Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

His consciousness grew increasingly blurred, and the boundary between reality and fantasy completely collapsed. Sometimes he muttered to himself and chuckled foolishly, and sometimes he curled up in a ball in terror, trembling.

Like a walking corpse, in this huge, dark tomb, driven by the last vestiges of survival, it wandered mechanically, desperately, and endlessly.

Awaiting the final collapse.

"Zhao, Meng, Hua," the wind whistled.

"Who?!"

Zhao Menghua turned around and swallowed a mouthful of even thicker, colder darkness.

His heart was pounding in his ears, each beat making him dizzy.

He groped along the cold, damp walls, trying to find his way back, but all he could touch were irregular stones and peeling paint; the passage had been forgotten by the world for a century.

"Hey, is anyone there?" His voice rushed out, but was immediately absorbed and crushed by the thick darkness, not even a trace of echo returned.

Only the sound of dripping water, falling from a distant height, beats the rhythm for this tomb.

He staggered forward, not knowing how long he had walked; time had lost its meaning here. Until, without warning, a faint green light appeared deep within the tunnel, flickering and expanding.

Clang, clang.

The sound grew closer, and the dim light revealed the outline of a railway track and the locomotive of an approaching train.

It wasn't the streamlined front of a modern subway train, but rather an old, rusty, green-skinned train that silently cut through the darkness and stopped in front of him.

The car door opened hoarsely and reluctantly, revealing the same eerie, bleak green light inside.

Zhao Menghua stood frozen in place, his blood seemingly frozen.

He saw something moving in the carriage, its shadowy form.

Then, a hand suddenly reached out from inside the car door, pale yet unusually strong, and grabbed his arm.

"Come on up if you don't want to die!" came the woman's voice.

He was roughly pulled inside, and the car door slammed shut behind him with a creak.

Clang.

The train started moving again and slid into the endless tunnel.

Zhao Menghua collapsed onto the cold floor, gasping for breath, his chest burning with pain.

He looked up and saw the person who had pulled him up.

The young woman, pale-faced with dark, deep eyes, stared warily at the car door that had just closed, as if something was chasing after her.

Dressed in a neat set of work clothes, stained and torn in a few places, he still exuded a sense of competence.

Standing next to her was an equally young Asian man wearing glasses, who quickly gestured for Zhao Menghua to be quiet.

Who are you?

“Kassel College, Executive Department Specialist, Wan Boqian,” the woman interrupted him, speaking rapidly. Her gaze returned to his face, scrutinizing him. “He is Gao Mi. Who are you? How did you get in here?”

"I...I don't know," Zhao Menghua's mind was a mess. "I was just...a gust of wind, and then..."

He gestured in vain.

Gao Mi pushed up her glasses, her voice hoarse and filled with exhaustion.

"Forget it, there's no point in asking. Anyone who falls in here is either extremely unlucky or..."

He didn't finish speaking, but gave Zhao Menghua a meaningful look.

Zhao Menghua then had a chance to look around. It was an old-fashioned carriage with frosted lampshades that emitted a ghostly green light, blurring the faces of everyone and everything, making them appear like ghosts.

The seats were made of tattered velvet and covered in a thick layer of dust.

They weren't the only ones in the carriage. In the shadows further away, sat two more people.

A tall European man, dressed in a well-tailored but wrinkled suit, with dull blond hair and deep-set blue eyes, stared intently at the flowing darkness outside the window, his lips moving silently, as if in prayer or curse.

He showed no reaction to the newcomers, completely absorbed in his own world.

The other was an Italian man with dark curly hair and sharp features. He nervously tapped a coin repeatedly on the table, making a monotonous and rapid tapping sound.

He raised his bloodshot eyes and swept them over Zhao Menghua. The despair and a kind of insane greed in his eyes sent a chill down Zhao Menghua's spine.

"And who are they?" Zhao Menghua asked, his voice hoarse.

“The guys who got here two weeks before you,” Wan Boqian said, “the Italian is called Luca, and the other one, we call him ‘Professor.’ Like us, they are passengers on this ghost train that never stops.”

"Two weeks?!" Zhao Menghua exclaimed, "This car has been running the whole time? Where is it going?"

“Nowhere,” Gao Mi continued, leaning against the carriage wall. “It just keeps cycling in this ‘domain,’ without a beginning or an end. Unless.”

"Unless what?"

Gao Mi and Wan Boqian exchanged a glance.

Wan Boqian nodded slightly.

Gao Mi took a deep breath, looked at Zhao Menghua, and her tone became unusually serious, with a hint of awe and fear.

“Listen, what I’m about to tell you is beyond anything you’ve ever known about this world. But we don’t have time to let you digest it. You just need to remember that if you want to survive, you must follow the ‘rules’ here.”

"This is a 'Nibelungen'."

Zhao Menghua looked at him blankly.

“You can think of it as an independent space constructed by extremely high-ranking dragons or their associated forces. It is superimposed on the real world, yet it follows its own set of laws,” Gao Mi explained, trying to use simple language. “This Nibelungen manifests itself in the form of this subway tunnel and this train. It is both dead and alive. It has its own will.”

"will?"

