Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei Returns from the Elden Ring

Lu Mingze peered curiously into the room, but above "Lu Mingfei's" shoulder, he could only see darkness. His ability was sufficient to see under starlight, yet he couldn't make out what was inside the room at all.

Lu Mingfei walked through the door, step by step, onto the charred gravel. Lu Mingze followed behind him, keeping a distance that was neither too close nor too far.

Lu Mingze had tested it, and this "Lu Mingfei" was unaware of his existence; the two must be in different timelines. The body he was inhabiting was the Lu Mingfei outside the door who was wreaking havoc, and it was only through the connection between the two Lu Mingfeis that he was able to follow him.

There were two Lu Mingfeis. Lu Mingze didn't know which one was the real one. Intuitively, the one inside the door was the original, but in fact, the one outside the door had a physical soul.

The connection between the two Lu Mingfeis was something even he couldn't see through. Only those supreme alchemy techniques could access such things, and even the Dragon King couldn't directly sense it.

Just as Lu Mingze was lost in thought, "Lu Mingfei" stopped in his tracks.

In the silence, he slowly turned his head to look at Lu Mingze, and smiled for no apparent reason. "Listen, the sound of flames burning..."

Lu Mingze was horrified. He did indeed hear the sound of flames coming from the darkness. The crackling flames climbed up the three bones and instantly illuminated everything.

It was a three-fingered hand, its entire body covered in bright yellow patterns. It emitted intense, dazzling, and chaotic bright yellow flames, completely different from the golden color of the Golden Law. Just looking at it brought intense mental anguish.

The three fingers spread wide, enveloping the naked "Lu Mingfei," and the flames suddenly intensified, burning fiercely. It was branding something into "Lu Mingfei's" body, even burning away the connection between the two Lu Mingfeis.

Lu Mingze dared not watch any longer. He had made a fatal mistake. Any law or power that transcends the law, more or less, possesses the nature of transcending time and space. When the most crucial juncture has occurred, any ritual is merely symbolic, not a process.

He quickly escaped.

"Brother, we messed up."

Lu Mingze, who was standing next to Lu Mingfei outside the door, only managed to issue a warning before he and Lani completely disappeared from the scene.

……

No matter which angle you look at it from, the light clusters of different sizes, shapes, and colors are embedded in the pitch-black background, like holes of various shapes pierced through a black page.

Those were indeed stars, each glimmer of light extremely far away from here.

Aside from the dazzling cluster of light overhead… although I knew it was a star like those faint starlight, it was still incredibly bright up close. It was as if a circular hole had been torn open in the pitch-black background, allowing the intense light from beyond the edge of the universe to shine in. The light was so intense that it appeared visually as a blue halo tinged with concentric circles.

Lu Mingfei narrowed his eyes and raised his hand to wave.

Here, air and gravity exist; although he is standing on thin air, he clearly feels reality. An invisible plane and the air on that plane make up this small world.

The "person" who invited him here stood in the brilliance of a star and looked exactly like him.

Supreme will.

"It's over?" Lu Mingfei asked. "Did I succeed? Or did I fail?"

The Supreme Will did not answer. He pointed to the star above, "Millions of years from now, in the protoplanetary disk of this young star, gas and dust clouds will give birth to planets. Until the end of its life cycle, how many civilizations will there be? How many beings will gaze at the stars?"

He raised his hand again, and the surrounding air rushed over, briefly creating a gentle breeze.

The next moment, a light far more dazzling and dangerous than the brilliance of a star shone forth. At the center of the air mass, flesh and blood materialized out of thin air, surrounded by an extremely hot and high-pressure "furnace." Just a few dozen seconds later, a creature resembling a demi-human appeared before Lu Mingfei.

It has a dull expression, large and thin wing membranes, and its whole body has a crystalline luster. Dense fin structures are distributed on its chest and head.

“This is an ordinary ‘person’ from Civilization 5,” said the Supreme Will.

Lu Mingfei frowned.

Immediately afterwards, the Supreme Will raised its hand again, pointing at the star. This time, the star, with nearly 20 times the mass of the Sun, began to "tremble." Lu Mingfei quickly understood what was happening. On the platform where he and the Supreme Will were standing, there was an atmosphere similar to Earth's. The drastic changes inside the star were manifesting as changes in its external light and shape, and under the interference of the atmosphere, it appeared as if it were trembling.

This massive star, located slightly to the left of the main sequence on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, is experiencing a phase of cooling.

Lu Mingfei noticed that the frequency of the stars twinkling in the sky was rapidly increasing. For an existence like the Supreme Will, even transforming a star in the blink of an eye was somewhat difficult; it had accelerated time.

