The black blade sliced ​​through space. The knight gripped the hilt with both hands and slashed down fiercely, creating a rift leading to reality.

Lu Mingfei only saw a flash of light, followed by terrifying pressure pushing him forward.

The immense pressure difference forced the air in the living room to surge wildly toward the crack, almost like a tornado passing through. Everything in the living room that was not fixed to the walls or the floor was dragged toward it. Exposed wires burst into flames, and flexible materials such as sofa covers and curtains instantly shattered into fluffy debris.

Lu Mingfei heard a sharp popping sound in his ear, which seemed to be the sound of glass shards.

He immediately leaned forward and fell to the ground, covering his ears with his hands to barely relieve the tinnitus, and a warm, rusty smell filled his nostrils.

This is no dream; we're doomed.

This was the only thought left in Lu Mingfei's mind.

After what felt like a few seconds, or perhaps an hour, the noise finally subsided. Lu Mingfei looked up and saw the knight standing before him, bending down and extending his hand.

Warm flames ignited in the knight's palm.

The stinging pain in his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and all parts of his body quickly subsided, and the flames even gave Lu Mingfei a feeling of "familiarity".

The rustling sound resumed, and the brief storm destroyed everything unstable in the house. The snakes finally broke free from the bathroom door. Whether it was Lu Mingfei's imagination or not, he felt that the snakes seemed to have grown a lot. The black snakes, which were originally only as thick as a finger, were now almost as thick as his thigh.