Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

Indeed, whether it's an atomic bomb, a hydrogen bomb, or a humanoid weapon capable of leveling half of the Kanto Plain, for a screw already welded to a warhead, the explosive yield is no longer a parameter that can cause sleepless nights.

"I'm completely relieved to hear what you said, brother! Now I'll go for a swim in the sea. That's all for today's chat. I wish you and the head of the Uesugi family a harmonious relationship!"

Lu Mingfei could almost picture it: the little devil sprang up from the beach chair, tossed his phone aside, and walked barefoot across the sun-baked sand towards an unreasonably blue sea, the waves crashing against his ankles and splashing fine white foam.

"Hey, hey, hey! That was all nonsense, okay? I haven't even said the most important thing yet! How am I supposed to subdue this girl? She is a human weapon, that's true, but I don't have the remote control code to force her to obey."

Lu Mingfei panicked. His thumb tapped the screen at such a speed that it almost left a blur, and his expression changed from "what's the point of all this?" to "Don't even think about running away until the pot is completely broken."

This was the question he had truly wanted to ask from beginning to end. From last night until now, this question had been churning in his mind: Why did Erii trust him? Where were the boundaries of this trust drawn? What would he do if this trust suddenly vanished one day?

Lu Mingze replied very quickly.

"Oh? You actually want to get the password to force the Uesugi family head to obey? Let me make this clear first: the Uesugi family head is indeed a beautiful girl, but she is one of the few channels connecting to God. I sent her to your side so that you could hold onto an important card, not for your own pleasure!"

"Get to the point!" Lu Mingfei typed out three words, each followed by an exclamation mark.

He had no patience left for the little devil's word games.

Chapter 762 The Key to God

"Just make her happy."

Lu Mingze's text message reply was lighter than a sigh of relief, and as usual, it ended with that infuriating interjection that made you want to punch him.

Lu Mingfei stared at the six words on the screen, feeling a vein throbbing in his temple.

How can I make Erii happy?

This is exactly the same kind of talk some corporate executives give at all-staff meetings, saying things like "Everyone should pay attention to work-life balance." It sounds perfectly correct, but when it comes to implementation, it's like trying to find a screwdriver.

"Make her happy? How? Make me dress up and entertain her at her knees to show my filial piety?" Lu Mingfei typed rapidly on the screen, each punctuation mark filled with barely suppressed anxiety.

"Entertaining one's parents in colorful clothes" is an old story from the Spring and Autumn Period about a seventy-year-old man who dressed up as a child to amuse his parents. When Lu Mingfei heard this story in Chinese class, he thought the old man's filial piety was commendable, but his methods were questionable. He never expected that one day he would be in a love hotel, texting with a devil, seriously considering whether he should learn from this method.

"First of all, she trusts you a lot. You are one of the few people who can make her lower her guard. Make good use of this trust and you can keep her calm."

This time, Lu Mingze's presentation had at least a semblance of seriousness, although the phrase "use it" made Lu Mingfei instinctively frown.

"Secondly, making a girl happy is very simple. It's nothing more than taking her shopping for clothes, buying her delicious food, taking her out for a stroll, chatting with her when she's lonely, and preparing warm brown sugar water in advance when she's on her period... I'm telling you, a seasoned loser, haven't you even taken the basic course of pleasing a goddess?"

Lu Mingfei's lips twitched violently.

Take her shopping for clothes? Where to buy them? How to choose? The last time he bought clothes for a girl was when he picked out two sets of convenience store pajamas for Erii. He was on edge the whole time, like he was defusing a bomb. He paced back and forth between the shelves for five minutes before daring to make a purchase.

Buying delicious food? That's barely feasible; at least today's hot pot meal is a decent example.

Chat with her? Chatting with a girl who doesn't speak is a mysterious art. He has only mastered the most basic trick so far: writing on a notepad and waiting for her to reply in equally neat handwriting.

"Get lost! It's never been repaired!" Lu Mingfei retorted.

"Sigh~ It seems that neither Goddess Chen Wenwen nor Frilian gave you any practice."

Chen Wenwen, Lu Mingfei pursued her silently for three years of junior high school, but he never dared to give her a complete confession.

