Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

Angers put down his chopsticks and looked up from the plate.

"Do you have any braised eggs?" he asked. "Cut one."

Uesugi stared at him, his eyes wide open.

"A little more sake," Angers said, swirling the empty glass again.

“I, you…” Uesugi Kotsushi pointed at Angers, trembling, and after a long pause, finally managed to choke out a sentence, “You’re a fucking old bastard!”

"My life has been ruined ever since I met you! Sixty years! Sixty years, you know? I thought I could hide on this street and sell ramen to avoid you, but you still found me! You sat on my stall, ate my noodles, drank my wine, and even made me cut your braised eggs! You even threatened to destroy my family! You're a bastard! A complete and utter bastard!"

"When I die, I'll definitely have a tombstone erected on my grave, with the words 'Angers and dogs are not allowed to visit!' Written in big letters, in Chinese! In English! In Japanese! In three languages! So I won't be so angry that I toss and turn in my coffin!"

“If you hate me, hate me, but don’t drag the dog into it,” Angers said. “The dog is innocent. The wine should be heated.”

Uesugi snorted, took a marinated egg from under the shelf, placed it on the cutting board, and cut it in half with one stroke. He put the cut marinated egg on a small plate, pushed it in front of Angers, then took out a bottle of shochu from the cupboard, unscrewed the cap, poured it into a small copper kettle, and heated it on the stove.

Angers picked up half a braised egg and took a bite.

"Let's get down to business."

“I’ve known for a long time that the Seven Serpent Clan are descendants of the White King, but I’ve never asked for your secrets. First of all, it wouldn’t have mattered. You outwardly submit to the Secret Party, but you don’t truly consider us as your allies. In your eyes, the Secret Party is nothing more than an uninvited guest who has intruded into the East. You cooperate with us not because of agreement, but because of need—you need the Secret Party’s technology and resources, you need our network of connections in Europe, and you need a powerful ally in the fight against the Dragon Clan.”

Angers paused, picked up half a braised egg, and took another bite.

"Secondly, the White King's secret is in your hands, and you won't abuse it. Although you're involved in the underworld, you are still guardians of order, not destroyers. I understand that very well. You sell weapons, run casinos, and lend money at exorbitant interest rates, but you never allow Deadpool to appear on the streets of Japan, nor do you let news of the Dragon Clan's awakening make the news. You maintain the stability of this country in your less-than-honorable ways."

Uesugi Kotsushi listened with his arms crossed and a blank expression.

“Finally,” Angers held up a finger, “I can slowly uncover the secrets of the White King’s bloodline. Over the years, I’ve allowed the Japanese branch to be autonomous, letting you manage your own affairs and not interfering in your internal matters, not because I trust you, but to lower your guard.”

“You were a staff officer in the U.S. Navy,” Uesugi Koshi sneered. “Intelligence is your forte! I knew you weren’t any good back then. What kind of good person could a British man be, serving as an officer in the American military? I learned your lesson sixty years ago; you’re full of bad intentions.”

“I am cunning,” Angers laughed brightly, making no attempt to deny it. “I never deny that. In our line of work, how could we have survived this long without being cunning? Weren’t you the same back then? Do you think I don’t know your tricks? Playing the fool, using others to do your dirty work, feigning one thing while doing another, you’re better at it than anyone else. We’re both equally cunning, so neither of us can say anything to the other.”

He picked up the warmed liquor, poured it into a cup, warmed his hands with it, and took a sip.

“I originally just wanted to know how to break through the critical bloodline limit, which is something every hybrid dreams of—breaking the shackles of bloodline and gaining greater power. I have studied for sixty years, read countless ancient books, and conducted countless experiments, but I still haven’t found the answer. I thought the secret of the White King’s bloodline lies in this. As long as I can unravel the mystery of your bloodline, I can find a way to break through the critical bloodline limit.”

"But sixty years later, I learned that you are far more than that."

"You are guarding an ancient city that sank into the Japan Trench a long time ago. That city is called Takamagahara, a relic from the post-White King era, which contains dragon technology, prophetic bronze pillars, corpse guardians... and the remains of gods."

Uesugi remained silent for a long time.

"How did you know? Has someone mastered the technology to dive into the depths of the Abyss?"

