Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

"How old is she?" Caesar asked.

"Twenty-one," Lu Mingfei replied.

“She’s the same age as Nono,” Caesar said, “but looks younger than Nono.”

"Her mental age is at a junior or senior high school level; she seems much younger," Chu Zihang said. "She requested to share a room?"

“I wouldn’t dare, and besides, Frilian wouldn’t allow it. Erii insisted.” Lu Mingfei sighed. “Damn it, the damn waiter saw me with a beautiful woman soaking wet and an ice queen by my side, and he was even more excited than me. His eyes were full of ‘you’re something else, kid.’ But Frilian and I just played games with Erii all night.”

And that was indeed the case. Erii dragged him and Frilian to play joss cards all night long. Her face was covered with slips of paper, each drawn with a crooked turtle and a pig. Every time she lost a round, she would carefully stick one on her face, then point at Lu Mingfei and Frilian's faces and laugh silently. She laughed like an ordinary human girl, not some "secret weapon" or "strongest demon."

“The more she acts like this, the more it shows her insecurity. She only trusts you and Frilian,” Chu Zihang said.

"Trust me? Do I have any 'good guy' card because I'm upright and decent?" Lu Mingfei wasn't very confident in his advantage in this regard.

He touched his face; stubble had sprouted on his chin, and he hadn't slept all night, with prominent dark circles under his eyes. He didn't think he looked like a trustworthy person; he looked more like the kind of creepy old man who would rub against a girl's shoulder on the tram—a younger version, of course.

“I don’t know.” Chu Zihang frowned slightly. “I suspect her mental state is unstable. The house she lived in was built ten years ago by Genji Heavy Industries. It was an old-style house, which is a cultural relic. So, there are two possibilities: the house was dismantled from an old house and then transported to Genji Heavy Industries for reassembly; or the house was a one-to-one replica of the place she used to live in.”

"It's a bit complicated, isn't it?" Lu Mingfei asked, puzzled.

He imagined the scene—in a towering glass-walled building, on one floor, there was a Japanese-style house made entirely of old wood and tatami mats.

"She is emotionally unstable and has a poor ability to adapt to new environments, so the Snake Clan can only arrange a monotonous living environment to prevent things from getting out of control," Chu Zihang said.

"Then isn't she in danger of losing control at any moment?" Caesar exclaimed in surprise.

He had seen the iceberg that Erii had created and knew very well what level of disaster the word "out of control" meant for Erii.

“She hasn’t lost control yet, probably because of Lu Mingfei and Frilian. She trusts Lu Mingfei and Frilian. Caesar, you know, when a chick hatches, it treats the first creature it sees as its mother. She sees Lu Mingfei as her father and Frilian as her mother,” Chu Zihang said.

"I'm not your father, and Frilian isn't your mother. What is Erii's strange Word of Power?" Lu Mingfei asked, shifting the topic away from himself. "Even Little Dragon Girl isn't as good as her."

He regretted it as soon as the words left his mouth, and Lu Mingfei mentally slapped himself.

Xia Mi is now a human, no longer the high and mighty Dragon King.

“In terms of pure strength, Jormungandr is the weakest among the Dragon Kings. Her advantage lies in learning and imitation, which is why she infiltrates the human race. In terms of strength, she is roughly equivalent to a Sub-Generation,” Chu Zihang said. “Eri is also at the Sub-Generation level. Her Word of Power is called ‘Judgment,’ and its power is terrifying, as if a god is judging humanity from the clouds, hence the name. The actual effect of the Word of Power is to deprive someone of life; it is a rare ‘command’ type Word of Power. Once activated, all life within the domain will be indiscriminately terminated, and the caster cannot control the specific target, nor can they stop it midway.”

"In other words, a word of power that can only be used for slaughter."

Chapter 745 Finding Trouble with Sister Fu

“Even Genjiro is far inferior to her,” Caesar said.

