Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei Returns from the Elden Ring

The sky was terribly dark; dark clouds had rolled in from all directions, threatening a downpour. Pedestrians on both sides of the road looked up anxiously; some took shelter in nearby shops, while others ran towards the subway station. Students attending summer study sessions huddled under the eaves of a shopping mall entrance. An office worker took a folding umbrella from his bag, walking among the hurried crowd like a rock in a stream, but his face showed no sign of relief, only deep weariness.

That's life, one problem after another. Some people are anxiously seeking shelter in the rain, while those with umbrellas are worried about their family's loan projects and their children's studies. For a moment, the eyes of the office worker and the students under the eaves met. The man in the suit looked at the teenagers chattering excitedly about whether to go to the movie theater to escape the rain, and a hint of envy appeared in his eyes.

“I say, Angers, you’re such a jinx!” Uesugi Kotsushi peeked at the weather outside and blamed the natural phenomenon on Angers. “Look, the weather has gone bad as soon as you arrive.”

"Judging from this situation, they've run into some trouble over there," Angers said nonchalantly.

Uesugi Koshi frowned warily. "Wait a minute, what trouble... Did you guys cause this weather? I was kind to you and this is how you repay me? Did you release a god? This is elemental turbulence, isn't it? This is definitely elemental turbulence!"

“Calm down, don’t talk like a cartoon character,” Angers said.

"I thought you came here to ask about the secrets of the White King's bloodline... What exactly are you doing?" Uesugi Kotetsu became more and more flustered as he looked at the sky above. He glanced back at Angers and then at his ramen cart. For a moment, he wanted to just take a taxi to the airport and fly out of Japan, but in the end, he sat down and sighed wearily. "Tell me, what do you want to know?"

"Are the marinated eggs fresh? Cut me one." Angers swirled his glass. "And some sake too."

"Aren't you worried at all? This is elemental turbulence! Do you even know what elemental turbulence is?" Uesugi Koshi angrily reached for the hard-boiled egg. "We're out of sake, only shochu! Should we have it on the rocks or hot?"

“I’ve already told you to calm down. Although things have gotten a bit out of hand, I believe that with Mingfei around, everything is still under control.” Angers smiled. “Don’t worry, your god hasn’t been resurrected yet; it’s just that the remains of the god have attracted these guys.”

"Mingfei? Is that your nuclear missile codename again?" Uesugi raised an eyebrow. "Even for the Secret Service, using a nuclear missile in a densely populated city would trigger World War III, wouldn't it?"

“No, no, Mingfei is a person’s name. He’s Lu Mingfei, a 09 graduate of the Dragon Genealogy major. He’s an outstanding S-class student and is now a senior executive in the Executive Department,” Angers said. “He has already dealt with two of the emperors on the four thrones. Apart from the gods, nothing in Japan can threaten him.”

"This is unbelievable." Uesugi Kotsugu muttered, "Before I retired, the Four Great Kings were still unverified myths and legends. In just a few decades, two of the great first-generation beings have been killed by students from Kassel College. What, is your college's final exam about killing the Dragon King? The TV said you hid alien spaceships and remains in Area 51. It seems to be true?"

"Alright, alright, stop complaining. I didn't lie to you," Angers said helplessly. "So far, apart from a few people who signed the agreement, no outsiders know about this. See how good I am to you?"

"Thank you so much." Uesugi Yue spat, then hesitated for a moment, "No matter what this 'Lu Mingfei' is, are you sure you can control him? Something that can kill the Dragon King, you should know what kind of existence it is without me telling you. Even if it has a human appearance, you can't treat it as a real human."

“Let’s not talk about that anymore, let’s talk about your god.” Angers took a sip of wine.

"I don't think you're entirely confident either," Uesugi Kotsushi said, narrowing his eyes. "I'm warning you, be careful not to play with fire and get burned."

“Like Izanagi and Susanoo?” Angers was determined not to continue the discussion on Lu Mingfei’s question. “I already know the basic background of your mythology. Tell me the real secrets that you, the former patriarch and emperor, know. I’m not exaggerating. The problems Japan is facing now are not as simple as the sinking of the four main islands.”