“Yes,” Angers said, “we sent the Trieste deep-sea submersible to the deepest part of the trench. As a result, we succeeded.”

“The key is not the submersible,” Uesugi Koshi said, “but the people who go down there. The Descent of the Gods is a cursed place; no one who goes there can leave.”

“There’s no need to worry. The academy happens to have a few young people with excellent bloodlines,” Angers said. “They recently survived the Abyss. They brought back the secrets of Takamagahara, as well as information about the nuclear bombs that the Seven Serpent Clans installed on the deep-sea submersible.”

Uesugi squinted.

"The ruins of Takamagahara have now sunk deep into the earth. Your nuclear bombs exploded, and that city is buried thousands of meters deep and can never be found again."

"A happy ending for everyone?" Uesugi Kotsushi shrugged. "That thing is useless in the world and should have been destroyed long ago. It's an ancient relic from thousands of years ago, dilapidated and old, and there are countless corpses living inside it. It's a ticking time bomb. Even if you don't blow it up, I'd like to. To celebrate, I'll buy you a drink."

“But we did not find God,” Angers said. “It had already awakened.”

He took a photograph out of his suit pocket and placed it in front of Uesugi Kotsugi.

The photo shows a deformed icebreaker. Its hull is twisted and bulging, as if something enormous is tearing it apart from within. The metal plates of the hull are ripped apart, revealing dark red, vein-like tissue beneath, like a beating heart. The entire ship is encased in a translucent membrane covered with a dense, alarming network of vein-like lines.

The Lenin, transformed into a fleshy cocoon.

Uesugi stared at the photo.

“Twenty years ago,” Angers said, “the technology to dive into the Arctic was not yet developed, but an icebreaker carrying an ancient dragon embryo sank to the bottom of the sea. The ship was the Lenin, a Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker. It carried an ancient dragon embryo sealed in amber, disappeared near the Arctic Circle, and was later found to have sunk in the Japan Trench. No one knows how it got in, or why it got in. But it got in, and it brought a living dragon embryo with it.”

He stretched out his finger and pointed to the callus in the photo.

"The fetal blood of the embryo awakened the gods. We discovered a large group of corpse guardians in the Abyss, tens of thousands of them, swimming around the ruins of Takamagahara like a school of fish. These things were awakened not because of the arrival of the deep-sea submersible, but because their gods had awakened first. They were waiting, waiting for the gods' command, waiting for the gods to guide them to the surface, waiting for the gods to lead them back."

"But the Trieste did not find the god who was qualified to receive the blood sacrifice. Lu Mingfei and his team searched for a long time in the ruins of Takamagahara, scouring every inch of the ruins and turning over every corner. There were no flesh cocoons, no remains, and no trace left by any god."

Angers looked up at Uesugi Kotsugi.

"Then there is only one answer left: God broke free from his cage and returned to earth."

Chapter 719 Is Things That Bad?

Uesugi handed the photo back to Angers.

“The one who released the gods must know your secret,” Angers said. “He is very likely hiding among your people.”

"If the truth cannot be found out, the only way to solve this once and for all is to eradicate the entire Sheqi family."

Uesugi remained silent for a long time.

"Has it really come to this?" he asked.

“I promise,” Angers said, looking directly at him.

Two elderly people with white hair sat at a dilapidated ramen stall, a dark blue cloth banner above their heads, a bubbling pot of soup beside them, and an endless curtain of rain outside. The scene seemed utterly ordinary, yet they were discussing matters concerning the survival of the world.

“I came to you because I want to resolve this matter without resorting to violence. But you must understand, rather than waiting for the Dragon King to awaken, I would rather destroy the Serpent Clan. I mean what I say,” Angers said, looking directly at Uesugi Kotsugi. “You have to tell me everything you know so that I can find the mastermind behind this and kill the god. I don’t know what your god is, but I know that such a thing can never be resurrected.”

Uesugi Koshi remained silent for a moment.

“I actually know very little,” he said. “My native language is French, and I barely spoke Japanese when I first arrived in Japan. My mother is French, and I grew up in Paris. I had never set foot in Japan before I was eighteen. Later, my father called me back to inherit that lousy shrine, and that was when I first set foot on this land.”