He had witnessed Genjiro's attack; the man's speed in drawing his sword was so fast that even the retina couldn't keep up, and the afterimage left by the Spider Slash as it sliced ​​through the air looked as if space itself had been cut open. But even Genjiro, in that state, was utterly powerless against Erii's "judgment."

"The Emperor is the strongest descendant of the White King, but Genjiro is far inferior to Erii. The head of the Uesugi family is an anomaly; she is... an oni, the strongest oni," Chu Zihang said slowly.

"The strongest, the demon?" Caesar raised an eyebrow.

"This is just my guess. The Emperor is a hybrid who remains stable even after crossing the critical bloodline limit, like a tightrope walker—dangerous, but still within a controllable range. So what about the opposite?"

"The strongest demon is even more powerful than the emperor, but his bloodline is unstable. He is like a tightrope walker who has let go of his balance bar and may fall at any moment, but before he falls, he can reach places that the emperor can never reach."

“How dare the Snake Clan imprison such a terrifying creature in a shrine? That’s more dangerous than keeping a bloodthirsty cougar in a garage,” Caesar said, his brow furrowing.

The Gattuso family also keeps many dangerous creatures, but those creatures are kept in heavily fortified underground facilities, at least tens of kilometers away from any inhabited areas. The Snake Clan, however, keeps the "strongest demon" in its headquarters building—this isn't just bold, it's madness.

“The Hebi-Hachi family needs her. Uesugi Erii is a demon, but she obeys the Hebi-Hachi family. Before she goes out of control, she is the Hebi-Hachi family’s secret weapon. Once she goes out of control, abandon her immediately.”

Chu Zihang pronounced the word "abandon" very softly, but Lu Mingfei sensed the weight behind it. It wasn't "treatment," not "salvation," not "help," but "abandonment." Like abandoning a broken tool, like abandoning a diseased animal.

Erii lived in the building for twenty years, serving as a secret weapon for twenty years, but those people never treated her as one of their own. She was a cougar kept in an exquisite cage, her claws and teeth used to tear apart enemies, but the moment she showed her teeth to her master, poison gas would be injected into the cage.

"Hey, Lu Mingfei stole the ultimate weapon of the Snake Clan." Caesar scratched his head, making his blond hair messy.

“Yes, there are other possibilities,” Chu Zihang said slowly.

"She is the god that the Snake-Headed Eight Families are looking for, but she has not yet fully awakened."

The three people remained silent.

This conjecture is truly terrifying. A god imprisoned by humans—just thinking about it sends chills down your spine. Not a god in the metaphorical sense, not a pretty winged character from a comic book, but a real, ancient dragon king connected to the very origin of the world.

If this conjecture is true, then the Snake Clan imprisoned within Genji Heavy Industries is not a weapon, but a nuclear bomb that could detonate at any moment. No, far more terrifying than a nuclear bomb. A nuclear bomb only destroys the physical body, but a god rewrites the rules.

The air in the capsule room seemed to have been half sucked out, and the breathing of the three people became clearly audible.

“Senior brother, haven’t you gone too far?” Lu Mingfei broke the silence, his voice dry like sandpaper scraping against a wooden board. “If Erii is a god, why would the Snake-Headed Eight Families bother exploring the Japan Trench? Why not just let her awaken her memories directly?”

"Hey, Lu Mingfei, you're defending that pretty girl over there?" Caesar seized the opportunity, patted Lu Mingfei hard, and the seriousness on his face vanished. "No wonder you've been alone with two women in a room before! You're starting to defend her now!"

Lu Mingfei's face flushed instantly, and he was about to retort when a commotion broke out outside the window.

The sounds came from downstairs: several men's gruff voices, mixed with malicious laughter, and the sound of a vending machine being slapped.

During this time of day, such commotion on the outskirts of Shinjuku usually means only one thing: drunk thugs are causing trouble.

Chu Zihang reached out and parted a crack in the blinds, and the three of them looked down at the same time.

At the entrance of the capsule hotel, next to the vending machine, Frillie stood still, holding an iced coffee in her hand, having drunk half of it.

There were three men standing in front of her.