"Don't try to scare me." Uesugi Koshi snorted coldly, then stretched out his hand in front of Angers.

"what?"

"I'm giving you intelligence; you must ensure I can leave Japan safely."

Angers stared into Uesugi Kotetsu's eyes, then suddenly chuckled softly, "Deal."

Now it was Uesugi Koshi's turn to be surprised. "You agreed so easily? That's not like you at all."

“We’re all old, except you’ve grown into a complete scoundrel,” Angers said calmly. “Years ago you came to assassinate me for Japan, but today you want to abandon this country and run away.”

Chu Zihang and Caesar, who were standing nearby, perked up their ears. They both said that Angers conquered Japan, but there was never any specific plot. It was as if Angers flew to Japan with the American army, and then the Japanese emperor and the remaining high-ranking officials in the political arena bowed and scraped to him... But that was MacArthur's script. It shouldn't be so mundane for an S-class dragon slayer with zero time to conquer the Japanese hybrids.

In retrospect, the principal's experiences back then must have been an epic tale filled with swordplay and intrigue.

"I say, aren't your students a bit too gossipy?" Uesugi Koshi said. "You only brought two students to participate in such a dangerous event?"

Chu Zihang and Caesar then realized they had been too obvious. They both picked up noodles and brought them to their mouths but didn't move, their faces buried in the soup as they cast furtive glances at the two old men. Anyone could see their gossipy hearts were burning fiercely.

“They are my best students,” Angers said with a smile.

“The best…” Uesugi Kotsushi muttered, then changed the subject, “When you returned to Japan this time, didn’t you go to see that idiot Aga? Logically speaking, he used to be your representative in Japan.”

“Stop calling me an idiot. Ahe has paid your land taxes for decades, otherwise you wouldn’t even have the right to sell ramen on this street,” Angers said. “He’s the one who brought me here. Someone attacked us at his nightclub. Thanks to my two students, otherwise you wouldn’t be here to see me… But we made a bit too much of a commotion. His nightclub now needs a complete rebuild.”

Angers pointed to a black Rolls-Royce in the distance. Uesugi followed his arm and looked down. The driver's side window rolled down, and a gray-haired man nodded to him.

Chapter 196 Uesugi Kotsu's Intelligence

“Let’s get down to business,” Angers said. “You have to tell me everything you know. There are two madmen who have the secrets of God. I need to know what they’re up to in order to stop them. Neither God nor the bloodthirsty army of emperors should exist in this world.”

“I don’t know about the former, but the latter has always been the dream of the Snake Clan. I suggest you interrogate my descendants.” Uesugi Koshi shrugged. “As for gods, to be honest, I know very little about them. My native language is French, and I barely spoke Japanese when I first came to Japan. The old shrines have many ancient scrolls written in Old Japanese, which I found very difficult to read, so I just skimmed through them. Later, when I retired, I burned most of the materials.”

“Those are priceless dragon records…” Angers clicked his tongue in amazement. “You are the only race to have your bloodline personally bestowed by the Dragon King, and you come from the White King, whose nobility is second only to Nidhogg. If the records contain even a single word left by the first Izanagi, their value will be comparable to the Emerald Record!”

“It’s not as ancient as you think. I remember the earliest records are only two thousand years ago. They are mainly texts and murals. The murals look a lot like the Dunhuang murals, and the texts are in the form of poetry. They all record that lost history. Together they are called ‘Imperial Records,’ which means the ancient history recorded by the emperor and that he had heard about.” Uesugi Kotsu waved his hand.

"The poem begins with an ancient war in which the Black Emperor defeated the White Emperor, binding her to a towering bronze pillar for six centuries before throwing her into the depths of the icy sea. The Black Emperor commanded the ocean currents from the poles to change direction and converge on that sea, turning it into the coldest sea in the world, a 'place of execution' set up for the White Emperor."

“It’s the same as the beginning of history recorded by the Secret Service.” Angers nodded.