“The old shrine contains many ancient scrolls, all written in Old Japanese—that kind of ‘Hōbun’ style, which even modern Japanese people can’t understand. I had a lot of trouble reading them, just like you foreigners reading Shakespeare’s original works, having to look up every word in the dictionary. So I just flipped through them quickly and didn’t look at them carefully. Anyway, no one was rushing me; those things have been there for thousands of years, so there’s no hurry.”

Angers raised an eyebrow slightly.

"Those are priceless dragon records, and you just flipped through them because you were lazy?"

“Yes,” Uesugi Koshi nodded. “Later, when I retired, I burned most of them. I was in a bad mood at the time, and I wanted to burn everything. Those ancient scrolls were piled up in the basement of the shrine, covered in ash for thousands of years. I thought that since no one would read them anyway, I might as well burn them clean. So I burned them.”

Angers closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled.

"It sounds like you once entered the harem, and the imperial concubine was swaying and beckoning to you with seductive eyes on the bed, but you were a little lazy and just said 'Hi' to her from afar before turning around and leaving the palace. Oh, by the way, before leaving the palace you also set a fire and burned the imperial concubine."

Uesugi sighed, "That's how people are; they never cherish what they have."

He lowered his head and looked at his calloused hands.

"At the time, I thought those silk booklets filled with ancient Japanese words were just like those AV DVDs on the shelf. You could watch them if you wanted, or not if you didn't."

Uesugi Koshi reached out and pulled Maria Ozawa's DVD from the shelf, twirling it in his hand. The woman on the cover, having removed her bathrobe, wore an ambiguous smile under the light.

"But when you want to watch it later, you find that the CD is damaged and can't be read. The same goes for those ancient scrolls; by the time you want to watch them, they've already been burned. Many things in the world are like that."

Angers remained silent.

“Your current mindset,” Uesugi Kotsushi put the CD back on the shelf, “is like downloading an adult video. The progress isn’t 100% yet, so you can’t see it, and you’re itching to watch it, scratching your head, and fidgeting. The more you want to watch it, the slower the progress gets. You stare at that progress bar, and it seems like it will never move. You want to smash the computer, but you don’t dare—if you smash the computer, even this little bit of progress will be gone.”

“Alright, alright,” Angers waved his hand to interrupt him, “let’s stop giving weird examples.”

He rubbed his temples, looking somewhat pained.

"Why do I keep making friends with Pompeii-type people? They're all like that, never serious, always talking about these kinds of things. What am I that attracts you lecherous thieves?"

Uesugi laughed, "You're the epitome of a lecher. Birds of a feather flock together; you attract what you are. Think about it, have you ever had a decent person around you all these years?"

Angers was speechless.

"Let's get down to business. Let's continue talking about those ancient scrolls. Even though you're lazy and you burned them, you must still remember some of them, right?"

Uesugi Koshihiko's smile vanished.

"The materials in the old shrine have been passed down for two thousand years, including texts and murals. The texts are in the form of poetry, either seven-character or five-character lines? It's hard to say, they're a bit like Chinese poetry and a bit like waka, with a very special rhythm. Each text is accompanied by a picture, depicting the content of the poem. All of these things together are called the 'Kokimon' – which means 'the ancient history recorded by the emperor and heard about by him'."

"The poem begins with an ancient war. The Black Emperor defeated the White Emperor, binding her to a towering bronze pillar and throwing her into the depths of the icy sea. How tall was the bronze pillar? The poem says, 'The bronze pillar reaches the sky, over a hundred zhang,' which is roughly three hundred meters. A three-hundred-meter-tall bronze pillar stood in the icy sea, with the imprisoned White Emperor chained to its top. The Black Emperor commanded the ocean currents from the poles to change direction, converging on that sea and turning it into the coldest sea in the world. That was the 'execution ground' set up for the White Emperor."

Angers slowly sat up straight.

This respect wasn't for Uesugi Echizen, that old bastard was still casually picking his ear with his little finger, but for the emperors of the mythical era. Although they had been dead for thousands of years, when their names were mentioned again millions of years later, they were still like blazing torches, glorious and unparalleled.

“That sea was frozen for six epochs,” Uesugi Etsushi said. “The Black Emperor carved two fissures, each a hundred kilometers long, into the ice, crisscrossing to form a massive cross. This domain enveloped the execution ground, and all living things fled in fear; even schools of fish changed their migration routes. For those six epochs, the royalty of Europe, looking north, would see a towering bronze pillar rising from the icy sea. Dark clouds forever filled the sky above the execution ground, and roaring blizzards constantly reinforced that icy prison. The Black Emperor used this to show all his kind the fate of traitors, and then—”

He raised his hand and made a crushing motion.