Frillian, he likes her now but can't even pronounce the word "like" properly.

Lu Mingze used a single line to simultaneously name two large gaps in his romantic history, so efficient that it made one want to strangle him through the screen.

"Get lost! Let's get down to business! You think taking her shopping, buying her clothes and food will keep her in check? Are you sure?"

"I don't know about that. We devils don't need these stupid methods to woo women. If you think you can't handle it, just kill her."

Lu Mingfei's thumb hovered above the screen, and he froze as if a pressure point had been struck.

"Just kill him then."

He read it twice. The first time was to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him, and the second time was to make sure Lu Mingze wasn't joking. Then he remembered that Lu Mingze never joked about matters of life and death. Every word that little devil uttered, no matter how flippant his tone, concealed a cold, hard core.

"Dude, you have a fever? What nonsense are you talking about?" Lu Mingfei replied.

It took me three tries to type those few words correctly.

"If you can't control this key and don't want it to fall into the hands of your opponent, the simplest way is to just break it. For the good of all mankind, what's so hard about breaking a small key?"

"Of course, if you want to be a savior and keep this beautiful little key intact, there's a way. Just make a wish with me, and for a quarter of your life, I'll kill whoever's standing in front of you."

"I'm going to apply sunscreen to the pretty lady first," Lu Mingze added. "The last line is a free tip: the head of the Uesugi family should drink a cup of unsweetened hot milk before bed, as it's good for calming the mind. If you can find a convenience store nearby, hurry up and go there."

Then his avatar went dark, leaving Lu Mingfei alone in front of the screen, staring blankly at the last few lines of text in the chat box.

On the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, beautiful women lie on deck chairs, unfastening the back clasps of their swimsuits and stretching as they wait for the sunscreen to be applied.

In the mailbox of a love hotel in Shinjuku, Tokyo, a small note lay quietly: about hot milk, about the spirit of a devastating weapon, and about a girl's daily bedtime ritual.

Milk. Hot milk. No sugar added.

These three simple, almost comical elements, when combined, form the thermostat of Erii's emotions.

During those years of imprisonment, every night a cup of hot milk was brought into her room, perhaps passed through a small window in the door, or perhaps placed on the coffee table by a nurse who never spoke.

That was the last ritual of her day, a silent period, a gentle code that softly told her, "That's enough for today, we'll continue as usual tomorrow."

No one is heating up milk for Erii today.

She probably couldn't quite put her finger on what was missing, but she vaguely felt that something was off, like a familiar tune missing the very last note.

Lu Mingfei stuffed his phone back into his pocket, his hand trembling slightly.

It wasn't because of fear, well, not entirely.

The little devil's words triggered a chain reaction in his mind, like a row of dominoes falling down with a clatter.

Lu Mingze is hinting at something.

Lu Mingze never lays the most crucial news on the table directly. He always wraps it up under layers of jokes and casual conversation, like hiding a bitter pill inside a marshmallow. You have to lick the sugar coating to melt it before you can taste the bitterness.

Erii is not invincible. Every monster will eventually be killed.

No monster is truly unkillable; the only difference lies in the cost. When necessary, eliminating Erii is the most sensible option. If you can't control her and can't guarantee she won't fall into the hands of the Oni Clan, then extinguish her before she becomes a weapon for the enemy.

This is not cruelty, it is cold-blooded rationality, it is called "necessary sacrifice".

So, Lu Mingze wasn't playing a trick on him. The Metropolitan Police Department's helicopter taking her away from them and safely returning her to him was not a prank from beginning to end.

Lu Mingze sent Erii to Lu Mingfei's side to help him with a legitimate favor: to help him firmly grasp the most crucial card in his hand.

Chapter 763 Sky Tree

The Tokyo Skytree suddenly lit up, its pinkish-purple light like an inverted waterfall, overflowing from the base of the tower, flooding the first and second observation decks, and finally converging at the top of the silver-white antenna, turning the entire giant tower into a pillar of light stuck in the very center of Tokyo's heart.

The Sky Tree is also lit up at night on weekdays.