The blue star gradually collapsed, its outer brilliance cooled, and its rotation speed increased dramatically. On its original outline, a layer of magnificent nebula rapidly expanded, while its core condensed and then extinguished. A dozen seconds later, as perceived by Lu Mingfei, that layer of magnificent matter swept across the platform, and its expansion speed decreased.

Where the star once stood, only a rapidly cooling, dense core remains, spinning at high speed but only one millionth the size of its original size.

Time resumed its flow, and Lu Mingfei quietly gazed at the remnants of the star, pondering for a long time.

Finally, he shook his head. "What exactly are you trying to say?"

Now that things have come to this, he has let go of his respect for the supreme will. He has fought to the very end in the mental illusion, and has no more worries or hesitations.

"Look, everything has vanished. Tell me, has fate changed?" the Supreme Will asked.

“Uld spins the lifeline, Belldandy pulls the lifeline, Skadi cuts the lifeline—this is the fate of all things, unchangeable. Fate hasn't changed; it's just been cut.” Lu Mingfei decided to respond to the riddle with a riddle, though his riddle was somewhat pale. The supreme will extinguished a star, and the example he gave was merely three women from human mythology.

"He still exists." The Supreme Will pointed to the "person" from Civilization 5 earlier. "His life was not an illusion."

Lu Mingfei wanted to say that you've ruined someone else's sun, and whether he's telling the truth is another matter entirely; anyway, there's no way to prove it now that he's dead. He nodded, "You mean to say that I'm no different from him?"

"On the contrary, Lu Mingfei." The Supreme Will raised a finger and shook it. "He is merely an illusion I created, but you and that black dragon truly exist. You do not depend on the history of the material world, and for this reason, you are reality itself."

"Gods? Deities?" Lu Mingfei was pleased to see the topic return to the right track.

"These two are different stages of the same existence. Next, I will explain to you what the so-called gods are."

Chapter 275 God

"Have you ever thought about the nature of the world?" asked the Supreme Will.

As He spoke, His entire demeanor changed. The subtle expressions and movements of the human body copied from Lu Mingfei vanished. At this moment, He no longer played the role of a human. His physical form, Lu Mingfei's flesh and blood, gazed at the sky like an exquisitely crafted statue, his eyes revealing the sculptor's true nature.

“The world is a game,” He continued. “A video game.”

Lu Mingfei: ?

“It’s just a metaphor.” The Supreme Will winked at Lu Mingfei. “When I communicate with natives, I always adapt to local customs. I’m saying this to make it easier for you to understand… If what’s standing here is pure divinity or an incarnation of Mad Fire, I can demonstrate it myself. But you are a product of compromise, a freak. In a very few qualified individuals, divinity and humanity choose to help each other, like a hunter and prey cooperating.”

Lu Mingfei felt he was being personally attacked, but he couldn't refute it.

“Let’s talk about video games,” he said.

The Supreme Will was quite pleased that he accepted the setting so quickly, and continued, "In contrast, gods are 'managers' who have higher authority than natural beings, and the medium of this ability is the law. The Elden Ring is a highly mature and centralized container of law, a product of my accelerated evolution of the furnace."

"Isn't it only by possessing the law that one becomes a god?" Lu Mingfei asked.

"The unity of deities and law is the 'Divine Network.' Marika's act of splitting into Radagan is a concrete manifestation of the Divine Network's self-degradation—maintaining unity through the unity of gods and humans," said the Supreme Will. "The difference between a deity and a god lies in the degree of control and dependence on the law. When you were on Rodel's throne, assuming the dual responsibilities of a deity and a king, didn't you curse me many times? How did you feel then?"

Lu Mingfei felt a little guilty. "There is no freedom."

"This is the drawback of the law. The law and the gods are not one. The law can stagnate, split, overflow, degenerate, err, and dissolve. You know this all too well, don't you?"

Lu Mingfei pondered for a while. He truly understood the meaning and gradually realized what the Supreme Will was metaphorically referring to: "Marica splitting Radagan, the shattering of the Dharma Ring into the Great Rune, the principle of reversion and causality, fading, corruption, and madness."

“The factors influencing this include the gods themselves, the laws themselves, time, and the gods in the starry sky. Even if the Ring of Laws transforms into a more perfect existence, these changes will still occur.” The Supreme Will nodded. “The original laws of the Ring of Laws were too perfect, which is why it must suffer the most cruel test.”

Lu Mingfei recalled his experiences over the past century, and his expression couldn't help but darken. It turned out that everything was predetermined. Even if any process spanned the time of several generations, there was still no way out if there was no way out.

"Stars, living beings, deities, gods—will this cycle ever end?" He felt a pang of bitterness.

Upon hearing Lu Mingfei's first words after a long silence, the Supreme Will revealed a remarkably human expression—appreciation.

"There will definitely be an end to it."