As the purest inheritors of the Black King's bloodline, the Secret Party also has a record of the history of the dragon race, but it is described from the perspective of a thief who stole the power of the gods. Many parts are interspersed with hallucinations seen by many generations of leaders when they crossed the critical blood limit. Subsequent historians sorted out which records were true and which were bloody and dark personal experiences left by half-dead beings.

This history, after being supplemented by the "Ice Sea Copper Pillar Table" in modern times, was finally preserved in the ice cellar underground of Kassel College. The latest version is the content of the professional course "Dragon Genealogy" after being deleted and made into teaching materials.

"The events described earlier do indeed resemble the history you recorded. The Black King Nidhogg destroyed the White King with his supreme power, killed him, ate his flesh, turned his bones into ice shards, and then melted the ice shards and poured them into the volcano. He completely destroyed the White King's body and soul, thus showing all his kind the fate of traitors."

Uesugi Koshi took a glass of shochu from the ice bucket and drank it all in one gulp. When he was the "shadow emperor" of the Snake-Headed Eight Families, he was drunk all the time and reeked of alcohol. Even when he was studying the history of mixed-race Japanese people as part of his duty, he would secretly hide whiskey on the rocks in his pocket and bring it into the old shrine. The shrine guards pretended not to see his disrespect for the gods and history because he was the emperor, and the emperor meant everything.

For the Emperor, alcohol was practically indistinguishable from water, but Uesugi Koshi was old. The cold liquor slid down his esophagus into his stomach, a fragrant aroma rising in his throat. The years he didn't want to recall became clear in his mind through this familiar sensation. This is called the encoding specificity principle in psychology: memory is most effective when the context of recall matches the context of memorization. It's also known as being moved by a scene or feeling a connection to someone.

“Let’s start from where our history books diverge…” Uesugi said. “The Black Emperor believed he had completely erased the White Emperor and her bloodline… but during those six eras, a human ventured into the execution grounds. We no longer know how that human reached the forbidden area, but in any case, he succeeded and made a pact with the frozen White Emperor, obtaining the Holy Infant.”

"The Holy Infant is also the Holy Remains?" Angers asked. "Is what the Eight Serpent Clan sealed really the piece of flesh and blood passed down from the White King?"

“The Holy Relic is part of the Holy Infant. Although two emperors in history have fused with the Holy Relic, we still cannot understand it. You can call it the White King's genes, the White King's flesh and blood, or the White King's egg, which is correct, but that is only a part of its characteristics, limited to what humans can understand. To give an analogy, we are three-dimensional beings, while the Holy Relic is like a projection of some kind of four-dimensional object. We may see one side of it, but we will never see its whole picture.” Uesugi Kotsushi shook his head. “Moreover, the White King is a king who controls the spiritual element. Human science currently understands the least about the spiritual element, so it's best not to use your scientifically educated worldview to describe what he looks like.”

“We cannot use human thinking to speculate about dragons,” Angers said calmly.

"Continuing with the Holy Infant, that thing is divided into two parts: the Holy Grail and the Holy Remains. The Holy Grail refers to the blood of the White King, and the Holy Remains refer to the bones that the White King bestowed upon humanity. The Holy Grail spread with the proliferation of the Snake Clan, but the Holy Remains have always been preserved as the remains of the White Emperor. The so-called god refers to the Holy Remains, which is not the complete skeleton of the White King, but just a piece of bone. In the murals, the priests would depict the Holy Remains as an arm bone or a skull, but I think they had never seen that thing and were just guessing. But the Holy Remains is a piece of bone, that should be beyond doubt."

“Very good, anything tangible is easy to handle.” Angers’ expression relaxed a bit. “No one can retrieve anything from 7000 meters underwater without attracting attention.”

“You’ve all seen the murals of the Hebi-Hachi family, so I don’t need to go into the myths and legends related to the sacred remains,” Uesugi Kotsu continued. “Apart from that, I really don’t know any other secrets.”

“No, two things.” Angers held up a finger. “First, you are the only emperor of your generation, and I need to know the current bloodline of the emperor. Second, do you know anything about the Lenin and Tachibana Masamune?”