“Maintain the rules and enjoy the game,” Gao Mi said in a low voice. “The rule is: we are allowed to exist here, temporarily ‘safe,’ because we have ‘chips.’”

He stretched out his hand and opened it.

Several ancient coins lay in my palm, their shapes peculiar, neither gold nor iron, gleaming with a dark, murky sheen under the eerie green light, engraved with ancient dragon script that was difficult to decipher.

“Everyone comes in with 10 of these coins automatically. They are the only hard currency here, the unit of measurement for ‘life’,” Gao Mi sighed deeply. “Once you run out of coins…”

Before he could finish speaking, Luca, the Italian man on the other side of the carriage, suddenly let out a short, hysterical laugh, then abruptly covered his mouth with his hand, his shoulders trembling violently.

The European "professor" was still gazing out the window, as if his soul had already left his body.

Zhao Menghua felt a chill creep up from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

"Who did you lose to?" He heard his own voice trembling.

Gao Mi's gaze turned to the front of the carriage.

Zhao Menghua followed his gaze. In the shadows of the connecting area between the carriages, a figure had quietly appeared.

It was draped in a large, dark cloak that covered most of its body, revealing only a pair of hands placed in front of it.

Those hands were covered with fine, dark blue scales, their claws sharp and curved, gently and slowly rubbing against each other, making a very faint "rustling" sound.

Its face was shrouded in the deep shadow of its hood, and only its inhuman, distorted outline could be vaguely seen, with two needle-like red lights remaining still in the shadow.

It just stood there, and a cold, pure malice spread out, making it hard to breathe.

“Deadpool dealer,” Wan Boqian said, her body tense like a string about to snap. “Or, you can choose to win from your ‘comrade’.”

Her gaze inadvertently swept over the other two people in the carriage.

"Why, why use this method?" Zhao Menghua felt nauseous.

“Because these are the rules of the Nibelungs, and also the ‘pleasure’ of the entity that built them,” Gao Mi smiled bitterly. “It enjoys watching struggles, enjoys watching hope and despair alternate. Winning enough chips—no one knows the exact number, maybe doubled, maybe more—is the only way to ‘bet’ and request to leave the rules. It’s the only way to survive.”

He paused, looking at Zhao Menghua's completely bloodless face, and added, "The two of us still have a few chips left. But Luca and 'The Professor,' they're almost done for. So, welcome to this hellish game, newbie. Your 10 chips are probably already in your pocket."

Zhao Menghua touched his pocket, his fingertips brushing against a pile of cold, hard, round objects.

He took it out and opened his palm.

Exactly 10.

It was heavy, covered with scribbles-like patterns, and felt cumbersome to the touch.

Clang, clang.

The train traveled at a steady speed in the endless darkness, the eerie green light flickering and casting an unpredictable shadow on everyone's face.

The rustling sound of the Deadpool dealer's claws rubbing together in the shadows seemed to become a little clearer.

Luca stopped tapping the coin, abruptly raised his head, and stared intently at Zhao Menghua, the newcomer, and the heavy, brand-new 10 chips in his hand, his bloodshot eyes fixed on him like a hungry wolf.

Gao Mi silently moved a step, slightly blocking Zhao Menghua and Luca.

Wan Boqian's hands hung at her sides, her fingertips slightly twitching, and a very subtle airflow passed through them.

A chilling despair and an even colder greed collided and permeated silently in the dark green carriage.

The train roared on, heading endlessly into the deeper, darker depths.

Chapter 168 The Fall of Grade A

The stark white emergency light swayed in Chu Zihang's hand, illuminating only a few feet of rusty rails and damp, sticky walls beneath his feet.

"Damn it, this place is even more convoluted than Norma's database," Fingel muttered under his breath, holding a modified high-powered flashlight in his hand. The beam swept across the faded and blurred old slogans and graffiti on the walls, searching for any possible landmarks or clues. "How far in have we gone?"

“Based on the changes in pace and direction, we have deviated from the known Beijing subway network by at least seven kilometers,” Chu Zihang said calmly, his grip on Murasame’s sword hilt tightening slightly.

In the darkness, the golden eyes shone like two miniature torches, scanning every shadowy corner.

Lu Mingfei followed closely behind him, feeling a chill run down his spine, as if countless eyes were watching them from the darkness.

"Senior brother, do you think Zhao Menghua would be in a place like this?" His voice trembled slightly.

"Didn't Chen Wenwen say that Zhao Menghua disappeared in the Beijing subway? The last known signal from Gao Mi and Wan Boqian's disappearance also disappeared in this area," Chu Zihang replied. "Very likely."

“Hmm,” Lu Mingfei muttered to himself, “I have a feeling that Zhao Menghua has already given away all his kills.”

“Shut up, Lu Mingfei,” Fingel interrupted him impatiently. “Stay alert. Frilian, have you detected anything with your senses?”

He looked at the elven mage in the group who had been concentrating with his eyes closed, surrounded by a faint aura of magic.

Frilian slowly opened her eyes, a hint of seriousness flashing in her emerald green pupils.

"The space here is strange. The flow of elements is stagnant and filled with malice. There is a very faint smell of blood ahead."

Master Zhu Mumu and his junior sister, who had been silently following behind the group, exchanged a glance.