All three were wearing loose-fitting floral shirts, collars open, revealing cheap gold necklaces around their necks. One, with dyed blond hair, leaned forward, one hand on the vending machine, trapping Frillie in the corner between the machine and the wall. The other two stood behind him, hands in their pockets, their faces wearing sticky, self-righteous smiles that suggested they were drunk.

The blond man said something like, "It's so boring for a beautiful lady to drink coffee alone. Come with us to sing karaoke," or something like that, and then reached out to grab Frillie's hand.

Lu Mingfei tried to stand up, but he immediately realized that he was too cramped inside the capsule to move.

Before he could say "we have to go down," a light came on downstairs.

The silvery light, close to moonlight, was cold and clear, like ice water dripping from the eaves in the depths of winter, frozen into the form of light. The light burst forth from Frilian's outstretched fingertips, tracing a smooth arc in the air.

"Whoosh!"

Then the blond man flew out.

He flew out with a clean, decisive motion, his body leaving the ground horizontally, as if lifted and thrown by an invisible giant hand. He traced an arc about three meters long in the air, his back slamming into the frame of a bicycle parked on the side of the road. Metal and flesh collided, and then he and the bicycle tumbled to the ground. His brightly colored shirt was caught in the wheel, and he and the bicycle were entangled in a knot.

The remaining two thugs reacted a full beat slower. They watched their companion fly away first, then turned to look at Frillie, their smiles barely fading before fear welled up in their eyes.

One of them took a step back, while the other opened his mouth as if to say something, something like "What's wrong with you, woman?" or "Do you know who I am?"—the standard lines—but he didn't get a chance to say them.

Frillie moved her fingers again. The movement was very small; she simply brought her index and middle fingers together and gently stroked them from left to right, as if drawing a line in the air with her fingertips.

The silver light shone again, and two beams shot towards the remaining two people. The light struck their chests with a chilling precision, knocking them down just in time without causing permanent damage.

The two people fell backward at the same time, their heads hitting the vending machine panel one after the other with two crisp "thuds" before they slid to the ground and collapsed into a heap.

Good start.

The vending machine was vibrated, triggering the release of two cans that clattered down and rolled to a stop at the feet of one of the thugs.

Chapter 746 You and Frilian take care of Erii

Lu Mingfei couldn't stand Caesar, this little Italian who spoke fluent Chinese.

Caesar spoke Chinese with a peculiar accent, too standard, as if he had learned it from dubbed Chinese films of the 1980s. His retroflex consonants were more standard than Lu Mingfei's, and his use of retroflex endings was more fluent than that of Beijing taxi driver BJ. Occasionally, he would even blurt out a few idioms that Lu Mingfei himself had almost forgotten.

At this rate of development, Caesar in his old age will surely be a Beijing-style old man wearing cloth shoes and a silk jacket, holding a palm-leaf fan, sitting under the grape trellis in an old manor in Rome, drinking espresso and chatting with his fellow Italians about Beijing's hutong culture, with a blond buzz cut.

The scene was too bizarre, so Lu Mingfei decided not to think about it anymore.

He really didn't mean to speak up for Erii.

Although Erii is very good—beautiful, with delicate features like a classical doll and fair skin; obedient, she sat quietly on the floor watching birds for four hours without making a sound, quieter than any human Lu Mingfei had ever seen in his life; and with a good figure, the scene he saw through the French windows was still vivid in his mind, her slender and full body curves wrapped in black lace underwear, like a fruit that was not yet fully ripe.

But no matter how good that rich and beautiful woman is, it has nothing to do with Lu Mingfei. He has hugged her and seen her dressed very scantily, but this is not ancient times, where a girl would cling to him and insist on marrying him just because she saw half of his fair arm.

If that were the case, Lu Mingfei, who was surrounded by a hundred girls every night in Takamagahara, should have already married a hundred concubines.

Lu Mingfei only had one thing on his mind.

This kind of worry is hard to explain, like a very fine thorn stuck in your fingertip. It's not visible on the surface, but it will hurt if you press it with a little force.