"Then destroy her completely."

“The Black Emperor refers to Nidhogg, the White Emperor refers to the White King, and the Royal Family refers to the Dragon Clan, right?” Angers asked.

“I’m not sure,” Uesugi Koshi shook his head. “These are just my guesses. I just read it as a funny novel and didn’t take it to heart. You know, what do you think would happen if an eighteen or nineteen-year-old French hoodlum was suddenly thrown into an old shrine full of old men and women, facing a pile of rags and shreds from thousands of years ago? My first reaction was—what the hell is this? My second reaction was—can I sell it for money? My third reaction was—well, I’ll keep it, maybe it’ll be useful someday. And then that was it.”

Angers took a deep breath.

"You refer to the White Queen as 'she,' so the White Queen is female?"

“That’s not necessarily true,” Uesugi Koshi waved his hand. “In Old Japanese, ‘彼女’ (kanojo) doesn’t always refer to a woman. Sometimes it’s used to refer to someone of high status. It’s like when you say ‘mother nature’ in English. It doesn’t mean that nature is actually a mother. It’s just a metaphor. You’ll understand once you listen to this.”

"After being frozen for six epochs, the White Emperor's power finally waned. She was bound to a bronze pillar and frozen for tens of thousands of years. Wind and rain, ocean currents and erosion caused her power to gradually diminish. Eventually, she became so weak that she no longer had the strength to struggle."

"So the Black Emperor sank the White Emperor and the Copper Pillar together into the underwater volcano. He threw the White Emperor into the lava, watched her burn to ashes bit by bit, and then devoured all the ashes. He took back the power he had previously bestowed upon the White Emperor."

"The Black Emperor believed he had completely erased the White Emperor and her bloodline. He believed there would never be a descendant of the White King again, and no one would ever be able to inherit the White King's power. He had won completely."

Angers awaits his next words.

“But…” Uesugi Kotsushi pointed to his finger, “In those six eras, a human ventured into the execution grounds. He made a pact with the frozen White Emperor and obtained the ‘Holy Infant’.”

"The Holy Infant," Angers asked in confusion, "what is that?"

Chapter 720 Holy Infant

"The Holy Infant?"

“The Holy Infant doesn’t refer to an infant,” Uesugi Kotsushi shook his head, dipped his chopsticks in some shochu, and drew a circle on the wooden table. “It’s a code word, referring to the White Emperor’s ‘bones and blood’.”

“Bone and blood refer to…” Angers understood, “The White King’s genes? Which human obtained the White King’s genes?”

“That’s right.” Uesugi Kotsu nodded, tapping his chopsticks twice on the wooden table. “That human is the father of the Snake-Headed Eight Families, and the White King is like the mother of the Snake-Headed Eight Families, so we call the White King ‘she,’ but it may not actually be female. It’s not a mother; it just corrupted humans with dragon blood.”

“Later, the character ‘皇’ (Emperor) came from China. You know that character, right? It’s ‘白’ (white) on top and ‘王’ (king) on ​​the bottom.” Uesugi Etsushi gestured in the air with his chopsticks. “Some people thought that this character with ‘白’ on top and ‘王’ on the bottom explained our bloodline—descendants of the White King, the King among the White. So the super hybrids in the family were honored as ‘皇’. Therefore, the patriarch was also called the Shadow Emperor, or simply the Shadow Emperor. This is actually a misconception. ‘皇’ only means super bloodline, not Emperor. But as it was passed around, it got distorted, as if the Snake-Headed Eight Families were trying to steal the Emperor’s throne.”

"You directly inherited the bloodline of the ancient dragons?" Angers said.

"Yes. You Black Kings, who originated from Europe, are descendants of stolen dragon blood. In the dark ages, humans offered virgins as sacrifices, allowing them to mate with male dragons and reproduce, selecting children with stable bloodlines to carry on the lineage. How many of those girls were willing? How many were tricked? How many were sent into the dragon's lair by their own parents? Your history, to put it bluntly, is a history of blood and tears."