Monday is pale blue, Tuesday is golden orange, Wednesday is soft green, and Thursday is crimson. Each day has a color that belongs only to that day, like a giant calendar standing on the city skyline. But on stormy nights, to reduce the risk of lightning strikes, it is always turned off.

The rain was so fierce tonight that the Skytree, which should have been pitch black, stood silently in the storm, looking like a giant lightning rod that had been disconnected from all power.

However, it lit up.

Light seeped out from the seams of every steel frame of the tower, and after being washed away by the torrential rain, it diffused into hazy wisps of light, making the entire tower appear to be ablaze from afar. Against the backdrop of dark, oppressive clouds, it resembled a giant amethyst sword piercing the sky from the depths of the earth.

This scene is so beautiful it takes your breath away.

Lu Mingfei wasn't the type of person easily moved by scenery. He'd seen sunsets no less than fifty times, and each time his reaction was just, "Hmm, pretty beautiful," before he'd lower his head and continue scrolling through his phone.

He is not religious and doesn't even know how many books the Bible has.

But at that moment, the story of the Tower of Babel uncontrollably surfaced in his mind.

The scene before me is so perfectly matched.

They fired the bricks thoroughly, used asphalt as mortar, and built a colossal tower on the plains of Babylon, its top reaching into the clouds, echoing day and night with the sounds of hammers and chisels.

From then on, no one would ever lose their way again, because gazing across the vast wilderness, you could always see that brightly lit tower. No matter how far you wandered, no matter how many days you lost your way in the desert, as long as you looked up, the tower would be there, and you would know which way to go.

But the Tower of Babel was never completed.

God confused human languages, making it impossible for people to understand each other, and the project stopped. The tower has stood there in a corner of human memory, forever remaining unfinished.

Lu Mingfei suddenly felt that he could understand what the builder was thinking. Building a tower that will never let you get lost is such a remarkable, yet so lonely, thing.

Erii sat on the bed wrapped in a bath towel. Her hair was half-dry with a towel, and a few water droplets were still slowly gathering at the ends, with one occasionally dripping down.

The warm red light from the wall lamp fell into her pupils, overlapping with the pinkish-purple glow of the distant sky trees, as if her eyes contained an entire hazy, yellowish sea of ​​stars.

She picked up the notepad, wrote a few words, and held it up for Lu Mingfei to see.

"I want to go there to play."

There was also a small, simple drawing in the notepad: a tower with crooked lines and clumsy strokes, like a kindergarten child's scribbles.

The drawing skills were far from skillful; in fact, they were quite poor. The tower was tilted, and the antenna looked like a bent bean sprout. But she drew it very carefully, even adding a few radiating lines to the top of the tower to indicate that it was emitting light.

The city was reflected in her eyes, like a warm yet unattainable sea of ​​stars.

Lu Mingfei stared at the words and the crooked tower, remaining silent for a second.

"Okay," he wrote on his notepad, "I'll take you out tomorrow."

He paused, then added, "You should take a shower first—no, you already have. Lie down and go to sleep, I'll go out and buy you some milk."

This was probably one of the most decisive promises Lu Mingfei had ever made in his life. He promised a girl he could erase Tokyo from the map that he would take her to the tallest tower in Tokyo the next day, even though he didn't know if Tokyo would even exist the next day.

Then he remembered Frilian.

Lu Mingfei turned his head to look at the sofa. Frillie had just closed "Romance of the Three Kingdoms." She had finished reading the whole book and was turning to the last page, where the famous concluding words were written.

"The affairs of the world are endless and the fate of heaven is inescapable. The tripartite division is now a dream, and future generations can only lament in vain."

She raised her eyes, her fingertips drawing a streak of light in the air.

"Please bring me an iced coffee."

Lu Mingfei nodded.

Hot milk, iced coffee.

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"The front-line broadcast vehicle reports that the groom bought four bags of chilled milk and a can of iced coffee at a convenience store on the north side of the road and has returned to his room."

A deep, crisp male voice was giving an announcement over the shortwave communication channel.

He was huddled in the back of a gray van, surrounded by rows of monitors and signal receiving equipment, with the infrared surveillance footage of the convenience store entrance playing on the screen in front of him.