"The Emperor's bloodline has definitely ended with me." Uesugi Kotetsu said casually. "Not only the Emperor, but the bloodlines of the three inner families have also ended with me. As for the Lenin, that's the Soviet ship, right? Does it have anything to do with the current situation?"

“Good, it seems you are unaware of this,” Angers said. “If Tachibana Masamune comes to you, keep him calm and remember every word he says to you.”

"That guy who impersonated one of the three inner circle?"

“No, he might really be one of the three inner families, and he might even be one of your descendants,” Angers said slowly, taking a sip of his drink.

Chapter 197 Angers and Friedrich

Angers briefly recounted to Uesugi Kotsugu the information provided by Genjiro regarding biological experiments in the Third Reich, Herzog, and research at Black Swan Harbor.

Uesugi Koshi acted more calmly than Angers had expected. The old man pulled off the towel wrapped around his head, his expression strange. "Do you know what it feels like to find out you have a son when you're about to die..."

"Don't rush to lament. Your sons might just be the culprits or the keys to Japan's sinking," Angers said calmly. "In any case, we now have Genjiro and Genjiro under our control, and on the surface, you are the only emperor left in Japan."

Uesugi remained silent.

Angers initially thought he was lost in complex thoughts, but when he looked up and met his gaze, he couldn't help but feel a chill. As the strongest known user of Time Zero, few things could make Angers feel terrified. Uesugi Kotsushi's pupils turned a fierce dark gold, as if molten lava was flowing deep within them.

Many years ago, when Angers pushed open the door to the Sheqi Eight Family Meeting Room, he was faced with Uesugi Kotsugi.

"What is it?" Angers asked softly.

"I don't know, it looks like some kind of evil spirit." Uesugi Koshi's voice was hoarse, and in this state, his speech sounded like a roar, so he could only lower his voice. "Thirty meters away, under the tree at the entrance of the alley."

Angers remained holding his wine glass in mid-air, neither setting it down nor taking a sip. The liquid was as smooth as a mirror, as if someone had pressed the pause button on him, freezing him and his wine in that moment. But an increasingly intense killing intent began to permeate the surroundings. When the human with the strongest Time Zero was serious, every flaw or opening meant death.

Chu Zihang activated his Blood Explosion for the third time, and Caesar's eyes shone with a crimson-gold light. Neither of them dared to rashly unleash their domains.

The hairs on their backs stood on end, a chilling, stinging sensation burning along their spines, their hearts pounding uncontrollably. This was the suppressive power of pure-blooded dragons over hybrids; they could feel a scorching gaze sweeping over their bodies, filled with scrutiny, contempt, and murderous intent.

The rain clouds overhead were so thick they resembled inverted mountains, their peaks almost touching the tops of tall buildings. The long-awaited downpour finally began. First, large raindrops pounded the ground, leaving damp marks. Then, a low, drumming sound echoed through the lush sycamore leaves. A few seconds later, the scattered sounds almost merged into one, everything was making noise, yet the different sounds blended together, the whole world enveloped in this monotonous cacophony.

Uesugi and Angers suddenly flared up at the same time, and the raging wind blew away the pots, pans, and roof of the ramen cart, and even the rainwater overhead flew backwards!

Chu Zihang pushed the Blood Explosion to level five. He saw Uesugi Kotetsu reach into the wooden cabinet of the ramen cart and take out a simple-looking Japanese sword, while Angers was left only as a black shadow. The level five Blood Explosion was far from keeping up with Angers' speed. This centenarian had spent his entire life honing his Time Zero technique, just to draw it once or twice in the dark days of his remaining life.

Now is the time for him to draw his sword.

The swarm of weasels moved through the dim rain and the large leaves that had been knocked down by the rain. Caesar did not draw his Desert Eagle, which was equipped with Philosopher's Stone projectiles. Several experiences had proven that the Philosopher's Stone was difficult to penetrate the defenses of a Dragon King-level target. At this time, alchemical swords were the best weapons.

He was the slowest of them all, but his vampire scythes followed closely behind Angers, waving their sharp bone wings. Behind them was Uesugi Yue, who was wielding his sword and stepping forward. Chu Zihang and Caesar himself lagged behind, and flames belonging to the monarch ignited on their swords at the same time.