Since entering Kassel College, one by one, the people around him have become dragon kings. It started with Old Tang, the guy who ate hot dogs with him on the streets of Chicago, chatted with him all night on QQ, and whose profile picture was a cat wearing sunglasses. Suddenly one day, he became the King of Bronze and Fire.

I'll go visit Old Tang and his brother another day; it's not easy for the two of them to take care of the orphanage.

Then there's Xia Mi. A pretty junior sister who lived in the girls' dormitory and whose eyes crinkled when she smiled, suddenly transformed into Jormungandr one day.

Now he's considered the comedic lead.

Behind every friend is a person who was once alive and well, but eventually became a dragon king.

Like a nightmare, everyone in the dream eventually grows scales and claws. Sometimes Lu Mingfei would wake up in the middle of the night, staring at the light on the dormitory ceiling, counting the names one by one, until he found himself in tears.

Everyone else seems to be doing well, so why am I crying uncontrollably?

Therefore, Lu Mingfei was afraid.

Lu Mingfei didn't care what Erii was. She could be the "strongest demon," a "hybrid of the next generation," the "secret weapon" of the Snake Clan, or the "god who has not yet fully awakened" that Chu Zihang mentioned.

These titles meant nothing to him. He simply didn't want Erii to be killed at the end of the story, and he didn't want to one day turn on his phone to find someone's profile picture grayed out and never to light up again.

This was his only little selfish thought.

“Lu Mingfei’s words make sense. Erii is unlikely to be a god. If she were, then the Snake-Headed Eight Families would have no need to spend time exploring the Japan Trench; the god would have already left Takamagahara,” Chu Zihang broke the brief silence.

Caesar nodded, no longer making jokes about "a man and a woman alone in a room," but instead crossed his arms over his chest and frowned slightly.

Lu Mingfei sometimes forgets that Caesar Gattuso is not just an Italian playboy who speaks with an "er" sound; he is also the heir to the Gattuso family and an excellent executor who has proven his judgment in countless missions.

“The head of the Uesugi family is emotionally unstable and his health may be very poor,” Chu Zihang continued. “Lu Mingfei saw medical equipment and doctors outside the house. The equipment was all used in the intensive care unit. Electrocardiogram monitors, ventilators, defibrillators, and micro-infusion pumps—the presence of these devices outside a bedroom at the same time indicates that he is not in good health and needs medical care.”

"To ensure her safety, we should send her back to the Sheqi family as soon as possible, where there are adequate medical facilities."

"Send the nuclear weapons launch button to the Snake-Headed Eight Family?" Caesar immediately retorted. "We can barely trust Genjiro, at least so far his performance has been somewhat sincere. But we can't be sure that the Snake-Headed Eight Family can all be trusted. We've seen enough of how many factions, how many schemes, and how many shady dealings are hidden within the family during our time in Japan."

The Eight Serpent Families were never a monolithic entity. The eight surnames—Uesugi, Minamoto, Tachibana, Fuma, Ryoma, Inuyama, Sakurai, and Miyamoto—were like eight snakes swimming independently. On the surface, they formed a giant Yamata no Orochi, but in reality, each had its own direction and goal.

Lu Mingfei and the others were unaware that the Inuyama family had broken away from the Snake Clan and joined Kassel College.

As the head of the Minamoto clan, Genji barely managed to keep the giant serpent from splitting apart, but even he couldn't completely control every heartbeat of each branch. Sending Erii back to Genji Heavy Industries was tantamount to handing over a still docile but destructive "demon" to a group of people with their own agendas.

No one can guarantee how those people will use her—whether they will continue to carefully protect her or abandon her without hesitation the next time she loses control.

“Yes, the academy doesn’t have enough control over Japan,” Chu Zihang nodded. “Returning Uesugi Erii to the Snake Clan is too risky.”

"Got it," Caesar snapped his fingers.

“We have Lu Mingfei and Frilian. Since she treats Lu Mingfei as her father and Frilian as her mother, let them take care of Erii.”