He said.

"When the deity perfectly merges with the law, that is the birth of the deity himself. I will not say much about the deity. You only need to know that I am a prophet and a wise man. I am everyone you have ever known and everyone you will ever know. Now I will give you one chance to ask a question, only once."

"Will Earth become a second border region?" Lu Mingfei asked.

"There is no difference between Earth and the borderlands, but that's not what you want to know, is it?" The Supreme Will shook its head. "The fate of Earth is as real as mine, and I cannot answer you."

"Okay." Lu Mingfei was also somewhat relieved.

Having just listened to the grand narrative of the Supreme Will, he was deeply moved and, without much thought, asked such a broad and abstract question. He then asked, "I seem to have created Mad Fire. What exactly is Mad Fire, and how should I control it?"

"You didn't create the Mad Fire; the Mad Fire is a part of you. Even for gods with some divinity, that thing is a mistake like cancer for humans. But chaos is still a part of the gods, can you feel it?" The supreme will touched his palm.

A spark ignited.

Lu Mingfei brought the bright yellow flame in his palm to his eyes, but he couldn't sense any power resembling law from it; it was elusive. According to the Supreme Will, this thing was also a variation of law, part of the divine network.

"It is the opposite of the law's direction of progress; it is contraction, it is the dissolution of all meaning, and its end is the reappearance of the furnace," said the Supreme Will. "It is not madness, it is the shadow in your heart."

As the words of the supreme will fell, other lights gradually appeared in the phantom of the flames: the Great Rune of Bronze and Fire, the Great Rune of Earth and Mountains, the Great Rune of the Spirit Throne, and the Great Rune of Half the Ocean and Water—all fragments of the law that he had destroyed with his own hands.

Earth, fire, and spirit were the first to be assimilated, followed by water. Then a strange scene unfolded: the mad fire was actually deducing the other half of water and the completely missing wind. Soon, the great runes of the five elements appeared in this mad fire, and the five elements began to merge into one.

Ultimately, what was born in the flames was the law of the Dragon Clan's primordial furnace!

"Is the shadow in my heart... the dragon race?" Lu Mingfei asked.

“No, I mean you are already a god,” said the Supreme Will. He was too lazy to explain the reason for the existence of the Dragon Clan's laws.

The moment the Madfire was born, before it could unleash its world-devouring flames, an inexplicably powerful force in the starry sky extracted its core and built a bridge from the mental illusion to the depths of the starry sky. In order to protect itself, it violated the essence of its existence and began to create the power of the local laws. This action also triggered a chain reaction, scaring away the black dragon located in the first layer of the dream.

"Me?" Lu Mingfei didn't understand.

"I must admit that everything that happened to you, just like Marika's fate, was my experiment." The Supreme Will could no longer tolerate the stupidity of the human god it had created, so it simply stated it directly.

He stretched out his finger and touched Lu Mingfei's chest, saying, "For you, there is no law, no god, no destiny... Do you understand?"

His voice sounded particularly monotonous in the deathly silence of the space.

Lu Mingfei's gaze passed over the figure of the supreme will and looked at the darkness spanning billions of kilometers.

He realized that this was the moment, but nothing proved it except for the interstellar dust in the darkness, just as the Supreme Will had said, it was a cold, eternal cycle.

He said softly, "Yes, from now on, I will bear the full weight."

(End of this volume)

Chapter 276 Throne

When Lu Mingfei reached the so-called exit, a strange memory suddenly surged into his mind. It was another timeline, and because of a small difference, he ultimately saved Melina, which was a victory for humanity.

The King of the Golden Law is merely a coincidence and balance among the vast majority of possibilities. When Lu Mingfei's humanity takes the decisive role, the true ending is like a deep pool of accumulated human nature, leading to the deepest and darkest future—Demonic Fire.

As a wisp of flame ignited, more and more radiance surged from the earth, and a spectacular tsunami of fire erupted around Lu Mingfei. The power of the mad fire completely consumed his last shred of consciousness.

A profound flame was born in his head, and the bright yellow mad fire burned away the flesh and blood of his head. The fireball slowly expanded, extending a dark red edge. Thus, the King of Mad Fire was finally born.

He took a cautious step forward, feeling the sea of ​​fire around him, then joyfully opened his arms like a bird spreading its wings. The flames sensed his approval and burned even more fiercely.

Everything came to an end, and only the King of Mad Fire looked up at the sky.

Almost instantly, the mad fire completely destroyed the mental illusion in the void, followed by the already collapsed illusion. The flames broke through the limits and expanded to their extreme.

Melina, who was maintaining the Golden Tree, suddenly awoke. In the blink of an eye, the flames devoured the power of the Golden Law and were about to engulf this layer of the world.

……

"You should go now."