The enemy of all this was the man standing under the cherry tree with an umbrella. The low brim of the umbrella obscured his face, but his pure white hunting attire was the only bright spot in the dilapidated old neighborhood. Angers clashed with the man, the rose he always wore on his chest was scattered in the gale, and their blades met, a brief burst of light like a shooting star.

"Old friend, you're really irritable." The man's umbrella shattered into fragments in the air, the steel frame twisted and deformed, covered in knife marks. In that instant of contact, he had caught Angers's slash with his umbrella.

Only then did he reveal his true appearance.

“Antique shop owner.” Caesar showed neither surprise nor discomposure. “Lin Fenglong, you are the ‘Crown Prince.’ You’re the one who spread the information about Jormungandr.”

The man did not respond to him, but instead looked at Angers, who had exited time zero.

Angers' suit was completely disheveled, the fabric pressed against his body by the high-speed wind. This old man not only had the energy of a young man, but his body was also as strong as a young man's, revealing exaggerated muscle lines beneath his burly frame. His chest rose and fell with his breath, and wisps of sweat rose from his body, mingling with the rain.

He even had a slight smile on his face as he straightened up and let out a long breath. "I've always been this irritable, haven't you forgotten? My dear old friend, Friedrich von Long..."

“I don’t remember very well, which is why I specially changed into this outfit to see you.” Friedrich spread his hands. “That past is like a movie I watched when I was young. I can only vaguely remember a few faces. Only a pathetic guy like you would remember the rest.”

"Angers, don't be impulsive!" Uesugi Kotetsu gripped his knife, his eyes fixed on Friedrich, and shouted at Angers. He had attempted to assassinate Angers, and naturally had studied this man, whom he considered the leader of the European Secret Society, knowing his history and hatred.

Friedrich's displayed strength was unfathomable, which was why Uesugi Kotsugu didn't immediately attack after Angers was repelled. He had fought Angers before, and if Friedrich could achieve the same speed, he might have been defeated in an instant. This defeat wouldn't be as simple as being beaten with a wooden sword by Angers; it could truly mean death.

He still wanted to revisit France, and he hadn't seen his son yet. How could he die here?

“The emperor, high and mighty, has the bloodline but not the heart of an emperor.” Friedrich turned to Uesugi Kotetsu, his words laced with sarcasm. “How can a king die of old age? Let him burn… burning would be much more interesting.”

"careful!"

Angers suddenly entered the realm of time zero, and the rain and wind slowed down, but Friedrich was out of control in the realm, leaving him with a faint smile.

An unknown alchemical realm was activated, enveloping the entire neighborhood.

Uesugi Yue, Chu Zihang, and Caesar all saw the thick black fog, which surged in from all directions, quickly swallowing up all light and sound. Friedrich and Angers' figures gradually dimmed in the fog until they disappeared.

Chapter 198 The Strongest Time Zero

“Now it’s just us left, old buddy.” Friedrich raised his sword to block Angers’ folding knife. His weapon was a short military knife, simple in design, entirely black except for the gleaming blade, with a hilt wrapped in dark ebony. Such knives are generally made of high-carbon steel and have excellent cutting and stabbing performance, but the one in his hand was clearly reinforced with recycled metal, capable of withstanding Angers’ alchemical folding knife in high-intensity combat.

The two swung their swords rapidly in the high-speed field. If Uesugi Yue, Caesar, and Chu Zihang were still there, they would only see a series of flashes and sonic booms. When the blades clashed, even the alchemical weapons would tremble and groan.

“Not fast enough,” Friedrich said with a smile. “You see, without power, even revenge is so powerless. Such is the baseness of humanity… Strength is not justice, but weakness is certainly the original sin.”

"After all these years, you've turned yourself into a monster just to spout this nonsense to me?" Angers said with a sneer. "I only know one thing."

“Oh?” Friedrich raised an eyebrow. “I’m all ears.”

“You will die here today,” Angers said, enunciating each word clearly.